A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell Their StoriesLarry Gara, Lenna Mae Gara Kent State University Press, 1999 - 207 pages Little is known about those who openly refused to enter military service in World War II because of their convictions against killing. While many of those men accepted alternative civilian service, more than 6,000 were incarcerated with sentences ranging from a few months to five years. Some were tried, convicted, and reimprisoned for essentially the same offense--resisting induction into the armed forces--after their initial release. In A Few Small Candles, ten men tell why they resisted, what happened to them, and how they feel about that experience today. Their stories detail the resisters' struggles against racial segregation in prison, as well as how they instigated work and hunger strikes to demonstrate against other prison injustices. Each of the ten has remained active in various causes relating to peace and social justice. This is a unique collection of memoirs that illuminated the American homefront during World War II and provides an important source for those interested in the American peace movement. |
From inside the book
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... II resisters who went on to significant post - war careers are no longer living . They include Bay- ard Rustin , who became a major figure in the civil rights movement ; Jim Peck , who was an energetic nonviolent fighter for xii PREFACE.
... civil rights ; Robert Lowell , who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry ; and Igal Roodenko , who became a roving prophet of non- violence , spreading the message at home and abroad . While many resisters later made important ...
... civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists raged on . At this point I felt , due to my personal contacts with many Friends , my new association with the American Friends Service Committee , and my shared feeling of affinity ...
... civil rights . Years later a joke went around AFSC that you could not be executive secretary unless you had been to China — first Colin Bell , then Lewis Hoskins , and then Bran- son Clark . After the war , Eleanor and I had three more ...
... Civil War , I knew I had to find a better way of fighting , a nonviolent way . I Believe That There are mysterious spiritual factors that influence who we are and what we do . For me , beginning in early childhood , these were the ...
Contents
1 | |
20 | |
My Resistance to World War II | 38 |
My War and My Peace | 53 |
My War on War | 78 |
War Resistance in World War II | 98 |
Reflections of a Religious War Objector Half a Century Later | 130 |
Prison and Butterfly Wings | 152 |
How the War Changed My Life | 174 |
My Story of World War II | 194 |
Selected Additional Readings | 205 |