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
Results 1-5 of 81
... friend and Antiochian Bill Hef- ner , went to Washington and promptly began our picketing in front of the British Embassy . We gave advance notice to the press and had handbills on the issue of Indian independence . A sign referred to ...
... Friends Ambulance Unit in China , Bronson Clark has been active in business and peace - related work . After the war he began a long association with the American Friends Service Committee , becoming executive secretary in 1969. He has ...
... friends got on the phone with George Lyman Paine , in whose Boston Park Street office I had my FOR desk . He paid my bail , and I shortly returned to Boston . Even though I knew I would not accept CPS , having been denied conscientious ...
... friends and helpers , and also ene- mies . My fellow convicts . They knew when I arrived , how long my sentence was , what I was in for . But the inevitable grapevine now helped me . I heard a scraping noise at the front of my cell door ...
... friends . The other two cells were occupied by lewd types , and eighteen - year - old Stanley was forced to witness various forms of sex play through the bars . And their talk was hardly elevating . After about three months at ...
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 |