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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... took the form of open resistance , not evasion . It is an aspect of the war that has been virtually ignored , yet the record is part of the larger picture of American reform and the history of nonviolence . These are individual stories ...
... took me out of that prison to China . After three weeks in quarantine , I wrote a letter to the warden asking about mail and why I was not being processed . It turned out that in some of the material I was carrying I had mentioned a ...
... took off his shoes and socks and became the " Barefoot Boy " again . I should say that Ashland had a much - improved atmosphere over Chillicothe , which had a large population of youthful offenders . Ashland had a large number of COs ...
... took pride in doing their own work without help . In spell- ing , one man would open his speller on his lap to copy out the words . I said , " For heaven sakes , Rhodes , put the book on the table in front of you , it's much easier to ...
... took me about an hour to settle down . Some of the negatives of prison life were offset in a major way by a sterling and courageous group of COs who shared the prison ex- perience . A fellow Antiochian greeted me at Ashland when I came ...
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 |