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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... 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 hunger strike at the Federal Prison in Danbury , Connecticut , and they con- cluded I would be ...
... warden . The prison administration did a little passive resistance of its own and chose to ignore Stanley . Thus he was assigned to the yard main- tenance crew where he pushed a lawn mower . His feet became sore and blistered in the sun ...
... warden , Dr. Hagerman , to teach a twenty - unit corre- spondence course on this subject . This was approved , and he sent in a sizable number of books for our course , complete with a sylla- bus that directed us to write a five - page ...
... Warden Hagerman handed me this wire , he congratulated me and I staggered out of the office . I was really nervous , my hands shook and I could hardly open a pack of cigarettes . ( Alas , in those days I smoked ! ) It took me about an ...
... Warden Hagerman had set up . We met at regular times and discussed various changes in prison life . Since individual radios would result in bedlam , we had a prison amplification system . Our committee arranged to schedule symphony ...
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 |