“My mother, on the other hand, was much more a woman who valued justice and honesty, doing the right thing. She was by no means a pacifist. She was a fighter for justice. I don’t know when for sure, I think 1934, the Hearst Press put on a big campaign against war. They published weekly a section of the paper that was a collection of WW I photographs of ships sinking with men in the ocean, trench warfare, corpses lying on the field, and this whole business. We didn’t ordinarily by a Los Angeles paper but my father went out and bought all the LA Examiners the weeks that these stories ran, six or eight weeks, I don’t know. And he went over that section of the paper with me. And showed me what those pictures meant. He never wanted me to be a soldier or to put on a uniform, or to join the Boy Scouts, or anything connected with that. He said, ‘Don’t ever go. Don’t ever go. Tell them you’re a conscientious objector and go to jail. You’ll have a roof over your head and they’ll have to feed you something and it’ll be better than in the trenches.’
“I was always interested in current events. My folks were. I followed the economy; we were in the midst of a big Depression and there were lots of economic solutions being trotted out in California. I also followed foreign affairs. So there was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and later on Mainland China. And the Italian invasion of the Abyssinia. The Nazi invasion of the Rhineland, the whole Nazi Party. Hitler came to power just about the same time as an FDR came to power.
“So I was watching all those things. I took part in current discussions in high school and freely talked about that and gave my opinions. But as to conscientious objections, to my objection to war, I was closed-mouthed about that. I didn’t talk about that.
“What about my junior year I had a good friend in high school and the Germans had overrun France. Congress that summer passed the Selective Service Act. Registrations were starting and so we knew what was coming. And somehow I got talking to him one day and I told him, ‘I’m not going. I don’t believe it’s right to kill people. And I don’t know what will happen. I suppose they’ll put me in jail.’ He said it wasn’t necessary to do that. He told me about a provision in the law for people who belong to a peace church; he knew about this law which I didn’t know about. That was very interesting news to me. I’d never been to a church service; I’d never been inside a church at 17. He persuaded me to go to his church because his church was involved, the Church of the Brethren was involved in this peace program for COs. I didn’t know any pacifist other than my father until that point when I realized that my friend was a CO!
“So then I got involved with the church. I certainly approved of the Church of the Brethren’s stand on the war. I understood that. And it flowed out of the testimony that Jesus had given, and that was fine. A lot of the church service was quite strange to me and always rather foreign, hymn singing and responsive readings, and stuff. I went along with that.
“So the time came for me to register. I registered and asked for the proper CO form and I had a little time to fill that out. And it asked a lot of questions. I don’t know that I have any special memories of it now except that they were trying to establish the legitimacy of the position I was asking for. Of course, growing up in a peace church would be great evidence of that. But a kid at 18 doesn’t have a whole lot of stuff in his file of evidence. So I was concerned about this and trying to make as strong a case as I could. So I wrote and rewrote and rewrote and finally, thought, ‘That’s the best I can do,’ and sent it in. But I continue to worry about this and kept thinking about it. Will they understand? Will they accept it? That kind of thing. Then one day I just heard a voice within that said, ‘You only have to understand what it is you need to do. You don’t have to worry about what other people think about it.’ And at that point I was at peace and didn’t worry about it anymore.”
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