CPS Workers, Community Members and Patriotism

CPS worker experiences with community members who questioned their patriotism.

It should also be noted that in some cases, CPS men interacted directly with current or former soldiers.

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/37/1  
Twenty-four days after the camp opened, the men put out the first of 33 fires in the season with the last on October 25, 1942.  Depending on the size of the fire, the COs worked alongside “convicts, barflies, soldiers, Indians, men from the Reno jail, and others”.   

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/44/1

Some patients and workers challenged COs.  When the COs first arrived, “a crowd of patients and on-lookers had gathered to see the new curiosities.  We heard remarks of ‘slackers’, ‘draft dodger’, ‘yellow bellies’, and from one of the wards, ‘I just dare you to come up on this ward and work, you conscientious objector, you! Do you object to work too?’”  (from CPS unit report quoted in Taylor, p. 191). The opposition dissipated as soon as the men began to work in the wards.

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/49/1

A group of the Byberry COs participated in jaundice experiments at the University of Pennsylvania as part of CPS Unit No. 140, (previously CPS Unit No. 115 under the Office of Scientific Research and Development).  The experiments grew out of problems during the war, particularly in Italy where more men contracted hepatitis than were killed or wounded in combat.  Superintendent Zeller supported their participation.  The Office of Surgeon General, the American Friend Service Committee and the Brethren Service Committee sponsored the hepatitis experiments.  Other volunteers in the experiment lived in the CPS quarters at Byberry or in a former fraternity house on the University of Pennsylvania campus. 
 
Some men participated since “it got them away from Byberry”; others because they believed the experience to be an opportunity “to serve mankind”.   Neil Hartman’s reason for participation reflected another motivation: “We were called yellow bellies and things like that. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t afraid to take risks if it did good.  I would not take risks to kill people, but if it would save people. . . Actually I was happy that I had the opportunity to show the world I was willing to take risks”.  (from 2007 interview reported in Taylor p. 85.)

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/54/1
Gordon Zahn describes a pervasive sense of isolation at Camp Simon, ten miles from Warner and an additional distance from Concord, New Hampshire.  Not only was the former CCC camp geographically isolated, but also the ACCO camps experienced psychological isolation from the Catholic Church.  In fact many in the church hierarchy were openly hostile to conscientious objectors, directing spiritual and material support to men in uniform, each parish with its honor roll of soldiers.  The Catholic Worker movement provided important and regular support to COs in the Catholic camps. (See Zahn Chapter 2, pp. 22-35) Gordon C. Zahn, Another Part of the War: The Camp Simon Story.  Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1979.

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/60/1

Luke Birky, who entered Lapine from his home in Albany, Oregon, worked as “a tree faller and heavy equipment mechanic.”  Reflecting on his experience over fifty years later, he wrote “War fever was at a high pitch so we met some hostility from people in the outside community.  We were viewed as cowards and ‘yellow bellies’ or worse.  So there were many things we had to think through.”  Even though he served more than three years in three camps, he noted the significance of his experience. 

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/108/1

CPS Unit No. 108, subunit 1, located at Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a National Park Service Camp, included men who not only fought fires, repaired trails and maintained roads, but also those who volunteered for guinea pig experiments.

Some locals called the COs cowards or “yellow bellies” and occasionally roughed them up. 

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/115/33
Major Theo. J. Abernathy directed this OSRD project studying atypical pneumonia during 1944 and 1945(?).  The first experiment took place at CPS Camp No. 108 at Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where over one hundred men participated, one to fifty at a time.  A second experiment occurred sometime later at CPS Camp No. 44 in Luray, Virginia. 
 
https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/131/1

One CO, in a 1988 survey reflecting on his experience at the mental hospital, reported the following.

For the year and a half that I was at Cherokee State Hospital, we never went to the dining hall but were greeted by other hospital attendants with jeers like “yellow-belly” and “Cee-O”.  At first the patients echoed the employees’ taunts, but within a few months that ceased.  Though the administration made feeble attempts to make us welcome, the hospital staff continued to be uniformly negative toward us.  (in Sareyan p. 240)

The various denominations operating camps provided financial support for the COs to cover their modest maintenance, medical and dental needs, as well as a small monthly allowance.  One Methodist woman from Minneapolis, Kansas wrote to CPS leaders about her efforts to persuade others in her congregation to support COs.

Our [Methodist] women’s magazine urged us to send money and gifts to our World Peace Commission to be used for CPS camps.  I called their attention to it and they voted to send $5.00 out of the treasury.  But some A No. 1 propagandists got wind of it and raised a furor and now the leaders are confused and don’t know what to do.  Our pastor’s wife suggests we drop it to keep down trouble.  But I assure you that a few of us will do something; I hope several times over that amount.  Also, as I have opportunity, I will see that the truth is given out. (Mrs. Omar Joyce in Goossen, p. 24)

While the Methodist Commission on World Peace was able to fund its COs, Mrs. Joyce illustrated the conflicts faced in congregations, and the important role women like her played in bringing the need before the congregants.

https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/140/1
Dr. Major Theo. J. Abernathy and Dr. John Dingle directed this OSG project on atypical pneumonia, which had the capacity to utilize up to one hundred and eighty-nine volunteers.  There is evidence that this unit had its origins in one of the 115 CPS Units, likely CPS Unit No. 115, subunit 33.  It operated from July through September in 1945, and was administered at Pinehurst, North Carolina, and possibly, at Gatlinburg, Tennessee earlier.   See reference on Gatlinburg, CPS Camp No. 108.

 https://civilianpublicservice.org/camps/140/2 -
CPS Unit No. 140, subunit 2, located at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, subjected COs to experiments on jaundice, a major disease threat for soldiers.

CPS Unit No. 115, subunit 33, located at Pinehurst, North Carolina, subjected CPS men to experiments studying atypical pneumonia. 

It may have been, as part of this subunit, that experiments were conducted placing men in isolation at Holly Inn, in Pinehurst, where they contracted atypical pneumonia by inhaling or drinking throat washings taken from soldiers with colds or pneumonia.  The experiment established that both colds and atypical pneumonia were viral in nature. (Keim p. 76)