Transcript:
During World War II, about 1,800 Pennsylvanians were classified as conscientious objectors or "CO's." Some were sent to prison for refusing to fight. Others joined the civilian public service or CPS and were stationed at base-camps throughout the U.S."I'm Warren Sawyer, I was a conscientious objector in World War II, all but two weeks."
Sawyer was in his 20s when the war broke. His Quaker belief in non-violence kept him from becoming a soldier. Still, he wanted to help his country, so he joined the CPS.
Warren Sawyer:
"The whole program started out in the forests, in the back woods. The Selective Service people thought it would be a good idea to keep these people away from ordinary citizens."
Throughout the war, conscientious objectors worked on a range of civic projects. Some helped build America's national parks. Others jumped from airplanes to fight fires in the west while some, like Sawyer, became human guinea pigs, subjecting themselves to mental and medical experiments.
Warren Sawyer:
"I was inoculated with 100 cc's of the virus yellow jaundice; I guess I was lucky because I never got it…it meant being stuck two or three times a day, that's three days a week."
Sawyer signed up for a yellow jaundice experiment, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania. He says he was only one of the conscientious objectors who participated in medical experiments all over the country.
Warren Sawyer:
"They had a hookworm project, a pneumonia project. …they had saltwater projects to study the effects of saltwater on sailors who had been shipwrecked.... the best known probably is the starvation unit, where men volunteered to be guinea pigs and they were on a diet for three months…the third set of months would be to bring them back to normal."
The Civilian Public Service or CPS was led by religious organizations, including the Quakers, which upheld ideals of toleration and freedom of conscience. While the CPS helped CO's avoid the front line, men like Warren Sawyer found themselves on another battlefield.
Emma Lapsansky is curator and historian at Haverford College:
"The notion of civilian public service really had to do with if I'm not gonna go to war and kill people, what can I do that will serve my community like those that are going to kill people are doing. So they put themselves on the front line, but just not on a military front line."
Lapsansky says the CPS gave Quakers and other pacifists a government-sanctioned way of being true to their beliefs and to their country.
Before Warren Sawyer volunteered for the yellow jaundice experiment, he volunteered at Byberry, a Philadelphia mental hospital. He says the job placed him alongside men and women who thought CO's were unpatriotic and vile.
Warren Sawyer:
"We'd hear all kinds of remarks about yellow-belly, etc., etc. from the other passengers on the bus who were heading to Byberry to work the nightshift or dayshift, as the case may be."
Public outcry against CO's even led to a stipend debacle during which most CO's either were paid very little or not paid at all. A Gallup poll taken in 1940 found that one in ten Americans felt that CO's should be shot or put in jail. Sawyer said the superintendent at Byberry, for a short time, hired armed guards to protect conscientious objectors from the staff.
Warren Sawyer:
"We did not ask for it, I'd say we weren't even aware of it, but he was afraid of the antagonism, of all the employees that were at the hospital."
While the men and women who fought in World War II were publicly lauded for their contributions, the CO's in Civilian Public Service were not, nor did they think they would be, says Sawyer.
Warren Sawyer:
"I think that CO's made their contribution to many things without realizing it or expecting to. There was no resentment. Other than the fact that we were drafted and rather be going on with our lives, the same as the fellows in the army preferred to be going on with their lives."
Warren Sawyer, a life-long conscientious objector, is 83-years-old. He lives in Medford, New Jersey.
