My personal opinion is that some of these camps will eventually be used as "Alternative Work Camps" for Conscientious Objectors after we institute a draft.
Conscientious Objectors
The personal convictions of some healthy men kept them from bearing arms. Some men objected on religious and moral grounds to participating in violence. Some belonged to churches that have historically objected to war. In World War I, these conscientious objectors were jailed. But as World War II developed, Congress, for the first time in history, recognized "CO Status" as a legitimate moral stand. Under the law, objectors had two choices -- they could go into the military but serve in the medical corps or other non-combat duties, or they were required to do "alternative service" here at home that was "work of national importance."
To see a video history of conscious objection, click here.
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0800/stories/0801_0107_01.htmlNationwide during World War II, there were 34.5-million men who registered for the draft. Of those 72,354 applied for conscientious objector status. Of those COs, 25,000 served in non-combatant roles and 27,000 failed to pass the physical exam and were exempted. There were over 6,000 men who rejected the draft outright and chose to go to jail instead of serving the war effort. And then there were 12,000 men who chose to perform alternative service. Their work was supervised by the Civilian Public Service (CPS) program.
(Bill Anderson, a conscientious objector who volunteered for the hunger experiment.)At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Ansel Keyes -- the inventor of K-ration meals for GIs -- was commissioned to find out how millions of starving refugees in Europe and Asia could be brought back to health after the war. He asked for volunteers from CPS conscientious objector units. The volunteers would be starved, studied and then fed back to health. Two-hundred COs volunteered, and 36 were chosen for the project. To see a video segment about the starvation project, click here. The results of the research have been used by relief workers in hunger crises ever since.
In Nebraska, the former Civilian Conservation Corps camp (one of FDR's programs during the Great Depression) at Weeping Water served as a conscientious objector camp for 150 men during the war, mostly Mennonites. The men were put to work on various conservation projects, which helped local farmers raise more crops to feed fighting men. The Weeping Water camp was open for about a year in the middle of the war. There were also camps at North Platte and Waterloo, Nebraska, later in the war. Other COs served as fire fighters or as orderlies at public institutions, like mental hospitals. All told, there over 150 units set up where conscientious objectors could complete their alternative service.
More:
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0800/stories/0801_0107.html All your objectors are belong to Halliburton.
See also:
Conscientious objector
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Conscientious objectors)
A conscientious objector is an individual following the religious, moral or ethical dictates of their conscience that are incompatible: (1) with being a combatant in military service, or (2) being part of the armed forces as a combatant organization. In the first case, conscientious objectors may be willing to accept non-combatant roles during conscription or military service. In the second case, the objection is to any role within armed forces and results in complete rejection of conscription or military service and, in some countries, assignment to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service. Some conscientious objectors may consider themselves either pacifist or antimilitarist.
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In the United States during World War I conscientious objectors were permitted to serve in noncombatant military roles. About 2000 absolute conscientious objectors refused to cooperate in any way with the military.<7> These men were imprisoned in military facilities such as Fort Lewis (Washington), Alcatraz Island (California) and Fort Leavenworth (Kansas). The government failed to take into account that some conscientious objectors viewed any cooperation with the military as contributing to the war effort. Their refusal to put on a uniform or cooperate in any way caused difficulties for both the government and the COs. The mistreatment<8> received by these absolute COs included short rations, solitary confinement and physical abuse so severe as to cause the deaths of two Hutterite draftees.<9>
Eventually, because of the shortage of farm labor, the conscientious objectors were granted furloughs either for farm service or relief work in France under the American Friends Service Committee. A limited number performed alternative service as fire fighters in the Cascade Range in the vicinity of Camp Lewis, Washington<10> and in a Virginia psychiatric hospital.<11>
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objectors#United_States