A Second Time Around

"A Second Time Around" by Arlo Tatum forms a chapter in CJ Hinke's new book about war resisters in prison, forthcoming from Trine-Day in Spring 2016. (He welcomes suggestion for a title!). CJ was the last person arrested for the Vietnam draft and lives in Thailand where he has co-founded the Nonviolent Conflict Workshop (NVCW) to teach the tactics of Gene Sharp and develop new ones. See https://prisonwarresisters.wordpress.com.

By Arlo Tatum

(Editor’s Note. Arlo Tatum was born in Perth City, Iowa on February 21, 1923, brought into the world by an osteopath. His birthright membership in the Religious Society of Friends is recorded in West Branch, Iowa.

Arlo consciously became a conscientious objector at the age of 14 when he wrote a dramatic poem about seeing a clothesline pole from his bedroom window which looked like a cross, to him a symbol of conscription. When he was 18,he was participating in a Quaker workcamp in Mexico when the Selective Service law was changed, reducing the age of registration from 19 to 18. He did not want to be considered a draft dodger, so Arlo returned to the U.S. to find counsel in his own position of nonregistration at the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. They spent three days trying to convince him to register.

He left sick at heart and went to see Dr. Evan Thomas in New York, at that time chair of the War Resisters League. He was the one person Arlo knew who had not coöperated with conscription, so Arlo explained he was not planning to register, but did not know how to go about it. Evan said, “Young man, I advise you to register.” Arlo turned from his desk, walked to the door and was beginning to cry. Evan called after him, “Well, are you going to register?”

Arlo spun around and said, “No.” Evan called to him and said, “Then we had better discuss it.” Eventually, Arlo wrote the U.S. Attorney-General saying he would not register.

Arlo was arrested by a neighbor who lived in the same apartment house as his parents in Fort Dodge, Iowa. The federal marshal and his wife played bridge with Arlo’s parents, and Arlo was a friend of their son, a boy the same age. The Marshal came to the door that morning, a great bulky man who filled the door. When Arlo’s mother opened it, tears came to the Marshal’s eyes and he finally managed to say, “I’ve come to take Arlo.” Arlo’s mother called him. The Marshal was given coffee and assured he was only doing his duty and Arlo was taken to the county jail in Humboldt, Iowa.

12 of Arlo’s relatives managed to post bond by putting their property up for it. Arlo was released pending sentence after entering a guilty plea and was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota, where he served out his two-year sentence.

Arlo’s arrest and sentence was in 1941 and 1942, when President Truman contrived the State of National Emergency in connection with the Berlin Airlift and — with the help of future President Lyndon Johnson —managed to get the draft law re-enacted in 1948. Registration was required up to age 26 and Arlo was 25 at that time. As events happened, Arlo was on a singing tour in Canada and was strongly urged (and was tempted) to stay. He was also tempted to fill out the forms and register, because by that time, he would have been 26 and nothing more would have been required of him.

But Arlo Tatum was unable to talk himself into coöperating even to that extent and so was arrested while on a concert tour for a faculty of the University of Minnesota. Again Arlo was sentenced, this time at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.

The only men liable to multiple prosecutions were those who fell into this age group. Several hundred were eventually sent to prison for the second time, their first sentence under the 1940 draft law and the second under the 1948 Act. In at least one instance, a third prosecution was reported! Today, only one draft resister, Peter Kiger, of the War Resisters League in New York, who served one year in Springfield for refusal of induction under the 1948 Act, has been prosecuted a second time and sentenced to three months for burning a draft card under the 1967 law. Many others who have served prison terms have been reclassified 1-A under Selective Service.)

The government’s offer was to go into what would be called a forced labor camp in the Soviet Union and to pay $35.00 a month for the privilege. This was called Civilian Public Service and, if you were put into one of the camps run by the Mennonites, Quakers or Brethren and didn’t pay, someone else paid for you. In fact, many a Meeting was obliged to devote its entire income to keeping alternative servicemen in the camps, although later the government set up a few camps at which there was no cost.

When I entered the prison at Sandstone, I was immediately impressed by the large number of very kindly prisoners who wanted to be my protectors. I had requested assignment to the library which I received; I guess that also made the assignment unusual.

A few weeks later, however, I was transferred to a job as denture maker for the prison dentist. He was a very lazy man and rather brutal, so I also ended up doing most of the teeth cleaning. I didn’t clean teeth as well as he might have done, and it was a bloody mess. One of the reasons I was glad to get out of the prison was that it rather embarrassed me to meet my smiling clients in the exercise yard, all with ill-fitting teeth.

My approach to prison was to get the maximum benefit out of it and perhaps this was a selfish approach. I felt that it was an unusual opportunity to be with social discards as a peer, and I knew the really dangerous criminals were more likely to be elective office than in prison. These men in prison were, of course, unsuccessful criminals. Too many of them seemed to never have had anyone to really listen to their problems, and I spent a great deal of time as a listening post. I was also instrumental in getting one man who was too good to be a prison guard to resign.

I like to feel that a few men did not return to prison because of my presence there. I started a glee club; I organized inmate shows for the two Christmases I was in and, in fact, was granted parole in order to spend the second Christmas at home. The date was advanced but I was unable to accept it because I had accepted the obligation of producing the show. I added the innovation of doing a second performance for the guards, their wives and children. I did this partly to show the prisoners that guards had wives and children and partly to assure myself that they did.

I shall always have a secret suspicion that I was more valuable to my immediate community when I was in prison than I have been since. I think that my objection to noncoöperation in prison is that it separates one from other prisoners and removes from one the only opportunity that he will have to associate as an equal with such men.

Sandstone was closed at the time I was sentenced for the second time so I was sent to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. There I was assigned to work on the farm, pick-axing manure to be put on carts and taken to different places where it would stand until it was taken to be used as fertilizer the following spring. This struck me as made work and, although there was no conscious decision involved, I decided that I didn’t care to do it. I submitted my resignation, giving two weeks notice. I was called to the Associate Warden’s office, which, in Springfield, is not on the compound.

The associate Warden is often a disciplinarian and runs the institution while the Warden is out making liberal speeches at the Kiwanis Club and Rotary. He waved the paper upon which I had submitted my resignation in my face and asked me what it was. I told him it was a resignation. He asked if I didn’t know where I was and I assured him I realized I was in the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. “Then you know you can’t resign.” I explained patiently to him that this was obviously untrue because I had just done so and asked whether he was incorrect in thinking that for an unskilled job I should have given more than two weeks notice. He ended up holding me before his classification committee.

After threats of being placed in segregation, which I had anticipated, I was given a different assignment as diet clerk for a civilian dietician. The dietician was a woman named Miss Carnes who had one stiff leg and was less than five feet tall. After I had worked with her for several weeks, she announced to me that she had resigned because she felt I could fulfill her job as she had wanted to quit for some time and had stayed on only under pressure. I then became dietician, relying upon one diet book produced in 1928 and another produced in 1934. I was constantly afraid I would kill someone, but it never happened. I was in a difficult position because I had civilian cooks working under me. The situation infuriated them and caused a certain amount of suspicion on the part of the other prisoners. I worked very hard and am quite convinced that those on special diets had better food during the time I was there than they had before or have had since. On the other hand, I realized I was saving the government quite a bit of money and this rather distressed me.

I can’t remember now whether I failed to make parole or whether it can so near my release date that I rejected it. I rather suspect the latter. In any event, I was released after 13 months of my year and a half sentence. Upon reflection, I would say that going to prison when you are younger and going to prison once is more than half as easy as going to prison twice. But if it is necessary for me to go to prison again, I shall do so, knowing that it will again be an interesting and challenging experience; one which everyone — particularly judges — should undergo until we are civilized enough to get rid of prisons. Although I do not advocate that men refuse to coöperate with the draft, I do urge that they follow their own consciences. And I object strongly to those who talk about “wasting time” in prison. There are men who waste their time in a university, or in a job, and well as in a prison.

I feel that had I not accepted the consequences of my total rejection of conscription, I would not now be visible in the peace movement. it is a part of me and my position, an expression of myself, just as is my present work for ending the draft and helping those who find it a problem in the meantime. A prison experience can be debilitating or it can be a stimulant to work for the elimination of the law which is sending men to prison unnecessarily.

Toward the end of World War II, an Amnesty Committee was set up. One of its leading figures was Albon Man, Jr., and it demanded amnesty for all those who refused Selective Service during the war. While no amnesty was granted, the pressure did bring about the establishment of a Presidential Pardon Board which theoretically went through the file of every man who violated the draft law and eventually granted pardons to about 1,000 men.

I was one of those pardoned. None of these men applied for pardons, but a good many of the remainder have applied for them since that time. There had been earlier instances of amnesty — such as after the Civil War and even after the First World War — but there was none forthcoming at the end of World War II. I know of no instance in which a draft violator who applied for a Presidential pardon being refused. I dealt with a number of men who wanted pardons during the Goldwater-Johnson campaign in 1964. These were men who had not previously voted and felt it important to vote for the peace candidate, Johnson. We all know how that turned out.

I think that amnesty becomes a political possibility if and when the draft ends or becomes substantially altered. I would like to see pressure for amnesty when the law is changed. If the administration is not of the same political party that brought about the escalation of the war in Vietnam, it is possible that a substantial number of criminal convictions might be expunged. This approach, however, is not a radical one, because a good deal of the amnesty work contains the suggestion that the vote is a means to really change society.

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