Civilian Public Service Camp 21

Tomi Owens, The Path Less Followed Leads to Wyeth

When France fell to the Germans in the summer of 1940, Congress passed the Selective Service and Training Act by one vote. It was the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. Historically, conscientious objectors to war could be exempted from a draft on the basis of training and belief. The National Board for Religious Conscientious Objectors was formed by the three traditional peace churches: Quaker (Friends), Church of the Brethren and Mennonites. This board convinced the government that instead of sending conscientious objectors (COs) to prison as draft dodgers to allow them to work in mental hospitals, volunteer for medical experiments, and to aid Forest Service projects.

Building on the Civilian Conservation Corps camp structure of the Depression era and often using CCC locations, the government created the Civilian Public Service. Smoke jumping, felling logs, clearing snags, and replanting areas of forest destroyed by clear cutting, this was the work for CO internees. Many COs were confined to the CPS camps for the duration of the war.

On December 5, 1941, CPS Camp 21 opened in Wyeth. Two days later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Conscientious objectors began to trickle into Wyeth. Highway 84 had not yet intruded on the solitude of the Columbia Gorge and wartime rations restricted travel. It was a day long bus journey from Portland to Wyeth when they ran at all. Isolated, removed from society — the deeply religious young men, often the sons of church leaders, were alone of the fringes of a vast wilderness. Most had never been far from home. Torn from their families and places of worship they offered their peace testimonies in the silent forest beneath the dark and solemn hills.

May 21, 2014

I recently discovered a book about this camp. I haven't read it yet, but it is on it's way... (I have read most of this book now and it has some great info that I'll be sharing soon... 12/12/14)

Refusing War, Affirming Peace: The History of Civilian Public Service Camp #21 at Cascade Locks by Jeffery Kovac

(Now I lost the book in the disastrous move a few years back and need to replace it... Sad. But I just ordered another copy from the link above! 5/13/2020)

Jeffrey Kovac, WWII pacifists served, too, in Oregon

The Civilian Public Service program operated from 1941 to 1947 and provided a unique structure for COs to do "work of national importance under civilian direction" as an alternative to military service. ...

One of the most notable CPS camps was right here in Oregon in the Columbia Gorge. On Dec. 5, 1941, two days before Pearl Harbor, 71 conscientious objectors, nearly all from California, arrived by train at CPS Camp #21 at Cascade Locks to begin their alternative service, expecting to serve for a year. After the U.S. entered the war, their term of service became the duration of the war plus six months, the same as those in the military. Eventually, the camp, which was actually seven miles east in Wyeth, housed nearly 200 men, who, despite long hours of physical labor on work projects for the Forest Service, were able to build a vibrant pacifist community that came to be known as the "Athens of CPS." About 550 men spent some time at Cascade Locks during the war.

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