What I want to talk to you about is kinda what you learned from this research you did. And—

Oh boy. I haven't done anything—

And you're an, you're a, an architect.

Yes. And—

But is this an, would you call this a sociological study?

Yeah, I was interested in sociology, and, and, got my Master's in city planning—how you, you develop a city, and, and so forth, and my practice was, large-scale land development stuff, generally. Subdivisions, and, and some shopping centers, and some—well, I, I worked for Wan-, I was the store architect for, at the Wanamaker Department Store, which is, the store in, in Philadelphia, during its suburban store expansion program. We built stores around in the suburbs. And, so, that's the kind of ar-, I, architect I, I was. I was interested in more than just the buildings, but the environment that you created.

Mm-hmm.

And—

Mm-hmm. Would you talk a little about how you became a conscientious objector? What motivated you?

The, family situation. My grandfather, John Bell Alexander—I'm Paul Alexander Wilhelm—mother's dad, was a Southern Baptist minister, preacher, evangelist, fundamentalist. And, well, he was the kind of guy—you can cut this out, if you, if you want—but he went to, the story is, in the family, that, that he went to a revival meeting one night when he was a young man, the next day he went up to start out the plow and had the team up on the top of the hill, and was plowing away, and, and then he came running down to the tent, and so forth, and looked for the minister, and, and said, I have had a strange experience, and I've been told that I have to preach, like you do. And the minister said, yes, son, I, I noticed you in the audience last night, and your hair was full color, and now it's white. [laughs] And so, that, so we were a family that, that had wild religious ideas, I guess. And, so, that's, that's all, I, I believed, I tried to believe. When I was eleven years-old, the minister came down to our Sunday school department, and invited those who would give their life to Jesus to come up and stand, join him on the platform, and pretty soon they were all up there on the platform talking to me, [laughs] I was sitting back in here. I was the only one who wouldn't go up. And so, finally, I went, and having gone, I decided I need to be a, a, a Christian, having committed, made that commitment in front of all those people, and so I went through with that, and I guess this is an outgrowth, my being a conscientious objector is an—

Mm-hmm.

—outgrowth of that experience of having made up my mind.

Why a conscientious objector, then?

Well, you can't love your neighbor and shoot him. And Jesus is pretty plain about what you were supposed to do, that you were supposed to love your neighbor, and you can't do that if you shoot him, or you blow his, his house, town apart, or, or poison him, or sink his ships. And so, I, was, decided that that was not for me, and sort of fought it out with my draft board, and...

How about your family? How did they feel about it?

Well, my dad was a, he had been, I think, ashamed that he had not been able to be in the World, in the First World War. He had flunked the physical exam. And, so, I think that he definitely would've wanted me to be patriotic. And he was patriotic, and so am I. I think it's, I want, I want to contribute to the country, but not that way. And, so I told the draft board that I wanted to be a conscientious objector. I don't know if, these people are talking today about having written letters, I don't know that I did that, I'm not sure.

You had a more lenient draft board.

—something—

Yes? Shift a little bit?

I'm having trouble with that hinge behind—

Yeah, it was good. [laughs]

Yeah, I can see—

Oh, the hinge coming out of the closet there?

Oh, you're getting a—

You know what I realized?

—bright spot. What?

I forgot to have you introduce yourself. And the reason I just did that to you is that when you do this [hits microphone?]—

Oh, OK.

—much time do we—well, you're gonna, you're gonna take as much time as we want—

Yeah.

—and then you're gonna edit. OK, I'll, I'll—

Because we're a little behind here, so...

—free.

So go back, and, just—

OK.

—introduce yourself.

OK.

Oh, are we starting all over?

He didn't, I forgot to ask him to introduce himself.

All right.

Well, I'm Paul Wilhelm. Paul Alexander Wilhelm.

I'm wrong, he did introduce himself, because there's, I remember you telling me that. Alexander—

Yeah.

—never mind.

Well, I told you my grandfather, maybe that was—

Yeah, yeah.

—Alexander. OK.

It's OK, I just need it on tape, so I could—

Yeah.

—so I know who you are—

[laughs]

—and, you're now when I look at the tape. Go ahead and talk about—I'm sorry. What were we in the middle of? Where'd we just stop?

I had told a, a wild story that my grandfather told—

Oh, Karen suggested we use, that you say you were from a Southern background, maybe, that—

I guess the question would be—

—you were Baptist at the time—

—a lot of people who were, who got CO status were from a traditional peace church.

Yeah.

So, I would like to hear you tell about being a Southern Baptist, and—

Yeah, OK.

How did you interpret that to—

—and being, and being—

Yeah.

—and telling your draft board, you know, that—

OK.

—just talk about going to your draft board with that, and, you know, you were a Southern Baptist, not a Quaker, or however you would put it, but...

Yeah. Just go on and, and—

Yeah, go ahead.

—tell? How did I become a conscientious objector when I was a Baptist? Well, because my grandfather was a, this, this rather powerful, Southern, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, evangelistic, fundamentalist preacher, I had a, a deep interest in religion, but I was often conflicted, because I, the, reason and, intelligence, and, and, doctrine don't, don't necessarily track together. So, becoming a conscientious objector was a sort of fight within myself, because I wanted, I had made this pledge when I'd joined the Delmar Baptist Church, because the minister had come down and, and I found that I was the guy sitting out in the audience and there were, the rest of my Sunday school classmates were sitting up on the platform with, or standing up on the platform, with the reverend, or with the, the pastor. So, I, I had made a commitment at that time, and, and so I was trying to live up to it. Why, well, I didn't, I don't remember reading any powerfully convincing things about what, how terrible war was, but my imagination of, of cities being bombed, and people crushed and, and smashed, and, and so forth, seemed to me to be wrong, 'cause that made people—if the United States does that, it makes people mad at the United States, and that makes it harder for the United States and, and those, that country, to arrive at a peaceful relationship. And, and so, rationally, I, I thought that war was, was wrong, and, and became a conscientious objector.

What was your experience in World War II as a conscientious objector? And was it hard to be a conscientious objector in World War II?

Not really. The, it was difficult at, at first, because it, a lot of people didn't understand and, and disliked me, but, for it, perhaps, but Washington University, where I was going to, where I was studying Architecture and City Planning, was on Delmar Boulevard, about, oh, several blocks away from Delmar Baptist Church, and I began going there. And the minister there, Rollin, Roland Duddon, was a pacifist, and that was very interesting to me. Here was a, a, another guy who thought that the war was all wrong. So he was good reinforcement that I, I much needed. I also had some, a couple friends who were pacifists. I, assume you will cut this to whatever your time requirements are, and I, I'll ramble on. At, in the last year or so at, at Washington University, I'd been a member of a group of guys who had dinner, I think it was every Tuesday night or something, together. And, there were, there were, one of those guys was a pacifist, and, and he held forth with these arguments, and sometimes I would help support him, and other times I would argue with him and get reinforced my-, myself by that. So that's, I think, how I became convinced that I wanted not to join the military. In, the, the legalistic business of dealing with the draft board and the Selective Service system, and so forth, I'm not clear. Those, those things, I've not rehearsed.

What, what was your experience in CPS camp? Was it an, a, a defining experience for you? I, I imagine it was, if you've come back and written this book years later.

[laughs]

We could talk about why it's been so important.

Well, I, I had gotten a degree in Architecture, and then City Planning, and so when the, I got to, [laughs] the Civilian Public Service camp at Patapsco, they put me to work to, with a, a, a builder, and we built privies for [laughs], for the park. The, that was as, as close as I think I got to, to come in, in using my architectural training. The rest of my experience as a conscientious objector—I have to think a moment.

You said you went to Palapa[?].

I—

Would you tell us the story about why they closed the Patapsco camp?

Oh, sure. One, one thing that, at Pa-, at, at the first camp, at the so-called Patapsco camp, was in the suburbs of, of Baltimore, in a suburban park. And, but we were conscientious objectors of, of all races, and, there were people who objected to the fact that we were a camp that, where whites and blacks were living together, and, and Jews and so forth. And, so, [stutters] Selective Service moved us out, and they got me to be—well, they, they took another Select-, Civilian Conservation Camp at, at Powellsville, Maryland, a swamp clearance project, and they sent us down to, to do that. The camp had been out of use for a couple of years, or, or more for conscient-, for the Civilian Conservation Corps. So they gave me maybe a dozen guys and we went down and rehabilitated the camp. And the first thing we knew there were a hundred [laughs] guys coming in and, and living there. And, that was a, that was a, in a sense, a, a good experience.

You went then from there to, to Byberry?

I, yes—

Or, or could you, could you talk about Byberry, about what that experience—

Sure.

—was like for you.

I, I, I can't remember now why I went to Byberry, but at Patapsco, I, my girlfriend, whom I had just happened to meet in, at the New York World's Fair just bef-, before I started my graduate work, had, she a Montana girl, but she had gone to school in New York, and was teaching at Plainfield, New Jersey, and so, we decided to get married, and while, and at Powellsville, the—then maybe this'd be an interesting story for people, but anyhow I'll be brief about it. We were both born on April the sixteenth, I in 1916, she in 1917, and we had all kinds of things that, she was a painter and artist, and I was an architect, and so forth. And, she had worked at this, there was a woman in the suburbs right next to the park, Patapsco Park outside of Baltimore, who took care of, of little orphans. And so, my, Jayne had taken a job with her to take care of, of the, the little girls, and on Sundays she taught art—I mean Saturdays. She taught art to the Saturday afternoon students, to the conscientious objectors in the camp at Patapsco.

And [pause] so, excuse me—

Wait one second. There's—

I'm gonna change the tape here, sorry.

Oh.

You're all right here?

Yep, I think we're rolling.

Everybody's happy? OK, we're rolling. So Byberry.

OK, I had gone to the World's Fair just before I started my graduate work at Washington University, and I, this, this girl was standing at the Statue of, of, of George Washington, painting his picture. And so I watched her; and the guy that I was supposed to meet there was an hour late, so by the time he came we had begun a friendship. And, so, while I, I was in the, at Patapsco situation, she came down and, as I've, I've told you. And then the, the next, year—where was I the next year?

Say, let's say you're in Byberry.

Well, I'm trying to get you to Byberry.

OK.

We don't need actually how you got—

Skip over it. We don't have, we don't care.

—there, just when you got there.

It's fine. Skip to Byberry.

Well, [stutters] I had this girl, we got married at Pata-, from Powellsville, and, at, what, an interesting thing, because it was, the wedding was interrupted by an air raid siren, and so forth. But, anyway, we were married, and Byberry seemed to provide an opportunity for us to be together, if I, at least some of the time. She could, she, she could get a job teaching in Phil-, in Philadelphia, and I could work at, at Byberry and, and get to be with her some. So that's, that's what we did, and, and we found an apartment in Germantown, part of Philadelphia, and, so, there I was, a happy, newly-married man at home, and, in charge of patients [laughs] at a wild hospital, mental hospital in, in Northeast Philadelphia. That was, that was a very interesting experience, of course. The, problem of...yeah, let's see, how do I, how do I do this? The, at, at first, I had, was given a job of, of, running a, a ward—no, the first, that's what I was trying to remember. The, my first assignment, I, I went into a room and in fifteen minutes, I, I was told, now, you will be in charge here. And I could see into this, in this room there were, about, I think, 185 men, in all levels of dress and, and nakedness, milling around in, in this room. There were, they were epileptics. And I was handed a tongue depresser wrapped with, with gau-, with tape, and a pillow. And I was told to try to get, when somebody has a seizure, try to get this tongue depresser between their teeth, so they don't bite their tongue off, and then try to get the pillow under them if they fall. And, I had that fifteen minute instruction and then the instructor locked the door, and kept—on me in there with the rest of these guys. And, and that was my initiation at, at Byberry.

You were alone? You were left alone?

I was alone in that room, big room, with 150 guys going, and the, I went, there was this terrible stench, so I went into the, the, bed, the, next to the, the dayroom was the toilet, and it was a terrible mess. Byberry had been built for 800 attendants and something like 1,000 patients, and, and we had many more times that many patients, and I was, I think, the thirty-eighth or thirty-ninth attendant.

Instead of 800?

Instead of, of, of several hundred, I'm not sure it was eight hundred. But any rate, that was the problem there. Guys could get any kind of job because of the war, or could get better jobs than this stuff, and, and so Selective Service had agreed to open nineteen mental hospitals and make it so-called Detached Service—

Mm-hmm.

—for conscientious objectors. We could go there then and, and help take care of the patients, and that's what we did. [laughs] I, I had the, the ward, next, after that, I, I—this, this time when I was given the, the, tongue depresser and, and the pillow, that only lasted a couple of, of weeks for me, because that seemed to be a place that when the new guy came they could start him. [laughs] At any rate, they sent me up to, Two West, which was a, a part of the hospital that's a sort of annex to the nursing room, so that people who were sick would be sent over to my ward, the one that I had responsibility for it. And I don't remember how many patients I had there. It was not as terrific of, as having this, two hundred, I think it was, and eighty-five patients milling around in day room. All epileptics, and all had, every once in a while one of them would have a—people get aggressive before they have an epileptic fit, and when a, somebody gets aggressive in a crowd like that, he's likely to start a fight, and so that, that...

How would, how did you, how did you manage to cont-, to be successful in that situation? How old were you?

I was, hmm...how old was I? That was '43, I,'43...no, I didn't get out, I got out in '46. Yeah, it was about '43, so I was—sixteen off of forty-three is what, twenty-eight? Twenty-seven?

Yeah, twenty-seven, something like that. So you weren't eighteen, but you were—

I wasn't eighteen, thank goodness.

—yeah, but you were still pretty young—

Well, yeah—

—and thrown in there with no training.

No training—

You didn't have any training?

—at all. That fifteen minutes was all the training I ever got, as a matter of fact.

How would you describe the, the, situation in Byberry?

Terribly undermanned; not well-organized. Byberry was a place where there were too many patients and not enough people to take care of them, right down the line from psychiatrists to the mop-wielders and, and so forth. The, and, and it was a rough deal for, for a lot of people. Much of the work was done by, quote, worker patients, who, guys who were fairly comfortable, I mean fairly intelligent and, and could be used for, for various, various things. After I got kicked out of my second job in, in, in Byberry, by letting a man escape—

How'd you lose the first job?

[laughs]

The, the first job was, the one with the epileptics, and apparently that's where they put the new guys—

Oh, I understand.

—because I got, in about—

You got promoted.

—a couple months I got promoted out of that—

[laughs]

—to take care of the—and, and in, in Two West, the nurses' work was, down at this end of the corridor, [gestures] and my ward of about sixty beds was down here, and so the nurses would send the, the noisy, difficult guys down to our place, but we would have to give them the dosages and, and, and shock treatment and, and so forth—or I would have to, down there.

You gave them shock treatment?

Yeah.

With no training—

Yeah.

—you were giving people shock treatment?

Well, there was some training in that. I'm sorry, that I didn't—

That was later—

—I'd forgotten that.

That's OK, that's OK. Would you, would you talk a little about using nonviolence in a situation, in that situation?

Very good. Yes, in, in Two West, which is the other end of the corridor from the nursing end, and we had these, these patients with real problems—for example, we had a, a young guy who I've, found, when I came on duty one day I found him sitting on a man's bed, astride the bed, gouging out the old man's eyes. And the temptation was to be violent with that kid, and, and, and so forth, and, and try to rescue the other guy. Well, I did. I, I, I know, knew not, I tried not to be too violent, but the idea was to get Philip off of the old guy, and save the old guy's eyes. I, think maybe I, I did. Another guy, we had a patient with syphilis, and one time I, I, I, when I—first time I saw him, as a matter of fact, I think now, I came to his bed to, to see how he was, and he grabbed me by a very sensitive portion of my body, and [laughs] put on a lot of pain. And I, well, I, having been a boxer, I guess, I cauliflowered his ear. I just punched him once, and, and he let, let go. And that was the, I felt badly about that for a long time. But the other conscientious objectors and I who ran that ward concentrated on this guy, and then six months we got him out. So, we, that trying to return good for, for evil, I guess.

So, so there were times when you did resort to violence, out of, because—

Automatically—

—you were threatened?

—yeah. And—

But did you learn to, did you develop more ability to use nonviolent methods in the, or was the, was that part of what you were trying to do as a CPS—

Yes, I, I—

—person there?

—I think that definitely we were, and, and, in, in the, the unit we had classes in relationships, and, and we, we formed, created the National Mental Health Foundation, and, and, in which—and we did a handbook for attendants, and I did the artwork for that, and, and so forth, to teach people how to deal with these guys so you don't have to beat 'em up to, to get him there—

Mm-hmm.

—'cause in, in B Building, for example—with, the, where violent patients were kept, there was an awful lot of rough stuff that went on there, and they didn't have any conscientious, there, objectors there for quite a while. But finally we got to work there, and learned, were taught techniques like the wet sheet. You take a sheet and fold it, soaked, a soaking sheet, and fold it around the, a, a naked guy so he couldn't move, and, and the cold sheet would cool him down. [laughs]

Mm. That would calm you down, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah, great.

And—

You have, oh—

—so—

Yes, go ahead.

I just want to change this.

OK.

It's gonna run out.

—learned from your, from writing this book? What stands out in, as important? Things you learned, or that people might want to know about CPS? Do you—

Yeah...

—want to look at it? To remind yourself?

Yes, let—

Hang on just to check. Are we going?

Yeah, are we rolling, Eric, or...?

Yes, I am rolling.

[yawns] We can stop for a—

Oh. At Patapsco, I discovered Quakers, and, my gosh, they were so different from the Baptists who—

Are we rolling?

—you know, be good or go to hell.

Yeah. Yeah, sorry, she had. It's all right—

What?

—sorry, see, I am rolling now.

Yeah.

Oh, you are rolling now? You told me you weren't!

Yeah, he stopped—

You said stop and I—

—and started again, I'm sorry.

I wasn't, then I was, and—

Well, we can do it. [laughs] Go ahead.

It's all right, we'll do it again.

That was kind of nice.

Do I repeat my, myself?

You may repeat that. Please repeat that.

Well, let's see...

At Patapsco you discovered Quakers.

Yeah. The—

Say it again, though.

I had, I had been an unhappy Baptist because they were so fundamental, and so rigid, and, and so forth, and, and it was great to discover in the camp, the, the first camp at Patapsco, Quakers, and their method of, of meeting. Instead of having a sermon that's supposed to scare you out of being a bad boy, they met in silence, and, and sought the truth, and, and so I was, very pleased to be, to discover the Quakers. And then, so then when the Detached Service came, thing came, and I, we got to, I got to work at Byberry. Then Jayne, my girlfriend, had gotten a job teaching Germantow-, art at Germantown Friends School. And it, the meeting that, the Quaker meeting that runs the Friends School, meets next door, and so we began going there, of course, and, and so I'm, I'm a, a thoroughly convinced and happy Quaker, I tell you, compared to other ways I might have been religious. I don't know that I'm basically religious, but I do think it's important to try to be a good person. Go ahead.

[gives him the book] What motivated you to do this book?

You know, I don't remember, except that, I, I think that having been, for the first time in my life, a radical, so to speak, saying, to heck with you, I won't do it, I, I wanted to say something about the time I had been a radical, and why, and, and so forth. And so, I ask a lot of, of questions that, that I thought were about why I was a CO, and, and what other guys had felt, and how they, they had reacted to the camps that we were in, and, and so forth. So I sent out 400 questionnaires to the, to the guys who had been in, in the camps, and, and things, and then compiled 'em in this book, and the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors agreed to publish it, and they did. They, this is a, in a sense, the second edition. The first edition, a friend of mine, who was a, a professor, was principal of the school at which my wife taught, [pause] went over the first, edition of this and, and made several suggestions, and so this is a second—

Second edition.

—revised edition, as it says.

So what do you think is important about, what did you learn writing this book? What—

Excuse me, could you just turn back a litte bit more so that—yeah.

Yeah.

—like that, that—

I'm sorry.

That's good.

—way we can see, see you a little better that way.

Why did I do this book?

No, not why did you do it. What did you learn?

What was the most important thing you learned—

Yeah.

—by doing it?

Oh.

What surprised you, as you put the research together? Were the results what you expected or were there surprises?

That's interesting. I, because now I, I'm far enough away from having written it that I, I don't remember details like this.

Actually, you know what I'd like to do is go back and think about that for a minute, but what you just said before, and I meant to catch up with it, and now let me. When you said, that was when I was a radical. Did you consider being in CPS camp being a, was that a radical position for you to take?

As far as my dad was concerned, it was. My dad was very conservative. He said, for example, all—Franklin D. Roosevelt's insisting on, we are having Social Security. Well, dad said, all the social security I want is a lock on the bathroom door [laughs]. So, and, and he had, as I have started to, to say, he had not been able to be in World War I because of his hearing, and he was a very patriotic American, and so he wanted, I mean, he was disappointed that I wouldn't go to war for America, and—

Do you think you can be patriotic and be a conscientious objector?

Oh, very much so. I, it depends, of course, on your, your, your—there are people who define patriotism by being in the army and waving the flag, but no. Wanting the best of, of everything for this nation is what we ought to be working for, and what we are. And in a sense, that's what this book is about: what, what did, what was the benefit to, to the guys who did this? What did it do, did it do the country to, for them to be conscientious objectors?

Well, can you answer that somewhat?

Or what did it, what did it cost them? Also, not to just be obedient. And, and although we were mostly obedient, we did what the law required, we went to jail, etc...[pause] Your question again.

What did you learn about what it meant for, to the country, that this, the, CPS experience?

Well, certainly the mental hospital situation was one that we got to be useful in. We didn't, I had no idea what Byberry was, or, or anything else about it, and, and yet when I got there it was a horror. And we, we did important work there, and everywhere else. All around the country there were a hundred-and-some camps for conscientious objectors where we were doing public work of national importance, theoretically. And, so, we got to be—I think, to satisfy my dad, in a sense—to be patriotic, and still to be honest with ourselves.

Mm-hmm.

And this, I think, helps a little. It shows that some of the things that got done, and, and some of the processes that, that were followed.

Did anything in your research here surprise you?

I think not. I, I think it was more a confirm, confirmation of, of my having, of, of what I thought it was all about, and—

Mm-hmm.

—that people, would—

I think I'm just gonna—

—would be good.

Yeah—

Yeah, go ahead.

—just gonna ask you one more question.

I have one question.

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

My question is, apart from the mental health, the influences on the mental health system, do you think that there were other important good effects on the life of the United States from the fact that there were conscientious objectors in World War II?

Well, very much so. We, for example, at Baltimore, we refurbished the park, we paved part of the parking lot for it, we re-, we built the whole array of, of—

I'm sorry—

—privies—

—can I interrupt you and clarify. My question was about the, any, maybe non-material things. In, in some kind of moral or spiritual way, do you think that there were ways that—or political way, that—

Oh, good, good.

—that—

Yeah.

—yeah, that, that this, that the life of the country after World War II was different in some way, than if there had been no conscientious objectors. How did conscientious objectors affect the moral and political life of the country?

That's—thank you, that's, that's very good. It's interesting to me to be here. I'm with 120 other guys who had this kind of experience, and not, and not necessarily—well, who had the experience of being conscientious objectors during the war, and doing all kinds of things, not, I mean, the mental hospital work was not, certainly not the, the only thing we did. And I've been, pleased with the sessions we've been having where people have talked about twe-, fifty years later how do you feel about that, and, and I, I think that we did national service even though it was not the patriotic thing at that time. And, we've been able to do an awful lot of, of, of things that wouldn't, then, and sort of, particularly during the war, we got to do a lot of things that would have been tot-, totally neglected.

Such as?

And I think, think that was important—

What about since—

—for us to do.

—the war, the political movement since the war?

The, [pause] by and large, we are, are fairly diverse. The, the same kind of attitude that would say, no, I'm not going to fight your, your, your war, is basic to most of the guys, and so their reaction to patriotism is different, and to politics. There are some guys who are very liberal, some guys who are very conservative, and, and I think that's good. I, I think that's, that's what we're all about, and so I'm not worried. But what we've done is, for example, this week, we've gotten 120 guys to-, together to sort of think about, well, now, oh, where are we, and, and what are we doing with our lives, and what are the younger guys doing, and where do we go from here?

Mm-hmm.

So, yes, I think it's, it's worthwhile.

Does that—

Is that a suitable answer?

I think that's fine. I think—

I think that's great.

—that's great. Thank you.

I think that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless there's something else that comes to mind about this that you think we should know.