Source: Hans Eiskonen/Unsplash It was called “The Good War.” Americans never more enthusiastically supported going off to fight than when the nation rallied around the flag to conquer the Axis Powers in December 1941. Mobilization took many forms. Some 10 million donned uniforms in the Armed Services, while millions more worked in the “industrial army,” making the bombers, guns, tanks, and provisions needed to take the war to Hitler and his fascist cohorts.
But some made the difficult choice to refuse to fight. These conscientious objectors (COs) had many reasons for their decision. Most commonly, deep religious convictions compelled them towards pacifism. We do not think of them as heroes today. But many helped their country in ways unappreciated then but worthy of our esteem.
The war tightened labor markets, and mental hospitals saw their staffs dwindle as attendants found higher wages elsewhere. To fill in the gap, the government assigned “detached units” of voluntary COs, some 3,000 of them, to work in the large and dismal state mental institutions of the midcentury.
Inside the hospitals, COs encountered horrors they were unprepared for. They witnessed abuses ranging from physical torment to emotional neglect. Food rotted on floors, incontinent patients sat in their own filth, sedations were misused, attendants meted out violence, and severe overcrowding left thousands of sufferers ignored entirely.
The COs struggled to make sense of what they saw. Then they rolled up their sleeves and did the best they could. By the war’s end, many COs felt compelled to make a more lasting impact. As one wrote home to his family, "If we COs do nothing about this place to improve it, our stay here has been to no avail and we have accomplished nothing.”
They took photographs of patients and conditions. Some of these eventually made their way to the socially progressive First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. Ultimately, the most haunting images made their way to the pages of Life, America’s most influential magazine.
In 1946, a group of COs established the National Mental Health Foundation. Their goal was “to help enlighten society to the true nature of mental illness and deficiency, to cooperate with others in the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental illness, and to seek higher standards of care and treatment in mental institutions.” This organization also sponsored the publication of the 1947 book, Out of Sight, Out of Mind.
Written by a CO who served in the Greystone Park State Hospital named Frank L. Wright, Jr., Out of Sight, Out of Mind compiles a damning list of horrors gleaned from submissions to the National Mental Health Foundation. We read about patients bleeding to death, living covered in their own excrement, freezing in overcrowded wards, getting beaten by laughing attendants, eating directly off the floor, getting bitten by bedbugs while tied to mattresses, and many other nightmares worthy of the most visceral horror story. The COs had lifted the lid off the shameful treatment of sufferers of mental illness forgotten by society.
In his foreword, Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts wrote that Wright’s book “cannot fail to shock us, to awaken us, to impel us to action.” Eleanor Roosevelt asked “everyone” to read Wright’s account in her popular newspaper column, “My Day.” This book, and the radio shows, articles, and testimony of the COs, contributed to meaningful mental health reform beginning in the late '40s.
THE BASICSThis month we celebrate America’s role in the Allied invasion of Normandy. American military personnel joined other Allies in a cross-channel invasion of the Continent on June 6, 1944, an event that led directly to the fall of the Third Reich. But perhaps we also should consider a different set of heroes as well. A group of COs wanted to help their country, but could not in good conscience put on the uniform. They found a way to serve their nation. They volunteered to enter some of America’s worst hospitals, and they told the truth in order to make things better.