The Challenge From Within

The military is fully aware of the drastic changes sweeping through the churches. Its collective fear of this metamorphosis was articulated by a general in the presence of 200 military leaders: "The greatest challenge to all we do now comes from within the churches. A new way of thinking is developing within the churches and we have to know what to do with it." I believe the military has yet another concern--the challenge that has already arisen within its own ranks.

In late 1980 a retired military officer in Hawaii asked 10 of us, including a three-month-old baby girl and her mother, to enter a nuclear war policy and planning room of Camp Smith and put ashes on the walls of this room. The ashes would symbolize the ruin to which we would all be reduced in the event of a nuclear war.

The retired officer said, "I no longer believe in what the military is about." He dared not run the risk of entering himself, but he drew a map, which explained in detail the war room location, and would drive us onto the base. The military sticker on his bumper would give us easy access.

We carried out our protest on March 4, 1981, which was Ash Wednesday. The liturgical action went smoothly until we came upon the door to the war room itself. It was locked. The mother, along with her child, was at the front of our group, and she bent over slightly to press a small button on the door frame. "Buzz and it shall be opened for you," I thought to myself. We walked in for our prayer.

We placed the ashes on the walls in the form of a cross and read aloud a section from the beatitudes. An irate officer emerged and screamed at us to get out. We invited him to join us in the Lord's Prayer, but he continued the tirade. We were unable to finish singing "Amazing Grace" following the prayer. We stepped outside the war room, which was then locked.

We were soon intercepted by the military police, who took us to a holding room where we were photographed and fingerprinted. We were then taken to another section of the base, where an officer read the charges: conspiracy, entering a restricted area, and defacing federal property. The penalty could have been two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Evidently, at a high-level meeting of surprised officers the decision was made to escort us off the base instead.

A moment of levity occurred in the holding room as the military police took information on all of us. The officer approached the mother of the infant and asked, "Ma'am, how tall, er, how long...is this baby?" The infant was booked along with the nine adults.

All of us were issued barring letters, which prevented our return to Air Force bases in Hawaii for the next two years. On the following day, we learned that the tens of thousands of civilians who work at dozens of installations in Hawaii, the most militarized state in the United States, were required that day to produce their personal security identification cards before entering. How many knew then that nuclear war is being planned there? How many can continue to live with their consciences?

While in Hawaii I met a man who served in a Polaris submarine. He told me that the crew had made a pact among themselves to refuse an order to launch a missile. "If your home is destroyed and your family incinerated, why add to the misery?" he said. He was yet another military person who did not believe in our country's policies.

RETIRED ADM. GENE LA ROCQUE, director of the Center for Defense Information (CDI), in a December 1984 letter to CDI supporters, explained, "Thirty officers from our war colleges were in CDI's conference room where Admiral [Eugene] Carroll, Captain [James] Bush, and I told them their mission was impossible...." After the retired officers concluded, an attending, active-duty officer replied, "You should be talking to the top brass at the Pentagon. Many of us in the military share your fears and doubts about our present course."

Not the least of them is Adm. Hyman Rickover, "father" of the U.S. nuclear Navy. He has serious misgivings about his achievements and cautioned the Senate in 1982: "The more destructive these weapons become, the more we want. There is something illogical about that proposition, and I urge you to do your best to seize the moment to reduce this threat...."

The challenges to rampant militarism and the suicidal proclivities of nuclear pundits are not only coming from the churches. What will be the outcome?

In the United States and other nuclear powers, it is encouraging to witness the military personnel who seriously doubt the wisdom, and sanity, of our policies. The challenge to all that the Pentagon is now doing is beginning to come from the military itself. How will the Department of Defense repress the refusal, within its own ranks to kill? ?

At the time this article appeared, Vic Hummert had worked as a missionary in Hong Kong for 10 years and had returned to the United States for more involvement in peace work.