History Fix

Ep. 115 Vietnam: War Through the Lens of a Conscientious Objector with Bruce Wasser

• Shea LaFountaine • Episode 115

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This week we're talking about the Vietnam War, one of the most unpopular wars in US history. Tomorrow is Memorial Day and while I very much want to honor and remember the over 58,000 Americans who lost their lives fighting for their country in Vietnam, around one third of them drafted, that’s not exactly the focus of this episode. Instead, I want to explore a side to the war we don’t often think about. I want to explore what happens if you’re drafted, but you  know you can’t do it. You can’t go fight in a war, kill people, lots of people, for a cause you don’t believe in, a war you are morally opposed to. Because for many, that was the reality. So what are you going to do? What options do you have? Join me and special guest Bruce Wasser, author of "90: A Conscientious Objector's Journey of Quiet Resistance" to uncover Bruce's experience as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. 

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It’s December 1, 1969 and TVs and radios all over the United States are tuned to a live government broadcast. 366 blue plastic capsules, like oversized pills, are poured into a large canister. Each contains a date, one of the possible 366 birthdates throughout the year, including leap day. Lieutenant General Lewis B. Hershey, Director of the Selective Service, an elderly bespectacled man in a suit and tie, addresses the crowd and explains that the birthdate capsules will be drawn one by one to determine the order in which men, ages 19 to 26 will be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Hershey calls up Congressman Pirnie, a republican from New York, to draw the first capsule. Pirnie is also elderly, bespectacled, and wearing a suit. He reaches into the container of blue capsules, grabs one quickly from the top, and silently hands it off to another elderly besuited man who clumsily opens it and unfurls the strip of paper within, his hands visibly shaking in the video recording. Then he reads “September 14th” (2:08). Someone else announces “September 14, 001” (2:10) as a fourth elderly suited man attaches the strip of paper to a large board with all the numbers listed from 001 to 366. This goes on. “April 24 is 002” (2:47), “December 30 is 003” (3:00), “February 15 is 004” (3:20), until all of the birthdates have been assigned a number. It’s an interesting spectacle, the fanfare, the introductions, such and such from the such and such department, the shiny blue capsules bobbling about in the canister. It almost gives off game show vibes. But for the over 850,000 young men whose birthdates are in that canister, there’s nothing fun about it at all. Their fates are quite literally in the hands of those men in suits. Being drawn early means being shipped halfway across the world to fight in a bloody war that many opposed. What would you do if you drew a low number, say, 90? Would you go off to fight in a war you didn’t support or… something else? Let’s fix that. 


Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Tomorrow is Memorial Day in the United States when we recognize those who have given their lives serving in the US Military. May is also Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, so with all that considered, Vietnam seemed an appropriate focus for this week’s very special episode. Now, while I very much want to honor and remember the over 58,000 Americans who lost their lives fighting for their country in Vietnam, around one third of them drafted, that’s not exactly the focus of this episode. Instead, I want to explore a side to the war we don’t often think about. That’s what History Fix is all about, right, lesser known history, unknown history. I want to explore what happens if you’re drafted, your birthdate capsule gets drawn early, you know you’re going to be drafted, but you also know you can’t do it. You can’t go fight in a war, kill people, lots of people, for a cause you don’t believe in, a war you are morally opposed to. Because for many, that was the reality. So what are you going to do? What options do you have?


I have a very special guest here today to help us answer that question. 


Bruce: My name is Bruce Wasser. I am a retired public school teacher now living with my wife, Arthur Fern Schumer Chapman, in Northern Illinois. And in my retirement, I helped my sister edit college essays. And I'm a sports official in four sports, baseball, softball, volleyball, and basketball.


Shea: Oh wow, you’re so busy. You stay busy! 


Bruce: I try to be. 


Shea: Yeah, that’s great, that’s great. 


Bruce is the author of a book, a memoir, called “90: A Conscientious Objector’s Journey of Quiet Resistance” about his experience being drawn as number, you guessed it, 90 during the December 1969 birthdate draft lottery. And I encourage all of you to read Bruce’s book. 


Shea: I read your book, actually, and I loved it. I couldn't put it down. I loved how the storytelling was really, really well done. And I loved how you were able to include all the necessary factual information, but it was this really engaging story. So with this interview coming up, I was like, oh, yeah, I should probably read the book. That might help. And I downloaded it and I started reading it. And I was like, oh, wow, I actually genuinely enjoy this book. You know, I would have read this anyway. It was really, really well done.


Bruce: I’m so grateful, what a kind thing to say. 


90 was low enough that, with a number like 90, you were pretty sure that they were going to send you to Vietnam. And in fact they did. They drafted all the way up to number 195 that time around. But Buce had a problem, despite coming from a family with a history of military service, his father had served during World War II, he found himself morally opposed to this war. There was a big difference between World War II and Vietnam. World War II was widely supported by the American people and it’s easy to see why. I spent two weeks covering it recently. World War II was fought to stop a murderous madman from taking over the world. It was fought to defend innocent people being killed in mass, to defend freedom and justice for all, all things Americans could get behind. Vietnam was fought… well, why exactly was Vietnam fought? 


Shea: So in your book, you talk about, it sort of centers around your experiences during the Vietnam War. And you were a high school history teacher. Is that correct?

Bruce: That’s right. 

Shea: I'm also a former, I'm an elementary school teacher, but I have mad respect for any and all teachers out there. So I'd love to know, you know, from your perspective as a high school history teacher, let's talk about the war for a minute. Why was the United States involved in a war in Vietnam?


Bruce: Well, it's a very complicated question, Shea, and like many difficult historical questions, there are deep and long existing causes of our involvement. Southeast Asia at the end of World War II was still involved in colonialism, and France was the owner, so to speak, of what we now call Indochina. At the end of World War II, there were many movements of national liberation, and one was such in Vietnam. The leader of Vietnam, a man we now know as Ho Chi Minh, helped Vietnam declare its independence and ironically used our own Declaration of Independence as the basis of this. It posed a very difficult question for the United States, or at least it was perceived to be difficult. Should we honor the Vietnamese's need for independence and honor our own background as a freedom-loving people? Or do we support our oldest ally, France, with whom we had just fought in World War II to vanquish the evil of Nazism? And France's help to us in our battle for independence was crucial.

Shea: Yeah. I think about the contrast between the public opinion of the Vietnam War compared to World War II, where the reason seems a lot more concrete. For World War II, it's like people can get behind the reason for fighting that war. And then with Vietnam, it seemed like there was a lot of confusion over why we were even over there. Why are we involved in a civil war in another country?

Bruce: I'm not as... I don't know whether I, Shea, I don't necessarily agree with that. I think there was a clearly articulated vision as to why we were involved in Vietnam. This was a cold war that was heated up between communism and what we called the free world. And the worry would be that if, at least in terms of President Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, these sound like old names now. This is a long time ago. They all believed in the dangers of appeasement. To let a bully take over a nation is only inevitable that that bully will want more. And we called that the domino theory. that if Vietnam fell, then the next country would fall, and eventually the dominoes would fall and San Francisco would be next to fall. Right. So there was an articulate explanation why. It was just now in hindsight, and even then with critics, they said it was a fraudulent reason, a reason that had many, many holes in it, not the least of which would be seeing the Vietnamese people as literal pawns in this battle between communism and freedom, this alleged battle between communism and freedom. 

That’s right, the US fought a war in Vietnam because they were worried about the spread of communism, the domino theory, that once communism started to catch on it would quickly spread to the rest of the world. Let’s back up to the end of World War II for a minute to see how things devolved in just a couple of decades. At the end of World War II, the United States was quite popular in Vietnam for having expelled Japanese forces. Vietnam was digging the US, even their communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. They were particularly digging the anti-colonial views of Franklin D. Roosevelt, US president during World War II, who opposed the return of French colonialism in Vietnam. Like Bruce said, Ho Chi Minh even applied the US Declaration of Independence to the situation in Vietnam as justification for their own independence from France. Because ever since the late 1880s, Vietnam had been a colony of France. FDR was like, hey, enough with that, and Vietnam rejoiced. What he actually said was that all people had a right to quote “choose the form of government under which they will live,” end quote. But then FDR died and Harry Truman became the next President of the United States. Truman did not share FDR’s anti-colonial views and, ignoring many warnings that it would lead to bloodshed, he supported France’s re-colonization of Vietnam. And, of course, it led to bloodshed immediately. Fighting broke out between France and the Vietnamese. For a minute the US was neutral. But then Truman said that US Foreign Policy was to assist any country whose stability was threatened by communism. Which like, to cast France as the ones being threatened here is so absurd. Who is invading who? But this conflict carries on throughout the Korean War and as the Soviet Union and China, also communist countries, provide more and more aid to communist Vietnam, Truman’s getting worried. The cold war has him really freaked out about the Vietnam situation. According to Jesse Greenspan writing for History.com quote “U.S. involvement in the conflict would only deepen from there. By the end of Truman’s presidency, the United States was funding more than one-third of France’s war costs, a number that would soon skyrocket to about 80 percent,” end quote. Why do we do this? Why? 

Shea: Do you think that stemmed from that fear of like the domino effect, letting someone get a start and sort of start to take over? Do you think that came from the trauma of World War II? You know, you have Hitler who was, they were sort of doing appeasement at first and then he starts taking over and they kind of let it get too far before they tried to stop him. Do you think that affected the opinions going into Vietnam and they were a little bit over, you know, almost, you know, reacting too strongly to what was happening in Southeast Asia?

Bruce: Perhaps, Shea, I think your audience, your listeners, may not understand the degree of fear that existed in the United States in certainly the decade and a half at the end of World War II. We had no sooner finished an extraordinary national commitment to defeat the, what were called Axis powers, then we had another enemy looming. This enemy was Russia and communism. There was a war in Korea that was a very difficult, wrenching national experience in the early 50s. That fear was genuine. And how we faced that fear had ramifications and has ramifications even for today.

In 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower became President and the following year, 1954 the French were defeated in Vietnam. They retreated, giving up their colonial reign. Eisenhower subscribed to the Domino Theory which said that if one country fell to communism, then its neighbors would follow. And so he continued to involve the US in Vietnam even though he wrote in his personal diary quote “I am convinced that no military victory is possible in that kind of theater,” end quote. Vietnam is divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam with communist Ho Chi Minh in charge of the north and pro-western leader Ngo Dinh Diem (No Jean Jam) in charge of the south. Greenspan writes quote “Though Diem proved corrupt and authoritarian, Eisenhower called him “the greatest of statesmen” and “an example for people everywhere who hate tyranny and love freedom.” More importantly, he also supplied Diem with money and weapons… By the time Eisenhower left office, open fighting had broken out between Diem’s forces and the so-called Viet Cong, communist insurgents in the South who were backed by North Vietnam. The Vietnam War was now in full swing, and the United States was right in the middle of it,” end quote. 

John F. Kennedy steps up to the presidency next. He was not a fan of US involvement in the Vietnam War. Back when he was a congressmen in the 50s, he said quote “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance … can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere,” end quote. But by the time he ran for president in 1960, his tune had changed slightly. Not wanting to appear soft on communism, he continued to supply aid to South Vietnam to help them in their fight against communist North Vietnam. So we’re providing aid right, supplies, weapons, boats, helicopters, whatever but we aren’t actively sending American troops to fight in Vietnam, yet. In 1963, the US supported a coup by the South Vietnamese military to take out Ngo Dinh Diem whom they viewed as an ineffective leader despite Eisenhower’s praise. He was assassinated and not long after that, John F. Kennedy himself was also assassinated. 

Up next to bat we have Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson comes on the scene precisely at the time of what appears to be another Reichstag Fire. If you listened to my two parter on Adolf Hitler then you got that reference. If you didn’t then… why not? This Reichstag Fire is called the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. In August of 1964, Vietnamese boats attacked a US Navy destroyer patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, another attack was reported which led  Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave LBJ permission to all out wage war on North Vietnam. But of course, just like with the Reichstag Fire, there is considerable doubt as to whether or not this second attack ever even took place. It was presented to Congress as a fact when, in reality, there’s a good chance it never even happened. But it was the reason they were waiting for and so in 1965 US troops were officially sent to fight in Vietnam. By 1967, there were around 500,000 US troops in Vietnam fighting a war that was not well supported by the US people at all and war protests started happening all over the country. 

Bruce: I believe the United States made a grievous mistake and sided with France. And that was after World War II. And so that set what we would call the ball rolling against the Vietnamese people's right for independence. And this led to, ultimately, the United States adopting a position that there were two Vietnams, a North Vietnam and a South Vietnam. That, to me, is a fiction. That area would be involved in a war. The United States perceived that as a war between two entities, North and South, when in reality it was one entity. just as much as during our civil war, we were never two nations. We were one entity fighting within. The United States found itself fighting in a civil war, people against people, in which the enemy could not be distinguished from the ally. And that led in turn to incredible, brutal confusion for our fighting troops. Many of the people were confused as to why they were there, all of whom yearned to leave in-country and return to the United States. It was an unpopular war within our fighting men and women and within our own nation. At least that's my perception.

Greenspan writes quote “U.S. officials kept insisting that victory was imminent. But, as the Pentagon Papers would later reveal, these comments were deeply misleading. In reality, the conflict had devolved into a quagmire. Vietnam became so polarizing, and Johnson’s name became so synonymous with the war effort, that he ultimately decided not to run for re-election in 1968,” end quote. 

And 5th to bat is Richard Nixon, whom Bruce calls Tricky Dick in his book. Greenspan writes quote “Richard Nixon campaigned for the White House promising to end the Vietnam War. It later emerged, however, that he had secretly tried to sabotage peace talks in order to improve his electoral chances,” end quote. Gross. This guy. And so the war continues, escalates actually with the invasions of Cambodia and Laos during Nixon’s term. But by the end of 1969, they were running out of troops. This war didn’t have the popular support of the people. Men weren’t lining up to enlist for this one and it wasn’t ending any time soon. So we have the birthday lottery. This was done during World War II as well but it started at age 21 then, which was the legal voting age at the time. The Vietnam birthday lottery started at freshly 19, basically 18 at the time of the drawing anyway. Which meant that many of these men were being forced to fight for a government they had no say in. They couldn’t even vote yet. But here is this event broadcast on live television, a birthday lottery which sounds like such a fun thing but in reality, it must have been a harrowing experience.

Shea: So I know, you know, in your book, you talk about this birthday lottery draft, which I just get like chills when I think about it. I'd like to talk about that night. It was December of 1969, I believe. How did that, you know, you're waiting to figure out, you're trying to figure out your number. How did that all go down? What was that like for you?

Bruce: Well, for those of the audience who have not read 90, my memoir, the draft lottery was a a means by which President Nixon could empower and enlarge the United States military presence. A draft means there's not enough people volunteering. On the surface, a lottery is really a very fair way of doing things. It's completely random. It is done by a person's birthday, not by a person's status or geographical area. It's simply by birthday. And so in selecting literally with little capsules out of a spinning bin, a person's fate would be determined. Now, in 2025, our information is instantaneous, Shea. We... We have access to data that was inconceivable in 1969. Newspapers were the only really genuine place to find information. Well, that evening, the event is broadcast, and there was chaos immediately, Shea. When numbers were announced and birthdays, we were confused if the date was the number before the date was said or after. I was trying to watch on TV. We couldn't hear. People were shouting at televisions and swearing. It was absolutely chaotic. We couldn't find our true number. I was a sophomore at the time at Princeton University. Excuse me, a junior at the time, I was very frightened. I didn't know where to go. And eventually I wandered into the basement of the dorm where I lived as a sophomore. Outside the radio station, there was a teletype machine that spit out reams of paper, everything from sports scores from my beloved Boston Celtics to to national news, and eventually I found out that my birthday, April 18th, aligned with the number 90 in the draft lottery. At that time, now this was, and I'd like to make an aside, and I mention this in the book, it was an extremely acute, wise decision by President Nixon. If a young man had a high draft number, and at that time, anything above number 240 would be considered high, that man, in this case, it was only men, that man would not be drafted. It makes sense that that person would lose interest unless he was really committed to the anti-war movement. Why should he be involved? He's free. He's never going to be bothered. He can pursue his life's dreams without any impingement. That's a brilliant move by a president who wants to kind of defang or defuse an anti-war movement. I think it was very cynical. And it worked. It helped defuse a large number of people who would have been passionately involved. I was overwhelmed with that number. I knew it would be, I knew I would be drafted. And I walked around the campus that evening. It was an early December evening. And Shea, it was a beautiful night. It was, the skies were almost clear. There were a few flakes of snow falling. Princeton is a very beautiful campus. And it was, I walked up and I heard joyous shouts from dorm rooms. It made sense to me. It hurt to hear it. This was not a night of celebration because for those who celebrated, there was always going to be somebody else who wouldn't be. And I had to come to grips that this number was going to influence my future. I had made application for conscientious objection in June of 1968, so that's a year and a half prior. That was done as a response to the murder of two men who were very important to me, Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. After Kennedy's assassination, within a day, I made application for conscientious objection, feeling that I could not tolerate any kind of violence, that violence had ripped Kennedy and King from me, away from me. I had used both men, as readers will find out in the book, as surrogate fathers to my own dad, who passed away in 1965. But, Shea, there was no direct consequence for my applying for conscientious objection, because at that time, I had a student deferment, about which I felt then and still do a great degree of guilt. After all, only the more affluent members of society could have claimed a student deferment. Defer means to put off, and it really allowed me to put off the consequences of my application for conscientious objection until 1971. And in truth, I didn't much think about it until after I made the application. There was no need to reclassify me. I had what was called a student deferment and would have that until 1971. But that December night meant that come 1971, I would have to face the music and see if I would be classified as a CO.

Shea: Right. And so from what I understand, up until that, at that point, pretty much you had needed a religious reason in order to get that CO classification. Were you able to work that into your application, or how did you explain to them why you felt like a conscientious objector? How were you able to express that?

Bruce: You're correct. Up to that point, roughly up to that point, conscientious objectors had to have a religious basis for their objection. Your listeners may say, well, who would that be? What groups of people? The Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, Mennonites, Seventh-day Adventists, these are members of a formal religion whose doctrines prohibit the bearing of arms. These men would be granted conscientious objection. But there was a sizable group of men whose value system, whose belief system that took the place of religion did not permit them to fight. Well, that would have been me. And in my writings to the draft board, I talked about the pain that I had losing King and Kennedy. My belief in nonviolence, civil disobedience, my belief that nonviolence could change the world. Those are the things that I wrote to the draft board.

Shea: And how were conscientious objectors viewed at that time? I'm assuming not favorably. And did that weigh on your decision at all? Were you kind of thinking about how your country was going to look at you for making that decision?

Bruce: Not at that time. Not until my number became 90. And then I realized that I had… eventually I would do research on conscientious objectors. America has a complicated relationship with people who object to wrong by reasons of conscience. When I taught American history my students tended to really look up to abolitionists, those men and women who fought against the evil of slavery as an immoral wrong thing. Their consciences did not permit them to tolerate the evil of slavery. For most of American history, of our national experience, our nation looked down on abolitionists as rabble-rousers. They were not seen in the light until the revisionist historians of the 1960s rehabilitated their image as very heroic figures. We COs in World War I and II were seen as cowards, not honorable people, yellow, weak, making other people do what should have been our obligation. There were over 8 million men and women who were in the armed services during the Vietnam War. Not all of them fought in Vietnam. A little bit short of 3 million did. There were 170,000 of us who were classified as COs. That's about 2% of all the fighting people who were in the armed services. We're not a big group of people. I think in Vietnam, over time, COs were seen as, it was more okay to be a CO in Vietnam than World War I or II. Still seen as kind of weak. We didn't have the courage to, I mean, other people were going to take our jobs, were going to march in our place. But there was, I don't think there was quite as big a stigma nationally. Now, in my family, there was. It was not an honorable decision that I made.

Shea: Yeah. What about, I know, if you had not gained that CO status, were you prepared to, I mean, I guess the only other option would be to just dodge the draft, I guess it's called, or avoid it, not show up, go to Canada, whatever. Were you prepared to take that action if necessary?

Bruce: No. In a simple word. I think about 100,000 men and maybe their loved ones left the United States to go to other lands. And I think they went out of a broken heart and out of anger. I would never call them draft dodgers. I call the president of the United States a draft dodger. I would never call the men and women who fled the country. They were anguished. They could not tolerate what their country was doing. And so they gave up their citizenship. Now, Shea, that was inconceivable to me. Inconceivable. This country had welcomed my grandparents, my great-grandparents, who fled persecution on the basis of their religion. They loved America. They gave... they gave their hearts to this country. They believed in the premise of social mobility. So you have my grandmother Rose, who as a child came with her family fleeing Tsarist Russia, and her grandson goes to Princeton. There's no other country in the world where that kind of social mobility would exist. So for that reason and for reasons of my profound belief in the greatness of the American experience the, the ideals of liberty and justice and equality for all men and women I would never forsake this country. Never. That meant that if I did not become a conscientious objector I wouldn't go underground, I wouldn't flee the country, I would probably go to jail. And that really scared me. It shouldn't have, but it did. And my beloved professor at Princeton, Martin Duberman, who has an important place in the book, tried to comfort me and say, many Americans have gone to jail for their beliefs. We'd say Dr. King went to jail scores of times for his beliefs. You can too, if it comes to that. But it frightened me. I have to be honest with you. It frightened me that I couldn't, that I'd disappoint my mother, that I would become a felon, that I would not be able to vote. I probably wouldn't be able to be a lawyer if that was my dream at that time. So I was really scared. I can't, there's no other way to address that. I was scared. I wish I had the moral courage where I wasn't scared, but I was.

In 1970, soon after the birthday lottery, Nixon began sending ground troops into Cambodia to try to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines. I talked about this back in episode 72 about the Khmer Rouge, how US involvement there helped indirectly lead to the rise of a brutal tyrannical government regime that systematically murdered around a quarter of Cambodia’s population. Yeah, that happened. But at the time, when US troops are first entering Cambodia in 1970, we don’t know that yet. We don’t know it’s going to lead down that road. And yet, this expansion of the war which we had been promised was soon coming to an end, prompted significant protests from the American people, especially on college campuses, like Princeton where Bruce was currently studying. And, notoriously, at Kent State University in Ohio when the Ohio national guard opened fire on unarmed protesting students, killing 4 and injuring 9. 

Shea: Let's talk about what happened at Kent State University. You know, this is another school. You're a college student at that time. How did that affect you at Princeton? How did that affect your life as a college student? Did it affect your outlook on the war or your opinion of the U.S. government, this tragedy at Kent State?

Bruce: Kent State was a massacre of students. And I was a student. And I felt that if it could happen at Kent State, it could happen at Princeton. It could happen on any campus where there were men and women were standing up against the war in Vietnam. It was an electrifying moment. And I think it galvanized protests, Shea, and made people feel that they must work all the harder to end the war, but that we could become its victims as well.

Shea: Right it probably increased the fear and just sort of the angst of that situation.

Bruce: Oh, without question. Without question. 

Shea: Now, you had a complicated, you know, you lost your father when you were 15, and then you had sort of a complicated relationship with your mother. Will you sort of unpack that for me? 

Bruce: I was the oldest child of three. I had two younger sisters. Mom was a very bright but very frustrated mom of the 1950s and 60s. This was before the women's liberation movement, before there was great strides for women's equality. I think mom was very ill-suited to be a housewife and a mother. She was very bright. My father was a veteran, and I don't think my mom ever understood why I wanted to be a conscientious objector. it was just befuddling to her. But I think animating all of it was her absolute panic that she would lose another man, the only other man that was in her family. I look at things now, I'm 76, and I can look back and see things more from her perspective, Shea. She didn't want anything bad to happen to her son, and she would move heaven and earth to make sure that nothing bad would happen to him. Of course, she didn't ask him. I'm speaking in third person. She didn't ask me what I wanted. She was acting that that was her need to protect me, even for myself, even from this misguided, idiotic decision that she thought I made. And that's what animated her. And it... fractured our relationship. And I think the war fractured relationships in millions of families. Some of which healed, some of which never healed. And I don't think my mother ever respected my decision to renounce violence or to oppose the war as a conscientious objector. I would imagine that your listeners well understand this kind of moral ambivalence, this kind of conflict. Those of your listeners who are mothers and fathers themselves would feel they would do anything to protect their child, anything to protect their child, even if it interfered with their child's need, their adult child's need, to be his or her own person. Thus, my mom called our congressman and asked him to intercede. My mom wanted me to get a medical excuse for some imagined phony reason. My mom would have done anything so that I would not die.

Shea: Right. I understand. I have two little boys. I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old. And, you know, I think about the possibility of this happening to them…

I had to stop talking there to keep from ugly crying during our interview. Bruce responds with tears in his own eyes. 

Bruce: Of course, Shea. I would imagine that it would be difficult for you even to watch them become inoculated, the pain they have in their arm. And you'd do anything to have, you would say, let the pain go from their arm, to my being so that my children will not be hurt. I understand my mom. I didn’t then. I couldn't. I was too young to understand then. But I do. I do. And I think one of the most difficult things with being a parent is is it possible to still love your child even if your child does something that really bothers you, makes a decision that you don't agree with, how do I, as a parent, still love my child? These are not easy questions. I don't really have a lot of answers to it, but they're tough. And there's an irony to this, that my mom's actions done understandably to save a child from distress could have backfired. If your readers, if those of you who read the book will find that when I, in my communication with the draft board, the wonderful secretary at our local draft board said, you know your mom is hurting your chances. She can't do this. It's interfering. It's meddling. And of course, mom didn't see it that way. She just saw it as I've got to get my son out, and if I can pull the string for a congressman who can give the draft board a call and say, get my kid out, I'm going to do that. So she didn't understand that what she was doing may have backfired. That's what she wanted it all. These are large historical events: Vietnam War, conscientious objection, protest. But they are... they're reduced sometimes to the most important person-to-person communications and decisions that we have. So I think when I taught, I tried to bring the war down to a personal basis. What does one person have to do? How does this impact one human being? That was that.

Shea: Yeah, yeah. And so you did end up getting CO status. And from what I remember, you were like one of the first to get that, in your area at least, without a religious reason. Is that correct?

Bruce: That was my draft board. And look, there were 170,000 COs, Shea, during the Vietnam War. That's a pretty good number. If you lived in liberal areas of the country, being classified as CO would be a lot easier than if you were living in a conservative part of the country. The San Francisco Bay Area would be considered a more liberal part of the country, pockets of New York City, large urban areas would have areas that would be very progressive, very liberal, anti-war. And their draft boards would reflect that. Not San Diego. which at that time, in the 1960s, was still a rather small city. And San Diego today is a large, it's a big-time city. It wasn't in the 1960s. It was very much in the shadow of Los Angeles, just 100 miles to the north. And it had an extremely conservative draft board. Extremely conservative. I had no chance, Shea. Now, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had made two decisions broadening the definition of conscientious objection, the secretary said, don't get your hopes up. The draft board, these are all, all of them were veterans. All of them. Yeah. And they didn't look kindly on long-haired, left-leaning students from the East Coast who were making application for CO.

Shea: Right, without a religious reason, right?

Bruce: Without a religious reason, right. Because I have no… Judaism has no formal prohibitions against warfare, so I couldn’t make that. 

Shea: Right. Yeah. And so you did get that status, and then you're serving this alternate service, and you're basically washing dishes, right, for this medical facility. And that part in the book really struck me because— here you are, you're a Princeton graduate, you were accepted into Stanford Law School, and you're washing dishes, and the doctors are like, what is this kid doing here? And it really just kind of illustrated to me sort of how that system was failing, and it seemed like we could have been doing a better job playing to our strengths, using our talents in a better way. It seemed like your talent was kind of lost or wasted in that position. But then I started thinking about, if we're going to play to our talents and use our strengths like that, then we have to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to gain those talents. And I started thinking about the civil rights movement. And you kind of touched on it when you talked about feeling guilty about your deferment. And I'm thinking about all of the Black men who didn't have equality and education, and they didn't have the opportunity to attend college to get that deferment. And I think you talk about in the book how often Black men who were drafted didn't fare as well as white men, and they didn't have the option of deferment a lot of time. And so then I'm kind of just spiraling, thinking about this. And how did the civil rights movement and that sort of awareness that people are starting to realize, how did that sort of mesh with the war and affect opinions of the war at that time?

Bruce: I washed laboratory glassware in the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital for two years from 1971 to 1973. I'm smiling because one of the best experiences I had at Princeton was in the kitchen of Stevenson Hall, where I took my meals my last two years at Princeton, where I washed dishes. six or seven days a week. So I was well prepared to be a laboratory glassware washer. In that kitchen was a wonderful man, Cleveland Cleve Washington, the African American Chef for Stevenson Hall, a place that fed about 150 kids. Cleve took me under his wing. He was a good man to me. He saw how upset I was. And he talked, and when we talked about the war, he was very bitter about the disproportionate sacrifice African-American men were making, contrasted to people like me, some rich white kid, even though I was washing dishes, but some white kid here at Princeton. He told me not to waste my life, that he expected things from me. So washing glassware was not really a comedown for me. I listened very carefully to some of the language that Dr. King used about people working. He would say that regardless of your job, I'm going to paraphrase, be the Michelangelo of what you're doing. If you are a garbage collector, be the Michelangelo of all garbage collectors. And so I was going to be the best damn dishwasher there would be at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital. And so I felt one of the sidelights of that is I was able to read. I felt terribly undereducated compared to some of my dear friends at Princeton who were very well read. I wasn't. And so it allowed me to start a lifelong love of American literature and reading about the character of this country and so the civil rights movement with its courageous commitment to non-violent civil disobedience was the standard that I took with me to washing dishes and the standard I tried to take with me when I became later on a teacher.

Shea: You know, I really related to, you talk in the book quite a bit about how you didn't really feel like you fit in at Princeton. You felt kind of like an outsider and, you know, you didn't come from a wealthy family and many of the students there did. And I really related to that. I had a similar, I went to UNC Chapel Hill, not quite on the level of Princeton, but I had a similar experience. I was very frustrated by a lot of the things that you touched on. It felt like, you know, UNC is a fairly liberal school and it felt like a lot of the students there were concerned about the social injustices and inequality, and yet at the same time, they came from a very wealthy, privileged family, and they were sort of benefiting from the system that they were so worked up about. And I felt this strange kind of like hypocrisy amongst my fellow classmates there. And I sort of picked up on that in your experience at Princeton as well. 

I had thought we would go on talking about both feeling like outsiders at our respective universities, but Bruce latched onto something else entirely that I think really illustrates how strongly morally convicted he is as a person. Something I had said didn't sit right with him. “I went to UNC Chapel Hill, not quite on the level of Princeton, but…” Yeah, that. And he couldn't help addressing it.

Bruce: Shea, I want to say something. My father was not, my father who died when he was 42 would not be considered to be an overly educated man. He went to Georgia Tech for a year and then left to fight World War II. Dad would say, son, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you. I don't think people that go to Princeton are necessarily any smarter than people who go to school any other place. I believe that's one of the things I learned. In fact, I think sometimes students who go to community colleges, state universities, less famous or less elite universities, they're every bit as good and sometimes better than the ones in the Ivy League. Don't be beguiled by a school. It doesn't mean anything. In fact, it may mean the wrong things. And I mean that wholeheartedly. I wanted, when I taught in a public school in California, at Newark, a working-class community in the Bay Area, I wanted my kids to go back to Princeton. I wanted them to go back with a chip on their shoulder and say, I'm every bit as good as you. But that was not... I went there because I... the history department was phenomenal. And I had professors who were extraordinary, but it was the wrong place for me. The wrong place. Yeah. Too much wealth. Too much expected power. And that's not a healthy thing. Not a healthy thing for a democracy. So I feel at best ambivalent about my Princeton experience, but I don't like to hear anybody say, I went to a certain university, but it's not like Princeton. I reject that. I think you, and I would tell my students, wherever you go to school, you sit in the front row. You make eye contact with your professor. You work as hard as you can. You become an agent for your own education, and that can be in any classroom, anywhere in this country, anywhere in the world, you sit in the front row. Don't be passive. Engage your professor. Engage your brothers and sisters in the classroom. And so I think you can get a great education anywhere you go.

Bruce completed his alternate service as a conscientious objector at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital washing laboratory glassware for two years in place of deployment to Vietnam. Although he attempted to get his acceptance to Stanford Law School deferred until after his two year service, the Dean rejected his request. Perhaps the American public’s negative views of conscientious objectors had caught up to him at last, what Bruce called a complicated relationship “America has a complicated relationship with people who object to wrong by reasons of conscience.” 

It certainly makes you wonder if his deferment would have been granted if he had been off fighting in Vietnam instead of washing glassware in Palo Alto, like somehow killing people, even innocent people, for a cause he didn’t believe in was better than being a conscientious objector, that giving into violence against his own morals would have made him worth keeping as a student at Stanford. Bruce never did attend Stanford, he never did realize his dream of becoming a lawyer. Instead he did, in my opinion, something possibly even more meaningful. He became a history teacher. But he did something else too, something you might not expect, considering his own complicated history with it. He served as part of the selective service system, the draft board. In his memoir he explains that he felt it was important for a conscientious objector to serve on that board, to balance it out. 

The Vietnam war eventually came to an end, much much later than promised and not at all with the outcome that the government had hoped for. Greenspan explains quote “In January 1973, just as the Watergate scandal was heating up, Nixon finally ended direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam, saying “peace with honor” had been achieved. As it turned out, though, fighting continued until 1975, when North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, and reunified the nation under communist rule,” end quote. After all that, some twenty years of violence, over 58,000 Americans dead and another 153,000 wounded, an uncountable number of Vietnamese dead, both military and civilian, with estimates ranging into the millions, all that, and the United States still lost the war. Their ultimate objective had failed and communism prevailed anyway. 

The consequences of the Vietnam War were far reaching. As Bruce explained, this war tore families apart, it turned countrymen against each other. It irrevocably changed the course of so many lives, including his own. But for Bruce, that redirection wasn’t such a bad thing. In his book he teaches his students about the Vietnam War by simulating a birthday lottery. The list of birthdates and their numbers is readily available, in fact I’ve linked it in the description. My birthday is October 11th which would have made me number 237, safe. I would have been one of the lucky ones. In his history class, Bruce had each student tell him their birthdays and then he told them their numbers. They split into groups, likely to be drafted like Bruce, number 90, and not likely to be drafted, like me, 237. One student in particular is clearly affected by this exercise in a way that only truly effective instruction can bring about. Amy Hashimoto has been given the number 27 and it’s struck a cord. “Amy drew a low number and immediately seemed to carry the weight of it in her entire being,” Bruce writes “‘Mr. Wasser, Mr. Wasser!’ she begins. ‘I don’t say this much. In fact, I don’t say it at all. I know I’m always critical of America in class.’... Now, dropping her gaze she says softly, ‘I actually love America. I love it a lot.’ She shakes her head “My number is 27, but I can’t serve,’ she snaps. “I won’t! I can’t kill! It’s not who I am Mr. Wasser!” Tears tumble from her Hazel eyes.Then she looks up at me and says pleadingly, ‘Mr. Wasser, this isn’t fair.’ Our eyes lock, and my stomach churns. Amy can’t fully fathom that, three years before she was born, the fates of hundreds of thousands of 19 year olds rested on a lottery drawing. Their draft numbers confronted American boys with their first adult decision: a defining  moral choice that they had to make for themselves. Each had to decide whether to serve; to find a way to dodge the draft, perhaps by leaving the country, or to announce himself to the world as a man incapable of fighting. The draft lottery of December 1, 1969 upended the lives of many young men, including mine. It’s the reason I stand here today, in this lively high school classroom, proud to be Amy Hashimoto’s history teacher. ‘I know Amy,” I nod, though that scarcely conveys how my heart aches with empathy. ‘I know it isn’t fair.” 

I hope that you will read Bruce’s book 90 a Conscientious Objector’s Journey of Quiet Resistance. I’ve linked it in the description. He talks a lot in the book about his relationship with his father and how the death of his father when he was just 15 years old affected him so deeply. He also mentions a lot of other men, famous ones like Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. but also men that surrounded him at Princeton like Cleve, the African-American chef of Stevenson Hall, where he washed dishes, some of his professors who left a lasting impact on him, and his high school basketball coach, the surrogate fathers who took him in and helped to guide and shape him as he entered adulthood during a tumultuous time, a task his own father was tragically unable to carry out. At its heart, 90 is a book about fathers and the challenges a young man faced when forced to go on without his. I think it would make an exceptional Father’s Day gift if you are lucky enough to have a father figure to gift it to this year. In fact, I just ordered a copy for my own father who is probably listening to this right now in which case sorry for ruining the surprise Dad. It would also make a great book for a book club because there’s just so much to unpack there. Really 90 is a coming-of-age tale, not just for Bruce Wasser, a junior at Princeton who, on a beautiful but chaotic night in December 1969 learned his number, 90, a number that would consume him and shape the rest of his life. It’s also a story about the coming of age of a country, the United States, a country torn over international issues and alliances but also issues within the civil rights movement, and what exactly does liberty and justice for all mean. What is freedom? Is Vietnam free if they remain under the oppression of French colonialism? Are black Americans free if they don’t have the same rights and opportunities as white Americans? In the end, the Vietnam war taught us many important lessons as people, as individuals facing conflict amongst ourselves, but also as a country so desperately in need of awakening.

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. And a huge thank you to Bruce Wasser, author of 90 a Conscientious Objector’s Journey of Quiet Resistance which I have linked in the description. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix. 

Information used in this episode was sourced from History.com, BBC, The US Selective Service System, PHData, and Encyclopedia Britannica. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.