I mean it… it seemed to me simply at that point that I simply must become a conscientious objector. I couldn't go and do something of that sort, but I simply didn't have the nerve to face my society and say:  ‘No, I won't’. I know that for instance that Bill Stafford, whom I… I had lived near to there, in Iowa City, had… had done four years as a conscientious objector and as a matter of fact he… he was taken out with a bunch of other conscientious objectors some place in the South and they had the rope around his neck already when… when the sheriff arrived. I didn't have that kind of nerve, and so I went.

I think as a matter of fact that many of the people felt much as I did, that they would go and try to do something of… of that sort, but as a matter of fact, it later came out that during World War II, three-fourths of the men in combat were unable to pull a ri… a trigger. The guns all jammed, they thought. Now they… they put people through a kind of psychological training so that they become more able to… to kill other people.

Anyway, I… I simply didn't have that; I went ahead and... and I became a… they… they sent us to Saipan where I became a brig guard and I ended up doing some things that… that really are fairly disgraceful. They brought… one night the SPs — shore patrol — brought aboard the ship two guys who had… whom had… who were drunk on the beach, and we threw them in the brig. Later that night they claimed they had been raped by some of the guys in the… other guys in the brig. Whether this was so or not, of course we will never know. Things of that sort happened, not infrequently.