Books in the Barracks

Before I describe Oak Knoll here, let me tell you about that library in my office at the Oakland Wave Barracks. No one checked out a book, nor did I have time or inclination to take a look at them. (Wartime books had no colorful dust jackets.) But when we were closing down the barracks, the officers told us the books were ours. Because I love books and reading, I was interested but it seemed no one else was. So I shipped home a large box of them. That box wasn’t opened till I had been home for several months. Finally the day came. I began reading one of the smaller books Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast. I read one page, and then I started over and read that page again. Something was terribly wrong. The tone of the book was clash, clash, clash. Fast was supposed to be writing about an American patriot, but he did so with an ulterior motive. I got through the story, began the second book, found the same sort of propaganda, and began spending time at the Carnegie Public Library, looking up the authors of all these books. (It was before the days of the Internet, or even computers.) All the authors of the books were or had been Communists, or well-known Communist sympathizers. Next, I looked up the organizations that had donated these books to the WAVES. That information was stamped on the books. Most were from one group which, I learned, was on the Government’s list of subversive organizations. I ordered the list from the Government Printing Office in Washington, D. C. You may be surprised to learn that while the publication was about 5/8 of an inch thick, the subversive organizations it listed as being on the LEFT filled the entire list, except for less than one page of various Klans in the South.

All this effort and study convinced me organizations were/are out there doing their best to brainwash military personnel into becoming anti-Americans. Add to that little library of about one hundred books in my office at the barracks, the seven other libraries in those buildings there, and think of all the damage possible at that place at that time. And then think of the other opportunities: every military base everywhere. It pays to be sure one is a patriotic American before signing up for the military. Thank the good Lord, we continue to hear of numerous American heroes, gallant patriotic Americans in uniform.

♥