Name: During WWII, troublemakers were sent to remote labor camp in Michigan's U.P.
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During WWII, troublemakers were sent to remote labor camp in Michigan's U.P.

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Detroit Free Press It was one of the most beautiful places John Partridge remembers seeing as a child — Germfask, a quaint town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with trees growing over the road, creating a picturesque canopy.&nbsp;&nbsp;His dad held very different memories of the town, which became to be known as America's Siberia."My dad said, 'Well yeah, this was where they tried to lynch me,'" Partridge said.His father, Al Partridge, spent time in Germfask during World War II as a registered conscientious objector. He&nbsp;was moved through various government-operated labor&nbsp;camps across the United States before ending up at Camp Germfask, where men who acted out were sent as punishment.&nbsp;From 1944-45, Camp Germfask became home to around 100 men who were deemed troublemakers and sent to isolation in the remote region of Michigan to work, while others enlisted to serve in the military or aid in the war effort.&nbsp;Decades have passed since the Germfask men left the camp. The camp, located off M-77 about an hour away from the Mackinac Bridge,&nbsp;officially closed in 1945 and later became Big Cedar Campground, as it is still known&nbsp;today.&nbsp;John Carlisle:Few remnants of Camp Germfask&nbsp;remain — a moss-coated sidewalk&nbsp;and a sign marking the site. All the old buildings have been removed.Unless you had a connection to the camp or lived in the area during the war, the story of the infamous camp is largely untold.&nbsp;Jane Kopecky, a lifelong Germfask and Schoolcraft County resident, wanted to change that. An encounter with the conscientious objectors while Kopecky was a child led to decades worth of interviews, research and writing about the camp, culminating in her recently published&nbsp;book&nbsp;""Most of the men who ended up in the camp were highly educated — scientists&nbsp;and&nbsp;attorneys. They were also known as privileged troublemakers&nbsp;who didn't want to fight in the war. The men resented the conditions in the camps, which were set up like boot camps,&nbsp;and they did not get paid to work, according to Kopecky."One of them set up his own lab, he was doing scientific research. There were attorneys, just some very, very intelligent people," Kopecky said. "The government did not want them to be out in the public because they could have swayed public opinion. So they hid them in the boonies in Germfask, or tried to."The townspeople saw the men as draft dodgers and criminals, shirking their duty while others were off in combat.Al Partridge, who was born in Turkey but raised in Oberlin, Ohio,&nbsp;was not a communist, he was not religious and did not come from a wealthy background, his son said. He simply was morally opposed to the war.&nbsp;&nbsp;While he and his fellow camp mates were known as "bad boys,"&nbsp;John Partridge said it never bothered his father.&nbsp;"He said, 'You've got to understand John, their sons, their brothers, their husbands were going off to this war and they were terribly worried about them. And here we were, these guys who were refusing to fight,'" Partridge recalled. "He had a lot of understanding of the animosity the town folk had for him."On a trip into Germfask,&nbsp;Al Partridge and several other men were identified as conscientious objectors from Camp Germfask by the townspeople. A crowd gathered around the men and began threatening to lynch them, John said.&nbsp;&nbsp;Al and the men managed to maneuver away from the crowd and get away unharmed. But the memory of the incident stayed with Al.&nbsp;&nbsp;Most of the men protested&nbsp;on principle — either religious or political, said Greg Sumner, history professor&nbsp;at University of Detroit Mercy.&nbsp;The conscientious objectors, who became known as "conchies," despised the living conditions in the camps. The men had to pay the government $35 a month, while still supplying their own food and sundries, but were not paid for their work in the camps, according to Kopecky. In a letter to the editor published in the Detroit Free Press on Feb. 18, 1945, conscientious objector Edmund Curtis&nbsp;compared the conditions he faced in the camp to slavery.&nbsp;Jeff Seidel:"We have been inducted and placed in labor camps without compensation for our work for a period extending over several years, and without provision for reasonable, normal, basic needs for our families and ourselves — which are but the basic guarantees of the Constitution which goes back even further in our history as a nation," Curtis wrote.&nbsp;While the conditions in the camp were not favorable, the men's actions in the camps weren't either, Sumner said.&nbsp;"These folks were resisting on purpose," Sumner said.&nbsp;"They would refuse to work, they would go on hunger strikes, there was a guy at Germfask who carried around a ball and chain I think he made with wood while he worked, which was some sort of statement that this was coercion by the state."&nbsp;People in the town recalled tales of the men stirring up trouble in the township, including rumors of the men raping a young girl in nearby Newberry, Kopecky said.&nbsp;&nbsp;Decades later, that resentment is still tangible.&nbsp;Sumner&nbsp;made a trip to the town in 2016 and could sense the tension&nbsp;that lingered.&nbsp;"They still hate those guys. Their sense was these are a bunch of draft dodgers, a bunch of troublemakers, they won't work, they are probably communists or something," Sumner said.&nbsp;"Meanwhile, put yourself in the position of these people — they are seeing people in town they think of as malingerers and they are getting a free ride. Here's the problem — while their sons, and brothers, and fathers and husbands are off fighting in places and casualties are being reported in the paper every day."You can understand why the locals might look at these guys and say, 'You're a bunch of draft dodgers.' There was a kind of slow boil of anger, hostility, and resentment toward these guys."&nbsp;Throughout the country, 151 work camps were opened and&nbsp;set up like military boot camps,&nbsp;where the objectors were sent to do work deemed equivalent to combat — working in national parks, fighting forest fires, and more.&nbsp;When the men lashed out or misbehaved, they were put on a list. Those who stayed on the list were eventually sent to Camp Germfask."If you misbehaved at another camp, you would be sent to a higher security camp or a camp that was less desirable," Sumner said.&nbsp;"The idea is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which has long winters, is not really a place you want to be sent."Of the nearly 12,000 men who became conscientious objectors during the war, around 100 who were moved throughout the camps and eventually sent to Germfask for their protests, according to Kopecky. Over time, the camp became a holding ground for men who did not cooperate with the system.&nbsp;Located near Seney National Wildlife Refuge, where the pulpwood and logging industry was booming, there was plenty of work to occupy the men at Camp&nbsp;Germfask.&nbsp;Prior to America's entry into&nbsp;World War II, the federal government initiated&nbsp;the first ever peacetime military draft, which allowed men&nbsp;who objected to war on religious or political grounds to register&nbsp;as a conscientious objector rather than&nbsp;fight.While there were objectors in the first world war, the peacetime draft made it possible for the men to officially register as an objector.&nbsp;A group of churches known as the peace churches — the Mennonites, Quakers and Church of the Brethren&nbsp;— lobbied Congress to exclude their members from the draft on religious grounds.&nbsp;The Selective Training and Service Act, signed into law&nbsp;In September 1940 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,&nbsp;required conscientious objectors&nbsp;to register with the Selective Service System, through which they would be drafted to do other work deemed of national importance instead of&nbsp;going into war.&nbsp;The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), originally organized during the Great Depression, was resurrected to give the men tasks during the war, such as forest work and fighting forest fires. The program then became known as Civilian Public Service (CPS).&nbsp;Camp Germfask was established during the Great Depression as a CCC camp, named after its founders —&nbsp;Grant, Edge, Robinson, Mead, French, Ackely, Shephard, and Knaggs."Germfask became the center for non-violent protests in the country. It became the symbol ...&nbsp;all the men in the CPS camps knew about Germfask," Kopecky said. "They printed little newspapers and distributed them throughout the camps, and the word Germfask itself became the symbol for World War II protesters. This is where all the action happened."The locals held such a strong resentment toward the Germfask men that when given the choice to root for conscientious objectors or the Germans in a nearby prisoners of war camp, the locals chose the Germans, Sumner said.One of five POW&nbsp;camps in the Upper Peninsula,&nbsp;Camp Au Train, was&nbsp;another former CCC camp that was transformed to house German prisoners during the war. Throughout the course of the war, about 225 German POWs lived in the camp as well as 40 U.S. troops, .&nbsp;The POW camps often would&nbsp;play each other in soccer matches. In 1944, German prisoners in Au Train camp played a soccer match against the Germfask conscientious objectors. The locals came out, cheering on the POWs, Sumner said.&nbsp;In their minds, at least the Germans were fighting for their country.&nbsp;"In the middle of World War II, up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the local Michigan people were cheering for the Germans to beat the Americans," Sumner said.&nbsp;"It is just this very upside down scene in the middle of the war."Nearly 80 years later.&nbsp;John Partridge still views his father's decision as an act of heroism."This was a very hard decision to make and it was not something you did because you were a coward or just kind of 'You can't tell me what to do' kind of a person," Partridge&nbsp;said.&nbsp;"These were guys who were&nbsp;really thoughtful... They made huge personal sacrifices for what they believe."Kopecky, an author and retired teacher,&nbsp;grew up in Germfask, but did not know the full story of the men who would wander into the town and anger the locals. When a memory of the Germfask men in her yard came flooding back to her while researching an&nbsp;assignment for her master's degree, Kopecky said, she made it her mission to share their story.&nbsp;After decades of research and interviews, Kopecky published her book&nbsp;in March.&nbsp;The story of America's Siberia was largely untold.&nbsp;The U.S. government during World War II wanted to keep the fact there was a vocal group of objectors quiet, Kopecky said.&nbsp;And those who experienced the camps, much like other veterans, did not want to talk about their experiences.&nbsp;Partridge, who now lives in Sonoma, California,&nbsp;said his dad&nbsp;would make remarks about his time in the camp but he never knew the full scope of what he went through until decades later.&nbsp;"He didn't talk about it much when I was growing up, he certainly didn't talk about it in terms of larger social things," Partridge said. "He would tell stories about things that had happened (in the camp), usually funny things that happened or things that were sort of ludicrous."&nbsp;Decades after Kopecky remembered seeing the men in her yard as a child in Germfask, their story is out.&nbsp;"The history is too important," Kopecky said.&nbsp;"There hasn't been any recorded history of this camp. It was one that got bypassed."Meredith Spelbring is a news intern with the Detroit Free Press. Reach her at mspelbring@freepress.com or on Twitter @mere0415.

Detroit Free Press It was one of the most beautiful places John Partridge remembers seeing as a child — Germfask, a quaint town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with trees growing over the road, creating a picturesque canopy.&nbsp;&nbsp;His dad held very different memories of the town, which became to be known as America's Siberia."My dad said, 'Well yeah, this was where they tried to lynch me,'" Partridge said.His father, Al Partridge, spent time in Germfask during World War II as a registered conscientious objector. He&nbsp;was moved through various government-operated labor&nbsp;camps...

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Meredith Spelbring

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primarily serves Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Monroe counties.  The Free Press is also the largest city newspaper owned by Gannett, which also publishes USA Today. The Free Press has received ten Pulitzer Prizes and four Emmy Awards. Its motto is "On Guard for 189 Years".

During WWII, troublemakers were sent to remote labor camp in Michigan's U.P.

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