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1950
Pamphlets Are Distributed At Oak Ridge; Pacifist Is Blamed
Oak Ridge,
Tenn., —
A self-described pacifist was picked up by police today while distributing
leaflets inside the restricted area of the Oak Ridge atomic plants.
Atomic energy Commission security officers identified the man as K. James
Otsuka, 29 of Richmond, Ind.,
They said he was questioned by security officers and
FBI agents and released.
Otsuka said he was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and the
Peacemakers. He described the latter organization as a “pacific group which
objects to war or the preparation for war.”
He said he gained entrance to the close-guarded area by boarding a bus
carrying construction workers inside it.
“No one asked me for a pass,” he declared. “The guards must have assumed I
was a worker.”
The leaflets Otsuka distributed outside the K-25 plant — the one which makes
uranium-2-35 by the gaseous diffusion process — protested the use of tax
money for “weapons of human destruction.”
A statement from the
AEC
security office said Otsuka was under observation from the time he lighted
from the bus.
Otsuka said he was a maintenance worker on the farm of Perry Kissick near
Richmond. He said he planned to return to Indiana this afternoon.
The leaflets he distributed said in part:
“I came today to burn at that hour 70 percent of a dollar bill, symbolizing
the percentage of taxes which, according to our president, Harry Truman, is
being used for military preparation and for fighting the cold war.”
At another point the pamphlet said:
“Thought we must stop serving Mammon, we must stop being afraid and start
acting for peace courageously, as Jesus and Ghandi fighting the cold war.”
Otsuka, an Earlham (Ind.)
College student, recently was released from the federal correctional
institution at Ashland, Ky.,
after serving five months for refusal to pay his income tax.
New York.
(UP) — Millions of Americans
rushed to beat the midnight deadline for filing income taxes
. All of them moaned and a few rugged
individualists flatly refused to pay.
“Conscious [sic] Objectors” Refuse
Across the nation there were isolated cases of “conscientious objectors”, who
refused to file returns.
Three Iowans and three New Yorkers balked at paying taxes because of
President Truman’s decision to develop the hydrogen bomb.
In the nation’s largest city, 16 pickets paraded before the internal revenue
offices during the lunch hour ,
carrying signs which read “Don’t pay your income tax. Refuse to finance World
War Ⅲ.” and “Your taxes pay for the H-bomb.”
In Yellow Springs, Ohio, an aged bed-ridden Quaker widow and six of her
neighbors refused to pay part of their taxes as a protest against use of tax
money for military purposes. The widow withheld 30.25 per cent of her tax,
the amount she estimated would go for national defense.
Minister Refuses to Pay
In Boston, a minister wrote revenue collectors that “as long as the bulk of
federal tax dollars goes to pay for past and future wars, I must refuse to
pay the tax.”
Here is some more war tax resistance news from
. First, from the Tonawanda
Evening News of (excerpts):
It’s T- (for Tax) Day and Rush To Pay Up Gets Terrific
Chicago (UP) — Americans rushed today to file their income taxes
before the deadline but a
few individuals and groups risked imprisonment by defying the inevitable.
Pacifists Won’t Pay
At Washington, the Justice Department revealed it expected to have indictments
by against 149
persons for trying to evade $10,000,000 in wartime taxes. There is a six-year
statute of limitation in tax cases.
Nevertheless, some people announced today that they would refuse to pay
taxes at the risk of going to prison.
At Des Moines, a Quaker couple and an engineer told the tax collector they
wouldn’t pay because they were Pacifists. Both the Quaker husband and the
engineer were sentenced as conscientious objectors during World War Ⅱ.
An organization calling itself “Peacemakers” planned a
picket of the Internal
Revenue Bureau in New York City. The signs said “Your Taxes Pay for the
H-Bomb” and “Refuse to pay Taxes for War Purposes.”
The Gandhi Manner
The group which says it is dedicated to non-violent resistance to militarism
and war, announced that at least 27 men and 19 women members throughout the
country would refuse to pay taxes.
At Cincinnati, three members of the group announced their refusal in order to
demonstrate “non-violent resistance to evil, after the manner of Mohandas K.
Ghandi [sic] of India.”
Arthur Sternberg of St. Paul
figured out for himself that 32 percent of his tax goes for defense and he
withheld that amount — $51 — from his payment.
Des Moines
(UP) — The
hydrogen bomb hasn’t been exploded, but it had income tax day reactions in
Iowa.
Three lowans listed the bomb among reasons why they refused to pay their
federal income tax for .
One of them is a 35-year-old mechanical engineer, Walter Gormly of
Mt. Vernon, who said he also
refused to pay his tax for .
Gormly, who said he is a “pacifist” and “a philosophical objector to war,”
said the hydrogen, bomb was only one of his reasons for refusing to pay the
tax.
“In the side-stepping of all efforts to hold high level conferences with
Russia, the United States seems to fear Russia might appease the
U.S. in any such,
conference and spoil the excuse for continued war spending,” he asserted.
Gormly said he was a conscientious objector during the recent war and served
three years in prison as an objector.
“I object to authoritarianism,” he said, in explaining why he refused to sign
his tax return. His tax was approximately $100.
Gormly said he was associated with the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.
That group issued a statement advocating peacemakers to refuse “to pay taxes
which are for the purpose of carrying on war.”
Arthur Emery of Earlham sent a joint return for himself and wife, along with
a statement of taxes withheld from his wife’s wages as an employe for a time
last year at Perin college in Oskaloosa, and a receipt for a $105 donation to
a peace organization.
“We do not object to paying 40 percent of our tax which we feel goes for
constructive purposes,” Emery wrote the internal revenue collector, but, he
added: “We cannot conscientiously finance the construction of atom and
hydrogen bombs.”
Mt.
Vernon, IA.
(AP) — Walter Gormly, 37, who says he is a “philosophical objector to war,” says he again has refused to pay his federal income taxes.
Gormly made public copies of his letter to the Internal Revenue office in
Des Moines announcing his intentions of not paying the tax.
Last year the self-styled consulting engineer similarly refused to pay his
federal income tax as “a protest gesture.” The government seized his station
wagon to satisfy a $270 tax lien. It was sold at auction for $230.
Gormly served a three-year federal prison term for draft law violations during
World war Ⅱ. In his letter of refusal to pay his
income taxes, he asserts the Korean war “is
illegal” and says he does not wish to provide the government with funds which
may be used in carrying on the war.
A press release by a national pacifist group known as “Peacemakers” lists
Gormly and two other Iowans among a group of 41 Americans who are refusing to
pay income taxes as an expression of their opposition to war.
The other two Iowans are Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Emery, Earlham Quakers who also
refused to pay taxes a year ago. As in Gormly’s case, the Emery car was put
up for auction by the federal government to satisfy a tax lien.
Mt. Vernon — Walter Gormly,
Mt.
Vernon’s self-styled anti-war crusader, announced
that he was refusing for the eighth
time to pay federal income taxes.
The announcement was made in a letter to Frank J. Halpin, Iowa collector of
internal revenue. A copy of the letter was received
by The Gazette, but Gormly set
— income tax deadline — as the
release date.
Gormly said his reason for refusing to pay his income tax was that the federal
government’s major function “is to prepare for and to wage war.”
“Something like 90 percent of the proposed Eisenhower budget is for past,
present, and future wars,” he wrote. “However, some of the remaining 10
percent is used for thought control, persecution of political minorities, and
for other nefarious purposes and ought not be paid any more than the money
for war.”
Served Prison Term.
Gormly, 39, drew attention in ,
when federal agents auctioned off his model
car for $230 because he refused to pay income taxes for
.
He is a mechanical engineer and does free-lance design work for small
industry.
He also served three years of a five-year federal prison term for refusing to
comply with selective service laws. He was sent to prison in
.
Gormly’s name is one of 43 on a list of persons who have refused to pay
federal income tax. The list, which contains the names of no other Iowans,
was sent out by the Rev.
Ernest R. Bromley of Gano, Sharonsville, Ohio, chairman of the Tax Refusal
Committee of Peacemakers.
The group is described as a national pacifist organization “which advocates
the practice of non-violence as demonstrated by the late Mohandas K. Gandhi.”
Text of Letter.
Gormly’s letter to Halpin also took issue with the federal government’s
handling of Communist spies.
“It is constantly dinned into us that all Communists are spies,” the letter
said. “J. Edgar Hoover says there are 271,000 people dedicated to communism,
others would place the number higher…
“I tried to find out from the department of justice, Senator McCarthy,
Senator Jenner, Senator Hickenlooper,
Rep. Velde, and the
house un-American activities committee how many people have been convicted of
spying for Russia and how many of them were Communists, but none of them
answered my questions.
“Finally I read in a newspaper column by Roscoe Drummond that 13 Communists
had been convicted of espionage and related activities
“Either J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI
are ridiculously inept in being able to convict on five-one thousandths of
one percent of the spies, or the story that all Communists are spies is a
hoax.”
The letter goes on to say that FBI
sources show that the average Communist does not stick with the party more
than two or three years.
“No spy conspiracy could work with that kind of defection,” Gormly’s letter
said.
