GI sanctuary
For two months in 1969, some Christians in Honolulu saw fit to defy the U.S. government.

Sebastian Blanco

March 12, 2003

When the peace march commemorating the 24th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima began in Kapi‘olani Park, none of the hundreds of participants knew that theirs would be the early steps in a peace movement that would split a church in two, involve a BBC documentary crew in a road race across Honolulu and cause U.S. military forces to invade two local churches. But that’s what happened.
     The march on Aug. 10, 1969, from Kapi‘olani Park to Ala Moana Park, was led by an alliance of GIs and civilians demanding a “bill of rights” for military personnel. Organizers wanted to form a Hawai‘i chapter of the American Serviceman’s Union, a national group of dissenters within the military.
     By the end of that day, six servicemen went AWOL and sought sanctuary inside the Church of the Crossroads on University Avenue. The six joined Louis “Buffy” Perry, who had entered the church amid a flurry of publicity on Aug. 6. “I’ve chosen to begin a lifestyle of noncooperation, on any level, with the military establishment,” Perry told reporters. “I urge all my brothers and sisters to do the same.”
     The Hawai‘i People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice quickly formed to support the soldiers. Two Christian “sanctuaries” for AWOL soldiers were established: the Church of the Crossroads, Delwyn Rayson, pastor; and the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu on Pali Highway, Gene Bridges, parish minister.
     During the next four weeks, Honolulu, with about 56,000 military personnel stationed on the island, was the red-hot center for GI resistance to the Vietnam War. At least 50 soldiers refused to cooperate in a war they didn’t agree with and fled into the churches.
     Larry Jones, a longtime political activist who now teaches part-time at Chaminade University, pointed out recently that pastors Bridges and Rayson deserve credit for sticking their necks out.
     “They led their congregations in rethinking the Vietnam War,” Jones, now 76, said, his voice still full of respect for these men. “They didn’t force it on them, but the congregations had to think it through and wrestle with it and debate it. They endured arguments and sometimes alienation from each other. It was a tough process.”
     In the early morning hours of Friday, Sept. 12, military police stormed the two churches and seized the 40-odd AWOL soldiers. Unitarian Church caretaker Ogden Myers remembered waking up with an MP’s gun to his head. The raids occurred simultaneously and were over quickly. The soldiers would face court-martial.
     “It was a dramatic end to a dramatic demonstration,” Bridges said recently, remembering the raid. He explained that the sanctuary idea derived from medieval Christian practice, when a person fleeing authorities could find safe haven inside a church. Call it Christian forgiveness and absolution. Call it finding peace in the church.
     The sanctuary movement and the subsequent military raids split the church congregations. Some Church of the Crossroads members who did not oppose the war felt the sanctuary was a misuse of the church, and that the church as they had known it for years was being taken from them. As The Honolulu Advertiser reported in October 1969, “It was one of the first times open dissidence had been noted within the liberal church’s ranks.”
     Cindy Lance, who still lives in Honolulu, was just out of Roosevelt High School when she joined the anti-war movement in the late 1960s. She worked with Liberated Barracks, an organization spawned by the sanctuary movement that continued to reach out to GIs after the sanctuary raids.
     “I think the military simply wanted the story — and, of course, the sanctuary movement — to die,” Lance, now 51, said. “They probably thought we would be demoralized after the bust and just fade away. On the contrary, we continued to visit the guys in the brigs and attend their trials.”
     News stories reported on the nationwide spread of the sanctuary movement. A Sept. 3, 1969, Advertiser story reported on two so-called “rebel servicemen” who were secretly sent to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where they received official church support after they recounted their experiences on O‘ahu. Another story told of GI resister John Lewis and his arrest at Honolulu airport after being chased across the city by a convoy of vehicles. The dramatic chase was documented by a BBC-TV news crew in Honolulu to cover the sanctuary movement.
     “You have to picture the grounds of the Crossroads teeming with people,” Lance said, recalling the sanctuary’s brief heyday. The memory animated her. “In the evening there would be maybe a couple hundred support people bringing food and other supplies or just coming to stay for the evening, singing and talking with the GIs.”
     Of course, being a GI in this environment meant being AWOL, she pointed out, and that meant punishment if caught. Once the sanctuaries were operating, military brass deployed MPs to guard the perimeters of the churchyards and prevent soldiers from entering or leaving.
     Some GIs didn’t want to be sent back to Vietnam or to the brig, so they decided to leave the country and make for Canada. The life-and-death gravity of the situation changed not only the lives of the GIs, but also the thinking of some anti-war activists.
     “Early on, the attitude of the protesters equated military with bad,” Jones said. “But the GIs didn’t know what the hell was going on. They thought they were serving their country and doing good. We had to realize that GIs were just working-class guys who were being given orders and told not to think. The enemy wasn’t the GI; it was the brass and the administrative leaders behind them making the war decisions.”
     Members of the community began secretly housing AWOL GIs in their homes. It was a risky business — and a federal crime — to harbor a fugitive or an AWOL serviceman.
     Aside from the obvious strategies — like putting wigs on the GIs, dressing them in conformist threads and using cars without bumper stickers — neither Lance nor Jones nor Bridges would reveal details about how the sanctuary support group moved GIs out of Honolulu and on to other countries.
     “Of course, it would be much harder to accomplish now,” Lance said, “with Homeland Security and all — but then again, wasn’t it difficult for Germans to help Jews escape, or for whites to smuggle slaves to freedom? It’s not a question of degree of difficulty, it’s a question of doing what’s right.”
     There may soon be need for more sanctuary work.
     “We’re happy that people are stepping forward to protest this Iraq war plan in a lot shorter time than it took us,” Lance noted.
     “I am very much concerned that Iraq will be much worse than Vietnam was,” Bridges, now 74, said gravely, “and I support anything we can do to head Bush off at the pass, anything except violence.”