Germfask, MI ... a link with Mancos

While in Newberry, MI, I realized that Germfask was just off our path into northern Wisconsin. Had to find it, because Germfask figures prominently in the Mancos story of Civilian Public Service Camp 111.

Camp 111 was based at the earlier CCC camp near Jackson Gulch Dam. In both instances, the men assigned there worked on site preparation, under Bureau of Reclamation supervision, for the dam. The CCC program started in 1933 and was discontinued in 1942, when the young men were needed for the war effort. During WWII, young men had four choices: Active military duty, active duty as a noncombatant (medic, etc.), CPS (doing "work of national importance") or prison. Camp 111 was the first government-run CPS camp; prior to that, the camps were run by religious denominations (mostly the "peace churches" - Mennonites, Brethren, Quakers - but others, too). 

The Germfask camp, No. 135, was opened later, at Seney Wildlife Refuge. It became infamous as the "Alcatraz" of the CPS camps. Conscientious objectors who acted out (or got crosswise with camp management) in ways that didn't warrant being sent to prison were sent to Germfask. There were COs (also called "conchies") who did their assigned duties in the camps, but there were also absolutists who opposed war in any form and would not lend a hand in any way to the war effort, believing that to do so was to support the war. 

Corbett Bishop was an absolutist who was assigned to Mancos Camp 111. He was an anchor of the "Tobacco Road" barracks at the camp, a core of dissenters and, in the eyes of the administrators, malcontents. He was sent to Germfask, where he was part of another "Tobacco Road." Bishop "walked out" in 1944, and was sent to prison. (Interesting side-note ... prisons and the military at that time were segregated; the CCC and CPS were not.) He fasted and was force-fed for more than 400 days; his case finally went to the Supreme Court. He was finally released and, as I recall, became a bookseller in Chicago, where he died in a mugging in 1961.

The absolutists at Germfask apparently made malingering an art and were so much trouble for the administrators and the F&WS that it's not surprising that the sign shown gives total credit to the CCCs, even though the CCC no longer existed after FY 42. TV