Stop Our Ship (SOS)

Poster used for the Constellation Vote

Although the city-wide Constellation Vote was non-binding, it served as a dramatic exercise in democracy. It gave not only San Diego citizens a voice in regard to being for or against the carrier's return to Southeast Asia, it also gave sailors a chance to vote. The Constellation Vote was a symbolic nonviolent action, not one that intended to stop the carrier from returning to Vietnam.

[10] In preparation of the Constellation Vote, hundreds of activists, including sailors and veterans, canvassed the city. The canvassing was followed by a citywide straw vote from September 17 through September 21, 1971. Out of 54,721 votes counted, over 82% of voters elected to keep the ship home, including 73% of the military personnel who voted. While not a "real" vote, the impact on public opinion was appreciable, boosted by national prime time coverage by CBS and ABC television.[11][12][13][14][15]

The involvement of large numbers of antiwar officers and enlisted men created significant debate in the traditionally pro-military town. It also permitted creative methods not normally available to other antiwar groups, such as the CONSTELLATION STAY HOME FOR PEACE banner frequently seen being towed over the city by recently retired navy flight instructor LT John Huyler, and the Constellation Vote stickers found everywhere on board the USS Constellation, including in the captain's personal bathroom.[16][17][18][19] Bathroom stickers weren't the only complication the Captain had to deal with. Over 1,300 of the ship's sailors signed a petition requesting actress Jane Fonda's antiwar FTA Show, known to most GIs as the "Fuck The Army" show, be allowed on board. The captain refused this request but then got himself in hot water by intercepting and destroying 2,500 pieces of U.S. mail sent by antiwar activists to crewmembers. Faced with a possible court of inquiry and health problems, the captain was removed from command before the ship sailed.[20][11]

Laying the basis for the broader SOS movement to come, a considerable amount of research was conducted into the role of aircraft carriers in modern warfare by Professor William Watson of MIT, who was then a visiting Professor of History at UC San Diego.[21] He argued in a widely distributed pamphlet that aircraft carriers had become weapons "used to crush popular uprisings and to bully the weaker and poorer countries of the world."[22]

When the Constellation set sail for Vietnam in on October 1, 1971, nine of its crew publicly refused to go and took sanctuary in a local Catholic church, Christ the King. The "Connie 9", as they were quickly dubbed, were soon arrested in an early morning raid by US Marshals and flown back to the ship, but within weeks were honorably discharged from the Navy.[23][24]

Active duty sailors, Bob Musa (left) and Larry Harris (right) speak at a protest rally.

Undeterred, the antiwar sailors created dozens of new copies and begin recirculating it with instructions about how to avoid confiscation. The military brass, however, declared the petition illegal and arrested three crewmen for passing out antiwar literature. With the ship now at sea for pre-deployment trials, a tit-for tat battle erupted. On September 28, 14 sailors passed out petitions and an antiwar GI underground newspaper in the mess hall in front of the captain. The captain responded by having several men arrested, some of whom claimed they were beaten in the brig. Word of these activities reached the civilian antiwar movement in the San Francisco area, and, when the Coral Sea passed under the Golden Gate Bridge as it returned to port on October 7, a large SOS banner was hung over the side of the bridge. Seventy crewmen responded in kind, forming the letters SOS on the flight deck as the ship passed under the bridge. The Navy then began to discharge those it viewed as leaders of the petition drive.[25]

Four active duty sailors from the USS Coral Sea lead large antiwar march on Nov. 6 1971.

By the time the dust had settled, over a 1,000 members of the crew had signed the petition - about 25% of the over 4,000 men assigned to the ship.[4] On November 6, over 300 men from Coral Sea marched with over 10,000 others in an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco.[28][29] In an unprecedented move the Berkeley City Council declared the city a sanctuary for the men on the Coral Sea who were refusing to go to war. The council encouraged city residents to "provide bedding, food, medical and legal help" to the sailors, and "passed a motion to establish a protected space where soldiers could access counseling and other support.”[30] Ten local churches also offered sanctuary.[31] In response a U.S. Attorney in San Francisco said “he would not hesitate to prosecute anyone who willfully harbors a military deserter”.[32] When the ship sailed on November 12, around 1,200 protestors demonstrated outside of Naval Air Station Alameda to encourage sailors not to sail and at least 35 crewmen failed to report for duty.[33][34][25][35]

When the Coral Sea arrived in Hawaii in late November, it was greeted by a special performance in Honolulu of the FTA antiwar show, featuring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Country Joe McDonald.[36] More than 4,000 people attended, including approximately 2,500 members of the military and several hundred sailors from the Coral Sea.[37][38] After the show, approximately 50 crewmen met with the show's cast. When the ship pulled out of port to continue to Southeast Asia, another 53 sailors were missing.[3]^:112–113In January 1972 with the ship off Vietnam, Secretary of the Navy John Chafee visited the Coral Sea. SOS activists on board held a demonstration and presented the Navy Secretary with a petition which 36 of them had signed.[39]

In San Diego, the local antiwar groups, including some of those who had waged the initial campaign against the USS Constellation, took their support to a more organized level by banding together in 1972 to form the Center for Servicemen’s Rights. They rented a large storefront space in the middle of the main GI strip which contained a bookstore, mimeo, meeting rooms and a stage; staffed by a "collective of volunteers that included active duty sailors, a few Marines, veterans, and civilian activists."[48] They provided individual and group counselling on GI rights, conscience objection and other means of opposing the war, as well as support for sailors who wanted to publish their own newspapers, leaflets or articles.[3]^:116

The San Francisco underground GI newspaper Up Against the Bulkhead and its staff played an important role in supporting the SOS movement, particularly the dissident sailors of the Coral Sea. Founded in 1970, by late 1971 it could be found everywhere GIs congregated in the San Francisco Bay Area and sailors knew where to go when they wanted counterculture help and friendship. As two Bulkhead staffers reported years later, "In 1971 a handful of sailors from the USS Coral Sea" showed up at the Bulkhead office "ready for action". The sailors "were a colorful lot, veritable hippies in uniform...more than eager not only to investigate ways to oppose the war, but also ways to sample the offerings of countercultural hedonism." With Bulkhead support the sailors went on to start the first SOS petition and officially launch the Stop Our Ship name.[27][49][50]

In January 1972, attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild, worked with several active duty sailors to create a support center in Olongapo, Philippines, just outside Subic Bay, the largest U.S. Navy installation in the Pacific at that time. Sparked by the appearance of the FTA Show in December, the center was soon publishing an underground newspaper called Seasick. The center supported dissenting GIs and worked to improve the conditions for sailors on shore leave, including by helping sailors gather over 500 signatures on a petition against police brutality by the Shore Patrol. The center was swiftly put out of business in September 1972 when martial law was declared in the Philippines (see below).[3]^:116[51]

There were SOS offices in Oakland, serving the San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, the office opened in January 1972 with SOS standing for Support Our Soldiers, carrying on efforts initiated several years earlier by supporters of the GI Coffeehouse movement. They began putting out a newsletter called SOS News and announced in their first issue that they were “a support office for the GI Movement.” They pledged to take responsibility for “raising money, providing literature and films, recruiting staff, maintaining communications and providing publicity for GI coffeehouses and projects.”[52] In Oakland, the Support Our Soldiers office offered similar supprt to the GI movement. Their newsletter stated that they would "try to fill the needs for money, staff, educational materials, and communication that individual organizing projects cannot fulfill themselves."[53]

The Navy's sudden need for additional personnel greatly intensified the pressure for new recruits and training. The Great Lakes Naval Station, located north of Chicago, IL, is the largest U.S. Navy training base and the only boot camp for naval enlistees. On May 20, 1972, the Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM) and the Chicago Area Military Project organized an Armed Forces Day demonstration with 400 GIs joining a crowd of over 2,000. Soon a petition was being circulated on the base opposing the increased speed-up in training that gathered more than 600 signatures.

Canoes and small boats attempting to blockade the USS Nitro as it departed for Vietnam.

Crew members aboard the USS Nitro, a munitions ship loaded with armament at the Naval Weapons Station in Earle, New Jersey, staged one of the most dramatic protests. Worried about the war and the unsafe conditions on board they contacted civilian antiwar organizations who helped them draw up a list of specific shipboard hazards, which they circulated, gathering signatures from 48 members of the crew. The petition resulted in little change, but on April 24, 1972, as the ship was pulling out of port, it was greeted by an antiwar blockade of seventeen canoes and small boats. As the Coast Guard attempted to disperse the demonstrators, they were first confronted by dissent from within their ranks,[54] and then, one of the Nitro's crew on the “ship’s deck suddenly stood up on the rail, raised the clenched-fist salute, and literally jumped overboard!” He was quickly followed by six more crew members, including one non-swimmer who had donned a life jacket.[3]^:118

William Monks, one of the seven who jumped explained his actions later:

I jumped from my ship because of my beliefs against the war and the killing in Vietnam. I also jumped to support the anti-war protesters who valiantly tried to keep the Nitro from leaving for Vietnam. I also jumped for the many oppressed people in the military that think like myself, but because of the way the military functions, no one ever listens to these people…. I see no reason why I should have to fight in Vietnam. I didn't start this war. I have nothing against the Vietnamese people, they never hurt me or my family.[54]

When martial law was declared in the Philippines in September 1972,[61] the U.S. Navy “used the occasion to crack down on so-called troublemakers and…loaded more than two hundred enlisted men from eleven different ships onto planes for immediate transfer back to San Diego.”[3]^:119[62] Once in San Diego many of the men wanted to let the public know what had happened and on October 24 “a racially mixed group of thirty-one enlisted men held a press conference to denounce the deplorable conditions, harassment, and racial prejudice they encountered while at sea.”[3]^:119 Their statement, partially excerpted here, captured many of the issues swirling within the Navy at that time:

We, the undersigned demand an end to the mistreatment and harassment that we have received from the United States Navy…. Living and working conditions on the ships were very poor. People had to work 14-16 hours a day. This Included watch and work. While we were on the line we got 4-6 hours sleep a night. At times we would work 24-36 hours straight without sleep…. There was a lot of pressure from our superiors. They keep trying to get us to do Jobs faster…. The superiors take out their frustrations on the enlisted people and especially on people of color.

The Captains and the command pushes the men and the machines to the breaking point. As a result the men turn to alcohol and drugs. It is an escape from the tension that is put on your mind and body by the long working hours and conditions. When the dope runs out or when the tension gets too great, fights break out on the ships. The tension results in racial fighting.

We demand an investigation into the working conditions, the living conditions, the tension on the Navy ships. We also demand an investigation to the drug program and the racism.[63]

In October 1972 the Kitty Hawk pulled into Subic Bay after 8 months at sea, expecting a rest before heading home. Instead, the crew was notified they were returning to combat operations in Indochina. Tensions, already high from accelerated combat operations, flared even more. Blacks made up 7 percent of the enlisted crew on board the Hawk, and the majority of them “were assigned to the toughest and dirtiest Navy jobs, in the deck force and on flight decks, while whites populated the more coveted and higher tech jobs in the crew.”[60] The black crew members felt they had been “treated like dogs.”[64] With a strong sense of black pride and influenced by the civil rights and Black Power movements in the U.S., they were very unhappy with their conditions. During the nights prior to deployment, several racial incidents occurred in Subic Bay enlisted men's club. On October 8, a black sailor went on stage and shouted "Black power! This war is the white man's war!" and then continued to preach to the drunken crowd. A glass was thrown that hit him in the head, and a fight between blacks and whites broke out. On October 11, the night before the ship was to depart, a larger black-white fight erupted in the EM club which was broken up by a marine riot squad with clubs. Five black and four white sailors were arrested but returned to the ship before it departed. Back at sea, unhappy about being redeployed and overworked, many of the crew were now also deeply angry over racial tensions.[65]

Once underway on October 12, an investigating officer began an inquiry into the fight by summoning several black sailors. “This [singling out of blacks only] was hard to understand in terms of the tensions” the NY Times quoted an officer saying “who had access to all of the reports of the incident.” One of those summoned brought “nine companions with him and grew belligerent”. The nine then stormed out to join other black sailors on the mess deck with the crowd soon growing to over one hundred. The chief master-at-arms became alarmed and summoned the marines, a move which was described later by “officialdom” as the first of “a series of mistakes” and an explosive situation quickly developed.[59][3]^:120–121[43]^:261–267

The ship's executive officer ordered the blacks and the Marines to separate ends of the ship, but the Captain issued conflicting orders. In the ensuing confusion, the blacks and the Marines ran into each other on the hangar deck and a fight broke out. “The fighting spread rapidly, with bands of blacks and whites marauding throughout the ship’s decks and attaching each other with fists, chains, wrenches, and pipes.”[3]^:120–121 More conflicting orders were issued resulting in more confusion and fights raged on for much of the night. The fights left 40 white and 6 black sailors injured, including three who had to be evacuated to onshore medical facilities.[60][66]

By morning, a tense calm was achieved and normal flight operations were resumed.[43]^:266 However, once arrests were made for the fighting, all of the 25 arrested were black. “The arrest pattern caused as grave concern in some areas of the Pentagon as the outbreak itself. ‘Anytime you have a so-called race riot and you lock up 28 blacks,’ one black Navy official noted caustically during a recent interview, ‘that has to raise some questions.’”[59]

As word spread in the fleet about the incidents on board the Kitty Hawk, many of the black sailors on the Constellation were “swearing an affinity with their beleaguered brothers on the Kitty Hawk.”[43]^:268 By late October 1972, with the ship undergoing training exercises of the coast of Southern California, black crewmembers formed an organization called the “Black Fraction,” “with the aim of protecting minority interests in promotion policies and in the administration of military justice.” They elected a “chairman and three spokesmen to deal with the officers and petty officers of the ship.”[3]^:121–122[67]

As commanders became aware of the Black Faction, they agreed to a meeting between them and the executive officer with the objective of easing tensions. Prior to the meeting, however, the command “singled out fifteen members of Black Faction as agitators and ordered that six of them be given immediate less-than-honorable discharges.” At the same time, notice was given ship wide that 250 men would be administratively discharged. Feeling they were being singled out for retaliation for their activism and fearing that most of the additional discharges would be directed at them, over one hundred sailors, including several whites, staged a sit in and refused to work on the morning of November 3.[3]^:121–122[67]

During the day, members of the ship's Human Relations Council attempted to meet with the mutineers in a private dining room with little success as they demanded to see the captain. Around midnight, with the sit-in continuing the captain announced to the ship that any complaints had to go through the chain of command. “’O.K., that’s it,’ shouted a black sailor in the dining room. ‘They want another Kitty Hawk.’ There were shouts of ‘Let’s get the captain,’ and ‘Let’s take the ship.” The Captain then called general quarters and ordered senior officers and petty officers to pick out white sailors and move to the mess deck to surround the mutineers where they had now moved. A tense standoff ensued that slowly dissipated overnight.[59][43]^:274[68]

In the morning the captain “washe[d] his hands of the mutineers. He [did] not want to admit mutiny, so he cannot charge the blacks with that. Yet he want[ed] them off his ship.”[59] The captain, in consultation with others all the way up to the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, decided to cut sea operations short and set the dissidents ashore. Once docked, 144 crew members left the ship, including 8 whites. The Constellation returned to sea but returned a few days later to pick up the mutinous sailors. Most of the men, however, refused to board the ship and on November 9 “staged a defiant dockside strike - perhaps the largest act of mass defiance in naval history.”[69] Despite these unprecedented actions, none of the sailors were arrested, most were simply reassigned to other duty stations, while a few received what were described as “trifling punishments”.[3]^:121–122[43]^:280