National Student Strike and NROTC
… I remained on course to get my officer’s commission and go on active duty at the end of the school year. As I neared that day, however, I had no idea that I soon would have my first major political awakening as a full-fledged American.
The Navy ran the NROTC program, but the university treated it as a regular department called naval science. The program occupied a suite of offices in the brick-and-stone physical education building, and the commanding officer had the status of a temporary university professor. As ROTC midshipmen, my colleagues and I were both students and military reservists. In addition to our regular college courses, we received training from naval officer instructors. Every Thursday, we wore uniforms and practiced close-order drills on an athletic field. During summers, we trained aboard ships and at naval installations.
I actually enjoyed my final training cruise, on a diesel submarine deployed to Vietnam but returning home soon to be decommissioned. I joined the ship in Japan, participated in exercises with the Japanese Navy, and then experienced a three-week Pacific crossing back to San Diego. Comradery among the officers and crew particularly impressed me. The one negative experience came during a day trip to Nagasaki, where I visited the memorial to those who died in the American atomic bomb attack. Though dressed in civilian clothes, I stood out as an American, drawing stares as I viewed disturbingly graphic images of the bomb’s impact on the city and its residents.
Back at school, I felt like a bad fit from the start. I lacked the discipline and motivation of most of my colleagues, and I associated with what the Navy viewed as the wrong people on campus. To my instructors, this was a problem of both aptitude and attitude. Midway through my second year, my instructor, a southerner with a contempt for all things Californian, even suggested I quit the program. He disclosed that the Navy had one of my fellow midshipmen keeping watch on me and filing reports on my conduct and associations. I turned down his suggestion. Despite what they thought, I still wanted to be a naval officer, for now.
… [T]he Vietnam War increasingly pushed me to think differently about my future with the Navy. Anti-war demonstrators swarmed the Democratic National Convention being held in Chicago in August 1968. After completing my summer NROTC training, I had driven to Las Vegas for a little R&R before school resumed. In my Visiting Officers’ Quarters room at Nellis Air Force Base, I joined the rest of the country in watching on television what an investigative commission later called a police riot. Thousands of Chicago cops beat, tear-gassed, and arrested anti-war protesters. I watched for hours, as news reports flipped back and forth between the chaos in the streets outside the convention and the near-chaos on the convention floor. I sweated at the intensity of what I saw. The odor and burning of tear gas virtually seeped from the television. Mayor Richard Daley made clear his disdain for the demonstrators and his determination to keep control of the streets. Other Democratic Party leaders vilified him and turned the convention into a virtual referendum on the war. Instead of going into town to drink and gamble, I remained glued to the TV screen.
I thought about recent events that set the scene for the confrontation in Chicago. In April, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated in Memphis by a white supremacist. That was what non-violent resistance to segregation and the war got him. Just two months later, as the nation still reeled from the King assassination, Senator Robert Kennedy, in the midst of an insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, was shot and killed at a rally in Los Angeles.
A family friend, Ira Cooperman, worked as a speechwriter for Kennedy and got me involved as a campaign volunteer. The photograph of Bobby lying bleeding on the floor in the Ambassador Hotel, appearing the next day in every newspaper, haunted me. His death two days later shook me and millions of other young people who had been inspired to engage in politics for the most altruistic reasons. I felt the classic Deja vu all over again, less than five years after we had experienced the national trauma surrounding President John Kennedy’s assassination.
Until the events in Chicago, I had maintained low-key support for the war. What I saw on that television screen shocked me into rethinking that. Thousands of people about my age battled with the police, putting their bodies on the line for what they believed. The police response looked to me like something out of a totalitarian dictatorship. Was this the America I was preparing to serve and defend?
Amid the scores of television interviews with spokespeople on both sides of the conflict, one person stood out — a particularly articulate man with tousled hair and an acne-scarred face, Tom Hayden. A federal grand jury later indicted him and seven others, mainly on charges of crossing state lines to incite a riot. Judge Julius Hoffman convicted all but one of them and sentenced their lawyers for contempt of court, but a federal appeals courts threw it all out based on judicial misconduct. I followed those events closely, and I remained interested in Hayden in particular.
The events in Chicago remained a hot topic when school resumed two weeks later. Around the NROTC unit, I kept my mouth shut. Talking to friends and family, however, I increasingly questioned the war. And I felt shocked and disappointed, though not completely surprised, when Richard Nixon defeated Humbert Humphrey in the presidential election that November. Even my father, still doing intelligence work for the Air Force and long a supporter of the war, began to change his views. Previously, when we had talked about the war, the discussion often ended with him telling me I would support it if I knew what he knew, but he couldn’t share that classified information. What he knew must have changed.
“I don’t know if the war is winnable anymore and, either way, it isn’t worth what it’s doing to our country,” he said with resignation in a late-night phone call, shortly after Nixon’s election. What the war was doing to our country. Not to mention what it was doing to the people of Southeast Asia. But it would go on for years.
In May 1970, as opposition surged to expansion of the war, National Guard troops killed protesting students at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi. In response, striking students briefly closed colleges across the country. USC joined in the protests.
The Navy seemed oblivious. Despite the school being closed, the NROTC leadership proceeded with the annual dress parade scheduled for that week. This formal occasion preceded the graduation and commissioning of the senior class of midshipmen, including me that year. As a precaution, the Navy moved the ceremonies off campus to a National Guard armory near Dodger Stadium.
I was aghast to learn it was proceeding, even as the rest of the campus community held teach-ins and debates in the park in front of Doheny Library and on the steps of Von KleinSmid Center, where most of my graduate classes met. I started calling the few other senior midshipmen whom I thought might feel the same way I did. Several were just as upset. This situation brought my feelings about the Vietnam war sharply into focus. I felt sorrow for the students who had been killed, kinship with the students on the USC campus, and alienation from the naval officers who seemed so out of touch.
On the day of the ceremonies, as the midshipmen, along with officers and guests, gathered at the cavernous armory, a few of us considered staging a walkout. We huddled in small groups with other midshipmen and talked about it. Some expressed sympathy, while others grew angry. I felt confused about what to do. Ultimately, we gave up on the idea, as we just didn’t have enough time or support to organize a meaningful protest.
Word of our discussions got back to the Navy authorities. Our commanding officer left town for the weekend right after the ceremonies. In his absence, his executive officer and the Marine officer instructor took matters into their own hands. They called in me and two others, Jim and Mike. They viewed us as ringleaders. The executive officer, a commander with a shaved head and a permanent scowl, leaned forward across his desk. His face was flushed and blood vessels bulged at his temples. The Marine instructor, a tall, lean major with a crewcut, lounged off to one side, looking like a predator about to pounce.
“As midshipmen, you’re subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” the commander reminded us. “You can be court-martialed for attempting to incite a mutiny.”
Off to the side, the major smirked. We stayed silent. Having succeeded in scaring us, they then dismissed us.
“Do you think they’re serious?” I asked the others, my voice trembling in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
“They can’t do anything before Monday,” Mike replied, also sounding a bit shaky. “The captain will be back and maybe we’ll have a chance to talk about this rationally.”
I wasn’t so sure. I needed a reality check, so I called home and told my father what had happened.
“You know I still disagree with you about the war,” he told me, “but threatening you like that is just wrong. Let me think about this. Maybe I can do something.”
Then I talked to Mark, a former neighbor in the dorms, now involved in organizing the campus protest. Long-haired and mustached, he was a visible figure in anti-war activities and one of the people whose friendship with me the Navy had been monitoring. He immediately saw both our dangerous situation and an opportunity to turn it into something positive.
“Wow! That’s outrageous!” he responded to my description of our experience with the commander and the major. “I’ll talk to people at the campus strike committee.”
I felt a little relieved at the prospect of having allies. Still, I sweated at the prospect of how badly this might turn out.
When word of our predicament spread, the university community reacted with outrage. Some students and faculty had been calling for a long time to have both Navy and Air Force ROTC expelled from the campus, and this provided new fuel for that cause.
Students from the law school offered to organize a legal defense for us. One of them jokingly referred to us as the “USC 3.” I remembered the Chicago 7 from the demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Years later, I would become friends with Tom Hayden. Now, we felt scared and uncertain what to do. I had never imagined being in trouble like this. Even if we avoided being court martialed, the Navy could deny us our commissions and activate us as enlisted men. Or they could discharge us and throw us into the draft pool. With my low draft lottery number, I would be gone as soon as my college deferment expired.
I felt a growing sense of outrage. We had done nothing more than talk. Nothing actually happened. And, even if it had, didn’t the Navy bear some responsibility for creating this situation? As I vacillated between fear and anger, what impressed me most was those law students. They stood up for us because they believed the law and the Constitution meant something and that those principles should protect us, like anyone else.
I previously had an interest in law only as it applied to my studies in international relations. Now I saw a whole different aspect of it. I started to understand that law provides the basis for enforcing our entire American system of values, our sense of right and wrong. The words in my oath of citizenship, about defending the Constitution, suddenly meant something concrete. For the first time, I thought seriously about becoming a lawyer.
Not knowing what the immediate future held, I made an impulsive decision to apply for admission to law school. Fortuitously, at the urging of my graduate school advisor, I had taken the Law School Admission Test the previous fall, just to try it out and maybe ease my future entry to law school as a step toward a diplomatic career. It was too late in the year to apply anywhere else, but USC accepted my application. Since I was already a graduate student there with a good academic record, they gave me a quick approval. That opportunity provided me with reassurance, in case things went the wrong way with the Navy.
All through the weekend, we talked back and forth among ourselves, with our parents, with other midshipmen, and with our naval science instructor, who was the one officer standing up for us. At one point, we met at his apartment, where we smoked, ate junk food, and tried to make sense of our situation. We felt more confident, but still uncertain.
The following Monday morning, the commanding officer returned to a situation that had spiraled almost out of control. At a faculty meeting, he heard calls for ending his program. When he got to his office, he received a call from my father, who had been stewing about this all weekend and now threatened to fly to Washington and demand a Congressional investigation. A quick poll of other midshipmen showed strong support for us within the ROTC unit, to the captain’s surprise.
Making a good, rational decision, he took the matter out of the hands of his crazed subordinates. Then he called the three of us into his office one at a time. I went first. Our instructor had briefed us in advance, so I knew what to expect.
I knocked at the captain’s office door. A stern voice ordered me in. I entered, marched to the front of his desk, and stood at attention.
“Sit down,” the captain said, gesturing toward a chair behind me. His voice sounded weary as he studied some papers on his desk. I sat upright, waiting for him. I had been in his office before but this time I felt like the walls were closing in on me. The brief silence seemed endless. He finally looked up, stared at me for a moment, and shook his head.
“I never expected anything like this,” he said. “I had no idea any of you felt this way. Maybe I should have seen it coming.”
He paused, then went on. “Do you still want your commission?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you understand, however you felt about the situation, you went about it the wrong way?”
“Yes, sir, I do. We realized that even at the time. That’s why we didn’t go any further.”
He smiled at that last statement. Apparently, it was what he needed to hear.
“All right, let’s put this behind us. The Navy still wants you. When you leave here to go on active duty, no record of what happened here will follow you.”
With that, he stood up. I did the same, returning to attention. The weight of the past few days lifted from my shoulders. The captain extended his arm and we shook hands. He nodded, dismissing me. As I turned and walked to the door, he instructed me, “Don’t say anything to your colleagues when you leave.”
Jim and Mike were sitting in the anteroom, waiting their turns. Walking out the door, I heard the captain call Jim in. I said nothing, but gave him a quick smile as we passed.
The three of us got together later and compared notes. Jim felt relieved. He wanted to be a pilot and still looked forward to a possible Navy career. Mike didn’t say much, except that he was glad to have this behind us. I was thoroughly disappointed. I respected the way the captain handled resolution of the situation, but it all left me with an empty feeling about going on active duty. I had no remaining interest in a naval career.
A few days later, with a friend from the Air Force ROTC unit, I drove to West LA to see Robert Altman’s newly released film M*A*S*H. With our military haircuts and preppy attire, we stood out in the ticket line. To our dismay, the show had sold out. While we stood outside the theater, considering our options, a long-haired, bearded, middle-aged man in baggy clothes exited the theater and approached us.
“You look like guys who should see this movie,” he declared. “You want to get in?”
We nodded. He motioned for us to follow him. At the theater door, he pulled out Motion Picture Academy credentials and showed them to the ticket taker, who waved us in.
Our benefactor couldn’t have been more right. I sat through the movie alternating between being quietly spellbound and laughing uproariously. It captured satirically but perfectly every bit of craziness I had already experienced in and around the military, and previewed others to come. Probably because of the timing, seeing it on the eve of my going on active duty, it became one of my favorite films, which I would see at least two dozen times in succeeding years.
As the end of the school year approached, the captain convened a meeting of the entire midshipman battalion, about a hundred of us, to discuss our relationship with the rest of the university. Some younger midshipmen, in particular, expressed concern about the future of that relationship. After listening quietly for the better part of an hour, I raised my hand.
“I’ll be done here at USC shortly,” I began. “If this unit wants to remain on campus, you have to recognize that you’re guests here, that you have to show more respect for the institution and its values. You need to get out of your cloistered environment and interact more with the rest of the students and faculty.” I felt pleasantly surprised at the murmurs of approval after I sat back down.
I received my commission a week later at a ceremony in the courtyard outside the NROTC offices. The commanding officer smiled and congratulated me. Neither he nor anyone else mentioned the recent conflict. Afterward, though, I got one unpleasant surprise. The executive officer let me know that he had friends at the Bureau of Naval Personnel, which would hand out our initial duty assignments. I had requested what I thought would be service far from the Vietnam War — communications duties aboard a ship in the Mediterranean. I did wind up in the Mediterranean, but first I had to attend virtually every air and surface weapons school the Navy offered. During my first four months on active duty, I attended successive training programs on naval gunnery, conventional bombs, rockets and missiles, and nuclear bombs — all to prepare me for my assignment in the Weapons Department of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga. …