Podcast (VN-E37): “The only thing I’m proud of” – Mike Turek

Transcript

Matthew Breems:
This is the Courage to Resist podcast. My name is Matthew Breems. This Courage to Resist podcast is produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace.

Vietnam veteran Mike Turek is the podcast guest today. While serving in the Air Force Mike had a front row seat to the military’s annual war games in the Pacific. These troubling experiences led him to become a vocal protester, which eventually led to an undesirable reassignment to Greenland. Mike went on to become an activist for Indigenous Peoples land and hunting rights.

Mike, I’m looking forward to our discussion today and hearing your story of activism. As always, we’re going to have you start off by giving us the background of how you ended up finding yourself in the Air Force during the Vietnam conflict.

Mike Turek:
Okay, well I’m Air Force Vietnam-era Cold War veteran. And I served from September of 1968 to the last day of August, 1972. I was stationed in Texas for training, Hawaii for two years and then Greenland. And my activism began about 1970 probably, when I began to get really disgusted with the war in Vietnam. And some other events that occurred including being involved with war games while I was serving in Hawaii, that opened up my eyes to the madness of the military command.

Matthew Breems:
Well, you had initially enlisted in the Air Force, so you were a willing participant in this. What happened to change your perspective on that?

Mike Turek:
Well, one of the things I think that isn’t discussed enough is that during that period, late sixties early seventies, culturally in our country there were a lot of changes and there was what was called the generation gap. And you really saw that in the military. First-termers had a different view of the military and the world than the career people. And a lot of that was cultural. A lot of it for me, was driven by music. That made me start thinking differently about the military and the war. Actually I was in about a year when I was in tech school and one song in particular, Sky Pilot by Eric Burdon, really started making me think.
We also had a little black and white TV in the barracks in tech school, and I believe on Sunday nights The Smothers Brothers television show came on and we’d all gather around that, which also had some very strong political commentary. What was going on, on the outside in the civilian world really affected the military. And unlike what some people like to believe, that the G.I.s didn’t like hippies, or didn’t like the protests, that wasn’t true. That might have been true for the career people, but for the first-termers we identified more with the college protesters and the hippies than we did with being a GI. We didn’t want to be G.I.s. It was not something nice, it wasn’t something popular, it wasn’t something cool. Many of us just wanted to get out as soon as possible.

Matthew Breems:
You found yourself in tech school, your views on the military and their involvement in Vietnam had started to change because of the popular culture around you. What transpired next that really made you take some first steps of activism?

Mike Turek:
Well, when I got to Hawaii, I was in the service about a year, and that was in the communications service in the Air Force and top secret crypto clearance. And I worked in a comm center in a Navy facility, the Kunia Tunnel, which was built in World War II after Pearl Harbor. And the idea was they were going to store aircraft in this tunnel, which is right behind Wheeler field. By the time they built the tunnel the war ended, and so it was repurposed in the fifties as a communication center and the alternate command post for the Pacific Theater, so that’s where I worked. And during the worldwide war games every year, the alternate command post would be manned by generals and all the staff from Hickam and Pearl Harbor. And we would get all this communications’ information routed through our comm center. And when I participated in the war games, that’s when I learned about the plan for using the doomsday machine to end the war.

And they did this both years that I was involved with the war games. And to me that was just total madness. And I said, “This is wrong. These people are crazy.” And so really that and, like I said, what was happening in Vietnam, the Kent State massacre, the Winter Soldier campaign with the Vietnam veterans against the war. And then just learning more and more about the use of napalm, and just the horrendous effect that our murderous approach to war was having on the Vietnamese, I had to do something. That’s when I became involved with anti-war movement amongst G.I.s.

Matthew Breems:
And so as you have this front row seat to the military planning and strategy in war games, was there a defining moment that really caused you to start questioning it? Or was this more of a gradual process for you over the course of your time in Hawaii?

Mike Turek:
It was gradual, but one thing… The music was one thing that really got me thinking, and I would do a lot of reading also. But the movie Woodstock really was a special event for me because… And I saw it a number of times when I was in the service, and I enjoyed the music. But also it showed that there was an alternative to this militaristic, warmongering attitude in our society, there was the peace, love and dope of the hippies. And to me that showed me that there was an alternative way to view the world than what I’d been taught.

And that really I think is to me, I tell people that’s the most important movie in my life, Woodstock. Because it began to give me an alternative view of the world that I didn’t have, I couldn’t really formulate to that point. And then for some reason that did it. Country Joe and his cheer, he was a Navy veteran. Jimmy Hendricks and his appearance and playing Star Spangled banner, the national Anthem, and he was an army veteran. He was a 101st Airborne veteran. These guys were veterans, they knew what they were talking about. They weren’t just some campus commando college student, and so that really struck home to me. That these guys, they had been there, they’ve done that. They may not have been to Vietnam, but they went in the military machine and they knew how that all works. Oddly enough, Woodstock was maybe the event that really pushed me over.

Matthew Breems:
And what was the first action that you took as an activist?

Mike Turek:
Well I’d go into meetings clandestinely distributing pamphlets on base, since you could get thrown in jail for that. The big event was in May of 1971 when I attended a demonstration at Schofield Barracks front gates. The big military army base on Oʻahu, right across the street from the Air Force base that I was stationed at. And that was the big event. I had attended several meetings at Honolulu, on the University of Hawaii campus or nearby, and these were hosted by the Hawaii People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice. And we worked with them, they worked with us G.I.s to demonstrate against the military. Against the Vietnam war, and against militarism.

I went to a demonstration, like I say, in May of 71. It was all active duty G.I.s, Soldiers’, Sailors’, Airmen, Marines’. We weren’t in uniform, we had a permit so we were perfectly legal. And nothing really outrageous occurred during the demonstration. We marched, some holding signs saying hooray for our side, and we weren’t harassed by anybody. We were there for a couple hours, then we all went back to our barracks and ships. And then within several weeks I got orders to the air base Greenland.

Matthew Breems:
And so that wasn’t coincidental in your understanding?

Mike Turek:
Correct. I eventually found out how I got sent to Greenland, it was all kind of low level. It was a low level enlisted man who pulled the strings to get me sent to Thule. My NCOIC, Noncommissioned Officer in Charge, a tech Sargent who I was under in the teletype maintenance shop. He had a friend at Hickam who was an enlisted man who just cut the orders for me to go to Greenland and had them signed off by the brass. When I got to Greenland I found out that they had never requested me. The unit I went to in Thule had never requested me. They didn’t even know I was coming until I showed up on the manifest the day I was flying in, so it was a place to put a troublemaker, in the cooler. So-

Matthew Breems:
Literally.

Mike Turek:
Literally.

Matthew Breems:
Thule is a difficult place to cause trouble or cause dissension in the ranks?

Mike Turek:
Exactly. It’s what was referred to as isolated and remote. If you were married and a career personnel, you couldn’t bring your wife. At the time it was one of the worst assignments you could draw in the Air Force. It was isolated and remote, and in the Arctic. Frontlines of the Cold War, and a lot of people have to remember that during the Vietnam war the Cold War was raging, so we had troops all over the world getting ready for the next World War.

Matthew Breems:
Being in Greenland, were you able to continue your activism there or did that really have the effect of squelching active participation in resisting?

Mike Turek:
Yeah, there was nothing I could do, except on a personal level by just being problematic for the military. But there was nothing… Totally cut off from the rest of the world, there was no internet or anything at that time, so the only connection with the outside world we had was mail and then the telephone lines. And so it cut me off from any kind of organizing capability.

Matthew Breems:
After your stint in Greenland, what was the next step in your military career?

Mike Turek:
I got discharged. When I left Thule I had my three years, 11 months and 11 days that I had completed. And so I got discharged when I got back to the States. Well one thing that happened right away, this was in 1972, I got out of the service the last day of August, so there was the election in 1972 in November. Nixon was running against McGovern and as you know McGovern got creamed. Only won one state, Massachusetts. And that just indicated to me that it was hopeless to cause any kind of political change in the country. If the American people were willing to re-elect this crook Nixon by a landslide. Essentially I gave up on politics at that point.

Matthew Breems:
Take us into the next phase of life for you then. You kind of move on, you’re trying to establish a personal life. Walk us through that, and how did that turn into a different season of activism for you?

Mike Turek:
When I got out of the service I was actually planning on immigrating to New Zealand. I bought a new Jeep when I was in Detroit and I was going to drive that to the West Coast, sell it, and then go to New Zealand. Well I stopped in Denver to visit with a friend and ended up staying in Denver for about four and a half years. Then I decided to go back to college. And I actually went to college a bit in Denver. A community college. Which I liked, there were a lot of veterans there and some of the classes were quite interesting, but nothing really captured me and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Except I had a real interest in indigenous people, which I started when I was in the service in Hawaii. I got interested in the people of Polynesia.

And then when I was in Greenland, it was really interesting because this is 1971, 1972, and Greenlanders were still dependent on dog sleds and wearing polar bear garments. And you would see them on base, we were restricted to the base. We couldn’t go off base in Thule, but Greenlanders would be at the post exchange sometimes, or at the hospital and you’d see them around, so that was interesting. And it got me interested in indigenous people. When I got to community college, I continued with that interest in anthropology and reading literature history of Native Americans. And then I eventually, late seventies, 1978, I decided to go back to college and I went to The Evergreen State College in Olympia for a year. So I transferred up to Western Washington University in Bellingham, and eventually went to a department there Fairhaven College, similar academically to The Evergreen State College. And I ended up graduating there with a self-designed degree in Native American studies and Environmental studies.

And while I was in college, I worked on the national forest fire crews and then trail crews in the National Parks. And eventually that led to an interest in the history of Native Americans in the National Park service. And I pursued that for about 10 years as an independent scholar, working with a friend of mine who was actually a history professor, Bob Keller, who I became friends with. And he and I ended up writing a book on American Indians and National Parks that was published in 1998 with the University of Arizona Press. And that work led to work with the Yakima Indian Nation, and then where I worked for 15 years at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Subsistence division. A social science unit working with the Alaska natives in Southeast Alaska on hunting, and fishing, and trapping issues.

And I retired from Fish and Game in 2010 and then came to Eureka where I worked for the Forest Service my last six years of work in Tribal Relations, so my interest in Native Americans history and studies, and National Parks and National Forests led to a career. I consider myself an activist in that respect, in that world of Native Rights.

Matthew Breems:
Were you able to play any role as far as Native Rights and how that relates to their interaction with the US government?

Mike Turek:
Yeah. When I worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Subsistence division, a big part of our work was regulatory development of regulations. We were involved with Alaska State regulations, hunting and fishing regulations, and that’s where we could have some impact, but we were limited because the State of Alaska is very racist, very anti-native. We didn’t have any support, really, from the legislature, but we had the governor’s office support. And he appointed our director, Mary Pete, the late Mary Pete. She was a Yup’ik Eskimo anthropologist, interpreter, and she was our director. And so that gave us some cover to operate within the department with a little bit of power, but not much, but we tried to do what we could to defend Native issues at the Board of Game and Board of Fish in Alaska and had some success.

But the department and the legislature really kept a thumb on us, so it was very difficult. It was very politically charged. The whole issue of Native Rights in Alaska in particular Hunting and Fishing Rights is really politically charged. I did it for 15 years and that was about all I could take and I wanted to get out of Alaska, especially after Knowles left, it really started getting bad working for the department, so it was time to leave. And that’s why I was shopping for jobs in the lower 48 in Tribal Relations and was able to get one here, land one in Eureka at Six Rivers National Forest.

Matthew Breems:
And during this time, were you able to be active at all as far as being an anti-war resistor or an activist in any way, or was your focus just exclusively with Native American Rights?

Mike Turek:
Well, when I got up to Juneau, Alaska with my job at the department of Fish and Game, it was in 1995, I became involved with the Veterans for Peace, Juneau, Alaska branch. Several 4th of July’s, I was in the parade. We would join in on the 4th of July parade, a group of us anti-war veterans. And that’s really all I did there. But when I came down to Eureka, I got involved a bit with the Golden Rule Project. In 1958, four Quaker activists sailed the Golden Rule, a 30 foot sailboat toward the Marshall Islands in an attempt to halt atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, they were boarded by the Coast Guard in Honolulu, and arrested, and put in jail. But this brought national attention to atmospheric nuclear testing. And years later, it was stopped. The atmospheric testing was stopped and some people contribute the beginning of that… Well, maybe not the beginning of that movement, but the momentum of that movement really picked up after the Golden Rule event.

Now, eventually the Golden Rule ended up back down here in Eureka, in Humboldt Bay and it sunk during a storm and some local people, including Leroy Zerlang who has a boat yard here. He lent his boat yard and equipment to the Veterans for Peace chapter in Eureka and dozens of other volunteers. And over about a five year period from 2010 to 2015, she was restored and put a float. I didn’t get involved with the Golden Rule until she was a float and ready to sail. And when I did, when I became involved with the Golden Rule, doing some preliminary research on the possibility of getting the boat on the National Register of Historic Places, because there are ships, and boats, and watercraft listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

But what I found from my research was that there are many sites on the National Register of Historic Places that won their significance due to their cultural slash political role in particular, the civil rights movement has a number of locations on the National Register that were the locations and buildings themselves were involved with the Civil Rights, so I was looking at trying to get the Golden Rule perhaps on the National Register through its political cultural history. But what I found from my preliminary research, as far as I could find, there are no ships, boats or watercrafts on the National Register that are there because of their cultural, political significance, so I sort of ran into a wall on that.

Matthew Breems:
Any thoughts or things you’d like to share with the current generation, especially the younger generations are very removed from the Cold War, it’s a history lesson to them now. Vietnam is just a history lesson to them now. Anything you would want to share with those people from the younger generations?

Mike Turek:
I’m hesitant to give any kind of advice to young people about the military, because I’m going to be ignored. I figure I’m going to be ignored. I don’t know what to say to them, because they’re not going to believe some old guy, some Vietnam-era veteran. I don’t really have much to say to young people today about this. Essentially I’ve given up, once Trump got elected. I figured, you know, any country that will allow him to assume the presidency is doomed. That and what’s going on with the climate chaos. I don’t see much hope for the future. And I don’t want to tell young people that, but if I’m going to be honest with them, that’s what I would have to say. I just don’t, don’t say anything.

People need to know that there were a lot of us in the military during the Vietnam war that did not support the war and took actions while we were in the service, no matter how limited we could do it, to try to at least express our view. I think a lot of stuff that you’re seeing about Vietnam now, doesn’t really portray that accurately. The only time in our history where a large number of people in the military were verging on mutiny. It was a unique experience for us and more Americans should know about it. For me, that’s the only thing I’m proud of, of the 3 years, 11 months, 11 days I was in the Air Force. The only thing I’m proud of was my involvement with the anti-war movement while I was in the military.

And although I got sent to Thule, Greenland as punishment. I didn’t get a bad discharge. I didn’t get thrown in jail. A lot of guys that were even less involved in activities than me got in a lot more trouble, so I was pretty lucky that way. Okay. I have one thing I’d like to share. Okay. This is a quote about my military experience. This is from Suketu Mehta in Maximum City a book that he wrote, and this is his quote and it pertains to me. And I think a lot of other G.I.s, and a lot of other veterans. “Each person’s life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.”

Matthew Breems:
Well, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today, to share your story of activism, your involvement in resisting. Thank you so much.

Mike Turek:
Thank you.

Matthew Breems:
This Courage to Resist podcast was produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure Effort of Veterans For Peace. This year marks 50 years of G.I. Resistance to the US war in Vietnam in and out of uniform for many of the courageous individuals featured. This episode was recorded and edited by Matthew Breems. Special thanks to executive producer, Jeff Paterson. Visit vietnamfulldisclosure.org and couragetoresist.org for past episodes, more information and to offer your support.