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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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subsequently. But anyway I wanted the experience and I felt this was the right thing to do, so I patiently awaited the draft, and didn't have to wait very long, because I happened to have an early number and went into the Army really quite early. So I didn't have to wait so long.

Q:

You were discharged as a Major?

Oakes:

Yes.

Q:

Did you have a chance to use your journalism?

Oakes:

I did everything humanly possible to avoid it, because I had another peculiar idea about Army service, and that was that I didn't want to use it as a vehicle for my journalistic career. This was perhaps irrational, but this was a feeling I had very, very strongly, even more strongly than the draft question, which I attribute as much to curiosity as to how the draft worked as to anything else. But as far as the newspaper experience, I did not want to be a newspaper soldier. I wanted to be in it, not merely reporting about it. I felt very strongly about that. I'm sure my father's very strong views about the military, about, really, if you were in the Army, really be in the Army, must have had an influence on me, even though he had died years and years before. But he was very much of an activist himself, and I felt that I didn't want to be in the Army as a reporter or as a newspaper man. And although I was put in - at least for relatively short periods - I was ordered into various kinds of jobs, two or three times, that were related at least in some way to my newspaper background, I always managed to get out of them eventually; I don't mean avoid doing them





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