Camp Angel

{{Short description|Civilian Public Service camp for conscientious objectors during World War II}}

Camp Angel was Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp number 56, located from 1942 to 1945 near Waldport and the coast in the Siuslaw National Forest and Lincoln County, in western Oregon.

It was one of many CPS camps across the United States where conscientious objectors (COs) were given unpaid jobs of "national importance" as a substitute for World War II military service.{{cite encyclopedia

|url=http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/untide_press/

|title=Untide Press

|encyclopedia=Oregon Encyclopedia Project

|accessdate=2010-02-24}}

Camp Angel was unique as the only Fine Arts Program camp in the CPS system. Between 1942 and 1945, Camp Angel's Fine Arts Program sponsored production of original plays and publication of books by the COs. When the war was over, notable objectors including poet William Everson, actor/writer Kermit Sheets and dramatist Martin Ponch relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area and launched what became known as the San Francisco Renaissance, profoundly influencing the Beat Generation.{{cite web

|url=http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2009/08/eight_oregon_books_you_havent.html

|title=Eight Oregon books you haven't read (but should write) 7. Camp Angel

|author=Greg Adams

|work=The Oregonian

|date=August 13, 2009

|accessdate=2010-02-26}}

History

For many of the COs, their time at the camp was a period of great creativity.

William Everson, architect and printer Kemper Nomland, Kermit Sheets and William R. Eshelman founded the Untide Press at the camp in 1943, with the aim of bringing poetry to the public in an inexpensive but attractive format.

The name was a challenge to the official camp magazine the Tide Press.{{cite web

|url=http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf5k4004zc&chunk.id=odd-1.3.3&brand=oac

|title=Scope and Content

|work= Online Archive of California

|accessdate=2010-02-24}}

The Untide Press developed a reputation for high-quality writing and innovative design. Writers included William Everson, Glen Coffield, Jacob Sloan, George Woodcock, John Walker, and Kenneth Patchen.

William Everson said that "those of us of Untide rank among our biggest moments in CPS the completion of a book, and the very real sense of achievement it occasions."{{cite web

|url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ohq/107.4/barber.html

|title="The Utmost Human Consequence" Art and Peace on the Oregon Coast, 1942–1946

|author1=Katrine Barber |author2=Eliza Elkins Jones

|publisher=Oregon Historical Quarterly

|accessdate=2010-02-26}}

Kemper Nomland created portraits of others at the camp including Glen Coffield, Windsor Utley, and Bill Webb, several of which are held in a collection at Lewis and Clark College. One of his paintings was published in two of Coffield's books as well as The Illiterati camp magazine.{{cite web

|url=http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/findaid/ark:/80444/xv58841

|title=Guide to the Kemper Nomland Collection 1942-1994

|publisher=Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA)

|accessdate=2010-02-26}}

Nomland also provided the illustrations for William Everson's War elegies, published by Untide Press in 1944.{{cite web

|url=http://www.pbagalleries.com/newsletter/414.pdf

|title=Fine Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries

|date=October 22, 2009

|publisher=PBA Galleries

|accessdate=2010-02-26}}

Kermit Sheets wrote the satirical plays Mikado in CPS and Stalingrad Stalemate while in the camp.{{cite web

|url=http://digitalcollections.lclark.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/pubs&CISOPTR=41&CISOBOX=1&REC=20

|title=Footprints of Pacifism: The Creative Lives of Kemper Nomland & Kermit Sheets

|publisher=Lewis & Clark College

|date=February–July 2007

|access-date=2010-02-24

|url-status=dead

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719230624/http://digitalcollections.lclark.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fpubs&CISOPTR=41&CISOBOX=1&REC=20

|archive-date=2011-07-19

}}

Glen Coffield published his first collection of poems Ultimatum (1943), a one-man operation since he was author, typist, designer and illustrator.{{cite web

|url=http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/jspui/bitstream/1957/11918/1/Imp_Ore_Vol_5.pdf

|title=Imprint: Oregon

|date=Fall 1978 – Spring 1979

|accessdate=2010-02-24}}

His anthology Horned Moon was published by the Untide Press in 1944, and several of his poems were also published in The Illiterati.{{cite book

|page=[https://archive.org/details/behindlineswarre0000metr/page/78 78]

|title=Behind the lines: war resistance poetry on the American homefront since 1941

|url=https://archive.org/details/behindlineswarre0000metr

|url-access=registration

|author=Philip Metres

|publisher=University of Iowa Press

|year=2007