Waging a One-Man War of Peace

Within 24 hours of graduating as the top physics concentrator in his Harvard class, Michio Kaku '68 found himself bald and in boot camp, learning how to toss grenades, dodge machine-gun fire, load an M-16 rifle and break a man's neck with his bare hands.

The young scientist volunteered for the army because his draft board told him he would soon be required to enter the service and, in the middle of the Vietnam War, enlisted men fared better than draftees.

Still, according to Kaku--now a physics professor at City University of New York--it didn't matter to the American government who you were when you joined the military. "They just wanted bodies to die in Vietnam. They wanted people who would go to the frontline and die."

This winter, after a modest, 10-city tour to promote his latest book about declassified Pentagon war plans, Kaku will resume teaching at CUNY and compiling lecture notes for another, soon-to-be published book. An additional science text of his will reach bookstores next month.

Now a prominent player in physicists' boycott of Star Wars, Kaku also makes time to teach colleagues and rally-goers the lessons he learned while still fresh out of college.

Panic in Leverett House

One week before his Harvard graduation, for instance, Kaku received a telegram heralding his draft assignment: Fort Benning in Atlanta, Georgia.

His mother, a maid, and his father, a gardener, had raised their family in San Jose, California. Though they had never visited the East Coast before June of 1968, their son's cabled orders kept them from relaxing enough to enjoy the trip.

Kaku remembers when he learned the draft would apply to all college graduates and there would be no more exemptions for graduate school-bound academics.

"I was in Leverett House when [President] Lyndon B. Johnson announced in February of '68 that there would be no more graduate deferment. There was panic throughout Harvard. It was topic number one."

Until early 1968, Vietnam had been called a rich man's war. The poor had been sent to fight while communities like Harvard were accused of letting the war remain an academimc topic.

Kaku and his classmates had counted on the chance to attend graduate school and pursue careers. Then they learned they had four months until graduation to plan to become professional soldiers or concoct medical excuses.

The physicist recalls watching another senior run "up and down stairs trying to get trick-knee. He actually got the deferment, the old bastard."

Fort Benning chants like "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one's for shooting, one's for fun," and "I want to go to Vietnam, I want to kill a Charlie Kong. Kill! Kill!" soon replaced what Kaku could remember of philosophy courses and essay-writing.

"At Harvard, you learned how to think," he says. "In the military they have to beat it out of you, because the more you think, the more you question."

Describing himself as once apolitical, Kaku started asking himself questions for the first time, and after finishing at Fort Benning and spending some time in machine-gun training at Fort Lewis, Washington, he joined "Science for the People" at University of California at Berkeley.

A routine blood test there showed the young soldier to be partially diabetic. "Just one of those gifts from God," he calls the results. "You sort of resign yourself to going to Vietnam and then you find you can get out of the military for health reasons."

Making Secrets Not So Secret

Kaku has spent the last five years acting on his grudge against the Pentagon by compiling a book of declassified war plans. To Win a Nuclear War: The Secret Plans of the Pentagon, published by Boston's South End Press, reached bookstores late last month.

Cynthia Peters of South End says the 350-page manuscript "blows away the myth that nuclear weapons prevent nuclear war. This book shows how since 1945, over and over again, policymakers have brought us to the brink of nuclear war."

In the book, Kaku examines U.S. first-strike war plans almost implemented between 1945 and the mid. 60s. The three closest calls, Kaku says, occurred during the Berlin Crisis in 1948, when President Truman prepared to drop 50 atomic bombs on the Soviet Union; during the Korean Conflict in 1954 when Eisenhower almost launched 1000 atomic bombs on targets in the Soviet Union, Korea and Vietnam; and in 1961 after the construction of the Berlin Wall when Kennedy considered firing more than 4000 bombs on the Soviet Union.

None of the three presidents carried out their plans, mainly, Kaku says, because America had no shield. Star Wars, according to him, could make such attacks feasible in the future.

"Star Wars is the missing link to the first-strike. It makes the world safe for nuclear weapons. It's a hoax, basically. It's only applicability is as an offensive system."

A quiet, self-described "wonk" (Kaku says that's "know" spelled backwards) while at Harvard, Kaku played trumpet in the Harvard Band and enrolled in two graduate courses as a sophomore. By his junior year, he had run out of courses to take.

Fascinated with physics since the fourth grade, the Hertz Scholar had never really separated from his books until drill sergeants began thrusting weapons at him.

"[The firearms] made me aware of the misuse ofscience," Klaku says. "It was the draft thatreally changed me."

But he had known since childhood about themerciless consequences of war. Both his parents,who grew up in Japan before moving to America justbefore World War II, spent time in Americanconcentration camps during the war.

Before imprisoning them, the U.S. governmentalotted his parents two weeks--an unusuallylengthy period of time under the circumstances,Kaku says--to "liquidate everything they owned.You would have to put your belongings on the lawnand sell them to your neighbors."

Meanwhile, back in the Kakus' homeland, severalof their relatives died in the Hiroshima blast.The physicist says he "grew up in the shadow ofthe atomic bomb."

Just two summers ago, in Japan for the 40thcommemoration of the bombing, Kaku met a cousinwho miraculously survived in the basement of ahome located near the center of the explosion.

"He crawled out of the basement and thought hewas the last boy on earth. His entire city hadbeen blown away. He told me that unless we canreverse the arms race, this will inevitably happento America as well--that some American will comeout of his basement and find his city blown away."

Anti-Star Wars Activism

Taking the prediction to heart, Kaku has spentthe last year and a half helping to circulate ananti-Star Wars petition among scientists.Initiated in May of '85 by John Kogut, a physicsprofessor at the University of Illinois, thedocument comes, Kogut says, "in direct response tothe government's attempt to militarize science."

Two years ago, according to Kogut, the federalgovernment made a nationwide overture tophysicists at major universities to solicit helpon the Star Wars program. The petition, which nowbears the signatures of 6500 Americanscientists--including 15 Nobel Prizewinners--states that the signer will notparticipate in any Star Wars research.

Kaku, who has outspokenly maintained that StarWars cannot function as a defensive system butonly as a first-strike weapon, joined Kogut andformer Attorney-General Ramsey Clark late lastyear when the trio presented the petition to theUnited Nations.

The American response to the Star Wars boycotthas already surpassed the expectations of thecirculators, who have also obtained the signaturesof more than 500 British and 2000 Japanesescientists.

"We didn't realize we were tapping into amotherload of sentiment against the Star Warsprogram. So great is the unease that physicistsare readily signing up," Kaku says.

Kaku's post-college role of political activisthas often led him to take an anti-governmentstance, as he did at the "Peace, Jobs and Justice"rally held on Boston Common in November. "ThePentagon does not want to destroy Russia; it wantsto run Russia," the scientist told crowd of 2000."It wants to shut Russia up so we can invadeNicaragua," he said.

"The real gap of vulnerability is the gapbetween the ears of Ronald Reagan," Kaku saidthen. "If his lips move, you know he's lying.