Pacific Counseling Service
"[1] The Armed Forces Journal, on the other hand, said PCS was involved in "antimilitary activities", including "legal help and incitement to dissident GIs.
"[2] PCS evolved out of a small GI Help office started by a freshly discharged Air Force Sergeant in San Francisco, California in January 1969.
[3][1] The idea rapidly caught on among antiwar forces and within a year PCS had offices in Monterey, Oakland, and San Diego in California, plus Tacoma, Washington.
[4]: 57 In July 1968, nine military men, from all four branches of the armed forces, publicly refused to go to Vietnam and chained themselves to ministers at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Marin City just north of San Francisco.
[6][7][8]: 270 One of the nine GIs was Air Force Sergeant and radar instructor Oliver Hirsch, who had just escaped in his pajamas from the Presidio Military Stockade where he had been held for a psych evaluation after feigning insanity in an attempt to avoid orders to Vietnam.
[10] This office, in the Mission District at 483 Guerrero Street, was the first of its kind in the U.S.[11] Hirsch had recognized and been an early part of a rapidly expanding expression within the U.S. military of the growing antiwar and anti-military sentiment surrounding the Vietnam War.
[4]: 78 For short periods of time there were PCS offices in Balibago and Angeles City in the Philippines, Misawa and Yokota Air Bases in Japan, and Honolulu.
At the Iwakuni office, PSC organized "rock concerts, camping and beach trips" and helped GIs put out an underground newspaper called Semper Fi.
Non-legal counselors could offer advice, support and community, but when more serious questions of military or civilian law arose, actual lawyers were needed.
As PCS expanded around the Pacific region, the Guild opened offices in the Philippines, Japan and Okinawa, "offering free legal counsel to hundreds of G.I.’s opposed to the Vietnam War.
Investigators also reported that "NLG representatives" conducted workshops outside Clark Air Force Base in the Philippians "on such subjects as conscientious objector claims, UCMJ Article 138 complaints, and dissent activities in general."
It was written by Nancy Hausch, a PCS staffer, who described its purpose: "Teaching people how to stay on top of the military machine by knowing and using the various legal tools ordinarily used to keep them down, is a very important part of the struggle.
"[21] The initial pamphlet was so popular in the GI movement that within a year a second improved longer edition (124 pages) was released by The Bay Area Turning The Regs Around Committee.
The handbook covered everything from correspondence with Congress to filing charges against officers to courts-martial, and explained GI rights to demonstrate and exercise their freedom of speech.
It also cautioned that the knowledge in the handbook couldn't "stop the brass from using their power to harass, exploit and oppress enlisted people"; that it was "only one helpful tool in a long and difficult fight.
"[24] Within the first six months of the opening of the Monterey office, the organizers "handled more than seven hundred legal cases involving GI rights, and helped 120 soldiers obtain ‘conscientious objector’ status.
"[8]: 272 [25] In early 1970 Oakland PCS activists began extensive leafleting of area airports informing incoming soldiers of their right to file for conscientious objector status, which at the time, automatically delayed overseas orders.
[17][16]: 190&219 PCS was also instrumental in helping the highly successful FTA Show come to several U.S. military bases in the Asia-Pacific region, including in the Philippines, Japan, and Okinawa.
The historical evidence indicates that over its lifetime, PCS counseled and supported many thousands of disgruntled and antiwar GIs, many of whom found ways out of the military or to avoid combat.
