I found it very impressive. My life took a very sad detour with agonzing facial pain. I underwent 30 surgeries. Part of me wants to write to vent, the stories are so horrific I feel people will not believe the accounts. Also, I feel shame for becoming ill. Magical JW type thinking. So many people have encouraged me to write. For me to do so, though, I need to reveal personal information. Unlike you, I can't fictionalize. Creativity is not my strong suit.
Perhaps I am a niche audience but I found it fascinating. Fictionalizing makes it far more readable and entertaining than a narrative. Despite feeling ver jaded about JWs, I am beyond shock how alone you were. It makes your witness so much more powerful. Maybe you no longer believe but it says so much about true character vs. repeating snippets of the WT in a nice KH.
B/c my father was at Bethel during WWII, he received a ministerial exemption. He always out of his way to provide younger JW males with information. Bethel did nothing to help him with his exemption. He was on his own. Many of my mom's NJ Male friends were totally alone, too. Rather than pooling and begging money to see a selective service lawyer or a knowledgeable Quaker, they listened to any old slob and received heavier sentences. I knew them later in life. They were not the types to tell a judge what he could before sentencing was imposed. The brothers who counselled such behavior never spent a dady in jail, let alone prison. One elder brother at Bethel helped him on an informal basis. No one even gave them forms or templates.
If the society offered some type of aid, paying a selective service lawyer to write a legal memo about the process in general and special concerns for JWs, in particular, the cost would have been so minimal. My uncle served time at Danbury. He served as the warden's secretary. Not once did I ever hear him mention it.
Paul received visitors awaiting execution. How much would a Hallmark card from the Salvation Army had cost anyone? Altho I am shocked, I find you credible. What kind of monsters are powerful enough to kowtow to the party line? Sorry -- I'm thinking of all those war films that show the home front with the women baking and sending cookies, knitting socks and sweaters, writing dutifully every day. Very moving.
Rather than stumble upon a JW and Japan during WWII in a legal review that never mentions a single individual, I think many nonJW readers would love to read of the personal consequences of making religious choices. Freedom requires a price; it is never free.
