Ep10 BONUS
 
Willa Seidenberg  00:05
Welcome to a bonus episode of A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War. I’m Willa Seidenberg,
 
Bill Short  00:14
And I’m Bill Short. This bonus is a companion to Episode 10, the story of young soldiers who deserted from the military. Most went to Sweden or Canada. We recommend that you listen to that one first. Michael Linder was part of the so-called Intrepid Four. They were a group of Navy sailors who decided to desert when their ship docked in Japan. Michael, Craig Anderson, John Barilla, and Rick Bailey left the USS Intrepid in October of 1967.
 
Willa Seidenberg  00:44
Lindner now goes by the name Michael Sutherland. We interviewed him in Stockholm in September of 2025 at the home of another deserter, Steve Kinnaman. He and Michael have been friends for some 50 years. Michael worked on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid. He told us that one of the things that really got to him was seeing planes loaded with bombs leave the ship a couple times a day,
 
Michael Sutherland  01:13
Coming back without bombs, you know, giving the thumbs up. You know, they hit their target. That just did not sit well with me, and I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was a part of it. This is not something I want to be a part of.
 
Willa Seidenberg  01:27
When the four left their ship and went to Tokyo, they spent their first night sleeping in a train station.
 
Michael Sutherland  01:34
By the time we got there, it was completely empty. By the time we woke up in the morning, it was just packed with people, and there we were sprawled out on these sofas and stuff like that taking up all the room.
 
Willa Seidenberg  01:46
Michael says he wasn’t really worried about getting picked up by the Navy.
 
Michael Sutherland  01:51
Guys that go AWOL, they don’t even bother looking for them, because they always come back. And, when the next time the ship comes into the harbor, they’re standing there with their hats in their hands on, I’m so sorry, you know. And then they throw them down into the brig, and the Marines that take care of the prisoners, they get to beat them up now and again. And then they come up and say, it’s all forgiven. They’ve been busted down in rank, and it’s always been the same story. They’re not going to waste effort or time looking for people.
 
Bill Short  02:27
Many classified CIA memos from the time have now been published online. One memo calls the area where the sailors were hiding out Tokyo’s “hippie land.”
 
Michael Sutherland  02:38
Anybody that would be looking for us would not be looking for us in those neighborhoods. They would be checking out the bars, the brothels, things like this, anywhere that we went, we never saw any military personnel.
 
Bill Short  02:54
Michael doesn’t remember how it happened, but according to the CIA memo, activists with a Japanese group called Beheiren made contact with them on October 26. Beheiren’s official name was the Committee Against the War in Vietnam. When we first read about Beheiren, we were intrigued by their role in helping these deserters. We wanted to find out more, so we called on an expert.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  03:18
My name is Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez. I am at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and I precisely focus on the history of ideas related to national security in post-war Japan.
 
Bill Short  03:32
Rogelio is from Mexico City. He’s been working on his PhD in Japan for the last seven years. He says the roots of Beheiren lie in the atmosphere of post-war Japan.
 
Archival Sound  03:43
Six years after the end of hostilities, the San Francisco Peace Treaty brings to an end the state of war with Japan.
 
Bill Short  03:49
The treaty signed in 1951 formally ended the war in Asia and U.S. occupation in Japan.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  03:56
The peace movement was very popular with the Japanese post-war generation, with those that had experienced the war, it was quite popular and also within the student movement.
 
Willa Seidenberg  04:09
Many Japanese were alarmed when the treaty was revised in 1960. It allowed U.S. military bases on Japanese soil.
 
Archival Sound  04:19
Japan, a former foe, is by treaty, to be elevated to partnership as an ally.
 
Willa Seidenberg  04:23
The treaty also called for Japan and the U.S. to defend each other if one or the other was attacked.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  04:31
With this, it means that Japan becomes a full-fledged member of the Western world in a Cold War setting. And this really puts the Japanese pacifist movement in a really tricky spot, because they believe that what the Japanese people really wanted was a pacifist identity, externally imposed, but also internally accepted, and built a Japanese pacifist state that did not play along in the power politics of the Cold War.
 
Willa Seidenberg  05:00
Beheiren was formed in 1965 just as the United States began sending combat troops to Vietnam. One of the founders of Beheiren in Tokyo was novelist Oda Makoto. This is Oda Makoto speaking in a film the Intrepid Four made before they left Japan. He says that Beheiren will keep supporting deserters, and he calls for solidarity between Americans and Japanese.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  05:31
He was not really interested in party dynamics, in politics per se, he really wanted to let the Japanese know, you have a stake to play here in the Vietnam War, because the Japanese government that represents you is being tacitly complicit with the abuses and imperialist ambitions of the United States in Vietnam. Oda Makoto really wanted to make the Japanese citizen understand that they were not only former victims of Japanese Imperial violence or American violence in the Second World War, but they were also perpetrators.
 
Willa Seidenberg  06:11
Not only did Oda’s message have meaning for the Japanese people and their role in World War Two, it also applied to U.S. soldiers.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  06:21
When one is a victim of state power, when one is drafted against his will to go to a foreign country to kill other people, one is also a perpetrator when one who does not resist that obligatory draft and is sent to a foreign country and starts killing people. So, you are a victim and a perpetrator, and the only way that we can break this cycle of violence is by recognizing that you are capable of resisting, that you are capable of saying no, despite the personal consequences that this might have for you,
 
Willa Seidenberg  06:57
The idea of breaking the cycle of violence by refusing to be a victim or a perpetrator is a powerful one, and one that may have fueled anti-war soldiers without them even knowing it,
 
Bill Short  07:15
Beheiren had chapters in cities and towns across Japan. Rogelio estimates that Beheiren had more than a thousand active members in Tokyo alone. They held demonstrations, sit-ins, teach-ins, and put anti-war ads in newspapers in the United States.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  07:32
They say, We don’t want to be an organization, we don’t want to be an association or a union or a party. We just want to be a group of citizens that are opposing American intervention in Indochina, and Beheiren really took pride on being a citizens coalition, and that it was fully autonomous, fully voluntary, that they did not ask for money, They did not ask for anything. You just had to show up and you were a Beheiren member already.
 
Bill Short  08:06
Rogelio says Beheiren members came from all walks of life — students, teachers, priests, artists, members of the Japanese Communist Party, and even housewives. Michael Sutherland found out for himself that you couldn’t stereotype Beheiren members.
 
Michael Sutherland  08:22
We were sitting there with this hippie and his wife, and beside us was a businessman. They all had blue suits at that time, and the hippie and him start talking. Then all of a sudden, the hippie says, Okay, I told him about you guys. And I said, Well, wait a second. You told him, what about us? Are you out of your mind. And then guy with the blue suit, he starts talking again. He says, okay, he wants you to come home and stay with him and his mother for a while, and he wants you to meet his mother. I mean, that’s the way the Japanese were.
 
Bill Short  08:58
Michael says, Beheiren treated them very well.
 
Michael Sutherland  09:01
There’s a movie producer that let us stay at his country place, and it was just this beautiful house up in the mountains above his bay with a little village in the bay. And like it was just like, you know, fairy tale beautiful. They took us places to see like Nara and Kyoto and stuff like that, they just took such good care of us.
 
Bill Short  09:35
It’s unclear how Beheiren was funded, but one source could have been the Soviet Union. We now know that a Beheiren member was in contact with the Soviets.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  09:44
His name was Yoshikawa Yuichi, and after the Soviet Union collapses, the records show that he was receiving money from the Soviet Union.
 
Bill Short  09:55
Rogelio says it’s speculation as to what Yoshikawa used the money for.
 
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez  09:59
What we know is that while he was in Beheiren he was coordinating certain aspects of the movement. He was in contact with Soviet authorities.
 
Willa Seidenberg  10:09
The CIA was aware of Yoshikawa. A secret CIA memorandum written when the Intrepid Four deserted, called Yoshikawa, a “brilliant communist” whose “conspiratorial organizational skills were indispensable to Beheiren.” Michael and his fellow deserters hid out in Japan for about two weeks. They knew they couldn’t stay there because Japan had an extradition treaty with the United States. So it was decided that Beheiren would meet with the Soviet embassy. Yoshikawa went to make contact with someone the CIA identifies as an American collaborator.
 
Michael Sutherland  10:53
He was like about six-four, you know, so he was stood head and shoulders above everybody else. And he was a monk, so he had this monk clothes on, which also made him stand out. And, you know, the bald head. But he was really cool, very nice person.
 
Willa Seidenberg  11:12
Records later showed that the American was Brian Victoria, a Buddhist monk from Nebraska.
 
Michael Sutherland  11:19
He was assigned the task to go to the consulate and see what he could find out about the possibility for us to transit Russia, to get to a neutral country. So he puts on his civilian clothes and goes down to the consulate and asks him in very limited terms, not saying who we were or that we came from the Navy or anything like that, just bare necessities. We were military. We had deserted from the Vietnam War. We wanted transit through Russia, and this was a shock for the consul. He just, I can’t touch this, you know, come back in a few days. So the guy goes back in after a few days, and the consul says, okay, official answer, absolutely not. But I don’t know, you know, if they managed to, like, wind up in Russia somehow, you know, without getting caught, how they would do that? I have no idea. I mean, like, unless they, like, stowed away on a Russian passenger boat or something like that. But you know, that would be quite difficult and as far as Russia is concerned, absolutely not.
 
Willa Seidenberg  12:44
When the envoys returned to the sailors, they realized…
 
Michael Sutherland  12:48
He said, Yes, didn’t he? They said, Yeah, we think so.
 
Willa Seidenberg  12:51
Secret documents written by KGB director Yuriy Andropov show he recommended that the Communist leaders facilitate the sailors’ delivery to the Soviet Union. And so, the four sailors prepared to sail to Russia. The night before they left, a couple of Beheiren representatives came to see them.
 
Michael Sutherland  13:13
They said, Okay, we want you to remove all the tags from your clothing. We don’t want you to take any kind of identification with you. We want it to be almost impossible, if not impossible, to identify you. The longer it takes for them to identify who you are, the better chance we have to get you out of there.
 
Willa Seidenberg  13:39
Now it feels to Michael like they’re in some kind of James Bond movie.
 
Bill Short  13:48
Next day, a Soviet embassy official greeted all four of them with visitors passes to board a Russian freighter, the SS Baikal.
 
Michael Sutherland  13:57
This is something that you would get a ticket to go on board. You’re not going to be able to go anywhere, but you can hang out with the people who are leaving you, and then you get off the boat and it leaves.
 
Bill Short  14:10
But, of course, the four men never left the boat. They needed to lay low until they got outside Japanese territorial waters.
 
Michael Sutherland  14:17
Two of the guys, John and Rick, just started going down the boat as far as they could get, and found, I think it was a toilet that had some partition that they could hide behind it, and just sat there. And it was going to take three hours before the Immigration and the pilot leave the boat at the same time. So then they take a pilot boat back to Japan, and then the boat continues. So until they leave, we have to kind of stay out of trouble. Craig and I, we just figured, well, you know, like nobody knows us, we’ll just, we’ll just blend in like everybody else. So we stood by the railing and throwing, you know, like ribbons and stuff like that, and wave. Talking to anybody like, Who do we know? So those poor guys are down there sweating, and we’re up here having a good old time.
 
Bill Short  15:09
Once they were safely away from Japan, the sailors asked to see the captain.
 
Michael Sutherland  15:15
They just looked at us. Yeah, everybody wants to talk to the captain. No, you can’t talk to the captain. We said, well, we need to talk to somebody about something important. Okay, you can talk to the first mate. And this guy shows up, and he looks like he’s maybe early 60s, elegant from top to toe, silver gray hair combed back. I mean, like that guy, he could have been a movie star, and we’re just looking at each other. This guy is no first mate, and he spoke perfect English. And he says, you want to talk to me, and we’d like to speak to the captain. Sure, come on. So he he takes us to the captain.
 
Bill Short  16:01
They had a few nervous moments when the captain and the first mate began speaking to each other in Russian, and then the captain turned to them
 
Michael Sutherland  16:09
And the very, very little English the captain knew, he says, So you boys have left the Navy. We just looked at each other. It has a soothing effect. You know, when you don’t have to worry about hiding your identity or anything, everybody knows that felt so good.
 
Bill Short  16:33
The Intrepid Four were given two cabins to stay in during the crossing. When they got close to the Soviet port city of Nahodka. The first mate came back to see them.
 
Michael Sutherland  16:43
He says, Okay, now what’s going to happen here is the people that are that are going to continue on the boat, they’re going to go to the fore deck and have a party, you know? He says, everybody else that’s going to get off the boat, they’re going to the gangplank, and they’re going to leave. So you guys, sit here and be quiet.
 
Bill Short  17:01
The first mate told them that he had the key, and they should keep the door locked and not let anyone else in.
 
Michael Sutherland  17:08
So we’re sitting there like small mice and being very quiet, and it takes a while, and all of a sudden there’s a knock on the door.
 
Bill Short  17:18
Since the first mate told them he had the key, they didn’t open the door.
 
Michael Sutherland  17:22
And then we hear knocking in a woman’s voice, oh, shit, this isn’t good. She puts a key in the door, and she starts talking to us in Russian. She starts going like this, you got to leave. Get out of here. And we’re going this, we’re sitting right here, and we’re not going anywhere. And then after maybe three minutes, she comes back with a man’s voice, very large man’s voice, quite gruff, and he starts telling us something. And then finally they open the door, and there’s this guy that’s about twice her size. He’s so big the uniform just takes up the whole door. And when he talks to us, he has to put his head in like this, because this guy is huge.
 
Willa Seidenberg  18:07
Michael and the others started wondering if this whole caper had finally gone south. And they thought maybe they were in real trouble.
 
Michael Sutherland  18:16
And then all of a sudden, first mate shows up, and he says a couple words to these people, and they just disappear. They were gone. I’ve never seen anybody so big move so fast in my life. They were gone. And he just kind of smiles and chuckles, and he says, Don’t worry about that. I’ll be back in a couple minutes. And then he comes back in a couple of minutes. Okay, now we’re moving. We’re going to be really fast, and we’re going to be really quiet. And so like he goes out, and we just right behind him, and then we’re out of the deck, gangplank, two military guards with Kalashnikov at the top, two guards with Kalashnikov at the bottom of the gangplank.
 
Willa Seidenberg  18:56
Once they were on terra firma, they were split up into two limousines and took off into the night.
 
Michael Sutherland  19:03
I sat in the back seat of one of the limos with John. We just looked each other and and laughed. You know, we didn’t know what was going on. Of course, had no idea. Yeah, both terrified and happy. We drove through the night, and it was just pitch black, and all of a sudden we happen upon a house in the middle of nowhere. It’s like maybe a four story, what they call in Swedish or “punctus.” It’s just a solitary building that that looked like it could have been an apartment building, but there’s just absolutely nothing around it. We go in here, not knowing what it’s all about. And there’s just, you know, naked light bulbs hanging on each floor.
 
Willa Seidenberg  19:46
Their handlers took them to the top floor, down a hallway, and into a room.
 
Michael Sutherland  19:52
There’s a bunch of guys sitting around, older dudes and a table full of food this brown sourdough bread, and it was cheese and cold cuts and lots of vodka. They give us each a box, and in the box is a pair of shoes, you know, Russian, little tad pointy, and the big coat and the hat.
 
Michael Sutherland  20:18
It was funny. Okay, enjoy some food. You know, like, oh man. I mean, you know, I’m anything but hungry right now, and guys just looked at us, That wasn’t a question. Eat! Oh, oh, yeah. Well, you know, I could I could nibble.
 
Willa Seidenberg  20:56
After they ate and tried to have a conversation with the men there, they were driven to a train station.
 
Michael Sutherland  21:02
So really kind of crispy, cold, and just absolutely clear night with stars and everything, and we’re at this train station with these old steam locomotives, and we’re looking at each other’s and everybody’s got the same thought. Dr Zhivago. You know like, look at us, look at us. Look at that look at that train. Man, is that cool or what?
 
Michael Sutherland  21:29
Yeah. So we get aboard this train and it was just as old on the inside of not even more so, beautiful. We’re talking museum. And so we, we took the train to an airport. They have their own champagne, and we’re getting a lot of that and getting a lot of caviar. We’re not suffering. And we get to this airport, and there’s this thing that looks almost like an airplane standing there, so some Tupolev with propellers, and comes also from a museum, nothing you’d ever seen before, but we’re gonna fly in that thing.
 
Steve Kinnaman  22:21
That’s why they gave you all the vodka.
 
Michael Sutherland  22:25
I reckon!  Otherwise, we’d have never gone aboard that thing, and then, yeah, we flew away in it. The seats aren’t like a modern-day airplane. It’s like plush seats, Paisley-patterned woodwork. Oh, it was beautiful.
 
Willa Seidenberg  22:43
They eventually ended up in Moscow, where they were met by four men.
 
Michael Sutherland  22:48
Now it’s going to get interesting, because we’re going to get a first impression about their plans for us. Came over, all smiles, handshake. Welcome to Moscow. What can we do for you, beautiful thank you so well executed. You couldn’t make me more happy than those words. And so we thought we would like transit through Russia to a neutral country. Then let’s get working on that.
 
Willa Seidenberg  23:20
They were taken to a beautiful old dacha out in the countryside, and throughout the next six weeks, they were wined and dined.
 
Michael Sutherland  23:33
They took us on a tour around the Soviet Union, down to Kiev and Sochi and Sortavala, really a nice vacation. We were four spoiled American brats, you know, if we had to sit still too long, we just got to be a handful. Gonna draw straws to see who the unlucky chaperones are.
 
Bill Short  24:07
The Soviets paraded them out to journalists and universities. The four sailors welcomed the chance to share their story.
 
Michael Sutherland  24:13
The only publicity that that we had was the film that we made just before leaving Japan and when they heard that we were okay in Russia, then they released the film.
 
Bill Short  24:28
Here’s Mike speaking in the film they made when they were in Japan.
 
Archival Sound: Michael Lindner  24:32
I am a somewhat average American boy born into an average middle-class family. My parents were strict as far as love would allow, but very open-minded. I have a sister who is married and has a beautiful family, and a brother who is pursuing this education. I regret that I will never again be able to see my family because of what I believe in and stand up for it, these things that are guaranteed me by the Bill of Rights and denied me by the military.
 
Michael Sutherland  24:57
That was the first time that news hit general public. It was an opportunity, and we jumped at each opportunity to tell them that regular army guys have not this possibility to walk out of the jungle and say that we don’t support the war. I mean, like a lot of the guys are in there, just trying to keep it alive. You know, we’re gifted with this opportunity to without any danger to ourselves. Not much anyhow, go and tell the story about how GIs don’t want to be there either.
 
Willa Seidenberg  25:37
During this time, the four men and their handlers were trying to figure out a neutral country that would accept them,
 
Michael Sutherland  25:44
We kind of decided that Sweden was the best bet.
 
Willa Seidenberg  25:47
At that point, only one person was known to have been granted asylum in Sweden. So the Russians arranged for the Intrepid Four’s flight to Stockholm.
 
Michael Sutherland  25:58
They said we would like to present you with $1,000 each. And it was given by the people of Russia to help you. I mean, like this is, like over 50 some years ago, that’s a lot of money, $1,000, we didn’t have any of our own money, but we had a lot of theirs.
 
Willa Seidenberg  26:18
From Russia. The four sailors were flown to Finland.
 
Michael Sutherland  26:22
Because if the Swedes didn’t accept us, we had to go back to the last place we were, and they didn’t want us to come back to Russia. So we would have been sent back to Finland.
 
Willa Seidenberg  26:35
When they arrived in Stockholm, they were supposed to meet up with a Swedish Communist Party leader.
 
Michael Sutherland  26:41
When we get there, it turns out that we’re not as incognito as we thought, and the tarmac was just full of people. When they opened the plane door, that poor guy, that the Swedish Communist party guy, is like being pressed through this door by the reporters behind him. He’s trying to talk to us, and, you know, and we’re just like, down on the tarmac being crushed by all these people, and journalists are sticking microphones in our faces. And, then this guy comes up. He says, I’m with the police, you can come with me. So I just, you know, we followed this guy and and now it’s two cop cars we’re jumping into two in each car. And the first thing, before we even get out of the airport, the one cop that isn’t the driver, he turns around and says, We don’t like people like you here. Oh, welcome to Sweden. Okay. Thank you very much.
 
MUSIC  27:40
 
Willa Seidenberg  27:41
A member of a Swedish peace organization picked them up from the jail. They were granted asylum on January 9, 1968 and from there, they settled into their new lives in Sweden.
 
Bill Short  28:04
Two years later, Craig Anderson went to Canada, then snuck across the border into the U.S. In 1972 the FBI arrested him. Anderson spent eight months in a military prison before he was given a bad conduct discharge from the Navy. He now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
 
Willa Seidenberg  28:23
John Barilla lives in Canada, and Rick Bailey, sadly, died about 10 years ago. Michael Sutherland is the only one of the Intrepid Four still living in Sweden.
 
Bill Short  28:35
The ship they deserted from the USS Intrepid is now a floating museum. It’s docked in New York City. One of its exhibits is called “Dissent On Board,” which tells the story of the Intrepid Four.
 
Willa Seidenberg  28:48
Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez says that after Beheiren helped the Intrepid Four, it aided 12 more deserters. Oda Makoto called the four sailors “truly intrepid” because they chose to resist the Vietnam War despite the serious, personal consequences.
 
Bill Short  29:11
A Matter of Conscience is an independent podcast. Word of mouth is our best way to get listeners. If you like what you’ve heard, please give us a review on Apple Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and tell your friends. And if you’d like to donate to the podcast, visit our website, amatterofconscience.com, and thank you for your support.
 
Willa Seidenberg  29:33
This bonus episode was written, edited and produced by Willa Seidenberg, with help from Bill Short. Polina Cherezova Is the sound designer, and Dylan Purvis is the associate producer. Some of the original music arrangements are by Danny Seidenberg. Many thanks to Michael Sutherland for answering our many questions, to Rogelio Vargas-Rodriguez for providing us with images and video of the Intrepid Four, and to Triana Silton for helping facilitate our trip to Sweden.