Biography
Benjamin L. Candee, CPS worker 001450, recalled leaving the Byberry alternative-service hospital assignment to protest unpaid conscripted labor. He and Tom Leonard offered to return as paid employees. In a 1996 Quaker conference discussing prison experiences, Candee described FBI arrest, bail release, a permitted postwar cattle-boat trip to Europe, and a subsequent trial yielding a four-month sentence. His later account describes this as a completed historical episode; exact custody dates and time served are unverified.
Verified detail sources (October 9, 2026, further review): Friends Journal’s October 2009 obituary, page 46, gives Benjamin Leroy Candee Jr.’s birthdate as May 24, 1921 and uses he/him. His Byberry walkout, hepatitis experiment, cattle-boat work and Danbury prison episode match the CPS oral history. APA Division 16’s Winter 2014 memorial independently gives the same birthdate. Conflicting sequencing of cattle-boat travel and arrest is not used to invent custody dates. Source 1. Source 2. Source 3.
Friends Journal, October 2009, printed/PDF page 46, identifies Benjamin Leroy Candee Jr. and reports his death on January 10, 2009 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, aged 87; the matching May 24, 1921 birthdate and Byberry/CPS/cattle-boat history establish the identity with this existing record. His obituary specifically names Danbury Federal Prison and says he actually served several months there following arrest for leaving the unpaid Byberry assignment. It also reports hunger strikes against racial segregation and his sitting with Black inmates against prison rules. The vague several-month account is not converted to an exact counter, nor is the independently reported four-month imposed sentence assumed to equal time served. CPS work and medical-experiment hospitalization remain distinct from criminal imprisonment. The obituary’s travel/arrest sequencing is not used to override the more detailed oral-history sequence or invent dates. No death in custody is implied: his death occurred decades after the completed prison episode.
