Biography
John M. Bach was imprisoned for resistance to the Vietnam-era draft. At Danbury he joined other prisoners in opposing the war and challenging prison censorship.
In a letter written in 1970 and reprinted in The Witness in January/February 1994, John Bach described his imprisonment at Allenwood Federal Prison Camp in Pennsylvania. He organized a July 14 Bastille Day gathering that brought conscientious objectors and prisoners from different racial and national backgrounds together. He wrote that officials summoned him the following morning and threatened harsh disciplinary treatment if he organized another such meeting. This account documents prison solidarity and resistance during his draft-resistance imprisonment; it does not establish a new admission or release date.
In his 2020 statement published by Friends Meeting at Cambridge, John Bach identified himself as Harvard’s Quaker chaplain and a former Vietnam-era draft resister who had served in federal prison. The November 13, 2023 General Dynamics–Electric Boat action report names John Bach of Boston among two people issued public-disturbance citations, separately from the nine participants arrested and processed at the New London police station. No further confinement is reported for this citation. First-person Cambridge statement; Contemporary New London report.
