Investigators concluded that Seeger association with known communists and his Japanese American fiancee pointed to a risk of divided loyalty.
Seeger sympathies, his unsatisfactory relations with landlords and his numerous Communist and otherwise undesirable friends, make him unfit for a position of trust or responsibility, according to a military intelligence report.
The investigation, forwarded to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, is detailed in more than 1,700 pages from Seeger FBI file, released by the National Archives under the Freedom of Information Act.
The musician and left wing activist known for such songs as I Had a Hammer, Have All the Flowers Gone and Turn, Turn died in January 2014 at age 94.
The government interest in Seeger is no surprise. canada goose parka He was a member of the Communist Party for a period of time, as he later acknowledged, saying he quit around 1950, and he performed with Guthrie and others in the proudly leftist Almanac Singers before he was drafted.
But the newly released files show the lengths to which the government went to keep tabs on the singer travels, performances and rally appearances at least into the 1970s. The archives plan to release additional Seeger files in the future.
The degree to which the security investigation affected his military career is not spelled out in the files. Seeger trained as an airplane mechanic at Keesler Field in Mississippi and, according to his file, expressed frustration that he was being kept stateside instead of being sent to where the fighting was. Ultimately, the singer and banjo player spent time in the Special Services, entertaining soldiers in the South Pacific, and made corporal.
Based on these records, Seeger underwent what appears to be his first major investigation after writing a letter to the California American Legion in 1942 criticizing the organization resolution deportation of all Japanese, citizens or not, and barring all Japanese descendants from citizenship. This was during a time Japanese Americans, many of them from California, were being forced to live in government internment camps.
fighting precisely to free the world of such Hitlerism, such narrow jingoism, Seeger wrote.
What followed was a wide ranging probe by the military into Seeger background. Investigators found that Seeger referred to as the was loyal at this time and eager to be transferred overseas from Mississippi to fight fascism.
But they didn like the company he kept.
Investigators found Seeger was a friend and associate of Lead Belly, or Huddie William Ledbetter, the folk legend they described as a murderer. The Almanac singers were described in the files as Communist and anti Fascist propaganda through songs and recordings. told an investigator that his buddy was but he was hard to understand, always trying to make things run more efficiently. The agent concluded Guthrie was telling the truth that he knew a great deal more about Subject politics and activities than he admitted. also uncovered evidence Seeger was not a good tenant. canada goose parka A New York City landlord complained to an investigator that she had rented a one person basement apartment to Seeger, but the next day a fellow named Guthrie turned up and never left. Then a woman they claimed was a sister showed up. Frequent callers included a group of and men who wore lumber jackets and blue denim trousers and carried guitars.
