FBI files show military saw Pete Seeger as ‘subversive’
U.S. military officials investigated folk music legend Pete Seeger when he served in the Army during World War II, concluding he was “potentially subversive” because of his friendship with singer Woody Guthrie and other lefty associates.
The Army investigated Seeger, a private at the time, after he wrote a letter to the California American Legion in 1942 denouncing the deportation of Japanese-Americans, according to The Associated Press, which obtained Seeger’s FBI file totaling more than 1,700 pages.
{mosads}Seeger criticized the deportation of Japanese-Americans as “Hitlerism” and “narrow jingoism.”
Seeger, who died last year, was a member of the Communist Party in the 1940s and performed with Guthrie and other musicians with left-wing views.
Military investigators interviewed Guthrie as well as Seeger’s former New York City landlord and other associates.
Guthrie described Seeger as “brilliant” but “hard to understand” in a conversation that left one FBI agent feeling that Guthrie was holding back information.
Seeger’s New York landlord complained that he often invited over “disreputable” and “noisy” guests in lumber jackets and blue jeans to play guitar, the AP reported.
One of those guests was Guthrie, a founder of the 20th century American folk revival, who moved in without permission from the landlord.
A military intelligence report concluded Seeger’s “Communistic sympathies, his unsatisfactory relations with landlords and his numerous Communist and otherwise undesirable friends, make him unfit for a position of trust or responsibility.”
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