Within 24 hours of graduating as the top physics concentrator in his Harvard class, Michio Kaku '68 found himself bald and in boot camp, learning how to toss grenades, dodge machine-gun fire, load an M-16 rifle and break a man's neck with his bare hands.

The young scientist volunteered for the army because his draft board told him he would soon be required to enter the service and, in the middle of the Vietnam War, enlisted men fared better than draftees.

Still, according to Kaku--now a physics professor at City University of New York--it didn't matter to the American government who you were when you joined the military. "They just wanted bodies to die in Vietnam. They wanted people who would go to the frontline and die."

This winter, after a modest, 10-city tour to promote his latest book about declassified Pentagon war plans, Kaku will resume teaching at CUNY and compiling lecture notes for another, soon-to-be published book. An additional science text of his will reach bookstores next month.

Now a prominent player in physicists' boycott of Star Wars, Kaku also makes time to teach colleagues and rally-goers the lessons he learned while still fresh out of college.

Panic in Leverett House

One week before his Harvard graduation, for instance, Kaku received a telegram heralding his draft assignment: Fort Benning in Atlanta, Georgia.

His mother, a maid, and his father, a gardener, had raised their family in San Jose, California. Though they had never visited the East Coast before June of 1968, their son's cabled orders kept them from relaxing enough to enjoy the trip.

Kaku remembers when he learned the draft would apply to all college graduates and there would be no more exemptions for graduate school-bound academics.

"I was in Leverett House when [President] Lyndon B. Johnson announced in February of '68 that there would be no more graduate deferment. There was panic throughout Harvard. It was topic number one."

Until early 1968, Vietnam had been called a rich man's war. The poor had been sent to fight while communities like Harvard were accused of letting the war remain an academimc topic.

Kaku and his classmates had counted on the chance to attend graduate school and pursue careers. Then they learned they had four months until graduation to plan to become professional soldiers or concoct medical excuses.

The physicist recalls watching another senior run "up and down stairs trying to get trick-knee. He actually got the deferment, the old bastard."

Fort Benning chants like "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one's for shooting, one's for fun," and "I want to go to Vietnam, I want to kill a Charlie Kong. Kill! Kill!" soon replaced what Kaku could remember of philosophy courses and essay-writing.

"At Harvard, you learned how to think," he says. "In the military they have to beat it out of you, because the more you think, the more you question."