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Alpine woman,
Duncan Hunter, right an old wrong
By Chris Mac Kenzie
For The Alpine Sun
ALPINE — Two mothers, one in 1944 and the other in 2006, called upon their government officials to right a terrible wrong inflicted upon a son. The wartime mother got absolutely no help and no answers to her plea. Today’s mother was more fortunate. Her Congressman, District 52 Rep. Duncan Hunter is ensuring that the records of wrongly convicted soldiers are reviewed for correction.
In 1944, with World War II at its peak, an Italian POW in the Fort Lawton’s Army Barracks in Seattle, Wash, was lynched. The war department immediately and unjustly charged three African-American soldiers with murder and 40 others with rioting. Jack Hamann, a former CNN journalist, with the help of his wife Leslie, as researcher, was so incensed by this miscarriage of justice, that he wrote and published a book in April 2005, entitled On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II.
Hamann grew up in Alpine but now lives in Seattle. His congressman, Rep. Jim McDermott was so moved by the story that he introduced HR 3174 in June 2005. The bill asks the Secretary of the Army to reexamine the verdicts of the Army’s longest court-martial of WWII in order to correct the military records, as some of those soldiers are still alive today. HR 3174 was assigned to the House Armed Services Committee and Sub-committee of which Congressman Duncan Hunter is the chair. But the bill, overpowered by other important current matters, languished.
Back in Alpine, Jack Hamann’s mother, Julianna Hamann, grew impatient after reading the plaintive letter referred to in her son’s book — a letter lost for 60 years until Leslie Hamann found it. It describes in detail what happened on that fateful night, and at the trial afterward, which Sarah Hughes, mother of one of the black soldiers, was allowed to attend.
His story that he was not even in the riot area that fateful night was entirely different from testimony in court that resulted in sentences of hard labor for six months to 25 years for 28 of the black solders, plus two more convicted of manslaughter, and with dishonorable discharges for all.
Hughes wrote, “Robert Sanders, my boy, has never told me a lie. I have always taught him that there isn’t anything too bad to tell me, for when he is in trouble, I am too, and he must always let me know the truth about everything. For it is only he and I; I am all he have to stand by him. That is why he wanted me to come to him if it was possible...These boys haven’t just pledged allegiance to their flag, but has been born. Their whole hearts and souls knows nothing but our country and love for it.”
An uneducated black woman, Mrs. Sadie Hughes sent her letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pleading for justice for
the young men who had been so wronged by an unfair trial.
She died many years later and her letter was never acknowledged nor answered. Robert Sanders, after serving his time, was released in August of 1950 but found life very difficult with a dishonorable discharge on his record. He died in1992.
Julianna Hamann was deeply moved when she read about the 1944 black mother and her son, so she wrote a letter to Hunter, in January 2006, pleading with him to respond to her concerns.
Hunter met with MacDermott and came up with a plan to get the 1944 case reviewed without the languishing bill. His letter to Hamann describes a review process he and staffer Kevin P. Coughlin set up with the Secretary of the Army to review old cases and correct individual military records at the requests of service members or their family members. Back pay and benefits may also be possible, Julianna Hamann said.
Hunter has assigned Rick Schweigert, chief of the Army Review Board Agency of the Congressional and Special Actions Office, as the point of contact for the surviving individuals and their families who are interested in filing applications for corrections of the 1944 court-martial records.
Even the army is helping to find survivors. It distributed news releases to Texas and the mid-west area, believing that some of them could be in those areas.
The stories also appeared on the web: “I’ve already heard from several of the descendents,” Hamann said. “The granddaughter of one of soldiers, the late Booker Townsell, was just surfing the web, and recognized a name. She was so excited! I’ve heard from three men and one woman, so far.”
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