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March 28, 2006 ON AMERICAN SOIL wins 2005 Investigative Reporters & Editors Book Award ON AMERICAN SOIL (Algonquin Books, 2005), the nonfiction account of one of the most overlooked civil rights events in American history, has won the Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) Book Award for 2005. Since 1979, twenty-five books have been honored with the IRE Book Award. Previous winners include Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersch, Neil Sheehan, David Cay Johnston, Edward Humes and Eric Nalder, each of whom has also won a Pulitzer. ON AMERICAN SOIL, by Seattle journalist Jack Hamann, reveals the untold story of the largest and longest U.S. Army court-martial of World War II. Forty-three U.S. soldiers—all of them African-Americans—were charged with rioting and with the lynching murder of an Italian prisoner of war. The case—which received worldwide attention in 1944—was prosecuted by Leon Jaworski, later to gain fame as the Watergate special prosecutor. ON AMERICAN SOIL unearths thousands of pages of previously-classified documents that conclusively demonstrate the weakness of the Army’s investigation and prosecution. A bill now before Congress, HR 3174, demands that the Secretary of the Army reopen the 1944 court-martial in light of the evidence uncovered in ON AMERICAN SOIL. IRE, founded in 1975, is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to training and supporting journalists who pursue investigative stories and operates the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a joint program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism. The organization has 5,000 members. The IRE Awards is the annual contest of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. recognizing the best in investigative reporting by print, broadcast and online media. Entries must:
The IRE Awards will be presented during the Saturday, June 17, luncheon at the 2006 IRE Annual Conference in Fort Worth. The conference, scheduled for June 15-18 at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel, will feature many of the winners speaking about the techniques, methods and resources they used to develop their stories. Judges' comments about ON AMERICAN SOIL: “This book reads like an outstanding piece of literary fiction, but it is investigative reporting of the highest order. In it, Jack Hamann reached back more than six decades to expose a hidden travesty of justice by the U.S. military in World War II, a miscarriage that occurred not overseas, but at an Army outpost on Puget Sound . The Army charged 43 soldiers, all of them African-American, with rioting that resulted in the death of an Italian prisoner of war. Twenty-eight of those soldiers went to prison. But Army prosecutors, led by Leon Jaworski of Watergate fame, knew that much of the evidence they presented at court martial was misleading. Hamann, with researcher Leslie Hamann, uncovered a web of lies in a book that holds lessons for today on the tensions between national security and individual rights.” IRE Book Awards (1979-2005) 2005: 2004: 2003: 2002: 2001: 2000: 1999: 1998: 1997: 1996: 1995: 1994: 1993: 1992: 1991: 1990: 1989: 1988: 1987: 1986: David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro 1985: 1984: 1983: 1982: 1981: 1980: 1979: |
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