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BELLINGHAM WEEKLY
April 30, 2005ON AMERICAN SOIL
reviewed by Christian MartinA mysterious headstone in Seattle's Discovery Park leads former CNN and NewsHour reporter Jack Hamann on a historical search to uncover a lost episode of World War II, a forgotten tragedy with resonance for our War on Terror today. The headstone belongs to Italian soldier Guglielmo Olivotto, a POW who was murdered at Seattle's now-shuttered Fort Lawton. The killing was linked to a mob of African American servicemen, and the largest and longest court-martial of WWII, led by future Watergate counsel Leon Jaworski, convicted several black men with no evidence against them.
Drawing upon hundreds of declassified documents and interviews with many of the survivors, Hamann spent 17 years sleuthing out the facts of this trafedy, and what he uncovers proves once again that truth is often the first casualty of war. With its intelligent examination of wartime racial dynamics, military incompetence, the treatment of POWs and the competing pressures of national security and individual rights, ON AMERICAN SOIL delivers lessons we are wise to heed today.