Table of Contents
Introduction
Author's Note
Chapter 1: Background
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Books by Roy Chandler
Printing History:
1989: First printing, Bacon & Freeman
1990: Second printing, Bacon & Freeman
1998: Third printing, Iron Brigade Armory
2008: Fourth printing, Iron Brigade Armory
2013: E-book
ALCATRAZ by Roy F. Chandler
Copyright © 1989 and 2013 Katherine R. Chandler
All rights reserved
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary - Circa 1934
Four small buildings comprising officers' and the warden's clerk's quarters
Lighthouse keeper's home
Warden's home
Associate warden and various other illuminaries' homes
Guards' quarters
Single officers' quarters, guards' gym and recreation hall
Old handball court. In 1937 a new wooden four-wall court was built on the parade ground almost beneath the cliff.
The sand pile (for almost continual concrete repair).
The usual view of Alcatraz Island is a side shot taken from along the San Francisco waterfront. The unknown photographer who snapped this angle was within the off-limit buoys that once forced boats to keep their distance. If he was unauthorized, you can be sure that warning shots from a 30/06 Springfield rifle were plunked into the bay just off his bow.
A current visitor to Alcatraz will usually approach the island just as the boat from which this photo was taken did before 1934. A straight course from San Francisco brings a boat into the dock, which borders the right hand edge of the photograph.
Once ashore, a 1934/35 visitor clumped across a wide planked dock and gained clearance from a small guard shack placed tightly against the four story concrete building that looms in the forefront. In later Alcatraz years, the shack also housed a metal detector. That shack is still in use and comprises a part of the current visitors' tour.
An interested observer might note that the wind, as indicated by the smoke from the powerhouse and the flag flying from the warden's home, is blowing directly out the Golden Gate. Those concerned with escape attempts might then consider that if the tide ran with the wind a swimmer was quickly carried out the gate and into the Pacific Ocean. Or, if the tide was against the wind a fierce chop was set that was extremely difficult to swim across or against.
A barely visible pathway ran almost against the seawall just below the tree line in the forefront and continued around this end of the island. Custodial officers patrolled on the path because the island end was otherwise undefended and could not be observed by any of the gun towers. In a later photo officers Crabb and Crowell are shown further along this path. The large warning sign, unreadable on this page, is also shown more clearly.
Introduction
Before he died in 1985, my father spent days with me hashing over the old Alcatraz. At eighty-one, Dad's mind was razor sharp on long past details, if not so good on what had happened last week.
He insisted on two points and spoke to them like this: "If you're going to write this stuff, get it right and don't add more crap to what is already out there." My father was not an admirer of the Alcatraz articles, books, and movies that have appeared over the decades.
He also said, "Write it simple and straight so people can enjoy the story. If you don't, it won't be worth reading."
So, that is how this book runs. It comes from an oral history and therefore is written in ordinary language and is conversationally organized. Our intention is that you gain a feel for what Alcatraz was like—when it was new, special, and different from any other prison in America.
This small volume is not intended to be the ultimate Alcatraz tome. It focuses on the early years, the hardest years, as remembered by one guard, Erville Freeman Chandler, and his son, Roy Freeman Chandler.
This book is about Alcatraz before prisoners controlled their own cell lights, before they had radios, and before they talked as they wished. We write here of the prison's first four years, 1934-1938, when the big names and the hard guys were in residence.
E. F. Chandler saw 1934-1938 as the hardest years, in part, because the guards were as tough as the convicts. There was no slack in the system, and the prison had not lost its rough edges. Alcatraz did not reform or rehabilitate—it confined and punished.
Alcatraz bit deeply into the minds of all who experienced those early years. It was a time of experiment—determining just how best to run an Alcatraz. Dangerous, new to its participants, mysterious to all outsiders, and centered in the news media, Alcatraz prison grabbed attention. It was an adventurous period. Those involved, convict, guard or dependent, have never forgotten.
As the son and writer, I choose to record in a chatty style similar to my father's speech. This book is based primarily on our conversations about his years as an Alcatraz guard.
I omit most of his cuss words, although they were natural to him and would enrich the stories.
E. F. Chandler was a tough man. If he gave an inch I never saw or heard of it. You could like him or not, he really did not give a damn. But, you had better not cross him. My father's Golden Rule was: "Give better than you got." Prisoners regularly described him as "hard but fair."
I have extracted from my father's experience incidents and details we believe might better explain The Rock as it was during its most exacting period.
It would not be possible to document many of his anecdotes. They are drawn from one guard's memories. Also, our opinions are just that—opinions.
My father's sense of history is demonstrated by the amount of material he and my mother gathered while stationed on Alcatraz. They kept every newspaper article that appeared, even those from the east coast that friends and relatives forwarded. For years they purchased every Alcatraz book published. They also collected autographs, photographs, official Alcatraz forms, and made lists of all sorts—some of which appear in this book. When facts and dates from my father's stories needed corroboration, we relied on the material that they had accumulated.
If you discover discrepancies with other records, remember: this is E. F. Chandler's account. His words and his opinion are about as first hand as any can be.
Remember also that no story can be repeated exactly the same even a second time. Repetitions polish tales until they may not be recognizable to the participants. I have worked at avoiding such pitfalls, and I am pleased with the result.
Our hope is that we offer fresh material, personal in nature and rich in character that can highlight a special period—Alcatraz in its hardest years.
Author's Note
It is necessary to emphasize that I, Roy F. Chandler, am the writer of this volume. The memories recorded and the opinions expressed are mine and my father's—mostly my father's. We do not speak for the Bureau of Prisons, the Park Service, or others.
History is usually compiled at later dates by individuals not present during the events. The recorder believes he is correct, and his version, when published, often becomes accepted as fact—the real story. A huge proportion of Alcatraz writing fits that description.
Therefore, it is especially important to record the memories and opinions of those who were actual participants—in this case, participants in Alcatraz's first four years as a federal prison. Of course, even witnes
ses to the same event can disagree, and the testimony of participant-witnesses often differs from accepted Alcatraz history. The more first-person points of view available, the greater the probability of gaining an accurate sense of how things actually occurred.
Chapter 1: Background
To understand Alcatraz in its early days, one must forget all of the movies and most of what has been written about the prison during those first years. The incidents, the procedures, the attitudes, and the results (shown, written, and spoken about), are mostly speculations by individuals with personal agendas and are usually gross distortions.
From the first imaginative movie, House Across the Bay starring George Raft and Edward G. Robinson, through Burt Lancaster's The Birdman of Alcatraz and a Clint Eastwood thing Escape from Alcatraz, creativity has substituted for reality.
If you desire an accurate portrayal of the prison, your best bet would be to visit the island and listen to the Park Service presentations. The guided tours offer a solidly neutral (G-rated) overview of Alcatraz Island, its prison, and its history.
For the general public, a Park Service walk-through is enough, but for anyone interested in details, more grit is required. There difficulties surface. So much tripe has been written about Alcatraz that it is almost impossible to separate truth from fiction.
Immediate examples are needed.
A popular fallacy retold since the very beginning was that the ultimate gangster, Al Capone, wore wrappings of canvas around his body out of fear of being knifed by other inmates. Ludicrous! It never happened and such a garment would never have been allowed.
A particularly nasty inmate, James Lucas – number 224, is described in the book Escape From Alcatraz as "Tex Lucas, a strapping Texas badman." Actually Lucas weighed in at one hundred and forty-seven pounds (hardly strapping) and no one called him "Tex." Lucas was a "Sunday puncher," the kind who hit you when you weren't looking, a guy who picked his shots and quit early. Tough? Capone thoroughly lumped Lucas, and no one ever claimed Al Capone was a fist fighter. Guards and inmates considered Lucas dangerous only because he sought a macho image. Among those who knew him, Lucas never made it. Eventually, "Jimmie," that's what they really called him, was transferred to the Springfield mental hospital facility. Most believed the reassignment appropriate.
Or take Joe Bowers – number 210. A newspaper article by P.F. Reed, released convict – number 181, claimed Bowers spoke seven languages. Astonishing! Warden Johnston and Doctor George Hess described him as "probably a moron."
Incidentally, there are no man-eating sharks hungrily circling the island. San Francisco Bay had sharks but they were small and offered little threat to man. In the 1930's, small attention was paid to bay dumping. Alcatraz was an environmental disaster in that it dumped its sewage, some of its garbage, and its industrial waste directly into the bay. What did not sink was carried away by strong currents. Small scavenger sharks hung around, and we caught some of them while fishing from the docks or rocky beaches.
To genuinely understand the hardest years at Alcatraz, 1934 – 1938, one encounters additional problems. Part of the difficulty is that much of what is now told about the prison is remembered from the facility's later years. Charter members of the custodial force had little to say in public forums. They were directed to remain silent and they did. Now, all are dead, taking their recollections with them—so are all of the convicts from those times.
Alcatraz was never a soft prison. Confinement on The Rock was always hard time. But, over the years there were changes and they were significant.
As time passed, Alcatraz became easier for inmates, if less desirable for guards and their families. With the departure in 1937 of the first Associate Warden, E.J. Shuttleworth, the iron discipline that had guaranteed control began to loosen. Convict privileges gradually became inmate rights, and concessions to "common humanity" opened the outside world to inmates and inmates to the world. A different stripe of prisoner appeared in the prison population, and the guard force changed from an elite team to a custodial assemblage that endured an often less than desirable assignment.
By 1963, Alcatraz had become just another prison. Overly expensive to operate and determined by a new "enlightened" penal authority as unneeded, the prison closed.
Closure was correct. The facilities were crumbling and too much of our society viewed Alcatraz as some sort of Devil's Island where men were tortured until minds cracked and bodies rotted.
In his writing, Warden Johnston noted that the first 178 convicts assigned to Alcatraz had already accumulated a record of 79 successful escapes, 19 unsuccessful escapes and had been involved in 12 escape plots that were exposed before activation.
Over its twenty-nine year existence as a federal prison, Alcatraz, confining the nation's most vicious and most escape-prone convicts, lost no prisoners.
Yes, it is true; NO ONE EVER ESCAPED ALIVE FROM ALCATRAZ! Cole and Roe in 1937 and Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin in 1962 all disappeared into the water and remained missing. Could Ralph Roe, bank robber, or Ted Cole, double murderer and kidnapper, live undetected for more than fifty years? Could Morris, a chronic burglar, or the Anglins, bank robbers, remain hidden for more than fifty years? None of those convicts were wealthy or had family or gangs waiting to aid in escape and hide escapees for the rest of their lives. They were poorly educated, mean and nasty criminals that would have been robbing in Oakland or San Francisco within hours of crawling ashore. Files are maintained because that is administrative procedure, but few believe that the convicts lived. Their drowned bodies went out the Golden Gate on the tide and will never be found.
A sort of sidebar mostly forgotten after these many decades was reported from a freighter going out the Golden Gate. The ship reported a body in the water, clad in what was probably prison garb, that when described sounded like Frank Morris. A ship takes miles to stop, and no effort was made to recover the body, but the timing was right for the corpse to be one of the three escapees, and that was probably the final viewing for Morris.
An aspect of Alcatraz accomplishment rarely examined is the prison's rate of recidivism. My father and I believe that, unlike most penitentiaries, where the same convicts are in, out, and in again with revolving door regularity, Alcatraz's released "tough nuts" tended to fly right. Not all, to be sure, but considering the incorrigible or uncontrollable status applied to those sent to the island, astonishingly few returned to lives of crime.
We know of no scientific studies, but it is commonly thought that as Alcatraz discipline and restriction eased, an increased percentage of releasees failed to choose the straight and narrow. Those who claim that flat-out punishment does not deter criminality should take a second look.
Alcatraz said to the villainous, "Beware or you will disappear into the bowels of this place."
We note that in these more "civilized" times Alcatraz reviewers and historians (almost unanimously) decry Alcatraz disciplines and effectiveness at reforming through simply never wanting to go back there again. They are somehow uncomfortable with the way it was, and they prefer the remembrances of later era custodial officers who knew a softer prison.
Almost to a man (or woman) the current crop of examiners claim the dungeon was not really used much, that the convicts and guards seldom observed the rules of silence, that guards did not knock cons around if orders were not followed, and . . . on and on. If a reader can locate a child of early Alcatraz (like the author is) you will discover that there are no exaggerations or spinning here of what really happened.
Only twelve acres in area, Alcatraz Island is the tip of a rock rising from the bottom of San Francisco Bay. The island lies about three miles within the Golden Gate and a mile off the San Francisco waterfront. It is almost 1700 feet long and about 500 feet wide.
Until 1853, the island was virtually ignored. In that year engineers began the surveys that in 1859 resulted in completion of a U.S. Army fortress that was part of the nation's coastal defenses. Although it never fi
red a shot in anger, Fort Alcatraz remained in service. The island officially became a confinement facility in 1868 when it was used to imprison heavily sentenced military convicts.
The soil on the island is thin and most was transported there boatload by boatload and barrow after barrow by military prisoners over many decades. Before government improvements, only brushy undergrowth patched a few spots. In 1924, three hundred trees and shrubs were planted. Ice plant and century plant cactus flourishes on the east slope. Persian Carpet grows on the south cliffs.
Above nature's austerity loomed the prison. Built by Army convicts atop the old fortress's lower levels and foundations, the cell houses, workshops, and custodial living quarters were made of concrete. The current lighthouse, placed to direct bay shipping, is also constructed of concrete. Wooden quarters were in existence, and the docks were piling and plank. The facility boasted a guards' gymnasium with a bowling alley, a recreation hall above, a firehouse and a wooden handball court down by the dock. A large supply of sand was bunkered beside the handball court for concrete repairing and building. A handsome cement parade ground completed the Alcatraz facility. There was little else to discover.
In 1933 the federal prison system took over the Army Disciplinary Barracks and remodeled Alcatraz into a maximum-security prison. In 1934 convicts were brought in. The prison functioned until March 1963 when it closed by order of the Bureau of Prisons. Attorney General Robert Kennedy signed the directive.
Alcatraz was a desolate station for guards as well as prisoners. In season, the island was enveloped by fogs, and stiff breezes kept the temperature chill. Ugly, dank, and isolated, even The Rock's water had to be delivered by tanker. Guards and dependents reached San Francisco via regularly scheduled boats. An Army tug, the Slocum, was also in service. The Slocum towed water and fuel barges and occasionally carried passengers. The island generated its own electricity (direct current, so normal radios and appliances would not work); everything else was shipped in.
Alcatraz: The Hardest Years 1934-1938 Page 1