On Wednesday, October 4, Veltmann called Alphonso McPherson, a seaman in the 2nd Division, to the witness stand to testify about being interrogated at Camp Shoemaker. The nineteen-year-old McPherson was from Columbia, South Carolina, where he had been a model student and social club chairman of his high school. He loved sports, especially basketball, and liked to sing and play the piano. At Port Chicago his job was to handle ammunition and rig the winch booms. He was not a particularly good worker, though, and apparently had a wild streak that was often exacerbated by liquor. On April 21, 1943, he was charged for “disturbing the peace and assault on another person in the Navy with a dangerous weapon,” for which he received a court-martial punishment of ten days’ bread and water and a loss of pay in the amount of eighteen dollars.
Veltmann established that on the night of July 17, McPherson had been taken to the hospital, where he remained for ten days, to be treated for severe cuts to the head, leg, and feet. Afterward he was transferred to the Mare Island Barracks, where on August 9 he confessed to Lieutenant Tobin, head of the 2nd Division, that he was afraid to load ammunition again. On August 11, after the admiral’s speech, he again told the lieutenant that he was afraid. Like Small and Green, he, too, was taken to Camp Shoemaker, where he was questioned by a lieutenant about the “don’t work” list.
“I don’t know nothing about no list,” McPherson answered him.
“You better come clean,” the lieutenant pressed him. Then he bluffed, “I know all about the meeting.”
McPherson replied innocently, “Sounds like you know more about it than me.”
Angered, the lieutenant called McPherson a “professional liar” and dismissed him.
Later he had the seaman brought back in by a Marine guard. “I am going to give you another chance, but if you don’t come clean this time, I’m going to see that you get shot.”
After relating the incident to the court, McPherson told Lieutenant Veltmann that another lieutenant had then entered the room. McPherson looked up and pointed at Judge Advocate Coakley; Coakley was the one who had come into the room. McPherson then described how Coakley also told him that if he did not cooperate, he would be shot.
CHAPTER 37
Putting the Navy on Trial
The trial had already attracted considerable national attention, but on Monday, October 9, the NAACP upped the ante. Sitting in the audience was Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel of the NAACP’s Legal and Educational Defense Fund, and future Supreme Court justice. Marshall had just arrived by plane from New York on Navy priority, with permission from Secretary Forrestal to observe the trial. The NAACP’s San Francisco branch, which had initially alerted the main office about the implications of the trial, had already briefed Marshall on the specifics: the men were up against a spurious mutiny charge, which the Navy intended to make stick. Although they may have been guilty of individual acts of insubordination, mutiny suggested a conspiracy of which the San Francisco office saw none.
Although his career was still young, by the time he arrived on Yerba Buena Island, Marshall had already argued a case before the Supreme Court. In 1940, in Chambers v. Florida, Marshall contended that the confessions of four black men who admitted that they had killed an elderly white man, a crime for which they were sentenced to death, had been compelled by the police and were therefore inadmissible as evidence. In a unanimous decision, delivered by Justice Hugo Black of Alabama, the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall and overturned the convictions.
Late in the day on October 9, following the trial, Marshall met with Veltmann and his defense team as well as the defendants. He was already suspicious of the mass mutiny charge, but when he discovered that a number of the men had been thrown in with the alleged mutineers against their will, he knew then that his instincts had been right. Others, he learned, had valid medical reasons for not loading. The interviews confirmed his belief that the Navy had chosen to try them not individually but as a group. Then it tried to link the men who had very little interaction with each other via a conspiracy charge. The number fifty had been chosen for its symbolism. Fifty black men conspiring to defy the authority of the Navy was memorable.
Although he had only attended the trial as a bystander, having witnessed the day’s events, he was convinced of the defendants’ innocence and was contemplating representing them. That evening he wrote Walter White, executive director of the NAACP, “Defense counsel are good and know what they are doing. Prosecutor is vicious and dumb.… Most of the accused testified that they told the lieutenant that they were willing to obey orders but that they were afraid of loading ammunition after the Port Chicago incident.… There is no evidence of mutiny and we should be able to beat this in the reviewing board.”
The next day, October 10, Marshall held a press conference. Eager reporters awaited him. None of them had ever laid eyes on Marshall before, but they knew his reputation as an ardent defender of the civil rights of black people who was willing to do battle with the white establishment and was not afraid of using the law to promote social change.
At six feet two inches tall, Marshall towered over them, and the way he carried himself made him look even larger. “The men actually don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice slow and precise. “They were asked whether they would load and they replied that they were afraid.… They had no idea that verbal expression of their fear constituted mutiny. This is not an individual case,” he challenged. “This is not fifty men on trial for mutiny. This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy toward Negroes. Negroes are not afraid of anything any more than anyone else. Negroes in the Navy don’t mind loading ammunition. They just want to know why they are the only ones doing the loading! They want to know why they are segregated; why they don’t get promoted.” On just his second day, Marshall had already seized upon the Jim Crow aspect of the case. It was an angle that Veltmann had either felt unprepared to address or, as a Navy officer, wanted to avoid. But it was a line of attack that Marshall was determined to pursue.
The following day, the San Francisco Chronicle put Marshall’s accusation on page one. The headline read, PREJUDICE IS CHARGED IN MUTINY TRIAL.
Meanwhile, the National Negro Council pushed President Roosevelt to end discrimination against Negro members of the armed forces, “especially returning [black] veterans being banned from rest and redistribution centers … provided for all other soldiers.”
By Tuesday, October 17, the day on which Lieutenant Commander Coakley summoned the first of his twenty-five rebuttal witnesses, Marshall began his campaign to discredit the Navy, insisting that the Navy formally investigate: “The policy of the Twelfth Naval District, which, with only a few minor exceptions, restricts the use of Negro seamen, regardless of their training and qualifications, to shore duty in the capacity of laborers and in segregated outfits; the inefficient and unsafe manner in which ammunition was handled at Port Chicago prior to the explosion, and the fact that Negroes working on it are given absolutely no kind of instruction or training in the proper handling of it; the inconsistent, haphazard and utterly unfair manner in which the fifty accused seamen now on trial for their lives were singled out from [other] men, whose actions with regard to the loading of ammunition after the Port Chicago explosion were identical in almost every respect to those of the fifty accused.”
The following afternoon he continued his attack. “I want to know why,” he said, “the Navy disregarded warnings by the San Francisco waterfront unions—before the Port Chicago disaster—that an explosion was inevitable if they persisted in using untrained seamen in the loading of ammunition. I want to know why the Navy disregarded an offer by these same unions to send experienced men to train Navy personnel in the safe handling of explosives.… I want to know why the commissioned officers at Port Chicago were allowed to race their men. I want to know why bets ranging from five dollars up were made between division officers as to whose crew would load more ammunition.”
Just nine days after arriving on Yerba Bue
na Island, Thurgood Marshall was already looking at the bigger picture. By October 18, it was clear that he intended via the press to defend the fifty seamen and to put the entire Navy on trial.
CHAPTER 38
Punishing the Seamen
On Saturday, October 21, as the court-martial concluded, Judge Advocate Coakley began his closing argument. “In a trial of one or two days, much reviewing of the facts is not necessary. But in a case that has taken as long as this, I believe that [the closing] argument can be of considerable assistance. Rather than spend too much time arguing facts and attempting to impress the court with my views or interpretations of the evidence, I believe that I can be of more assistance by reviewing the evidence and recalling it to the court’s attention. Now, the case might be generally divided into two phases: the events preceding 1100 on the ninth of August; and … the events which transpired from that time on.”
Coakley then hammered home the points he had made time and again during the trial: The conspiracy was hatched in the days after the explosion, when the men who had survived the blast were taken to Camp Shoemaker. Gradually the notion picked up steam. Those who wavered were presented with an ultimatum: you’re either with us or against us. In its second phase the rebellion became a reality when the seamen were ordered to load ammunition and they refused. Although Admiral Wright convinced most of the men of the seriousness of their actions, fifty mutineers decided to defy the authority of the Navy.
Coakley reviewed the evidence for the better part of two hours. Before the court adjourned for lunch, he left it with this: “I submit … that under the law applicable to this case, there is ample evidence to sustain a conviction of all of these fifty men under the charge and specification.… Collective insubordination, collective disobedience of lawful orders of a superior officer, is mutiny.… A conspiracy to disobey the lawful orders of a superior is mutiny.… You do not have to prove in any conspiracy case that men actually got around a table and agreed to commit a crime … men who conspire and confederate together to commit crimes do it in such a way and under such circumstances that people don’t see them doing it, and they do not shout it from the housetops.”
When the court reconvened, Coakley explored the terms mutiny and conspiracy and for fifteen minutes explained why the allegations in the case of the fifty seamen were appropriate. Before the court adjourned until Monday, October 23, Coakley concluded, “Here, we have ample proof of a specific intent, a deliberate purpose to override superior military authority.”
On Monday, October 23, it was Lieutenant Veltmann’s turn. Like Coakley, the lieutenant began by defining a number of words: mutiny, usurp, subvert, and override. Then he addressed the prosecution’s witnesses and the contradictions in their testimonies. He called one of the witnesses “the comic of the trial, glib of tongue and sharp of answer,” and not at all credible. Why, he asked, were all but four of Lieutenant Commander Coakley’s seventeen enlisted witnesses from the 8th Division? Why did he avoid calling to the stand the seamen of the 2nd and 4th Divisions? The answer, Veltmann said, was clear: because the men of the 4th Division would have “burst beyond repair the bubble of conspiracy … and destroyed the fantasy of concert of action.”
Veltmann argued that the seamen acted individually and without intent to conspire, and were motivated by “uncontrollable” fear. Many of them were lucky to have escaped the blast with their lives. Many had lost friends. Never before had they flinched about loading ammunition. These men, in other words, were not shirkers. Prior to the explosion, they were reliable and hardworking. But following the explosion, they were in a state of shock. “These fifty men,” Veltmann pointed out, “had been at Port Chicago from three to twenty-five months … They had loaded ammunition, handling all types of explosives, large and small.… They were all subjected to the danger and uncertainty of that work without an opportunity to fight back. The repercussions from that catastrophe,” he added, “linger in this court today—the damage wrought by that explosion is well known.”
The lieutenant then painted a vivid image of the July 17 tragedy. “When you cannot see or hear the danger until after it bursts in your face, until after the flames envelop your surroundings, until after the concussion has shaken your world and wiped out the lives of your fellow workers without warning, when you see them picked up in baskets and pieces—an arm, a leg, or a head and shoulder—or you pick up the remnants of human bodies, as some of these men did, when you can’t see your opponent you must fear him—fear him the more for the reason he can wipe your name from the slate of life with one sweep and you are powerless to resist his move.”
Continuing, he said, “There was no scheming or plotting toward a conspiracy or mutiny. There was talk of ammunition at Shoemaker, so the prosecution insists—yes, there probably was, but there is no reliable, recorded evidence of the type of talk the prosecution would have you believe took place.… If there was conversation among the men, it must have been of the specific incident of the explosion … the fear that it imposed in the minds of the men. What would be more natural for these men … to exchange comments along these lines?”
Then he invited the members of the court to explore their own experiences. “Have you ever discussed with a friend, with whom you witnessed an unusual scene or accident, the details involved? Didn’t you gentlemen, in fact, discuss with your acquaintances the explosion at Port Chicago? That is not conspiracy; that is not scheming; that does not provide the essential elements of mutiny or conspiracy.… The record shows that the state of the men at Shoemaker was free of contrivance, free of meetings, free of prearrangement.… And the record shows conclusively that the men of the fourth and fifth (formerly the second) divisions were at no time after the explosion, until and including the 9th of August, within immediate proximity of each other.”
Regarding the varying testimony about whether or not the seamen had been given an order to load ammunition, Veltmann reiterated that even if such orders were given, “collective insubordination” did not constitute mutiny.
By many accounts, the defense’s performance throughout the course of the trial had been excellent. Now, after thirty-two days of hearings, and after delivering a final, impassioned appeal for the innocence of the fifty seamen, Lieutenant Veltmann put their futures in the hands of the court.
Walter McDonald, NAACP San Diego branch secretary, had already cautioned the Osterhaus court to resist the temptation to make an example of the men. “Every effort should be made,” he said, “to impress the Navy with the fact that a heavy-handed sentence in this case will not make any contribution to discipline, but will, in fact, only arouse resentment among the Negro people … and will be very damaging to the national unity of the white and Negro people in behalf of the war effort.”
Following the defense’s closing remarks, Lieutenant Commander Coakley stepped forward to make his final rebuttal argument. He began with a lengthy discourse on the history of mutiny. An hour later, Admiral Osterhaus called for the court to adjourn. Coakley would be allowed more time the following day to complete his argument.
On Tuesday morning, October 24, at 9:30 a.m., Lieutenant Commander Coakley continued. First he called into question the veracity of the defense’s witnesses, explaining that they had good reason to “distort,” to “color,” and to “twist” their testimonies. Then he addressed what was perhaps the defense’s most precarious argument: that the officers had asked the defendants if they were “willing to obey orders.” Coakley reminded the court that every officer had testified that he had given a direct order. “This is the Navy,” Coakley said. “Do you think that any of the officers were in any mood to fool with them [the seamen]? Were they in any mood to ask questions? Or do you think they gave them a direct order and put them up against the proposition of obeying or disobeying it?”
Next, Coakley addressed the element of fear and the way Lieutenant Veltmann used it to explain the defendants’ disobedience. “The reason they drag it in,” Coakley cautioned the court, “is
because they have no confidence in the testimony of the accused with respect to the order issue. They probably have a feeling that the court won’t believe that after three days, they were still being asked a question, so they hang their hat on two hooks.”
Coakley paused. He knew what he was about to say had to be done just right, in order to elicit the kind of response from the court that he hoped it would. “There is a war on,” he said. “There was an ammunition ship to be loaded … and fear was no excuse. Under the circumstances I cannot understand how any man in uniform could be so depraved mentally as to come into a court of law in a time of war and under oath say, ‘I was afraid to handle ammunition.’ A man … who is so depraved as to say that is capable of giving testimony that is false.”
Still indignant over Alphonso McPherson’s accusation that he had threatened to have the seaman shot, the judge advocate surely fastened his eyes on the defendant and then on the brazen Ollie Green and then on Joe Small, who, despite Coakley’s attempts to break him, had testified with quiet defiance. These were three men, he felt, who deserved to be punished to the full extent of the law.
Coakley ended on a solemn note. “What kind of discipline, what kind of morale would we have if men in the United States Navy could refuse to obey an order and then get off on the grounds of fear?”
On Tuesday, October 24, on the trial’s thirty-third day, after 1,435 pages of single-spaced transcript typed on legal-size paper, and following the testimony of nearly one hundred witnesses, the court emerged from its quarters having deliberated less than an hour and a half, a period of time that, because it fell over the noon hour, also included a lunch break.
The Color of War Page 35