[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 127 (Tuesday, July 29, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7583-S7585]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO SAMUEL SNOW

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, it is with a heavy heart that I 
come here to speak about an American, who was discriminated against and 
who lived a life of trying to overcome that discrimination and was not 
treated fairly by his Government, who unexpectedly died on Sunday. This 
is Samuel Snow from Leesburg, FL. I want to tell this story because I 
want people to be outraged, as this Senator is, at the way he was 
treated by the U.S. Government.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
two articles: one from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from November of 
2007, as well as the St. Petersburg Times from July 28, 2008, after my 
comments.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, back in 1944, 27 African-
American soldiers were convicted of rioting and lynching an Italian 
prisoner of war at Fort Walton, WA. Among those convicted was Sam Snow.
  Following his conviction, he was imprisoned for almost a year, forced 
to forfeit his pay, and then when he was released from prison, he was 
discharged with a dishonorable discharge. Until recently, there was no 
hope of him receiving any kind of future health or retirement benefits 
from his admirable service during World War II.
  Sunday, Sam Snow passed away, not in his home of Leesburg, FL, but in 
Seattle, WA, because he had gone there, traveling across the country, 
for a ceremony that the U.S. Army was doing to apologize and award Sam 
Snow with an honorable discharge because for more than 64 years, Sam 
Snow had endured this injustice--imprisoned, ordered to forfeit his 
pay, dishonorably discharged--and it was all

[[Page S7584]]

wrong. The U.S. Army never got around to changing things until an 
investigative reporter in Seattle suddenly uncovered this in a book he 
wrote a few years ago.
  So the Army, last Saturday, was presenting Sam Snow with his 
honorable discharge. But he got to feeling bad. His son had to go and 
accept the honorable discharge for him. His son brought it back to him 
where he was feeling ill. He clutched it in his hands, and a few hours 
later he died.
  After that dishonorable discharge 64 years ago, he returned to his 
hometown of Leesburg, FL, with a dishonorable discharge. He took a job 
as a janitor. He took on odd jobs. He even was a neighborhood handyman. 
Last year, when the Army overturned his and those other surviving 
veterans' convictions, they decided they were going to give him his 
backpay they had taken away from him when he was imprisoned for almost 
a year. Mr. President, do you know how much that was? It was $725, 1944 
dollars.
  When a bunch of us heard about it, we petitioned the Department of 
the Army.
  I have come to this floor many times to quote President Lincoln, and 
I say it again for it is our obligation ``to care for him who shall 
have borne the battle--and for his widow, and his orphan.''
  In May, the Armed Services Committee unanimously reported out the 
Fiscal Year 2009 National Defense Authorization Act which contains a 
provision to enable the service Secretaries to adjust forfeited pay for 
all servicemembers who suffer an injustice, such as Mr. Snow, which is 
later overturned and corrected.
  It is with a heavy heart that I acknowledge Mr. Snow will not receive 
an interest-adjusted payment for his injustice. I am hopeful, however, 
that this body will soon take up the Defense authorization bill so Mr. 
Snow's family and others like them receive justice when there once was 
none.
  Today I will ask the Secretary of the Army Pete Geren to use this 
authority to ensure that Mr. Snow's surviving wife Margaret and son Ray 
receive all benefits that are due to them.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wish I could tell the story. 
I will do it later on and complete the story.

                               Exhibit 1

          [From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 3, 2007]

                 He Stood Tall After Army Dealt a Blow

                        (By Robert L. Jamieson)

       He's 83 years old and has a slight frame, shy of 5-foot-5.
       The weight he carried for 63 years, after being railroaded 
     by the Army for a Seattle crime he always said he didn't 
     commit, would have destroyed a lesser man. But that's not the 
     way of Sam Snow, whose story offers a road map for how to 
     move on after a crushing blow.
       Snow was a footnote to last week's news--the Army paved the 
     way to overturn convictions of 28 black soldiers linked to a 
     race riot and hanging of an Italian war prisoner at Fort 
     Lawton in August 1944.
       Snow was brought up on rioting charges even though he 
     wasn't involved in the fracas.
       After several months in lock-up, he was dishonorably 
     discharged, which disqualified him from the GI Bill--and a 
     chance at college.
       He was just 19 at the time, and Seattle was the only big 
     city Snow, from a small, Southern town, had visited. After 
     his ouster from the Army, Snow was hurt and ashamed, derailed 
     from the path of his own father, who served during World War 
     I.
       He returned to his segregated hometown of Leesburg, Fla., 
     poverty staring him in the face.
       But this is what Snow did next:
       He got work as a janitor, rising at 4 a.m. every day.
       He took on odd jobs working in orange groves or with 
     livestock under a fiery sun.
       In his spare time he became the neighborhood handyman and 
     never turned down a request.
       He married his sweetheart, Margaret, and they had two sons 
     and a daughter.
       He buried that daughter, just 17, after she lost her fight 
     with lupus. He buried his mother after an illness--and his 
     brother as well.
       He took in his sister's son, who was mentally challenged 
     and nurtured his potential.
       He put his own sons through college on a blue-collar 
     salary, and they went on to become teachers.
       He built a home in Leesburg--and built his brother one in 
     the lot behind.
       He became a pillar of his African Methodist Episcopalian 
     church, rising to become a lay president for the local 
     district and galvanizing people to get humanitarian aid to 
     the Third World.
       As Snow went from teenager to father to grandfather, there 
     was one thing he never did: Bad-mouth the Army.
       He did the opposite, actually, encouraging his 
     grandchildren to sign up, Ray Snow Jr., a grandson, told me 
     with a chuckle.
       ``Yes, I felt I had been served an injustice,'' Sam Snow 
     said when we caught up this week. ``But I decided I wasn't 
     going to hold a grievance against nobody.''
       He followed a life map of his own: ``Stay patient. Stay 
     humble. Don't be boastful. Take care of your family. And God 
     will make a way.''
       He always told people God would find a way to shed truth on 
     what happened long ago during his brief time in Seattle, 
     where he was on a stopover before heading to war.
       During the court-martial, he and the other soldiers had 
     defense lawyers who weren't given enough time to interview 
     them.
       The prosecution, meanwhile, botched the identification of 
     some men and held key documents the defense should have seen.
       These--and other injustices in the case--would have been 
     lost to history had Jack Hamann, a Seattle journalist, not 
     written a powerful book, ``On American Soil,'' that moved 
     Uncle Sam to take another look.
       ``Wouldn't have made it without Jack,'' Snow told me. ``He 
     believed.''
       As did another man--Howard Noyd of Bellevue.
       Noyd, now 92, was one of just two defense lawyers who 
     represented the original pool of more than 40 soldiers.
       ``We weren't given enough time even to interview all of the 
     black defendants and do justice on their behalf,'' Noyd told 
     me this week.
       ``We were not able to get the inspector general's report. 
     The government was out to get the black troops punished in 
     order to satisfy the Italian government.''
       Last week, the Army said that military prosecutors had used 
     questionable tactics that undermined a fair trial.
       In addition, Hamann says in his book, the Italian POW was 
     likely lynched by a prejudiced white military police officer.
       For Snow, whose life was shaped by two places--Seattle, 
     where fate struck in a bad way, and Leesburg, where he found 
     his way--a gross injustice has been made right.
       He never planned to stop living even after being so 
     wronged. He always believed a beautiful life was right there 
     for the making. Amen.
                                  ____


             [From the St. Petersburg Times, July 28, 2008]

                      Burden Lifted, WWII Vet Dies

                            (By John Barry)

       Samuel Snow got his father to help burn his dishonorable 
     discharge papers. Snow kept the secret from everyone in 
     Leesburg--even his own children. For six decades no one knew 
     that in 1944 he was convicted in the largest Army courts-
     martial of World War II. He worked anonymously as a church 
     janitor. ``No one wants to be a failure,'' he said.
       The Army formally apologized Saturday for the life of 
     invisibility it had inflicted on Samuel Snow for 64 years.
       It came just in time. The 83-year-old former buck private 
     fell ill the night before Saturday's ceremony in Seattle. He 
     died hours after his son placed his freshly issued honorable 
     discharge in his hands.
       Snow was 19 when he was convicted. He had been in a Seattle 
     Army camp called Fort Walton, due to be shipped out to New 
     Guinea. A riot had erupted in the camp between black soldiers 
     and a group of Italian prisoners of war. The next morning an 
     Italian POW was found lynched. Forty-three black soldiers 
     were prosecuted. Three were convicted of first-degree murder. 
     Twenty-five, including Snow, were convicted of rioting.
       It turned out they had been railroaded. A confidential Army 
     investigation called the case a sham, lacking any physical 
     evidence. A general's report speculated that an MP could have 
     done the lynching.
       That report lay buried at the National Archives until 2002, 
     when a Seattle TV reporter named Jack Hamann found it and 
     used it to write a book, On American Soil. When Hamann's book 
     was published in 2005, Samuel Snow's secret was out.
       Snow's youngest son, Ray, said the book answered questions 
     that had always nagged him. His father was the hardest-
     working man Ray had ever known. He worked ``can't-see to 
     can't-see,'' Ray said, meaning Dad left for work in the dark 
     and came home in the dark. But he worked only small, odd 
     jobs.
       Dad was living a lie. He had gone into the Army hoping to 
     be a mechanic. He had hoped to go to school on the GI Bill of 
     Rights. He had wanted more than janitorial work. But he 
     couldn't risk an employer checking into his background. He 
     couldn't even tell his wife or his kids.
       Snow was one of only two known surviving soldiers from the 
     64-year-old courts-martial. The other soldier, Roy L. 
     Montgomery, is in poor health in Chicago. He did not attend 
     the ceremonies.
       Snow fell ill and was hospitalized in Seattle after a 
     Friday dinner with his family, said Hamann and others who had 
     helped with the case. Son Ray accepted the honorable 
     discharge papers for him the next day. ``My father never held 
     any animosity,'' Ray told the audience. ``He said, `Son, God 
     has been good to me. If I hold this in my heart, then I can't 
     walk in forgiveness.' ''
       Snow's family was en route home on Monday. A funeral is 
     tentatively planned for Saturday in Leesburg.

[[Page S7585]]

       Arrangements are pending for the only thing Snow had wanted 
     from the Army besides an apology: a military sendoff, 
     including an honor guard with spit-shined shoes, a three-
     volley gun salute, taps on the bugle, folded Stars and 
     Stripes solemnly presented to his wife, Margaret.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico.

                          ____________________