[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12] [Senate] [Pages 16656-16658] [From the U.S. 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 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. [[Page 16657]] 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. 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, [[Page 16658]] folded Stars and Stripes solemnly presented to his wife, Margaret. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico. ____________________