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I am a veteran of the Viet Nam era Navy (1970-74)and participated in a court martial as a witness. The Navy of the Viet Nam era was known to be racist and indeed there were a number of incidents that caused Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt to institute "rap sessions" where sailors would discuss the problems and hopefully change their behavior and understanding of minorities.

The incident which led to the court martial I was involved with stemmed from a racial incident aboard the USS Horne (DLG-30)at anchor off Beppu, Japan, in the spring of 1974. The crew off watch, gathered on the ship's stern at the end of the day. One of my men, black, was insulted with the "N" word, went to his bunk and got his oriental fighting sticks (the ones connected by rope or chain) and proceeded to swing it at his tormentors. He was taken into custody by the Master at Arms and court martialed.

He was clearly guilty of the assault, but the event was motivated by racism, an endemic problem in the Navy at the time. His counsel, a Navy JAG lawyer, was a young Ensign just out of Law School who, I thought at the time, got eaten alive by the Marine lawyer prosecuting. Military law tends to assume guilt until innocence is proved in my experience, so the sailor was bound to be found guilty, but his lawyer was pretty ineffectual I thought. I think he got 3 or maybe 6 months in the brig.

It was a tough situation. He was insulted by other sailors on a racial basis, but the violence of his response was as unwise as it was clear. As an isolated incident of the times it was pretty cut and dried. But seen in the larger context of the Navy's racial problems it is tragic. The white sailors who issued the first insults were punished at Captain's Mast (a lower level of military justic and at the discretion of the ship's captain)with some loss of pay and restriction to the ship.

As an example of the routine racism aboard ship then, there was an earlier incident in which this same black sailor and a white sailor in my watch section were both late for muster one morning. The black sailor had been written up as UA (Unauthorized Absence)by the leading Chief Petty Officer, and the white sailor was not. This being unfair, I wrote up the white sailor which brought the Chief down on my head with threats to write me up. I said "fine with me. I don't mind talking with the Captain" which backed the Chief down and both write-ups were withdrawn.

Thanks for this topic.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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