by David Ward
On August 28, 1941, a new “special treatment unit” opened with three tiers of cells fronted by grills of tool-proof steel bars. Six cells on the main floor were constructed with steel floors and featured solid steel doors in addition to barred grill doors. Two of the six cells had “oriental toilets” (a hole in the floor). The new design allowed for isolation of rule breakers from the general population and solitary confinement cells for those who continued to make trouble even in a punishment unit. From that date forward Warden Johnston and Director Bennett could honestly deny that any prisoner on the Rock was locked up in the dungeon.
As the trial of an Alcatraz convict in 1941 demonstrated, the earlier use of the dungeons would continue to trouble Bureau of Prisons officials who did not want to be held responsible for having employed such a primitive means of punishment. The grills that covered the fronts of the basement cells were removed and discarded and their use as places of punishment appears to have been forgotten by Alcatraz wardens after James Johnston. Sanford Bates’s successor, Bennett, denied these cells had been used when after his retirement he was asked if dungeon confinement had been an early feature of the Alcatraz regime. He contended that while he was aware that many prisoners had claimed that the dungeon was used, “If the Alcatraz staff had actually placed prisoners in these cells Bureau Headquarters would have known about it.”9 Despite correspondence reporting the use of lower solitary from Warden Johnston to Directors Bates and Bennett, and despite the numerous entries referring to these cells in prisoners’ files and in other Alcatraz records, James Bennett’s position remained as expressed in a letter to Supreme Court Justice Harlan after the Bureau had ceased operations on the island:
I am personally much interested in the history of the island and the purposes it has served over the years. When we occupied the island there were frequently charges that we were utilizing some of the alleged dungeons under the institution for the punishment of prisoners committed to the island. Apparently there was a time when some of the caverns on the island were used but this was long discontinued before we ever took over the administration of the institution from the military.10
The tension between Bureau headquarters and James Johnston over the use of a form of punishment that lent credibility to charges that confinement at Alcatraz was brutal and inhumane was never clearer than in regard to the use of the lower solitary cells. Lieutenant Maurice Ordway summarized the disagreement between Alcatraz and Bureau administrators:
Johnston and [his deputies] said, “We’re going to run this thing and we’re going to run it our way.” They did. And they used those cells.11
A MORE SERIOUS CHALLENGE TO AUTHORITY
Toward the end of 1935, the initial mix of military, McNeil Island, Lorton (D.C.), Leavenworth Annex, and Lewisburg prisoners combined with the more sophisticated, long-term offenders from Atlanta and Leavenworth had changed markedly. Many of the relatively short-term, lesser offenders had been transferred, more real convicts from the two penitentiaries had arrived, and more of the big-time felons, such as Dock Barker, had been caught up in the government’s dragnet and shipped to the island.
As the inmate population approached more the character originally envisioned by the Department of Justice, it was only a matter of time before prisoners organized another work strike. On December 25, 1935, and again on December 31, rumors about a strike were frequent and specific enough that the guard force was alerted to the possibility of trouble. Then again on the morning of January 20, 1936, all staff were advised that a strike was to begin that morning in the laundry. Extra guards armed with gas bombs were dispatched to the laundry and sent to the towers, gun galleries, and cell house.
The walkout began when six men left their work assignments, walked down the stairs to the door of the laundry, and clapped their hands. At this signal, sixty-eight other inmates left their work places, while twenty-four remained at their posts. The men proceeded to the door amidst shouts of “Let’s get the guys that wouldn’t quit work,” but no action followed this threat. Other prisoners then walked off their jobs in the blacksmith shop, the mat shop, and the carpenter shop as well as the entire general labor crew—a total of 101 men.
Deputy Warden Shuttleworth found himself with a much larger number of angry strikers on his hands than he had had in the previous year’s protest. Having stationed himself in the industries area in anticipation of trouble, he confronted the protesting inmates with a large group of guards. The strikers obeyed his instructions to march back up the steps to the cell house, where they were locked in their own cells. Shuttleworth reported to Warden Johnston that most of the “agitation” was due to five men he identified as “communists.”
A precipitating factor in this strike was convicts’ anger over the death of prisoner Jack Allen a few days earlier. After his transfer to Alcatraz, Allen was determined to have “active, moderately advanced pulmonary tuberculosis,” and his transfer to the Springfield Medical Center had been recommended. But when an inmate in the hospital alleged that Allen had exchanged sputum cups with another prisoner in the ward, Allen was sent back to the general population.12
During the daytime sick call on January 13, 1936, Allen had complained of pain in his stomach and was examined by the Public Health Service resident intern, who reported that he could find nothing wrong. During the evening of the same day, Allen called from his cell to the lieutenant on duty to complain that he was sick and experiencing pain and cramps in his stomach. The intern was called down from the hospital. After examining Allen, he determined again that the inmate
did not appear to be critically ill in any way. . . . In fact, in view of the absence of any physical findings and having in mind his previous history of malingering . . . I was decidedly under the impression that the patient was putting on a show in order to get back into the hospital.13
The intern gave Allen some aspirin, told him to return in the morning for reexamination, and left orders with the custodial staff that he was not to be called again that night. Allen, however, continued to complain and his moans and groans prompted a warning from the lieutenant that if he kept making these sounds he would be placed in solitary. When Allen continued to moan and call out for the chief medical officer, guards removed him from his cell and put him in a D block isolation cell. When guards checked him the following morning, they saw that something was wrong and Allen was taken to the prison hospital, where it was determined that his stomach was badly swollen and he was running a high temperature. Several hours later he underwent exploratory surgery, which revealed a perforated gastric ulcer for which treatment was initiated. Two days later Allen developed a high temperature, began to cough, and experienced difficulty in breathing. At examination this time it was determined that he was suffering from pneumonia; treatment commenced, but his condition deteriorated rapidly and on the afternoon of January 17, Jack Allen became the first prisoner to die at Alcatraz.
Inmates’ resentment ran high over what they regarded as callous treatment given to Allen by the medical staff. Combined with widespread frustration over the lack of privileges such as radios that were allowed at other federal prisons, it was enough to fuel the strike. After interviewing every strike participant, and receiving information from several informants, Shuttleworth was able to identify the leaders of the protest and ordered them placed in isolation cells. Convict Henry Young was among those selected for isolation because he admitted to dumping some four hundred pounds of prepared vegetables on the floor before he abandoned his job on the kitchen crew. Norman Whitaker was identified as one of the principal agitators because he had begun a hunger strike at breakfast on the morning of the twentieth, and another seven or eight inmates had joined in this form of protest over the next several days. John Paul Chase, Ralph Roe, James Lucas, and several other men were placed in isolation, not because they were identified as leaders of the strike but because they “lost their heads during the excitement.”14
Fifteen men in isolation cells went on a hunger strike t
o protest their restricted diet of one full meal and two issues of bread and water per day. After they refused food for three days, the chief medical officer ordered that they be force-fed, at which point five men accepted the liquid mixture of milk, eggs, and sugar; ten others were fed through a tube forced down their throats. After several more days, all of the protesters stopped the hunger strike, but they were held in isolation to separate them from men in the general population who were by then reporting to their regular work assignments.
Warden Johnston, while assuring Bureau headquarters that everything on the island was peaceful and under control, reported that he had been required to move inmate ringleaders in and out of the solitary cells in A block and in the dungeons below the cell house. The basement cells were used to separate the leaders from the followers, in order to disrupt inmate solidarity. Johnston also reported that the unrenovated D block had been pressed into service as a separate disciplinary segregation unit. He complained that the lack of any wall or barrier between D block and the B and C blocks allowed the agitators to continue trying to influence other inmates by shouting threats from their D block cells. What was needed, said Johnston, was a separate disciplinary segregation unit. Approval from Washington, D.C., to remodel D block would not come, however, until a sensational escape several years later demonstrated the folly of placing the prison’s most disruptive inmates in old cells that did not have new tool-proof steel bars like those in the other cell blocks.
Eleven men identified as the major instigators of the strike lost all the good time they had earned on their sentences up to the date of the strike. In addition, Warden Johnston asked but did not receive approval from Bureau headquarters to remove all the good time the strike leaders could ever earn in the future—a punitive measure amounting to many years of additional imprisonment.
Two months after the strike, eleven strikers remained locked up; four months later, five of them were still in isolation cells. Newspaper reporters heard rumors but as usual were unsuccessful in obtaining any firsthand information. Nevertheless, stories appeared even in the nation’s capital with sensational headlines such as “Fox [Norman Whitaker] Headed 3 Days of Madness in Western Crime Fortress” and “Capone Now Cowers in Cell Fearing Death from Mutineers.”15
THE PRESS TRIES TO SATISFY PUBLIC CURIOSITY
If Alcatraz had been located in a relatively unpopulated area and hidden from view, the public might have lost interest in it after the initial uproar over its creation. But the prison was in the middle of San Francisco Bay, in full view of more than a million Bay Area residents, and everyone knew it held a collection of newsworthy felons. Ferryboats transporting hundreds of commuters steamed past the island daily, plying their routes between Sausalito, Tiburon, Angel Island, and San Francisco. Sailboats and pleasure craft cruised around the island, sometimes coming as close as several hundred yards from the rocky cliffs. Telescopes mounted on piers at Fisherman’s Wharf offered residents and tourists a close-up view of the prison’s walls, buildings, barred windows, and gun towers. But no one was allowed to look behind the walls, and not one word about what was going on inside was issued by Alcatraz or BOP headquarters.
As time passed and officials remained silent about how the prison’s remarkable assemblage of outlaws, desperadoes, gangsters, and prison troublemakers was getting along, curiosity only intensified. Newspaper reporters, editors, and representatives of the national wire services and every major newspaper and magazine in the country besieged Warden Johnston and his superiors in Washington, D.C., with requests to visit the prison and to interview staff and inmates. Every news organization promised to present to the public “the truth about Alcatraz” but what they all really wanted was to exploit the rumors of madness and torture and to obtain information about how Big Al, Kelly, and the rest of the Rock’s star-studded cast were getting along with each other, and with Alcatraz.
After failing in repeated requests for its reporters to visit the island, a Bay Area newspaper attempted to force a response from the Bureau of Prisons and Warden Johnston to allegations of brutality. In fall 1935 the San Francisco News claimed that it had received information smuggled out of Alcatraz that conditions at the prison were so harsh and inhumane that three prisoners had been driven mad and four other men had tried to kill themselves. It printed a story under the headline “Note Says 3 Driven Insane at Alcatraz: Brutality and Torture Charged in Letter Smuggled from ‘Devil’s Isle.’ Ridiculous says Warden. Prisoner Declares Inmates Beaten, Shot with Gas Guns, Starved.”16
According to the story, the smuggled note claimed that inmate Edgar Lewis had been “kept in a dungeon for a total of more than 6 weeks, starved, shot in face with gas gun, beat over head with clubs by three guards.” Because of this punishment, Lewis “is now insane and is kept in a cage in the hospital.” The note, it said, ended with a plea: “In the name of God, do something!”17
Bureau of Prisons headquarters regarded this article as an attempt by the press to force disclosure of information about specific inmates. Warden Johnston was reminded that the policy approved by Attorney General Cummings to neither affirm nor deny any news related to the prisoners at Alcatraz was still firmly in place:
In no instance should we be put in the position of becoming a disputant with a prisoner, or be drawn into a publicity article in an attempt to answer any rumor or charge made to or through newspapers. Everything possible should be done to build up a tradition for complete stoppage of news relating to prisoners confined in Alcatraz. As far as the public is concerned, a veil of mystery should hang over the prison, and the prisoner in Alcatraz should lose his place in the public notice that attended his capture and trial.18
This initial instance of a sensationalized “news” report was a sign of what was to come. The press would always be able to glean bits of information—whether it was from “smuggled letters” of questionable authenticity, careless remarks by a small number of employees who lived on the mainland, the statements of released or transferred inmates, or terse press releases from the warden or the BOP—and transform them into sensational stories to feed the public’s curiosity. And as long as the Bureau maintained its policy of not responding to the stories, readers in the outside world generally concluded that the reports must be true.
CRACKS IN THE “WALL OF SILENCE”
In early February, shortly after the January 1936 strike, a former Alcatraz inmate was released from Leavenworth, where he had been transferred a month earlier. Reporters were eager to talk with Al “Sailor” Loomis, and he was happy to answer their questions about the sixteen months he had spent imprisoned on the Rock. His comments were reported in newspapers across the country. The story printed in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Just a Life of Hell—That’s Felon’s Alcatraz Story—Monotony Breaks Spirit” focused on the psychological elements of punishment:
Once again that wall of silence surrounding Alcatraz Island has been pierced and details learned of what is asserted happening to the Nation’s no. 1 public enemies in the rocky Federal prison. Al (Sailor) Loomis, counterfeiter, recently released from prison, told his story in Kansas City yesterday. It is similar to other stories told by convicts who previously have been released from the island. “It’s hell,” said Loomis. “I don’t know enough words to make a person realize just what the convicts have to endure on the island,” he said. “The real truth has never been told.” Loomis complained bitterly of mistreatment at Alcatraz, but indicated it was mental rather than physical. “Why a man can talk only six minutes a day in that place,” he said. “Three minutes in the morning and three in the afternoon. It’s the ‘island of mistreated men.’ Soon it will be the ‘island of mad men.’ Life gets so monotonous you feel like bucking the rules to break the monotony.”
Loomis depicted the daily routine as unvarying and stupefying, with rules against everything. He made a point of mentioning lower solitary, which he called “the hole,” characterizing it as “a dungeon where rule breakers are confin
ed on diet of bread and water. There wasn’t a day I spent on the island that there wasn’t at least four in the hole for violating some regulation.”19
The story of another former Alcatraz inmate also appeared in early 1936. Harry Johnson, a citizen of England and a first offender, had been in the federal prison system only because he had committed his crime in a U.S. territory (Alaska), and he had wound up at Alcatraz only because the Bureau of Prisons needed to fill up the new prison’s cells. As a federal prisoner, Johnson developed into a prolific and accomplished writer of short stories and essays—and numerous requests for clemency.20 His appeals for a reduction in his prison term paid off when President Franklin Roosevelt commuted his sentence. He was turned over to Immigration and Naturalization Service officers on October 21, 1935, transported to New York, and put on a ship for England. He never returned to the United States, but he did reflect on his thirteen months at Alcatraz in an article sent from England that appeared in U.S. newspapers under the title “Terrors and Tortures as the Background of the Riots on Uncle Sam’s ‘Devil’s Island.’ ”
The eternal silence, the underground dungeons, complete severance from the world of free men, from newspapers and letters from relatives and friends, no comforts, not so much as a photo on a cell wall—a straight-jacket, changeless routine under threat of Alcatraz “solitary” which is different from any I ever heard of, guards’ clubs, guns and tear gas. Tear gas, why, there are vents in each cell from which if some jailer pressed the button, the stuff would pour out; in globes that would shatter from a finger-flick, it hangs from the dining and other hall ceilings, and a “screw” could bring them smashing down like rain with a button push.
