Lieutenant Veltmann could tell that Gray was not a particularly responsive witness, so, when he cross-examined the seaman, he posed a number of basic questions. Could the “don’t work” list, he asked, have said, “We, the undersigned men, don’t want to handle ammunition”? Gray admitted that it could have. Then Veltmann asked him about his initial decision not to load ammunition, and Gray testified that no one had forced him to say no. It was a line of questioning that the defense had used with the other prosecution witnesses, attempting to prove that the seamen were motivated by fear and not by an insidious plan to wrest power from the hands of Mare Island’s officers. Even in their petition, the seamen had tried to strike a compliant tone.
The following day, the San Francisco Examiner, reporting on the trial, focused not on the discrepancies in the seamen’s testimony, but on Edward Stubblefield’s accusation. The paper’s headline read: THREAT TOLD AT SAILOR TRIAL: BEATING PROMISED FOES OF MUTINY.
On Friday, September 22, Lieutenant Commander Coakley, having finished with his arguments for the prosecution, prepared to turn over the courtroom to Lieutenant Veltmann, who would open his defense fully aware that Coakley had won some of the trial’s biggest battles. Veltmann hoped to reverse that tide by calling to the stand each of the fifty defendants and allowing them to testify on their own behalf. The strategy was a dangerous one. How would the men hold up under what was sure to be aggressive interrogation? They would either come across as dedicated Navy men who, after the explosion, had become victims of fear, or Coakley would undermine their testimony during cross-examination, depicting them as subversives acting together to deliberately disobey a direct order.
The following day, Lieutenant Veltmann addressed the court regarding the hearsay evidence it had allowed into the record over his frequent objections. He noted that the judge advocate, without first having proved that a conspiracy existed, introduced the evidence of alleged co-conspirators, unidentified co-conspirators, and even more brazenly unidentified seamen who were not alleged to be part of the conspiracy. “I wish the record to show,” Veltmann said, “that the defense wishes to reserve the right to submit in writing objections to the entire record when it is finally completed.” The motion was granted, and at 11:15 the court adjourned.
On Tuesday, September 26, the defense called Division No. 2 Seaman Second Class Edward Longmire to the stand. In the immediate aftermath of the blast, Longmire had been transferred to Camp Stoneman. By late July, however, he was back at Port Chicago. On August 9 he was bused with the rest of his division from Port Chicago to Mare Island. Although no one had told the men why they were being moved, many guessed the reason: once again they would be loading ships. Only three weeks after the explosion, everyone was still traumatized. Upon arriving at Mare Island, they left the bus, mustered, and then Lieutenant James Tobin explained why they were there and asked them if they were planning to obey orders. When they hesitated, he told them to separate into two groups: those willing to load, and those unwilling. When Tobin spoke to Longmire, the seaman confessed that he was “afraid of ammunition.” Tobin then instructed him to give his name to the assistant division head. Coakley’s witnesses had said that some of the seamen had grown cocky and unruly and were congratulating those who were brave enough to submit their names. Longmire, however, contradicted their testimony. Their mood was anything but brash.
On the night of August 10, Longmire heard Joe Small speak aboard the barge. According to Longmire, the seamen were subdued, and a composed Small spoke but never said anything about “having the officers by the balls” or “the tail,” as a number of prosecution witnesses, including petty officer Stubblefield, said he had. Instead Small cautioned the men, exhorting them “to watch their conduct and cooperate with the shore patrol officers.” The meeting was brief, and at no time did Small or anyone else force Longmire to say that he would disobey orders. Unlike Stubblefield, Longmire depicted Small not as a ringleader, bullying the others into rebellion, but as a responsible and respected spokesman who encouraged the men to stay out of trouble.
In a deep Alabama drawl, Longmire also testified that after Admiral Wright’s speech, he had tried to join the men who were willing to load ships, but was told by Lieutenant Tobin that it was too late for a change of heart. Afterward, he was taken to the stockade at Camp Shoemaker, where a lieutenant pressed him for details of the barge meeting. “If you want us to help you, you have got to help us,” he said. “There is a side for the sheeps and a side for the goats.” Longmire insisted that he did not have the kind of information the lieutenant wanted. He had not coerced anybody into not working, nor had he been coerced himself. After questioning him, the lieutenant read what he called Longmire’s “statement.” The seaman was taken aback. He had not said those things. When Longmire objected, the two got into a shouting match, and the officer informed him that he would not change a word.
When Veltmann asked the seaman if anyone had told him that he had to make a statement, Longmire answered, “No, sir, no one told me that I had to make a statement, but they put it to you so funny … anyway after they was talking about shooting I was afraid.”
The day’s most shocking testimony came from Ollie Green of the 4th Division, who had suffered multiple lacerations in the explosion and almost lost an eye. A thirty-seven-year-old Washington, D.C., native who had made his living before the Navy as a special delivery man and cardplayer, Green might have been the oldest seaman at Port Chicago. He was also one of Lieutenant Delucchi’s favorites, a man who could be trusted to do a good day’s work. Judge Advocate Coakley, however, was determined to break Green down, and hammered him about whether Lieutenant Delucchi had given him a direct order to load ammunition. Although Green had only a grammar school education, the lieutenant commander’s tactics did not intimidate him.
At one point, Lieutenant Commander Coakley asked him, “And before you broke your wrist on the eighth of August, did you intend to say no if you were ordered to load ammunition?”
Green replied, “If I was ordered to, I would have had to load it.”
Then Coakley said, “Answer the question, please. Before you broke your wrist on the eighth of August, did you intend to say no if you were ordered to load ammunition?”
Green was resolute. “If I was ordered to, I would have had to load it, sir.”
Coakley persisted, “But—”
Green interrupted him: “I had never been ordered to load ammunition.”
Green’s claim that he had never been given a direct order might have sounded deceitful. But at the time Delucchi and the other officers might have deliberately avoided ordering the men to load out of fear for their careers in the event that they might have to go on record with the mutiny charge.
Coakley continued to grill the seaman, not about Delucchi, but this time about Chaplain Flowers. “You testified on direct examination that the chaplain asked you if you were going to work and that you said no.”
Green corrected the lieutenant commander. “He asked me was I willing to go to work and I said no.”
Angered by what he felt was Green’s obstinacy, Coakley fired back, “You heard him testify that he gave you an order.” Perhaps he thought that the seamen would not be bold enough to contradict a chaplain, but Green held his ground.
“No, sir,” he responded. “The chaplain asked me was I willing to work and I told him, ‘No, sir.’ He didn’t give me no order.”
After Coakley realized that he could not break Green, he announced that he had no more questions. Admiral Osterhaus then asked the seaman if he had any comments before leaving the witness stand.
“I got a couple of things to say, sir,” Green replied. “The reason I was afraid to go down and load ammunition [was because] them officers [were] … racing each division to see who put on the most tonnage, and I knowed the way they was handling ammunition, it was liable to go off again. If we didn’t work fast … they wanted to put us in the brig.”
No one had dared to say it. The naval c
ourt of inquiry had addressed the issue and arrived at the benign conclusion that the “loading of explosives should never be a matter of competition,” but no one had come out and made the link between the constant pressure to move ships in and out of Port Chicago as fast as possible and the explosion. Green was accusing the officers of having precipitated the disaster.
In the courtroom there was silence, except for the sound of newspaper reporters scribbling in their notebooks. Green continued, “That is exactly the way—put it on fast; if we didn’t put it on fast they want to put us in the brig. That is my reason for not going down there.”
On Wednesday, September 27, one day after Ollie Green’s testimony and nearly two weeks into the trial, Marine guards escorted Joe Small from solitary confinement at Camp Shoemaker to Yerba Buena Island, where he was called to the stand. Small was the witness that everyone was waiting for, especially Lieutenant Commander Coakley, who hoped to portray him during cross-examination as the chief agitator.
Small, like many of the men before him, testified that in the weeks after the blast the seamen were terrified. Many, like Douglas Anthony, one of the accused, who had suffered a concussion and had cuts on his legs, face, and also his left eye, were injured when the ships exploded. Others, like John Gipson and Charles Hazard, two of the fifty defendants, were forced to handle the mangled bodies. So the explosion was all they talked about. They prayed for survivor’s leave and new assignments, even if those assignments involved loading ammunition somewhere else. They just wanted to put as much distance between themselves and Port Chicago as they could.
While being questioned by Lieutenant Veltmann, Small told of an incident that had happened at Camp Shoemaker before the seamen were transferred to Mare Island. It was after taps, and the barracks were dark, when one of the men dragged his bunk across the floor. To the men who had survived the Port Chicago blast, the rumble sounded like a precursor to another explosion. It woke them from their sleep and they scrambled for the door, tripping over bunks and banging their shins. When they realized that it was nothing more than a practical joke, they cursed the man. Some wanted to beat him. If Small had not stepped in, they might have made good on their threats.
Following the story, Lieutenant Veltmann questioned Small as he went through the events of August 9. After the men balked at the prospect of loading another ship and were interviewed in the recreation building, Small testified that Lieutenant Delucchi had him muster the men who were unwilling to work. The lieutenant then made it clear to Small that he and Ollie Green, Myrle Wylie, one of Percy Robinson’s Hawks, and another seaman were in charge. They would have to make sure the men got their gear and made it to the barge. Once there, it was their job to maintain discipline. “Keep things straight,” Delucchi told Small. If it seemed an odd order to be giving the ringleader of an alleged mutiny, Veltmann chose not to make an issue of it.
On the night of August 10, not long before taps, Small and a number of other men called a meeting on the lower deck of the barge. Under oath, Small testified that he told the men to knock off the rough stuff. Then he encouraged them to be on their best behavior, to obey the shore patrol guards so that white Marine guards would not be brought in. Then he urged them to “pull together.”
Veltmann interrupted. “What did you mean by that?”
“I meant to pull together in keeping themselves straight,” Small explained. “If one got off wrong, it was up to his shipmate, his pal, whoever it might be, to tell him to ‘straighten up and fly right.’ ”
Veltmann again interjected. “In other words, you meant to keep order?” Veltmann’s strategy was to show that Small had taken Lieutenant Delucchi’s order seriously. Veltmann was taking a risk. To highlight Small’s role as the primary speaker that night could be ruinous.
Next, Lieutenant Veltmann drew Small’s attention to August 12, the day that he and the others were taken to Camp Shoemaker. Small was placed in solitary confinement and then interviewed by a lieutenant. At no point did the lieutenant reveal that he was drafting a statement. When he brought the copies in for him to sign, Small was surprised.
“Did you sign them?” Veltmann inquired, to which Small answered, “I did sign them, yes, sir.”
“Why did you sign them?” Veltmann asked.
“Well,” Small answered, “he told me to sign them. I was under orders from him; he just shoved them and said, ‘Sign them,’ and so I signed them.”
Having achieved his goal of depicting Small as anything but uncooperative, Veltmann sat down at the defense table and turned over the courtroom to Lieutenant Commander Coakley. In an attempt to find discrepancies in Small’s testimony, the judge advocate went over much the same ground as Veltmann. At times Coakley bordered on antagonistic, most especially when he was grilling Small about calling the meeting on the barge.
“Now, then,” said Coakley, “you called it, didn’t you?”
“Well, that’s where all the petty officers come in,” said Small. “One is as much to blame as the other.”
Coakley then referred to Small’s interrogation at Camp Shoemaker. “In that conversation … I will ask you whether or not these questions were asked of you and these answers given: ‘Q. Who called the meeting? A. I did, sir. Q. How was the meeting called? A. I just went through the barge and asked all the men to gather on the lower deck.’ Were these questions asked you and those answers given?”
Small paused. “Well, they were asked, but it wasn’t exactly that way, that is not exactly the answer.”
“Answer the question yes or no,” said the lieutenant commander. “Either you did or you didn’t.”
When Lieutenant Veltmann objected, Coakley answered that he was “laying a foundation for impeachment,” attempting to destroy Small’s credibility as a witness.
“I will ask you again, when you were asked the question who called the meeting, did you say, ‘I did, sir’?”
“I did,” Small yielded. But then he added, “I had a part in calling it.”
Osterhaus called for a lunch recess. After everyone returned to the courtroom, Coakley again bore down on Small, referring frequently to the statement he had made at Camp Shoemaker in order to highlight holes and half-truths in his testimony. It was a grueling cross-examination for both Small and Judge Advocate Coakley, but no matter how much the lieutenant commander hounded him, Small would not recant. He had not called the meeting in order to organize the men to take over the base. Nor had he or anyone else engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the authority of the officers at Mare Island.
As for the mutiny charge, Small testified that he and the others were well aware of what mutiny meant. The Great Lakes Naval Training Center required that all recruits, black and white alike, read the 1940 edition of the Bluejackets’ Manual, which was the one used throughout World War II. Chapters Four and Five of that manual were devoted to “Rules and Regulations” and addressed issues related to misconduct and punishments.
After Small, Lieutenant Veltmann called upon a number of other witnesses to testify. Then he recalled Ollie Green to the stand. Admiral Osterhaus reminded the seaman that his oath was still binding. The only question that Veltmann asked Green was whether or not Lieutenant Delucchi had made him one of the bosses of the barge.
“Small and me and Willie Gray and Myrle Wylie,” Green answered.
Then it was Lieutenant Coakley’s turn. Green had frustrated the judge advocate earlier in the trial, and now that the seaman was back on the witness stand, Coakley seemed determined to exact some kind of revenge.
“By the way, Green,” Coakley asked, “what was your occupation before you were drafted—you were drafted, weren’t you?” The lieutenant commander was trying to impugn Green’s character by insinuating that the seaman had no interest in serving until he was forced to by Uncle Sam.
“Yes, sir,” Green replied.
Then Coakley asked again, “What was your occupation before you—”
But Veltmann cut him off; what Green did before the N
avy was immaterial. When the court sustained Veltmann’s objection, Coakley announced that he wanted to continue to pursue the same line of questioning. This time Osterhaus allowed it, and the lieutenant commander rephrased his questions. Green was evasive and uncharacteristically intimidated. Then, finally, he confessed that before entering the Navy he had “made a living on the game of chance.”
Coakley saw his chance and, raising his voice, confronted the seaman. “Green, you were one of the leaders in this thing, weren’t you? You were one of the leaders in this refusal of the men of the Fourth Division to work, weren’t you?”
No one was more surprised by Coakley’s outburst than Lieutenant Veltmann. It was more than the judge advocate trying to prejudice the court against the witness. Clearly things had become personal between him and Green.
On September 28 the two largest San Francisco daily papers, the Chronicle and the Examiner, ran articles on the trial. Under the headline ORGANIZED RESISTANCE TO ORDERS DENIED, the Chronicle concerned itself largely with Small’s denial of having instigated a mutiny. The Examiner ran the headline TERROR TOLD IN MUTINY TRIAL. A story run by the Chicago Defender also focused on Small’s story about the panic at Camp Shoemaker. The paper’s correspondent, John Badger, wrote that Veltmann’s key witness had painted a “vivid, terrifying picture of fear that gripped [the men] after the fatal Port Chicago blast.”
• • •
Over the next few days, Veltmann questioned and Coakley cross-examined some of the defense witnesses. Veltmann succeeded in establishing that most of the defendants had signed the written statements prepared by the interrogators at Camp Shoemaker under stressful circumstances. Some felt that they had been forced to give their signatures against their will, while others maintained that the statements were only rough approximations of what they had really said. In a number of cases it had been Lieutenant Commander Coakley who had recorded their admissions.
The Color of War Page 34
