On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II Jack Hamann Algonquin Books 368pp. ISBN: 1565123948 Available from Powell's Books.

Fast forward forty-three years. Jack Hamann, a young reporter with a local rag, has been assigned to cover a sewage treatment expansion. It's dull work, and soon Hamann is talking with a park ranger who directs him to a strange headstone. The headstone was Olivotto's -- and that's where Hamann became part of the story. Since then, Hamann has served as a reporter, network correspondent and documentary producer -- and most recently as Seattle bureau chief for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. A veteran of PBS, CNN, and NBC, Hamann has won ten Emmy Awards for his work. He is, obviously, a dedicated man, and one well-suited to this sort of story. Luck, too, had its part in the telling, as it was only through Hamann's access to previously classified documents and extensive interviews that he was able to expose a miscarriage of justice that took place more than fifty years ago.

On American Soil features forty-three defendants, two counsel and a whole host of secondary characters, including witnesses, family members, judges and political figures. Every single one of them gets his or her say in the story of what happened. As such, any sort of synopsis is going to do a disservice to both the multi-layered story that Hamann presents, and his methodical, and impressively thorough, research. The book begins August 15th, 1944, as two military policemen find Olivotto's body strung from the obstacle course cables. What was an Italian POW doing in Seattle, living on an American military base? Much to the consternation of American servicemen and their families, thousands of Italian soldiers, having surrendered in combat, were shipped stateside to live in the coastal army barracks. Moreover, they had been granted more than a few liberties that grated on people like M.C. Swope, the fiancée of a soldier stationed in New Jersey: "They (the Italian POWs) are free to 'clutter up' the PX and Service Club, which has always been overcrowded with our own boys who have a perfect right to be there, thus making it practically impossible to get service and further necessitates the rubbing of elbows with men who not many months ago would have destroyed our boys if given the opportunity." (52)

In addition, Fort Lawton had two segregated regiments of African-American soldiers, who were generally treated professionally, if not genially, by their white counterparts, but were usually avoided by the Italian POWs. These subtle tensions were leading the base to a riot. The initial report of the riot was filed by Colonel John Nash: "There were some Negro troops being staged right adjacent to the Italian Service Unit area and beat up the Italians and stole some of their property. About thirty Italians were injured, none seriously. This morning, one of the Italians was found hanging from a tree. It has not been determined whether the Negroes did it or whether he committed suicide." Four hundred soldiers ­- every member of two Negro port companies ­- were now locked in a stockade "to prevent any further trouble." (104)

As to what actually happened that hot August night, there are striking differences between eyewitness accounts and military reports. When officials went to question participants, there were often glaring errors in their alibis and their adherence to protocol. Although no one was seen with Olivotto, three American soldiers were charged with his murder, and forty others with rioting. All defendants were black. Leon Jaworski was brought in to prosecute the case. At the time, he was a fierce litigator, but still relatively unknown.

There is a brief pause in the narrative as Hamann provides a shortened history for Jaworski: named for an ancient warrior king, called "Nidi" by his family, strong German accent and subject to prejudice because of it, law school graduate at 19, youngest lawyer in Texas at age 20. In the midst of talking about Jaworski, Hamann tosses in a small detail about Texans calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" during World War I. There is an obvious connection to "freedom fries", but Hamann refuses to make it. As elsewhere in the book, the questions and connections that are raised go without comment, wisely avoiding controversy even as the past provides another angle from which to view current events.

At trial's end, the fate of forty-three men lay in the hands of nine judges. "There was no reason to expect the process would go quickly. The court was permitted to take but one closed-door vote on each of the charges against each defendant, so the judges were likely to spend plenty of time reviewing all the evidence before casting any ballots." (280) Moreover, the number of judges agreeing on guilt could change the sentence a defendant might receive; if six of nine judges voted guilty, a defendant could be sentenced to a term not longer than ten years; if seven judges agreed, the term could extend the length of the defendant's life. For those on trial for their life, it would take the concurrence of all nine judges for the death penalty to be applied. In the end, however, the judges only deliberated about twelve hours, or less than eighteen minutes per defendant. Thirteen men were immediately acquitted; the others received sentences ranging from five years to twenty-five years hard labor. Revealing their sentences isn't giving away the ending; the punishment is not the point. How the military conducted itself, what stories are given credence, issues of race, and the years that it took for the truth to come to light -- that's the story, and that story has no ending. Hamann has created a book that perfectly encapsulates a time and place with far-reaching consequences. It might not be beach reading, but you could do far worse, and could scarcely do better.

-- Tyson Lynn

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