Jack Hamann’s career highlighted by his "On American Soil" represents a classic case of procedural journalistic sleaziness in pursuit of profit and recognition. Dominic Moreo 's "Riot at Fort Lawton" sets the record straight on Black American Soldiers Lynching of Italian POW Guglielmo Olivotto in 1944, and the senseless beatings of helpless unarmed dozens of other Italian Americans, who were hospitalized.

Political Correctness to compensate for past injustices to Blacks "required" this "RIOT" with Blacks as the aggressors and Italian POWs as the Victims, to give HERO status to those Rioters, and a Celebration, a pompous ceremony was held at Fort Lawton to shower plaques, medals and praise on the rioters, whom the Secretary of the Army and city officials declared to be "heroes" who "deserved the blessings of the angels." The first rioter to attack the Italian barracks, African American soldier Samuel Snow, was even scheduled to be the guest of honor at the Seafair Torchlight Parade! 

Why Are we Celebrating Jack Hamann's Career?

The Daily of University of Washington 
Samantha Chase
Beacon Hill, Seattle
Friday, March 13, 2009

Friday night, the UW Alumni Association sponsored what its Web site refers to as a "celebration" following a lecture by Jack Hamann. What exactly are they celebrating? A sloppy and obscene political whitewash of inconvenient local history.

The subject and crowning achievement of Jack Hamann’s career represents a classic case of the procedural journalistic sleaziness I fear no society could ever fully shake regardless of the empowered interests or perspectives it serves.

A few years ago, Italian American author Dominic Moreo published "Riot at Fort Lawton", an in-depth study of the August 1944 riot at Seattle’s Fort Lawton installation that left an Italian prisoner of war hanging lifeless from a rope. It is immediately obvious why Jack Hamann was approached by local bigwigs to write "On American Soil" a laughably far-fetched, politically motivated revision of the story when you read this sentence: "The murdered Italian prisoner of war Guglielmo Olivotto was last seen by Italian soldiers being carried off by several of the hundreds of African-American soldiers who stormed the Italian barracks with knives, clubs and hatchets, hospitalizing dozens."

Hamann’s ostentatiously PC thesis " that Clyde Lomax, a white military policeman, seized upon a tiny window of opportunity with superhuman strength and speed to scare off Olivotto’s African American attackers and lynch Olivotto himself in order to frame the former " is not only stated as fact by local politicians, it is enshrined in local and federal government policy. Last summer, a pompous ceremony was held at Fort Lawton to shower plaques, medals and praise on the rioters, whom the Secretary of the Army and city officials declared to be "heroes" who “deserved the blessings of the angels." The first rioter to attack the Italian barracks, African American soldier Samuel Snow, was even scheduled to be the guest of honor at the Seafair Torchlight Parade! Such transparent political gestures - Friday’s "celebration" included " represent a glaring insult to victim Guglielmo Olivotto, the Italian American community, the living relatives of Clyde Lomax and the law-abiding majority of African Americans, who need no reduced standards or whitewash to live honorable lives.

Seattle officials and media have a history of flagrantly whitewashing or suppressing murders of white people " Kris Kime, Mike Robb, James Paroline, Ed "Tuba Man" McMichael, etc. - by a tiny minority of African American citizens. Such dishonesty, some of it no doubt conscientiously motivated, has proven to be bad medicine for the illness of racial tension we’d all love to move beyond. If establishment media cannot learn to embrace the responsibility of reporting politically inconvenient news and local sentiments, it will have itself to blame when it is left behind.

http://dailyuw.com/2009/3/13/free-speech-friday-mar-13-2009/
 
 

The ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (With Archives) on:
[Formerly Italy at St Louis]