Ft. Lawton Riot - The death of Italian POW Guglielmo Olivotto (Seattle, Washington)

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The night of August 14, 1944, an all-black port company at Seattle's Fort Lawton was under orders to ship out to the war zone the next morning. Anxious soldiers packed their bags, wrote letters and read the Bible. Others played cards, shot craps, visited girlfriends and drank beer or bootleg liquor. Just after 11pm, an intoxicated black soldier and his three companions crossed paths with three Italians, who may have also been drinking. Words were exchanged, the black soldier rushed forward, and with one punch, an Italian knocked the American out cold.

As the Italians retreated to adjacent barracks, the call went out: US soldiers had been attacked by one or more enemy prisoners. A small contingent of black soldiers, including Pvt. Samuel Snow, ran after the Italians, but were quickly wounded by frightened Italians wielding boards. Hearing the commotion, dozens of black soldiers poured out of their barracks and saw at least three of their comrades on the ground, each bleeding from the head, each under the care of Luther Larkin. A rumor flew that one American was dead. Assuming they were under attack, and responding to months of military training, dozens of black soldiers headed into the Italian area, armed with rocks, fence posts and a couple of knives.

Private Clyde Lomax, a white military policeman, was responsible for patrolling the area known as the "Colored Area," and was on the scene almost immediately. He loaded the most severely injured American into his jeep, but delayed transporting him to the hospital. As the melee grew, several witnesses—white, black and Italian—reported seeing Lomax contributing to the fray. Rather than restore order or call for reinforcement, Lomax instead encouraged black soldiers to attack, even handing weapons to some.

More than forty minutes passed before a contingent of military policemen finally arrived. By then, dozens lay injured. The MPs restored order, but chose not to take anyone into custody. Later, every single MP claimed it had been too dark to identify even one of the participants in the riot. After belatedly bringing the injured American to the post’s most remote hospital, Pvt. Lomax disappeared for at least two hours.

At 5:00 the next morning, Lomax drove his jeep to a distant gully at the base of the fort’s Magnolia Bluffs. In the dark of the pre-dawn night, he walked through brush and purported to discover the lifeless body of Guglielmo Olivotto, lynched from a noose tied to an obstacle course guywire.

The largest and longest U.S. Army court-martial of World War II took place at Seattle's Fort Lawton. 43 U.S. soldiers—all of them African-American—were charged with rioting; three were also charged with the lynching death of an Italian prisoner of war named Guglielmo Olivotto. A 2005 book, On American Soil, convinced the U.S. Army's highest court of appeals that prosecutor Leon Jaworski had committed "egregious error," and that all convictions should be reversed. President George W. Bush signed legislation allowing the Army to disburse back pay to the defendants or their survivors.