Fort Lawton veteran dies hours after Army's apology, honorable-discharge award

Samuel Snow wasn't about to let a bad heart keep him from traveling to Seattle.

The 84-year-old Florida man was on a mission to set an old injustice right — and he succeeded.

Then he let go.

Snow died early Sunday at Virginia Mason Medical Center, hours after the U.S. Army awarded him an honorable discharge and apologized for the "grievous wrong," done to him and 27 other black soldiers more than 60 years ago.

"That honorable discharge meant more to him than his own health," said his son, Ray Snow.

The elder Snow and his fellow soldiers were court-martialed and sentenced to a combined 200 years in prison after a 1944 brawl between black soldiers and Italian prisoners of war being held at Fort Lawton, an Army post that occupied Seattle's Magnolia bluffs.

Several people were injured in the riot and an Italian private was killed and strung up on wires at an obstacle course.

But after reviewing the case last year, an Army board concluded the trial was "fundamentally unfair" and set aside the convictions.

Only two of the soldiers are known to have survived to see their names cleared — Snow and Roy Montgomery, who lives in Chicago.

Montgomery didn't come to Seattle for the ceremony Saturday on Fort Lawton's former parade grounds, now part of Discovery Park.

Up early

But Snow was so eager to make the trip that he called his son at 3:30 a.m. on the day they were to depart.

He fell ill in Seattle and was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat. Ray Snow attended the ceremony, then brought the long-sought documents to his father.

"When I walked into his room at the hospital, he was lying in the bed smiling, and I said: 'I got it!' "

Ray Snow read the certificate to his father, then handed it over.

Unable to speak, Snow "grabbed it and smiled."

Snow had made an earlier trip to Fort Lawton, visiting in 2002 as the guest of an Army major general who apologized for the miscarriage of justice.

But Snow, who had burned his Army papers to keep his family from learning of his disgrace, still wanted that official document.

"It was a mission he was on," said Ray Snow. "He was here to complete that mission."

For a black man in post-World War II America, a dishonorable discharge made it nearly impossible to get a good job, said Ray Snow, a fourth-grade teacher in the family hometown of Leesburg, Fla.

His father was also denied G.I. Bill benefits.

After serving a one-year sentence in Fort Lawton's stockade, Snow returned home.

In the segregated South, he took a job as a janitor at a white Methodist Church and worked there for more than 20 years.

Racial tension played a role in the 1944 riot.

Black soldiers, who were barred from many Seattle bars and restaurants because of their color, resented the Italian POWs, who were able to leave the post and drink wherever they wanted.

White soldiers also were hostile to the Italians, who charmed local girls, according to the book, "On American Soil," by Seattle author Jack Hamann.

Hamann championed the cause of the black GIs. His investigation cast suspicion on a white military policeman, now dead, as a prime suspect in the murder of the Italian soldier.

Hamann also pointed out that defense attorneys had less than two weeks to prepare their case, and that prosecutors withheld exonerating evidence.

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, took up the case, too, pressing for a review, and for compensation for the wronged men and their families.

Snow did receive a token payment of $725 from the Army, representing the actual salary he lost.

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com