Weekend Rewind

MEMORIAL DAY:  We had a busy Memorial Day.

First, the kids harvested a couple dozen roses from our yard to take to the Fort Lawton military cemetery, now on the grounds of Discovery Park, just a couple of miles from our home. 

There are over 1,100 interments in the cemetery.  

At least as couple of the graves were for Axis power soldiers. For instance, this grave of a German captain is in the cemetery's northeast corner, off by itself.

It's overrun with weeds. Would be interesting to learn how Capt. Marquardt came to be buried so far from home.

Also off by itself is the grave of an Italian POW, Guglieamo Olivotto. He wasn't killed by war wounds, per se. He was murdered.

Though he was a POW, Olivotto, along with other white POWs, was granted access to clubs that African-American soldiers were banned from because of their race. Also, black soldiers were often assigned degrading tasks instead of having POWs so the work.  Tensions and resentment boiled over and on August 14, 1944, and turned into a riot, during which Olivotto was killed (hung from a tree specifically). (There's an article about the Fort Lawton Riot on Wikipedia.)

Forty three soldiers, all black, were court martialed, charged with rioting. They were given just two lawyers (for all of them!) and 10 days to prepare for court. The five-week long trial was a debacle. Evidence was destroyed, covered up, and withheld. The jury was all white officers (hardly a jury of the defendents' peers).  After a 5 week trial, 28 men were found guilty of rioting and two were found guilty of manslaughter. 

A few years ago, Seattle journalist Jack Hamann spied Olivotto's headstone on a trip to the cemetery, and set about researching all he could on the Italian man's death.  He combed archives, conducted interviews and the result was an award-winning book, "On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II."

The book led to U.S. Rep Jim McDermott (D-WA) introducing HR 3174, a bill demanding that the US Army reopen the Fort Lawton case.  In Oct. 0f 2007, the U.S. Army Board for Correction of Military Records found that the prosecutor (Leon Jaworski ) had committed "egregious error" during the case. As a result, all of the convictions were overturned and the defendants were issued retroactive honorable discharges. Surviving defendants, and the estates of those who had died, were deemed entitled to "all rights, privileges and property lost as a result of the convictions," including "all due pay and allowances," per the Wikipedia article. .

If you want to read more, here's a link to a Seattle PI story on the Fort Lawton Riot: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/The-almost-forgotten-Seattle-story-that-may-2115203.php

In the afternoon, we headed to Mariners game.  There were a number of special recognition moments before and during the game. During the National Anthem, each team took the field with vets standing by their sides.

 

Instead of the standard MLB teams' flags, all the the stadium flags were Old Glory.

Many members of the military were in attendance, in uniform. A sharp-dressed Marine Corps member was a few rows in front of us.  Christian went down to thank him for his service and the two chatted for several minutes.  Turns out the young soldier is from Somalia. He came to the U.S. at age 15. He speaks impeccable English, and is a radio operator and linguist for the Marines, stationed in Yakima right now.

We took a few minutes to visit the Mariners Hall of Fame and the Baseball Museum of the Pacific Northwest on the main concourse, not too far from home plate.

There, we checked out a ball from the first game at the Kingdome ...

and the first game at Safeco Field.

We also checked out Harold Reynolds' very gold Gold Glove award.

There's a nice display of former Mariners manager (and Seattle Pilots player!) Lou Piniella. We're looking forward to seeing his official installment in the Mariners' Hall of Fame later this summer.

The game was lots of fun, as the Mariners scored early and often, and the Angels hardly made a peep, offensively. I kept a book for the first time in a long time, and taught the kids some of the rules of scorekeeping.

The kids did a happy dance with the last out of the ninth, and the Mariners won handily.

This weekend also included a trip to a local nursery, where we ogled but didn't buy anything ...

and a serene beaver and duck pond in Discovery Park on a Saturday morning stroll.

ON DECK: Launch alert! Tomorrow, three men will be packed into a Soyuz and shot toward the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, cosmonaut Maxim Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst are set to lift off at 12:57 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday.

Here's a photo of their ride heading for the launch pad via rail.

NASA TV coverage begins at noon Seattle time, and will include video of the prelaunch activities leading up to and including the crew members boarding their spacecraft.

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Image Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky