Having served in the U.S. Navy (1972-1976), I know about military justice. Having been a scholar of the different ways in which a trial can be formally set up, I know about varieties of justice systems. Having heard the old joke about the black man who is sent downtown for “justice” only to find out that in the jails it’s “just us,” I know about racial tensions in the American justice system. Knowing all that, I was still stung by The Interpreter, Alice Kaplan’s story of the history racial injustice in the American military in WW II France.

Sometime in 2005, at Quail Ridge Books, my favorite bookstore, I attended Alice Kaplan’s reading and book signing. I went even though I didn’t really know anything about the book. I was glad I went because it was a good event. Ms. Kaplan was entertaining; a serious scholar with a personal flair and a flair for story telling. I bought a copy of the book. Even so, I didn’t read the book right away. But now it was on my list. Then I bought a house.

I moved out of the apartment I had been living in for four or five years. Four years later, about a month ago, I was in one of my closets and looked down at a bag. What’s in here, I wondered and, no surprise, found books. At the bottom of the pile I found “The Interpreter.” I picked it up, sat on my couch and read the first page and a half. When I read this short paragraph, I was hooked.

“In one hour, an American soldier was going to hang. His name was James E. Handricks. He was a black GI from a quartermaster battalion that had camped in a field in Le Percoul, a tiny farming hamlet up the hill from Plumaudan, back in August, only days after the town was liberated from the Nazis.”

Kaplan tells the story of how the crimes committed by American soldiers during WW II were handled differently depending on the race of the GI. James Hendricks hanging becomes the lens through which we see black soldiers hanged for murdering civilians, and white soldiers receiving no punishment for murdering civilians and even French military personnel.

In the case of Hendricks we sit in on the Army trial and see what happens through the eyes of a witness. Louis Guilloux, a Frenchman, was employed by the Army as an interpreter. When a French man or woman was testifying, Guilloux interpreted the questions for the witness from English to French, and the answers to the court from French to English. But Guilloux was more than an interpreter. He was novelist. As such he was a keen observer of human behavior. Guilloux felt that Hendricks hanging was a tragedy.

Tragedy not because Hendrick was innocent; he was guilty. Tragedy because Guilloux was seeing a pattern of African American soldiers who committed crimes being hanged, and white soldiers were not even being brought to trial or when they were, the white soldiers got off. Guilloux saw this, and Alice Kaplan’s research of the history confirms the pattern. Kaplan writes that despite each soldier’s guilt,

…the real culprit…was the unfairness of a system that could assign such different fates to two trigger-happy drunken soldiers.

What Kaplan does in her book, is let us see the story, partly through the eyes of Guilloux, who wrote an award winning novel about what he saw; OK, Joe. So as Kaplan gives us the history, we are reading a story with voices speaking from transcripts, interviews, military reports and Guilloux’s diary and novel. Using all these pieces of historical evidence, we learn about a “Jim Crow Army” that so disbelieved in the abilities and morals of black soldiers that black soldiers were hanged with no afterthoughts.

One of the features of this book that makes it worth reading is that it is written with a novelist touch. This is not dry history. Kaplan tells the story. She even takes us to Plot E where Hendricks is buried with other “dishonorable dead,” eighty of ninety-six being enlisted men assigned to “colored only” Army units.

Still like the excellent storytelling historian she is, Kaplan let’s Guilloux’s voice from his novel ask the most important question: “But why always blacks…” When asked to explain why he set his novel in a court room, Kaplan quotes Guilloux as saying,

“Society reinforces monstrous differences among people. And gives itself permission to punish some and not others.”

That’s the answer to the “But why…” question, and the best reason to read “The Interpreter.” It reminds us of why we should all be careful about casually accepting as having real meaning, superficial distinctions between people. If we are not careful, we set up tragedies.

1. Lena F Charles Says:
   October 26th, 2009 at 10:10 AM

   This is very interesting injustace still in systematic to just us.