My grandfather Frank Gustaferro found out about it at his Uncle Carlo’s bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey. His orders said that he was to report to the SS John Barry which would depart in a few days. The ship, secretly transporting millions of silver coins to support war operations in Saudi Arabia, was torpedoed by the German submarine U-859 on August 28, 1944. Two crew members were killed in the explosion. The rest, including my grandfather, ended up in the water: temporarily blinded by the oil, injured, terrified, clinging to whatever remains they could find. They heard Japanese planes flying overhead as they floated in the Indian Ocean. My grandfather prepared himself for the tough race that he assumed was ahead. It never arrived.
Even in the brutal logic of total war there were limits. There was a line, a line older than the Geneva Conventions, older than the United Nations, older even than the modern idea of “war crimes” itself. You did not kill the castaways in the water. You didn’t kill the survivors who were out of combat. You didn’t shoot the wounded who were clinging to the rubble. My grandfather survived because even America’s enemies in 1944 understood that basic rule of humanity.
Yeah donald trumpIf management had been in charge that day, I’m not sure my family would exist.
The Defense Department faces intense scrutiny this week following a Washington Post report that the military – supposedly under orders of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth – carried out a second attack against a sunken ship in the Caribbean on September 2, killing defenseless survivors who had already been hit once. According to the MailHegseth’s initial directive was that all 11 people aboard the suspected drug smuggling ship should be killed. Hegseth has denied ordering everyone’s death, and The New York Times has since then reported Hegseth did not indicate what measures to take if the first attack did not kill everyone on board. Admiral Mitch Bradley said he ordered the follow-up attack after the first attack left survivors clinging to the rubble.
The Pentagon at the beginning denied the Mailthe whole storybut the White House confirmed on Tuesday that a second attack did occur. Hegseth says He personally did not see any survivors after the first attack, nor did he stay to observe the second. Trump and his administration have tried to justify the series of attacks on ships that began on September 2 by claiming that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels, and Hegseth has cited the “fog of war” to defend the second attack on September 2, but the idea that the United States is currently at war with drug traffickers is dubious, to say the least.
Lawmakers from both parties have raised the alarm about the Mailreport last week, and Admiral Bradley briefed Congress behind closed doors on Thursday about what happened on September 2. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said after the briefing that Bradley was “very clear” that there was no order to “kill them all.” Democrats, however, still expressed alarm. “What I saw in that room was one of the most disturbing things I have seen in my time in public service.” saying Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), referring to the full video of the attacks on the ship. “You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of transportation, with a destroyed boat, who were murdered by the United States.”
“Any American who watches the video I saw will see the American military attacking the shipwrecked people,” Himes added.
Whether the military deliberately killed survivors of the attack is not a close call, a new legal theory, or a murky extension of post-9/11 counterterrorism doctrine. It is a war crime, if not outright murder. This is bad for America and bad for our troops.
It is a strange and embarrassing feeling to realize that the rookie, low-ranking Japanese pilots my grandfather feared in 1944 may have shown more restraint, more discipline, and more humanity in those crucial minutes over the Indian Ocean than the man who currently sits atop the Pentagon.
The Imperial Japanese Army, despite all its many and well-documented atrocitiesThere were still pilots and sailors who chose not to fire on American sailors who posed no threat. There are cases of American Navy sailors being saved by Japanese ship pilots and crews, as documented in James D. Hornfischer’s book. The last battle of the tin sailors.
The international conflict law that prohibits such attacks, known as out of combatHe doesn’t care if the people in the water were suspected drug traffickers, enemy combatants or just unlucky people. America is built on the premise that “all men are created equal,” even those with whom we fight. Humanity is the line that prevents war from becoming a massacre.
The Senate and House Armed Services Committees will have to determine whether Hegseth gave an illegal order and whether Admiral Bradley complied with it. But the moral dimension does not require a classified annex. If the US military killed surviving castaways because the Secretary of Defense supposedly ordered “no survivors,” that is not a new frontier. It is a step back towards barbarism.
It is up to both sides to do the right thing, especially the party in power. Only by taking responsibility can we restore the dignity and agency that the men and women who lived and died at sea, defending America, earned through their sacrifice.
