Dark Charges

For 97 days a Navy court-martial in Washington (five captains and two commanders) heard, in secret, the case against Lieut. Commander Edward Neal Little, 39-year-old Naval Academy graduate who won the Silver Star for gallantry during Corregidor's last days. Behind the case—a deep hatred of Little by some Army, Navy and Marine Corps enlisted men who had been his fellow prisoners of war at Camp 17, Omuta, where the Japanese worked American P.W.s in the coal mines.

Little, senior in rank among the prisoners, had been put in charge of their mess, made answerable to the Japs for camp discipline and food supplies. Those who hated him said he was a little dictator. Said one of his accusers: "He loved rules; even Japanese rules." They accused Little of cultivating the favor of his Jap captors by being their camp informer. The darkest charge of all: as a result of his reports to his captor-bosses, an Army enlisted man was beaten to death and a Marine Corps corporal was starved to death by the Japs; others were brutally treated.

What Little and about 40 defense witnesses had to say about these charges remained a secret. He had requested the closed trial. It might be assumed that part of Little's defense was that extreme disciplinary measures were necessary to keep order among the despairing P.W.s, to keep them from stealing from each other, for example.

Last week the court-martial acquitted Little of all charges. But the case did not die there. Some veterans' organizations raised the familiar charge that Navy courts-martial have one brand of justice for enlisted men and another for fellow officers. West Virginia's Senator Harley M. Kilgore and New York's Democratic Representative Donald O'Toole demanded that the secret record of the proceedings be opened up for congressional inspection. Said Kilgore: "Such [secret] trials may be necessary in wartime, but they certainly are contrary to our peacetime ideas of justice."