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The Jonathan Dolhenty Archive |
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Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk by Gregory Freeman Palgrave Macmillan - September 2009
Reviewed by Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty Gregory Freeman has written what he contends is the "real" story about an incident (or better, incidents) aboard one of America's greatest aircraft carriers during the war in Vietnam, a story which is both controversial and, apparently, officially disputed. Was the incident merely a spontaneous riot, a singular temporary rebellion, or was it much worse?: a mutiny, for instance. This is where the argument over the nature of the event -- how to specifically define the event -- gets fuzzy and incongruous. I am ashamed to admit this, but I completely missed this story back in 1972 and there is no excuse for it. I was in my early 30s, teaching history, politics, and current events and was a dedicated news junkie, trying desperately to keep up to date on what was going on in Vietnam and elsewhere. So how I missed a report about a rebellion or, as the author suggests, "mutiny," aboard the USS Kitty Hawk is beyond me. Maybe I did see a brief news report about it but, if so, it didn't make an impression on me at the time; this is apparently what the Navy wanted at the time, to downplay the seriousness and importance of what occurred. After all, there were racial issues involved and these were domestic hot buttons at the time. Freeman argues, as do many others, that the event was a mutiny, something which the Navy apparently denies. Was it or wasn't it? Frankly, I don't think it really matters. I think we're actually arguing semantics here. All the dictionaries I consulted more or less defined a "mutiny" as a "revolt or rebellion against constituted authority." My trusty Super Thesaurus provided the following synonyms: rebellion, revolt, riot, uprising, insurrection, overthrow, takeover, coup, and strike. None of this seems to help us delimit the meaning of "mutiny" except possibly the notion of "constituted authority" in the dictionary definition. But what is constituted authority? The policies, practices, and regulations of the Navy? The captain and other officers on the ship? The Constitution of the United States? Does it really matter? For the most part, how one categorizes the events that took place on the USS Kitty Hawk appears to me to be of little significance, in spite of the Navy's denial it was a mutiny and Freeman's arguing that it was, at least in the minds of many of the sailors onboard. And we do not want this fussing over words and meanings to cloud the genuine issues which appear to be involved in the riot, such as racial discrimination, epithets, and perceived insults, lack of appropriate education and training of recruits, promises made to individual recruits by the Navy and not kept, and what might be called general war weariness and lack of just plain old R&R. It might also be pointed out that the Vietnam war was increasingly an unpopular war back on the home front, something which the sailors onboard the Kitty Hawk must surely have known. Troubled Water should appeal especially to all those who are interested in military history. But the general reader will find this book to be a fascinating narrative, an exciting adventure, as close to a page-turner as any nonfiction work can be. Freeman has done his research well and his book is proof positive of that. Highly recommended. |
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Enrich your life with a book about politics and current events... |
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