Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993                   TAG: 9310310072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GARY, IND.                                LENGTH: Medium

BLACK SAILOR'S HONOR A LONG TIME COMING

Swann is a hero, the Navy now acknowledges. But the path from a flaming aircraft carrier 49 years ago to his rightful place among the country's honored has had many detours - all for one reason, he believes.

Swann is black.

At age 68, he will finally receive the Navy's highest award for valor - the Navy Cross - Wednesday in a ceremony aboard the USS Intrepid, the aircraft carrier on which he earned the honor in the face of a Japanese kamikaze pilot.

"I surely don't want to have a feeling that I have a bone to pick," Swann said in an interview at his modest home on Gary's southwest side. "But I surely don't think I feel out of line when I say that the Navy took my life, because they further stopped me from getting an opportunity that I normally would have gotten.

"And I surely feel bad about that."

Swann was barely 19 when the enemy suicide plane descended on the Intrepid on Oct. 29, 1944, in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines. As other crews ran for cover, Swann and more than a dozen other young black men in his crew stayed at their guns.

Nobody can tally how many lives were saved when they shot away the attacking plane's left wing and most of its tail, diverting the kamikaze from the vital flight deck. But the plane instead crashed into their own position, spewing flames that claimed nine of the black sailors and badly burned Swann.

"All you could hear was things blowing up," said Swann, a native of Steelton, Pa., just outside Harrisburg. "And fire. . . . Ooh man, I have never had that much pain in my life, and I went out. The last thing I remember is falling, right back into that fire."

Pulled from the inferno, Swann was back in the gun tub within a month.

The ship's commander, Capt. Joseph Bolger, promised Navy Crosses to Swann and five other surviving sailors. They were given citations recognizing the award, and Navy press releases sang their praises. The awards were even mentioned in a front page of The New York Times in late July 1945.

But then the Navy quickly recanted, reissuing its press release to show Bronze Stars were awarded - not Navy Crosses.

On board the Intrepid, the paper citations were recalled, and the lesser awards handed out.

For more than four decades, Swann screamed angrily into the abyss that is government bureaucracy. Racism, he said, had deprived him of his rightful honor.

He fought the battle alone most of those years, spending almost all of the money he earned as a 21-year employee of Gary's health and building departments.

Trauma from his war experiences and frustration over his situation led to several nervous breakdowns. He has made a weekly visit to a mental health clinic since he retired in 1977 to pursue his Navy Cross full-time.

"You have to have endurance to fight for what is right," said Swann. "But to have endurance is to take a beating."

Swann finally got legal help in 1991 from Hammond attorney Ron Layer, a Vietnam veteran. Armed with stacks of documents Swann had uncovered, Layer presented the case to U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano in Hammond.

Lozano ruled in December that Swann was denied the medal "either through error or intentional racial injustice," and the judge ordered the Navy to give Swann the award.

The Navy acted in January but said they had decided in Swann's favor after reviewing the case, not because of Lozano's order.

In World War II, Navy Crosses were awarded to 3,376 members of the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. Only three were black. Swann becomes the fourth.

About 400 people are expected to attend Wednesday evening's ceremony aboard the Intrepid, now a floating museum on the Hudson River in New York City. The Navy's top officer, Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, will present the cross to Swann.

The Intrepid Museum Foundation also will award a scholarship in Swann's name for inner-city youth.

Asked to comment on Swann's case, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cate Mueller issued a written statement saying only that the Bronze Star was upgraded to a Navy Cross after a review by former Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe.

"Without admitting it, they just said, `Hey, we're going to give him the medal. He deserves it,' " Layer said. "And that's what we were hoping for."