Schindler left high school in Chicago Heights, Ill., when he was 18 and joined the Navy. "I just can't believe that anyone could be so angry that they could do what they did to my son," she said. But most of all, she said, she wanted to get to the bottom of the case. She said she still doubted that her son was gay, even though he told her so in 1991 and wrote of a homosexual encounter in Hawaii in a journal he kept, which was recently given to her by the Navy. Schindler's mother, said she was groping to understand. Michael Petrelis, an official in the gay-rights group Queer Nation, said he intended "to make Schindler the gay Rodney King."ĭorothy Hajdys, Mr. "We wrote the letter because we knew this wasn't getting out and we were outraged," said Eric Underwood, a member of the group who now lives in New York. Schindler met here and his mother say they fear that the Navy has been seeking to cover up a hate crime. The Navy insists that it is investigating the Schindler case fully. There are crazy people in the Navy who are going to do this kind of thing, though.
But no matter how you feel, he didn't deserve what happened to him. "I don't think there's a place for them in the Navy. "I don't know anybody who thinks you can have them on ships," said one sailor who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity. One point agreed upon by several of the seamen, whether they supported or opposed allowing homosexuals in the military, was that this killing exposed how generally unprepared the military is to deal with either the substantial number of homosexuals already in its ranks - last year they were discharged at the pace of about two a day - or the prospect of permitting them to enlist openly. They also said it was one of four previously undisclosed cases of harassment of homosexuals at a normally quiet base that experienced a spasm of violence after the Belleau Wood arrived last fall. 13.īut more than a dozen sailors here were willing to talk about what they generally described as a clear case of gay-bashing. Schindler might have been killed because he was gay until the American entertainers he met here wrote a letter last November to Pacific Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, which published an article on the case on Dec. Navy officials declined requests for interviews and did not acknowledge Mr.
Schindler so badly disfigured, his mother said, that she could identify his body only by the tattoos on his arms. Both sides have seized on the case as evidence for their arguments.īut here, in the far southwest corner of Japan, there is an edge of fear to the discussions because of the horrific nature of the crime. Schindler has been transformed into a symbol of the powerful anxieties that have been unleashed by President Clinton's proposal to end a ban on homosexuals in the military. Although the incident occurred months ago, reports about it have begun circulating only recently as the United States debates whether homosexuals should be allowed in the military. Schindler has shocked many at this modest-sized base. One has been sentenced as part of a plea agreement and the other is awaiting trial. Two other seamen from the Belleau Wood, a large amphibious assault ship, were arrested the next day. He spoke of his homosexuality and the harassment he was enduring from other sailors as word of his sexual orientation spread.Ī couple of days later, a month after his confession, the sailor went to a nearby park and was battered to death against the fixtures of a public toilet. There, he met several American entertainers, some gay, who were singers and dancers at a nearby theme park. Schindler was allowed to go ashore in late October, and he quickly made his way to the knot of pubs known here as Sailor Town. As expected, he was informed that he would be discharged, but he wrote in his diary of his relief at finally showing his "true self."Īfter being confined to ship for a month, Mr. Schindler, a 22-year-old radioman, ended months of inner turmoil and told his commander that he was homosexual. Belleau Wood arrived at this sleepy American naval base last Sept.