During World War II, African soldiers all over the continent played a key role in the Allied Powers’ victory. They helped defeat the Italians in Ethiopia. Troops from Kenya and the Gold Coast now known as Ghana traveled to Burma to aid in the defeat of Japan and fought alongside British and American troops on many fronts.
During the 1940s, the Gold Coast became a crucial location for both the Royal Air Force and the United States Army. In Takoradi, American and British planes were assembled and refueled before being sent to the Middle East. It was Accra, however, that became the most significant base of operation for the Americans, who had a total of over 5,000 troops stationed there. The US Army’s Air Transport Command was moved from Cairo to Accra, where it established its Africa-Middle East Wing.
Accra’s importance as a base of operation for the US Army was further enhanced with the addition of three additional ferrying squadrons, making it a key point in the transportation network linking the US, Africa, and the China-Burma-India theater of war. With such a large-scale operation taking place in Accra, the Americans heavily relied on local African staff to provide various types of support services.
As a result, US military personnel had close daily interactions with the people of Ghana. However, due to the prevalent racism among many Americans then stationed in Ghana, many Africans were subjected to indignities and abuses.
One victim of this casual brutality, which characterized the colonial rule in many other places was James Ewusie-Mensah, a 28-year-old Ghanaian man who was married with five children. Ewusie-Mensah worked as a clerk in the Transportation Office at the American base in Accra to support his family. On the night of 4 June 1943, he was busy working a late shift. Little did he know that as he toiled away at his desk, dispatching vehicles to and fro, that an American Air Force major by the name of Russell McCormick would bring his life to a violent, untimely end.
Major McCormick had recently arrived in the Gold Coast on his way back to the US from Cairo, where he was convicted by a court-martial for excessive drunkenness and unruly conduct and ordered to return home.
On the night in question, despite being identified as an “acute alcoholic” by military authorities, McCormick was allowed to consume a large amount of whiskey and sodas at the base’s staff bar. He then requested a car to take him to the departure wing of the airport to wait for his flight back to the US. The Transportation Office dispatched a driver, Jonas Amponfie, a Ghanaian, to collect McCormick and take him to the airport. However, shortly after getting into the car, McCormick instructed Amponfie to take him to Accra instead of the airport. Amponfie informed major that he was only authorized to take him to the airport and that if he wanted to go to Accra, he would have to return to the Transportation Office to get a new trip ticket.
When they reached the Transportation Office, McCormick, who was enraged, took out his pistol from his bag and began to hit Amponfie from behind with it. Amponfie quickly got out of the car and ran as fast as he could when he realized he was being attacked with a gun. McCormick fired his pistol but missed Amponfie.
The loud noise and bright light of the gunfire caught Ewusie-Mensah’s attention, as his desk was positioned next to a window that gave him a clear view of McCormick. His colleague reported that Ewusie-Mensah saw the gun and said: The master has a gun. Seconds later, a second shot was fired, breaking through the window and hitting Ewusie-Mensah just above his right eyebrow, killing him instantly. The impact of the bullet lifted his body up from his chair before throwing him to the ground.
Unconscious, Ewusie-Mensah was rushed to the base’s hospital before being transported to the capital’s main hospital, Korle Bu. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead the following morning.
McCormick was arrested and taken into American custody. It is believed that the Americans intended to quietly remove him from the country, but a public outrage over Ewusie-Mensah’s murder forced them to trial him publicly.
McCormick was charged on two counts:
(1) Violation of the 92nd Article of War, with the further specification that “with malice and aforethought, [he] willfully, deliberately, feloniously, unlawfully, and with premeditation kill[ed] one, J.E. Mensah, a human being by shooting him with a pistol”.
(2) Violation of the 93rd Article of War, with the further specification that “with intent to do bodily harm, [he] commit[ed] an assault upon Jonas Amponfie, by striking him on the back with a pistol and by shooting at him with a dangerous weapon”.
McCormick pleaded “not guilty” to both counts. In the ensuing trial, all manner of damming information came out about McCormick’s past. He had been arrested no fewer than six times for drunkenness, including an arrest in Pennsylvania for drunk-driving which led to his license being revoked for a year. On another occasion, he had been arrested for arguing with a policeman. In 1934, his wife was granted a divorce on ground of “cruel and barbarous treatment”. He was also sued for assault by his former secretary and chose to settle the case out of court. Perhaps the most eerie aspect of the trial details involved McCormick’s personal history with gun violence. When he was six years old, his younger brother, who was four at the time, died “as a result of a shooting which had occurred accidentally”.
According to the trial transcripts, his mother had accidentally shot his brother believing that the gun was not loaded. The underlying implication, however, was that McCormick himself may have been more directly involved and that his mother might have been covering up for him.
Ultimately, however, the only part of McCormick’s past that came into play in the final outcome of the trial was his alcoholism. It was argued that on the night of the murder, he suffered from psychosis due to alcohol with paranoid trends which were aggravated by diabetes and arteriosclerosis.
On this basis, the defense argued that McCormick could not be held responsible for his actions. While finding him not guilty on the second charge of attempting to do bodily harm to Amponfie, the jury found him guilty of “willfully, feloniously, and unlawfully” killing Ewusie-Mensah.
Despite the guilty verdict on the first charge, the trial resulted in a true miscarriage of justice: McCormick only received three years in prison.
Ewusie-Mensah’s daughter, Rosina, recalls that her father was looked upon as a hero by the huge number of people who came to their home to pay their respects and who trailed his coffin to the coastal town of Saltpond where he was finally laid to rest.
Although James Ewusie-Mensah is not considered a well-known or celebrated figure in the independence movement, his death is one of the countless sacrifices that triggered the fight for independence throughout Africa in the 1940s to 1960s.
