TAMC, HI
Court Martial Defense

We all find our calling in life and for the men and women who serve the nation’s largest military hospital in the Pacific Rim, their calling is to save lives. Should we ever find ourselves in a war with a near peer rival in the Pacific, one can be certain that Triple Army Medical Center will play a key role in that conflict. As for the Bilecki Law Group, our calling is to save the careers, retirements, and freedoms of those service members facing a military court martial. However, don’t let the term medical personnel fool you into believe that the medical personnel stationed in Hawaii wouldn’t know how to get into the fight if needed. They have an obligation to protect the wounded and few Docs personify that better than World War 2 dentist Benjamin Salomon.

Captain Salomon joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps in World War 2 and found himself as the Regimental Dental Officer off the coast of Saipan in 1944. When the battalion surgeon was wounded during the fight for Saipan, Salomon volunteered to fill in at the aid station near the front lines. Now, the battle for the Mariana Islands was a pitched back and forth battle with the aid station resting no more than 50 yards behind the front lines at times. As the battle raged on, the aid station began to be flooded with wounded and the dentist was doing his best to keep up.

That’s when he noticed a Japanese soldier bayoneting a wounded soldier near the tent. Salomon dropped the surgical tools and picked up a rifle to make short work of the enemy. That’s when he noticed other Japanese soldiers climbing under the tent. He shot three more, bayoneted another and butt stroked one in the stomach before unleashing another round. It was clear the position was being overrun and Salomon wasn’t going to let the enemy harm his patients.

Salomon ordered the wounded and all others to make haste for the regimental aid station further back. Salomon headed to a machine gun position that had been overrun and this was the last time anyone saw the good dentist alive. When the position was retaken a few days later, they found Salomon slumped over the machine gun with over 98 dead Japanese soldiers in the field in front of him. Salomon had been shot 76 times along with multiple bayonet wounds as it seemed the Japanese took exception to the carnage he levied upon them.

Remarkably, Salomon would have to wait nearly 60 years to receive the Medal of Honor because, at the time, it was against the Geneva Convention for medical personnel to take up arms. That’s right, the man who gave new meaning to the phrase, “the doctor will see you now” was in violation of existing military law at the time. Those laws have since been relaxed to allow medical personnel to protect the wounded, but at the time, that was the law. Now, are there any among us who thinks Captain Salomon was in the wrong? So let’s talk about the UCMJ and military law.