WWII Profile: S. Arthur Spiegel

<iframe width="550" height="350" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" src="https://www.uscourts.gov/file/spiegel-audio-interviewmp3" title=" Judge S. Arthur Spiegel Audio Interview "></iframe>

Transcript

Q. Tell me how you enlisted in the Marines.

I was educated here in Cincinnati. … When the war came along, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I wanted to impress all the girls. When I went in to enlist in the Navy, hoping to get into the Navy Air Corps, my eyes weren’t good enough, so I was rejected. That was here in Cincinnati. I decided to go up to Cleveland, and maybe they wouldn’t notice it, but they did, too, and I was rejected up in Cleveland. Then … the Marines announced that they were going to come to Cincinnati and recruit for the platoon leaders’ class. And I found it was going to be done at the University of Cincinnati, and the medical department would be where we would be taking the physical. So, I went down there and memorized the eye chart, so when I enlisted … I did very well on the eye exam. I was told I’d get orders to report later on, meaning sometime in June or July, that I should finish school. So, I finished and graduated in May of 1942.

Q. Tell me about your duties in the Pacific Theater.

… I was assigned to be a forward observer with the First Battalion. A forward observer is one who travels with the infantry, and calls in on radio or land line, artillery orders on targets. ; ; … And so as we moved forward with the infantry, we were really a part of it, and got a good taste of what jungle fighting was. … You can be right on top of the enemy, and smell him, and hear him, and not see him. And it was the same for the enemy with us. We would be in very close quarters at times, but not be sure exactly where they were. ;

The day we landed, our commanding officer sent out the intelligence squad to clear the area as best they could and find out what would be our boundaries. Well, he never reported back, and the colonel sent me out to find him. So I went out and I found him on a jungle trail, with his squad just all down, having been shot. … There were a couple of Marines who were sort of dazed, and I asked what the hell was going one, and they said they were crossing a trail and this machine gun opened up. They said, “One of our buddies is out there, and the machine gunners have shot him in the leg several times, and he can’t move.” … Fortunately, I had some hand grenades, so I hollered to the guy, and told him to keep his head down, and I tossed a hand grenade . ... I jumped over the ; ;tree and grabbed this guy and dragged him to one of these trenches the Japs had, and we got another Marine, and the two of us dragged this guy… to a place where it was safe to pull him out.

I was scared to death, trying to keep my butt down and my head down, so I could see where the machine gun bullets were tracking. … People ask if you were thinking about God, are you praying, were you afraid? Of course we were all terrorized in those situations, but then ; we learned that we could handle ourselves and survive if we followed our training. … I really didn’t think too much of myself. The first time around, you just don’t think you’re going to get hit, it’s going to be somebody else. So I was just doing my job dragging this fellow out.

Q. What made you interested in being a lawyer?

A. My grandfather was a lawyer and a judge, and my father was a lawyer and municipal judge here. It was sort of a tradition in our family.

Very few of the big law firms (in post-war Cincinnati) had Jewish partners or Jewish top associates…. ;I came back and had a reasonable record at Harvard Law School. I went around to the law firms. Everyone was very polite and nice, but there never was any place.

I finally hung my shingle up myself and became a supporter of the NAACP, CORE, and a few other organizations like that. I was made chairman of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, and we went after department stores and banks and other institutions that didn’t have any black employees. They generally had black employees by the time we got finished with them.

Q. You handled the Pete Rose case, in which he was sentenced for tax evasion. What do you recall about that?

A. There were all kinds of things swirling around Pete, but the one thing they nailed him on was he didn’t pay his income taxes for a period of two or three years. He pled guilty to them, and it became a question of how to dispose of a guy like that who’s an icon, and is admired by so many people, who’s the hit king and all that, yet on the other hand, he has to pay his dues like everybody else. And that’s how I handled it. … I sentenced him to prison for five months.

Years later, I saw Pete at a dinner. We were both at the same table. And of course, he’s recognizable anywhere he goes. I said, “Do you remember me?” He said, “You’re god-damned right, you sent me to prison.” And from that point on, we had a great time together.

Q. Looking back, did your war experience have any significant long-term impact on your legal career?

A. Absolutely it had an impression on my legal career. As a for instance, when you’re a Marine officer and you’ve got responsibilities, that helps, I think, in the kind of job you have as a judge, of being able to understand and deal with people. Also to be firm and to be fair, that you can’t really get away with showing favoritism. I’m glad that I survived the Marine Corps. I don’t know that I’d want to go do it again. … It made me a tough son of a bitch in some people’s eyes. Other people’s eyes, I think they understand.

Q. Looking back at your entire career, what are you most proud of?

A. I’m most proud of being a United States district judge, and that President Carter, who I met recently, had the confidence to appoint me. I’m proud to serve as a judge, I’m proud to have served in the Marine Corps, and of serving this country. I really believe in it and its ideals.