American naval officers stationed in the Black Sea between 1919 and 1923 wrote down what they witnessed in their war dia...

American naval officers stationed in the Black Sea between 1919 and 1923 wrote down what they witnessed in their war diaries, and those records now serve as some of the most credible outside documentation of the Pontic Greek Genocide. The logs, preserved in the US National Archives, were not written by humanitarian workers or Greek advocates. They were written by neutral military officers whose primary job was protecting American tobacco merchants and missionary organizations in the region. Researchers Savvas Koktzoglou and the late Dr. Robert Shenk compiled these diaries into a published work titled "The Genocide of the Greeks Through the War Diaries of the American Navy," released in Greek by Disigma Publications and in English through the University of New Orleans. The book has already been nominated for the John Lyman Book Award. The diaries from Commander Cunningham of the USS Williamson describe Greek families being deported after the Independence Tribunal ordered the execution of prominent Pontic Greeks. A later diary entry from McFarland notes that Greek families connected to fugitives were imprisoned as reprisals and then deported. Even a similarity in surnames was considered enough cause to arrest an entire family. The officers recorded written orders reportedly circulating at the time calling for the execution of all Greeks of military age. The diaries also document that anyone who could not keep pace on the deportation marches was shot. US High Commissioner Admiral Mark Bristol, based in Constantinople, is also examined in the research. The records suggest Bristol was guided largely by economic and geopolitical interests in a potential Kemalist victory, and that protection of Christian minorities ranked low among his concerns. Because these American officers had no stake in documenting atrocities, their accounts carry particular weight as evidence against Turkey's longstanding argument that Christian deaths during this period were parallel wartime losses rather than organized extermination. #PonticGenocide #Greece #History