Okay, Joe! or the Memoirs of Private Guilloux

Overview

In August 1944, during the chaotic climate of the Liberation, American GIs committed rapes and murders against French civilians. The U.S. Army set up a court-martial to try them. Almost by chance, it hired the writer Louis Guilloux as an interpreter. Little by little, the novelist discovered that only African-American soldiers were sentenced, often to death. He recounts this in a short story: "Okay, Joe!" By comparing his account with historical reality and the recollections of witnesses and descendants, this documentary reveals several taboos of World War II: the atrocities committed by the U.S. Army against civilians, the rape of women, racial segregation, and the cruel and selective punishments it inflicted on its Black soldiers. The film tells a little-known side of World War II.