Dear Readers,
Umberto “Bert” Benedetti, our longtime nonagenarian subscriber in Montana, arrived on U.S. territory aboard a veritable gilded floating palace, the Conte Biancamano, an Italian Luxury Liner based in Genoa.Unfortunately, the year was 1941 and in Europe war clouds had been gathering. In April, president Roosevelt ordered U.S. forces deployed to Greenland and Iceland to protect the arms supply sent from America to Britain. In June, Italy declared war on Britain and France.
In August 1941, an ostensible “fishing trip” with U.S. President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill aboard the British Battleship Prince of Whales off the coast of Newfoundland, resulted in a North Atlantic Pact and strengthening of the “Lend Lease” pact deferring British payment for American arms until the end of hostilities and nudged the United States one step closer to war.
In November, the Italians sank the British aircraft carrier H.M.S. Royal. This was in retaliation for the loss of the Italian held port of Mogadishu (Somalia) after attacks by British Commonwealth troops earlier in the year.
On December 7, 1941 Japanese war planes bombed Pearl Harbor, our major Pacific base in Honolulu and destroyed five U.S. battleships, 200 aircrafts and killed over 2,000 people, many of them civilians. In an emergency session of Congress the U.S. declared war against Japan, Italy and Germany the next day.
During the turbulence, the Conte Biancamano was seized on March 30, 1941, during a layover in the Panama Canal zone. The Conte Biancamano was taken over by U.S. Naval personnel aboard the U.S.S. Mallard, from which the American boarding party went on the liner. The Conte Biancamano was one of twenty-eight Italian ships seized by U.S. Forces in territorial waters.
The 500 crew members, Umberto “Bert” Benedetti among them, were transferred to New York and later to Missoula, Montana, where through the years he has become a beloved figure on the University of Montana campus, welcomed daily by friends who work in the administrative offices of the University and has won the “Man of the Year” University of Montana Alumnus Award.
Umberto Benedetti was born on November 22, 1911 in Vasto (Abruzzo), Italy but moved to Genoa to live with an uncle who worked for the Lloyd Triestino Company. Because his nephew wanted to see the world, was a skilled cabinet maker and had studied art, language and theater, his uncle was able to get him a job aboard the elegant passenger ship “Il Conte Biancamano”.
The ship was going mostly on the oriental route Genoa, Gibraltar, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila and back to Genoa, a 45 day trip.
It was when the ship was routed to Central America and stopped at the Panama Canal zone, where United Fruit Company had their stocks, that the ship was seized and the crew and passengers were brought first to Ellis Island, New York and then to Fort Missoula. In all 993 Italians were detained. He remembers the train ride through Chicago, the bars on the windows and how FBI agents stood guard over the peaceful Italians.
It is cold in winter, but when the first group of men arrived in May 1941, both civilians and sailors were impressed with the beauty of the site and called it “Bella Vista”.
With a number of other internees, Benedetti helped build a theater and since the Conte Biancamano used to carry a Band of musicians and a string quartet, there was no shortage of music. The men formed soccer games within the fences of Fort Missoula’s camp making the best of their stay and enjoying what would become Bert’s permanent homeland, America.
Benedetti has spent the rest of his life educating himself. He attained U.S. citizenship in 1948 and joined the Army. After a stint in Korea translating Italian documents, he used the GI Bill to pay for college at the University of Seattle, Washington and later a master’s degree in Spanish Literature from San Francisco State College.
He worked with the Economic Opportunity Council in the San Francisco Bay area as a community assistant while he was working towards his master’s degree in Spanish Literature and studied under Luis Cernudo, a Spanish poet from Seville. Mr. Benedetti also attended the University of California at Berkeley. He worked with the Medicare program in cooperation with the Social Security Office, served as a social worker and taught foreign languages to Peace Corps volunteers while he was with the E.O.C.
He returned to Montana to teach school in Miles City. In 1966, he moved to Missoula and enrolled in UM’s graduate school, meanwhile beginning a long career at the campus print shop.
Mr. Benedetti graduated with an Ed.M., the six-year Master’s program in Education from the University of Montana, Missoula, on the Foundations of Philosophy of Education. He holds a B.A. in Romance Languages from the University of Washington, Seattle, with an emphasis on Spanish Literature and Art. At the University of Washington, Mr. Benedetti also studied analysis and the criticism of art under Dr. Glen Lutey, chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Fine Arts. Mr. Benedetti attended Columbia University, New York, studying the aesthetic art and philosophy.
Mr. Benedetti taught Spanish, French and Art at Sacred Heart High School in Miles City, Montana. He has published a poetry book, Montana: Noon a Very Bright Day, Friend, translated reports for the State Department about bears, written in Italian; published a story, The Lady and Her Lover, in 1987, describing the power of love at any age. Also A Cultural Freedom of the Press in 1988, and a brochure, Histonium, describing the old Italian language and the name where Italy was cognated for the first time, Corfino D’Abruzzo, Italy.
In addition to books of poetry Mr. Benedetti published the book The Lifestyle of Italian Internees at Fort Missoula 1941-1943 (Bella Vista), in 1986.
As a writer, Benedetti has published nine books and is now working on his 10th and 11th. His paintings and pictures are spread across campus, including a painting which hangs in the second-floor study lounge “The Kennedy Drama”.
Worried that something may happen to him and with no family to pass his belongings on to, he has been dropping off documents to the Mansfield Library’s archive during the past few years.
Although he retired in 1989, Benedetti has not ended his pursuit of learning, and his love for the Unviersity of Montana can never die.
As for the Italian Luxury Liners that were seized by the Americans in 1941…The first class ballroom aboard the Conte Biancamano and other equally splendid spaces were gutted during the early years of the Second World War, and the Americans converted most liners they had seized into troop transports. By 1942, the former Conte Biancamano became the U.S.S. Hermitage and the Conte Grande entered service as a troop ship, the U.S. S. Monticello.
After the War President Alcide De Gasperi went to see President Truman in 1946 and personally asked for the return of the four Italian liners that were in wartime American hands. President De Gasperi’s pleas succeeded. The four passenger liner-troopships were returned to the Italians – the Saturnia and the Vulcania in December 1946, the Conte Biancamano and the Conte Grande in the following summer and were restored or rebuilt to their former pre-war splendor.
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