Families Seek Payment in Land Dispute
Published: June 17, 2007
In 1941, hundreds of families in Western Kentucky were told to leave their farmland to make room for a World War II training camp.
Over the years, they say, they have been cheated out of an agreement to buy back their land after the war and denied a stake in a government windfall: the discovery of enormous deposits of gas and oil. Now, the families and their heirs are battling the government for what they say is their fair share of more than $30 million in profit.
Interviews with residents, historical documents and court records tell the story behind what lawyers say may be the nation's last remaining land dispute from World War II.
''They don't get around to paying you quickly when they owe you money,'' said 83-year-old William Griggs, who had just graduated from high school in May 1942, when his grandfather and other small farmers were told to move off their land.
''Everybody was disappointed,'' Mr. Griggs said. ''But we were patriotic.''
Camp Breckinridge, spanning 36,000 acres across Union, Henderson and Webster Counties, was one of a handful of inland camps built to train soldiers far from the threat of coastal attacks.
More than 1,000 people were forced off the land, either through negotiated sales or through condemnation proceedings. Their 522 properties ranged in size from 50 acres to 250 acres.
Beginning in 1941, families were told to sell or move all their livestock, furniture and crops.
The landowners received payouts totaling $3.1 million, and many believed they would be able to buy back the land once the military no longer needed it.
Mr. Griggs, one of the few original residents still alive, said the government sent people out to his house with a deadline for them to move and promised that the land would be returned at the end of the war, but offered nothing in writing.
Mr. Griggs and others hope to receive compensation, as well as an admission that the government reneged on its word.
The former landowners pursued a lawsuit in the late 1960s, but a judge dismissed it. After years of failed efforts, Congressional action in 1993 allowed the plaintiffs a hearing in the Court of Federal Claims, which hears a variety of monetary claims against the United States, usually involving contracts.
Judge Susan Braden in 2005 issued a preliminary ruling for the former landowners, awarding them $32.5 million -- roughly the profits that the government made from selling the mineral rights to the land. In an effort to end the long-running case, she told both sides to negotiate a settlement.
But mediation overseen by former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the Supreme Court broke down in May. Justice Department lawyers have declined to comment on the case, but in court filings they have argued that the families' case has not made a valid legal claim for compensation.
Photo: William Griggs, 83, at Camp Breckinridge Museum in Morganfield, Ky. His family had to move from their farm in 1942 for a training post. (Photo by Daniel R. Patmore/Associated Press)