Port Chicago disaster
Encyclopedia
The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitions
explosion
that occurred on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California
, United States
. Munitions detonated
while being loaded onto a cargo vessel
bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations
, killing 320 sailor
s and civilian
s and injuring 390 others. Most of the dead and injured were enlisted African-American
sailors.
A month later, continuing unsafe conditions inspired hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Fifty men—called the "Port Chicago 50"—were convicted of mutiny
and sentenced to long prison terms. Forty-seven of the 50 were released in January 1946; the remaining three served additional months in prison.
During and after the trial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the court-martial
proceedings. Due to public pressure, the United States Navy
reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945; the court affirmed the guilt of the convicted men. Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre
among African Americans and white Americans; it and other race-related Navy protests of 1944–1945 led the Navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation
of its forces beginning in February 1946. In 1994, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
was dedicated to the lives lost in the disaster.
The town of Port Chicago was located on Suisun Bay
in the estuary
of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin River
s. Suisun Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean
by San Francisco Bay
. In 1944, the town was a little more than a mile from a U.S. Navy munitions depot, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, which was later expanded and renamed the Concord Naval Weapons Station
. The original magazine was planned in 1941 with construction beginning shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor
. The first ship to dock at Port Chicago was loaded on December 8, 1942.
Munitions transported through the magazine included bomb
s, shells
, naval mine
s, torpedo
es and small arms ammunition. The munitions, destined for the Pacific Theater of Operations
, were delivered to the Port Chicago facility by rail then individually loaded
by hand, crane and winch
onto cargo ships for transport to the war zones. From the beginning, all the enlisted men employed as loaders at Port Chicago were African American; all their commanding officers were European Americans. Each of the enlisted men had been trained for a naval rating during his stay at Naval Station Great Lakes
(NSGL) but the men were instead put to work as stevedore
s. None of the new recruits had been instructed in ammunition loading.
s at Port Chicago suffered because of the absence of high-scoring black men, and that overall levels of competence were further reduced by the occasional requirement for Port Chicago to supply drafts of men with clear records for transfer to other stations. The Navy's General Classification Test (GCT) results for the enlisted men at Port Chicago averaged 31, putting them in the lowest twelfth of the Navy. Officers at Port Chicago considered the enlisted men unreliable, emotional and lacking the capacity to understand or remember orders or instructions.
Black laborers at Port Chicago were led by black petty officers who were regarded by some workers as incompetent and ineffective in voicing their men's concerns to higher authority. Petty officers were seen as having fundamentally different aims than their men—they were described later as "slave drivers" and "Uncle Tom
s". They and their men sometimes struck an antagonistic relationship.
Captain
Merrill T. Kinne—commander of the Port Chicago facility at the time of the explosion—had served in the Navy from 1915-1922 and had returned to the Navy from civilian life in 1941 to be posted aboard a general cargo ship. Prior to his being sent to command Port Chicago, Kinne had no training in the loading of munitions and very little experience in handling them. White loading officers serving underneath Kinne had not been trained in supervising enlisted personnel or in handling munitions until they had been posted to Mare Island Navy Yard
, after which they were considered adequate to the task by the Navy.
There was no system at Port Chicago for making sure officers and men were familiar with safety regulations. Two formal lectures and several informal lectures were given to the enlisted men by commanding officers, but follow-up confirmation of retained knowledge did not take place. Safety regulations were posted at a single location at the pier but not within each of the barracks—Kinne did not think the enlisted men would be able to comprehend such a list. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) responded to word of unsafe practices by offering to bring in experienced men to train the battalion but Navy leadership declined the offer, fearing higher costs, slower pace, and possible sabotage from civilian longshoremen. No enlisted man stationed at Port Chicago had ever received formal training in the handling and loading of explosives into ships. Even the officers did not receive training: Lieutenant Commander Alexander Holman, loading officer at Port Chicago whose duties included officer training, had initiated a search for training materials and samples but failed to organize a training class before disaster struck.
es were used on cargo ships to speed the handling of heavy loads. One winch was operated at each of the ship's five cargo hold
s. During loading operations, the winches were worked hard, requiring steady maintenance in order to remain operable. Winch brakes—a safety feature provided for stopping the load from falling if the winch's main power was lost—were not often used by a skilled winch operator, as the load could be more quickly maneuvered using various power settings than by application of the brakes. Disused brakes sometimes seized up and stopped working. The winches on the SS E. A. Bryan were steam-powered
and showed signs of wear, even though the ship was only five months old.
On July 13, 1944, the day that the E. A. Bryan docked at Port Chicago, the ship's No. 1 winch brakes were found stuck in the "off" position, meaning that the winch could be operated freely, but lacked the critical stopping capability if steam pressure was interrupted. The ship's chief mate and chief engineer were called to examine the winch but it was never determined whether the brake was made operational. During loading operations on July 15 the winch at No. 2 hold began making a hammering noise. A steady application of grease quieted it through the night until its main bearing could be replaced the next morning on July 16. On the afternoon of July 17, a bleeder valve on winch No. 4 required immediate repair. Albert Carr, a civil service
plumber from Pittsburg, California
, was called to replace it; it was his first day at Port Chicago. Carr pulled a broken nipple
out of the bleeder valve and replaced both the nipple and the valve from new stock taken from Port Chicago's shop. While at work, he witnessed a man accidentally drop a naval artillery
shell two feet onto the wooden pier but there was no detonation. Carr waited until the African-American winch operator successfully tested the newly repaired winch, then hurriedly left the pier, thinking that the whole operation appeared unsafe.
s upon arrival at the combat theater. Handling of the larger munitions such as bombs and shells involved breaking individual munitions out with levers and crowbars from boxcar
s in which they were packed tightly with dunnage
, lifting the heavy cylindrical shapes coated with grease, rolling them along the wooden pier, packing them into nets, lifting them via winch and boom, lowering the bundle into the hold, and then dropping the individual munitions a short distance by hand into place. This series of actions was rough enough that naval shells were sometimes damaged and began leaking identification dye from their ballistic caps.
Commander Paul B. Cronk, head of a Coast Guard
explosives-loading detail tasked with supervision of the working dock, warned the Navy that conditions were unsafe and ripe for disaster. The Navy refused to change its procedures and Cronk withdrew the detail.
The Liberty ship
SS E. A. Bryan docked at the inboard, landward side of Port Chicago's single 1500 ft (457.2 m) pier at 8:15 a.m. on July 13, 1944. The ship arrived at the dock with empty cargo holds but was carrying a full load of 5,292 barrels (841,360 liters) of bunker C heavy fuel oil
for its intended trip across the Pacific Ocean. At 10 a.m. that same day, seamen from the ordnance battalion began loading the ship with munitions. After four days of around-the-clock loading, about 4,600 tons (4,173 metric tons) of explosives had been stored in its holds. The ship was about 40% full by the evening of July 17.
At 10 p.m. on July 17, Division Three's 98 men were loading E. A. Bryan with 1000 pounds (453.6 kg) bombs into No. 3 hold, 40 mm shells into No. 5 hold and fragmentation cluster bombs into No. 4 hold. Incendiary bombs were being loaded as well; these bombs weighed 650 lb (294.8 kg) each and were "live"—they had their fuze
s installed. The incendiary bombs were being loaded carefully one at a time into No. 1 hold—the hold with a winch brake that might still have been inoperative.
A boxcar delivery containing a new airborne anti-submarine depth charge
design, the Mark 47 armed with 252 lb (114.3 kg) of torpex
, was being loaded into No. 2 hold. The torpex charges were more sensitive than TNT to external shock and container dents. On the pier, resting on three parallel rail spurs, were sixteen rail cars holding about 430 ST (390.1 t) of explosives. In all, the munitions on the pier and in the ship contained the equivalent of approximately 2000 ST (1,814.4 t) of TNT.
One hundred and two men of the Sixth Division, many fresh from training at NSGL, were busy rigging the newly built Victory ship
(also spelled Quinalt) in preparation for loading it with explosives, a task which was to begin at midnight. The Quinault contained a partial load of fuel oil, some of which was of a type that released flammable fumes over time or upon agitation. The fuel, taken aboard at Shell Oil Company
's Martinez
refinery mid-day on July 17, would normally be sluiced to other fuel tanks in the following 24 hours.
A total of 67 officers and crew of the two ships were at their stations, and various support personnel were present such as the three-man civilian train crew and a Marine sentry. Nine Navy officers and 29 armed guards watched over the procedure. A Coast Guard fire barge with a crew of five was docked at the pier. An officer who left the docks shortly after 10 p.m. noticed that the Quinault′s propeller was slowly turning over and that the men of Division Three were having trouble pulling munitions from the rail cars because they had been packed so tightly.
At 10:18 p.m., witnesses reported hearing a noise described as "a metallic sound and rending timbers, such as made by a falling boom." Immediately afterward, an explosion occurred on the pier and a fire started. Five to seven seconds later, a more powerful explosion took place as the majority of the ordnance within and near the SS E. A. Bryan detonated in a huge fireball some 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter. Chunks of glowing hot metal and burning ordnance were flung over 12000 ft (3,657.6 m) into the air. The E. A. Bryan was completely destroyed and the Quinault was blown out of the water, torn into sections and thrown in several directions; the stern landed upside down in the water 500 ft (152.4 m) away. The Coast Guard fire boat CG-60014-F was thrown 600 ft (182.9 m) upriver, where it sank. The pier—along with its boxcars, locomotive, rails, cargo and men—was blasted into pieces. Nearby boxcars—waiting within their revetment
s to be unloaded at midnight—were bent inward and crumpled by the force of the shock. The port's barracks and other buildings and much of the surrounding town were severely damaged. Shattering glass and a rain of jagged metal and undetonated munitions caused many additional injuries among both military and civilian populations, although no one outside the immediate pier area was killed. Nearly $9.9 million worth of damage ($ million in current value) was caused to U.S. Government property. Seismographs at the University of California, Berkeley
sensed the two shock wave
s traveling through the ground, determining the second, larger event to be equivalent to an earthquake
measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale.
All 320 of the men on duty at the pier died instantly, and 390 civilians and military personnel were injured, many seriously. Among the dead were all five Coast Guard personnel posted aboard the fire barge. African Americans hurt and killed totaled 202 dead and 233 injured, which accounted for 15% of all African-American naval casualties
during World War II
. Naval personnel worked quickly to contain the fires and to prevent other explosions. Injuries were treated, those seriously injured were hospitalized, and uninjured servicemen were evacuated to nearby stations.
After the fires had been contained there remained the gruesome task of cleaning up—body parts and corpses littered the bay and port. Of the 320 dead, only 51 could be identified. Most of the uninjured sailors volunteered to help clean up and rebuild the base; Division Two was separated into a group that would stay and clean up and a group that would be moved out. This section of Division Two and all of Divisions Four and Eight were transferred to Camp Shoemaker
, about 30 mi (48.3 km) south, where they were assigned barracks duty until July 31, 1944. The men of Divisions One, Five and Seven were reassigned other duty in distant locations and shipped out. The cleanup detail from Division Two dug into the wreckage of the pier and began tearing out the damaged portions. Beginning in August, Divisions Four and Eight and both sections of Division Two moved to the Ryder Street Naval Barracks in Vallejo, California
, across a short channel from Mare Island, where they were assigned barracks duties with no ship-loading. The men were in a state of shock; all were nervous. Many of them inquired about obtaining a 30-day "survivor's leave" sometimes given by the Navy to sailors who had survived a serious incident where their friends or shipmates had died, but no 30-day leaves were granted, not even to those who had been hospitalized with injuries. White officers, however, received the leave, causing a major grievance among the enlisted men.
A Naval Board of Inquiry
was convened on July 21, 1944, to find out what had happened. The official proceeding lasted for 39 days and included interviews with witnesses who were officers, civilians and enlisted men. Ordnance experts were questioned as well as inspectors who had overseen previous loading procedures. Five African Americans were questioned, none of whom were later to refuse to load ammunition. Captain Kinne's posted division tonnage results came to light in the inquiry but Kinne stated that the competition to load the most tonnage did not make for unsafe conditions; he implied that any junior officers who said so did not know what they were talking about.
The inquiry covered possible explosion scenarios involving sabotage, faulty fueling procedures, failure of the moorings of the Quinault Victory, defects in munitions, the presence of a super sensitive element in the ordnance, problems with steam winches and rigging, rough handling by loaders and organizational problems within the base. The Navy determined that the tonnage contest between divisions was not at fault, although the Judge Advocate
warned that "the loading of explosives should never be a matter of competition." The officers in charge were cleared of guilt. The report stated that the cause of the explosion could not be determined, but implied that a mistake made by the enlisted men in the handling of the ordnance was most likely at root. No mention was made of the men's lack of training in the handling of explosives.
The Navy asked Congress
to give each victim's family $5,000. Representative John E. Rankin
(D-Mississippi
) insisted the amount be reduced to $2,000 when he learned most of the dead were black men. Congress settled on $3,000 in compensation, and interred
what little remained of the victims in a local cemetery
with tombstones reading "Unknown, US Navy, 17 July 1944". Years later, on March 4, 1949, the heirs of eighteen merchant seamen killed in the explosion were granted a total of $390,000 after gaining approval of their consent decree
s in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
.
A memorial ceremony was held for the victims on July 31, 1944. Admiral Carleton H. Wright
, Commander, 12th Naval District, spoke of the unfortunate deaths and the need to keep the base operating during a time of war. He gave Navy and Marine Corps Medal
s for bravery to four officers and men who had successfully fought a fire in a rail car parked within a revetment near the pier.
Wright soon began implementing a plan to have two groups of white sailors load ammunition in rotation with black sailors: one division of 100 men at Mare Island and another at Port Chicago. No plan was forwarded to use black officers to command the black sailors, and no plan included any form of desegregation. Wright sent a report of the incident to Washington, DC, telling his superior officers that the men's "refusal to perform the required work arises from a mass fear arising out of the Port Chicago explosion." Wright's report was passed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt
by Secretary of the Navy
James Forrestal
who added his opinion that it was "mass fear" motivating the work stoppage. Forrestal told Roosevelt that white units of munitions loaders were to be added to the rotation in order "to avoid any semblance of discrimination against negroes [sic
]". Roosevelt forwarded a copy to his wife Eleanor
, knowing of her ongoing advocacy of civil rights for African Americans.
where there was an ammunition depot and loading piers. On August 8, 1944, the docked to be loaded with naval mines and other munitions. Three hundred twenty-eight men were asked to resume the dangerous task of ammunition loading; all said they were afraid and that they would not load munitions under the same officers and conditions as before. It was a mass work stoppage, which would have been called a strike
if the workers had been civilians.
The Navy would not countenance such conduct, especially in time of war. Seventy of the men changed their minds after their superior officers made it clear that loading ammunition was their duty. On August 9, 258 African-American sailors in the ordnance battalion continued to refuse to load ammunition. These men were taken under guard to a barge which was used as a temporary military prison
or "brig", despite having been built to accommodate only 75 men. Most of the men in the brig had not been given a direct order—they had simply been asked if they were going to load ships or not, and to step to one side if not. All said they were afraid of another explosion. Civilian stevedore contractors were called to replace the imprisoned men in loading the Sangay.
Among the prisoners, Seaman First Class Joseph Randolph "Joe" Small, a winch operator in Division Four and a natural leader who called cadence when his division marched, was asked by officers to assemble a handful of reliable men as a team of acting petty officers and to keep the other prisoners on good behavior. On August 10, there had been conflicts between the prisoners and their guards as the prisoners were marched to the mess
hall for meals. There was also a brief fight in the mess hall, and some prisoners were seen sharpening spoons into makeshift knives. Small sensed a general air of rebelliousness among the prisoners. To counteract the rising tension and offset the disaster he saw coming, Small convened a short meeting that evening aboard the crowded barge and told the prisoners to "knock off the horseplay", stay out of trouble and obey the shore patrol guards (who were black) and the officers, because the alternative (white Marines as guards) would be worse. He said to the men, "We've got the officers by the balls—they can do nothing to us if we don't do anything to them. If we stick together, they can't do anything to us."
On August 11, 1944, the 258 men from the prison barge were marched to a nearby sports field and lectured by Admiral Wright who told them that troops fighting on Saipan
desperately needed the ammunition they were supposed to be loading and that continued refusal to work would be treated as mutinous conduct which carried the death penalty
in times of war. Wright, who had seen nearly 400 of his men killed in 1942 in the Battle of Tassafaronga
, said that although loading ammunition was risky, death by firing squad
was the greater hazard.
After the admiral departed, the men were ordered to separate themselves into two groups, one for those willing to obey all orders and one for those not willing. To a man, Division Eight chose to obey all orders. Divisions Two and Four were split by the decisions of their men: Small and 43 others chose to form a group unwilling to obey every order. These 44 were taken back to the brig and the remaining 214 were sent to barracks. On the morning of August 12, six men from Divisions Two and Four who had put themselves in the obey-all-orders group failed to show up for work call; these six were confined to the brig, making 50 prisoners in all. These 50 were identified by the Navy as mutineers.
Throughout August, all 258 sailors were taken to Camp Shoemaker and questioned. Forty-nine of the 50 "mutineers" were imprisoned in the camp's brig. Joe Small was placed in solitary confinement
. Each of the men was interviewed by officers, sometimes in the presence of an armed guard. Questions focused on identifying "ringleaders" of the work-stoppage and on what was said by whom at the meeting on the prison barge. The men were asked to sign statements summarizing the interrogation, but the officer's version rarely matched the enlisted man's recollection of the interview. Some men, upon seeing that the written statements did not reflect what they had said, refused to sign. Others felt they had no choice but to sign—they were being ordered to do so by an officer. Several men refused to give any statement at all. Others spoke freely, thinking that the officer was there as defense counsel
.
After all the interviews concluded, the group of 208 men were convicted in summary courts-martial of disobeying orders, Article 4 of the Articles for the Government of the United States Navy (Rocks and Shoals
). Each man was subject to forfeiture of three months' pay. A few of them were held as witnesses in the upcoming mutiny trial. The rest were split into smaller groups and shipped out to various places in the Pacific Theater. Carl Tuggle, one of the 208, said in 1998 that a group of prisoners including himself were assigned menial tasks such as cleaning latrines and picking up cigarette butts at a series of Pacific islands. After returning from active duty they each received bad conduct discharges which meant the loss of virtually all veterans' benefits.
The Navy set up the court-martial in a disused Marine barracks building at Treasure Island, halfway between Oakland
and San Francisco. Reporters from the major and local newspapers were invited to watch the proceedings; Navy public relations officers gave reporters copies of photographs and press statements describing the trial as the first mutiny trial in World War II and the largest mass trial the Navy had ever convened. Chosen to head the seven-man court was Rear Admiral Hugo Wilson Osterhaus, United States Naval Academy
, class of 1900. The prosecution team was led by Lieutenant Commander James F. Coakley who had recently served as deputy chief prosecutor in Alameda County
under district attorney Earl Warren
. Defending the accused men were six Navy lawyers, one as leader of the team and one attorney for every 10 men. Lieutenant Gerald E. Veltmann headed the defense.
Veltmann and his team talked to the accused men prior to the trial in order to prepare their defense. They discovered that not all of the 50 were experienced ship loaders. Two of the men taken to the brig had never before loaded ammunition—they were permanently assigned as cooks because of physical conditions making them unsuited to loading. The two cooks had responded "no" when asked if they would load munitions. Another of the 50 had a broken wrist in a sling; he, too, was asked if he would load ammunition to which he replied that he would not. More importantly, Veltmann sensed that the men had not conspired to seize command from their superior officers. In a pre-trial brief, Veltmann cited the definition of mutiny from Winthrop's Military Law and Precedents and asked that the mutiny charges be dismissed as the formal charges against the 50 men failed to allege that they conspired together deliberately to "usurp, subvert or override superior military authority". Coakley opposed with a brief stating that, under military law
, a persistent refusal to work by two or more men—something that might be called a "strike" among civilians—was sufficient proof of a conspiracy to override superior military authority and was equivalent to mutiny. Osterhaus agreed with Coakley and refused Veltmann's motion; the trial would proceed as planned.
, was unable to identify who said it. Veltmann objected to this hearsay
but was overruled after Coakley explained it was evidence toward conspiracy.
On September 15, Delucchi continued his testimony, saying that some of his men told him they would obey all orders and perform all work except loading ammunition because they were afraid of it. Delucchi confirmed that a cook and a man with a broken wrist were among the 25 men in his division that now sat among the 50 accused. Delucchi added that the cook and a second man were sailors he did not consider "up to par"; the cook in particular was prone to nervous attacks and was seen as a liability at the pier.
Later in the trial, Lieutenant Carleton Morehouse—Commander of Division Eight at Port Chicago—took the stand to say that at the first sign of problems on August 9, he assembled his men and read their names off alphabetically, ordering each man to work. Ninety-six of 104 refused and were sent to the prison barge, but all of these men agreed to work after hearing Admiral Wright's speech on August 11; none of Morehouse's men were on trial for mutiny. Morehouse confirmed to Veltmann that some of his men had said they were afraid to handle ammunition. Following Morehouse, Lieutenant James E. Tobin, Commander of Division Two, took the stand. Lieutenant Tobin (no relation to Commander Joseph R. Tobin) related that 87 of his men initially refused to work but that number was reduced to 22 after Admiral Wright talked about the firing squad. Tobin said he put three additional men in the brig the next morning when they, too, refused to work, saying they were afraid. Tobin affirmed that one of the accused men from Division Two was permanently assigned the job of cook because he weighed 104 lb (47.2 kg) and was considered too small to safely load ammo.
The next few days of testimony were filled with accounts from African-American enlisted men from Divisions Two, Four and Eight, who were not standing accused of mutiny. Some of these men had already been convicted of disobeying orders in summary courts-martial. The testimony of the men agreed on several points: that there had been talk among them of a mass work-stoppage leading up to August 9, that some men (none of the accused 50) had passed around and signed a petition to avoid loading ammunition, and that Joe Small had spoken at the meeting on the prison barge and had urged the men to obey their officers and to conduct themselves in an orderly fashion. Some men said Small's speech included words to the effect of having the officers "by the tail" or "by the ass". Coakley was challenged by Veltmann when he attempted to bring the men's signed statements in as evidence but the court allowed the statements to be used to refresh the men's memories of their answers to interrogation.
Coakley summed up his prosecution case on September 22. His aim was to show the court that a conspiracy had taken place—the mass of accounts from officers and men appeared to support the conclusion that ringleaders and agitators had forced a rebellion against authority. Veltmann pointed out that few of the accused had been ordered to load ammunition, meaning that they could not all be guilty of the charge of disobeying orders. Veltmann stressed that much of the testimony was hearsay and failed to establish a conspiracy or a mutiny. The court, however, seemed to side with Coakley on all points, settling each objection in favor of the prosecution.
Starting on September 23 and continuing for over three weeks, each of the accused men was brought to the witness stand to testify in his defense. The general trend of the men's responses was that all of them were willing to obey any order except to load ammunition, all were afraid of another explosion, and none had been approached by "ringleaders" persuading them not to work—each had made his own decision. Each man said that he himself had not coerced others to refuse to work. Some of the men related how, following the official interrogation at Camp Shoemaker, they had been under great pressure to sign statements containing things they had not said. Some men said that, at the meeting on the barge, Joe Small had not urged a mutiny and had not uttered any phrase to the effect of having the officers "by the balls". On the witness stand, Small himself denied saying any such thing, though he would admit to it decades later in interviews.
Coakley's cross-examinations began with an attempt to have the signed statements admitted as evidence. Veltmann objected that each statement was obtained under duress and was not voluntary. Coakley characterized the statements as not being confessions requiring voluntary conditions but merely "admissions" that had no such requirement. Osterhaus ruled that Coakley could not introduce the statements as evidence but that he could ask the defendants questions based on what each man's signed statement contained.
Some of the men who had been named as having been given direct orders to work testified that they had not been given any such order. Seaman Ollie E. Green—who had accidentally broken his wrist one day prior to the first work-stoppage on August 9—said that though he had heard an officer in prior testimony name him as one who had been given a direct order, the officer had only asked him how his wrist was doing, to which he responded "not so good."
At the end of his testimony, Green told the court that he was afraid to load ammunition because of "them officers racing each division to see who put on the most tonnage, and I knowed the way they was handling ammunition it was liable to go off again. If we didn't want to work fast at that time, they wanted to put us in the brig, and when the exec came down on the docks, they wanted us to slow up." This was the first that the newspaper reporters had heard of speed and tonnage competition between divisions at Port Chicago, and each reporter filed a story featuring this revelation to be published the next day. Naval authorities quickly issued a statement denying Green's allegation.
Another one of the men gave the surprising testimony that Lieutenant Commander Coakley had threatened to have him shot after he refused to answer some questions during interrogation at Camp Shoemaker. Seaman Alphonso McPherson held fast to his testimony even when faced by Coakley in cross-examination. Coakley denied threatening anyone, exclaiming that such an idea was a personal affront. Veltmann responded that this line of evidence was news to him, too. The next day, Coakley gave the press a statement accusing Veltmann of coaching McPherson.
October 9, 1944, was another in a string of days consisting of accused men testifying on the witness stand. This day, however, Thurgood Marshall
, chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), sat in on the proceedings. Marshall had flown to the Bay Area
on a special wartime travel priority arranged by Navy Secretary Forrestal. The NAACP had given the mutiny trial top importance due to the U.S. Navy's policy of putting Negroes into dirty and dangerous jobs with no hope of advancement. Although Marshall was allowed to observe the trial, as a civilian he was ineligible to take on an official role in the men's defense. After hearing five of the men defend themselves, Marshall spoke to the 50 men and then conferred with Veltmann's defense team. The next day, Marshall held a press conference, charging that Judge Advocate Coakley was handling the case in a prejudicial manner. Marshall said that, from a review of the proceedings and his conversations with the accused, he could only see these men being tried for lesser charges of individual insubordination, not mass mutiny.
The defense continued a few more days with testimony from a Navy psychiatrist who verified that the immense explosion would generate fear in each man. A black petty officer under Delucchi testified that he had heard no derogatory remarks or conspiratorial comments and that it had been a surprise to everybody when all of the men suddenly refused to march toward the docks on August 9.
Marshall held another press conference on October 17 to announce that the NAACP was requesting a formal government investigation into the working conditions that had led the men to strike. He called attention to three aspects: the Navy policy that put the great majority of African Americans into segregated shore duty, the unsafe munitions handling practices and lack of training which led to catastrophic detonation, and the unfair manner in which 50 of 258 men had been singled out as mutineers when their actions with regard to loading ammunition after the explosion were not significantly different than the other 208 men. Marshall pointed to the men of Division One who had refused to load ammunition prior to August 9 but had been shipped out and given other duty, not arrested and court-martialled.
Coakley's rebuttal witnesses consisted of officers who had interrogated the prisoners at Camp Shoemaker. The rebuttal fared poorly, as Veltmann was able to elicit from them that some of the accused men had not been informed they could refuse to make a statement, that some of the interrogations had taken place with an armed sentry standing guard, that very few of the prisoners' explanations that they had been afraid of another explosion had been laid down in the statements, and that the officers had emphasized portions of the interrogations that would satisfy Coakley's requirement for evidence of conspiracy. Coakley's last rebuttal witness testified on October 19, and the whole court took October 20 off to allow both sides to prepare closing arguments.
Veltmann denied that there was a mutinous conspiracy, saying the men were in a state of shock stemming from the horrific explosion and the subsequent cleanup of human body parts belonging to their former battalion mates. He said the conversations at Camp Shoemaker were simply those of men who were trying to understand what had happened, and that these discussions were not mutinous nor could they provide the groundwork for conspiracy. Veltmann argued that Small's brief four- or five-minute speech to the men on the barge was given in the performance of his duty to maintain order, a duty placed upon him by his superiors. Veltmann restated that the established legal definition of mutiny was a concerted effort to usurp, subvert or override military authority, and that there had been no such action or intent. Refusal to obey an order was not mutiny.
. Each man was reduced in rank to Seaman Apprentice
and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor
to be followed by dishonorable discharge. The men were held under guard while their sentences were passed to Admiral Wright for review. On November 15, Wright reduced the sentences for 40 of the men: 24 were given 12 years, 11 were given 10 years and the five youngest sailors were given eight-year sentences. The full 15-year sentences remained in place for ten of the men including Joe Small and Ollie Green. In late November, the 50 men were transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island
in San Pedro Bay
near the Port of Los Angeles
and the Port of Long Beach
.
Marshall—working as special counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
—determined that the first course of action should be a publicity campaign mounted with the aim of gathering public support for the release of the men. In November 1944, Marshall wrote an incendiary piece for Crisis magazine, published by the NAACP. Pamphlets were printed and distributed, and editorials denouncing the trial appeared from African-American publishers in January 1945. Petitions began to circulate, collecting thousands of names of citizens who demanded a reversal of the mutiny verdict. Protest meetings were held and powerful people in sympathy to the cause were asked to bring pressure to bear. Eleanor Roosevelt sent Secretary Forrestal a copy of NAACP's "Mutiny" pamphlet in April 1945, asking him to take special care in this case.
Marshall obtained written permission from each of the 50 convicted men for him to appeal their case when it came up for review in Washington, DC in front of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy. On April 3, 1945, he appeared to present his arguments. Marshall's appeal made the case that no direct order was given to all 50 of the defendants to load munitions and that even if orders had been given to certain individuals, disobeying the orders could not constitute mutiny. He said that Coakley deliberately misled the court on the definition of "mutiny" and that the mass of evidence he introduced was hearsay, thus inadmissible
. Marshall wrote that "[t]he accused were made scapegoats in a situation brought about by a combination of circumstances. [...] Justice can only be done in this case by a complete reversal of the findings." Marshall said "I can't understand why whenever more than one Negro disobeys an order it is mutiny."
The office of the Secretary of the Navy ordered Admiral Wright to reconvene the courts-martial, this time with instructions to disregard the hearsay testimony. Admiral Osterhaus once again called the court to session for deliberation and on June 12, 1945, the court reaffirmed each of the mutiny convictions and sentences. Admiral Wright stuck by his reduced sentences.
After the surrender of Japan
and the cessation of hostilities, the Navy was no longer able to justify such severe sentences as a warning to other potentially dissident servicemen and labor battalions. In September 1945, the Navy shortened each of the 50 mutiny sentences by one year. Captain Harold Stassen
recommended in October that the Navy reduce the sentences to just two years for men with good conduct records and three years for the rest, with credit for time served. Finally, on January 6, 1946, the Navy announced that 47 of the 50 men were being released. These 47 were paroled to active duty aboard Navy vessels in the Pacific Theater, where the men were assigned menial duties associated with post-war base detail. Two of the 50 prisoners remained in the prison's hospital for additional months recuperating from injuries, and one was not released because of a bad conduct record. Those of the 50 who had not committed later offenses were given a general discharge from the Navy "under honorable conditions". In all, the Navy granted clemency to about 1,700 imprisoned men at this time.
but also over racial inequality at home. The mutiny trial was seen as underscoring the tense race relations in the armed forces at the time.
Late in 1944, under conditions of severe racism, a race riot broke out in Guam
at a naval base. In March 1945 a Seabee
battalion of 1,000 African-American men staged a hunger strike at their base in Port Hueneme, California
, in protest of discriminatory conditions. In the weeks following the latter incident, Fleet Admiral Ernest King
and Secretary Forrestal worked with civilian expert Lester Granger
on a plan for total integration of the races within the Navy. The Port Chicago disaster had helped catalyze the drive to implement new standards.
Beginning in 1990, a campaign led by 25 U.S. Congressmen was unsuccessful in having the convicts exonerated
. Gordon Koller, Chief Petty Officer at the time of the explosion, was interviewed in 1990. Koller stated that the hundreds of men like himself who continued to load ammunition in the face of danger were "the ones who should be recognized". In 1994, the Navy rejected a request by four California lawmakers to overturn the courts-martial decisions. The Navy found that racial inequities were responsible for the sailors' ammunition-loading assignments but that no prejudice occurred at the courts-martial.
Freddie Meeks, one of the few still alive among the group of 50, was urged to petition the President for a pardon
. Others of the Port Chicago 50 had refused to ask for a pardon, reasoning that a pardon is for guilty people receiving forgiveness; they continued to hold the position that they were not guilty of mutiny. Meeks pushed for a pardon as a way to get the story out, saying "I hope that all of America knows about it... it's something that's been in the closet for so long." In September 1999, the petition by Meeks was bolstered by 37 members of Congress including George Miller, the U.S. representative for the district containing the disaster site. The 37 Congressmen sent a letter to President Bill Clinton
, and in December 1999 Clinton pardoned Meeks. Meeks died several years later in June 2003. Efforts to posthumously exonerate all 50 sailors have continued. In 2004, author Robert L. Allen
was reported as saying "...even for today it's important to have these convictions set aside."
The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
was dedicated in 1994 to the lives lost in the explosion. The National Park Service
(NPS) was directed to design and maintain the memorial. Congressman George Miller pushed for the memorial to be upgraded to national park
status in 2002, in the knowledge that such status would help the site "become more competitive for federal funds to upgrade and enhance facilities and education materials". This effort did not result in a change of status. In 2006, a local newspaper article highlighted the precarious position of the disused chapel within the grounds of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, a chapel that had been previously dedicated to the memory of those fallen in the explosion. The 1980 chapel was said by local historian John Keibel to be unsalvageable due to lead paint
and its dilapidated condition. Keibel called attention to the stained glass windows which were crafted in 1991 as a tribute to the disaster, noting that they could be dismantled and remounted at the memorial site. In March 2008, NPS was directed by Congress to manage the memorial, after passage of a bill introduced in 2007 by Miller. On July 10, 2008, Senator Barbara Boxer
introduced legislation that would expand the memorial site by five acres (two hectare
s), if the land was judged safe for human health and was excess to the Navy's needs. The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial Enhancement Act of 2008 was not put to a vote. On February 12, 2009, Miller introduced a similar bill entitled "Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial Enhancement Act of 2009" which, in addition to calling for another five acres, allowed for the City of Concord
and the East Bay Regional Park District
"to establish and operate a facility for visitor orientation and parking, administrative offices, and curatorial storage for the Memorial." President Barack Obama
approved and signed the bill in December 2009.
The site is contained within an active military base and requires prior reservation in order to visit. Visitors are asked to allow 90 minutes per visit and are shuttled to the site in NPS vehicles from the Concord Naval Weapons Station Identification Office.
team working on the Manhattan project
. The resulting damage was seen as being similar to the effects of a relatively small nuclear explosion
with destructive power equivalent to 2,000 tons of TNT. Paul Masters—a photo technician at Los Alamos—made copies of some of the study documents and stored them at his home. In 1980, Peter Vogel discovered one of Masters' documents in a rummage sale and noticed that one section of text read "Ball of fire mushroom out at 18,000 ft in typical Port Chicago fashion". Vogel—a New Mexican
information officer-turned-journalist—began to research the possibility that the Port Chicago explosion was caused by a nuclear bomb. Beginning in 1982, Vogel publicly voiced his theory, raising a storm of controversy in the Bay Area press.
Vogel continued to hunt for clues for the next 20 years, eventually writing a book and, in 2002, establishing a website delineating various circumstantial reasons why the Port Chicago explosion could have been nuclear. After failing to find hard evidence to support his theory, Vogel abandoned it in 2005. Vogel's website was remounted in 2009 under a different URL
.
Vogel's theory has not had any traction amongst mainstream historians. Nuclear historians Lawrence Badash and Richard G. Hewlett
, in an article from 1993, took issue both with Vogel's alleged evidence of weapons effects residues as well as Vogel's proposed timetable for the production of the bomb itself. "It is impossible that there would have been no noticeable effects that later would have been identifiable as nuclear," they wrote, "Yet rescue and investigating personnel combed the area immediately after the blast, and the ammunition depot, which was quickly rebuilt, is in use today. These activities, without any reported injuries resulting from residual radioactivity, clearly indicate that only conventional explosives were detonated." They criticized Vogel for being "silent" about all of the evidence against his theory, and found the persistence in the propagation of the Vogel theory in the media "even in the face of evidence to the contrary" as exemplifying "the process by which conspiracy theories and other astounding knowledge claims gain popular attention."
provided narration for the story which included dramatized scenes depicting events as they might have occurred in 1944. The documentary was nominated for the Peabody Award
s and won an Emmy
.
In 1996, Dan Collison interviewed Port Chicago sailors for a radio show on This American Life
. The men described how they were initially trained for action on ships and were disappointed when they were not assigned to ocean-going ships. Collison interspersed interviews with contemporary news reports about the explosion.
The story of the Port Chicago 50 was the basis of Mutiny, a made-for-television movie which was written by James S. "Jim" Henerson, directed by Kevin Hooks
and included Morgan Freeman
as one of three executive producers. Starring Michael Jai White
, Duane Martin
and David Ramsey
as three fictional Navy seamen, the film aired on NBC
on March 28, 1999.
The disaster was featured in "Port Chicago", a 2002 episode of the NBC
/CBS
drama television series JAG
.
Ammunition
Ammunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...
explosion
Explosion
An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive"...
that occurred on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California
Port Chicago, California
Port Chicago was a town on the southern banks of Suisun Bay, in Contra Costa County, California. It was located east-northeast of Martinez, at an elevation of 13 feet...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Munitions detonated
Detonation
Detonation involves a supersonic exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front propagating directly in front of it. Detonations are observed in both conventional solid and liquid explosives, as well as in reactive gases...
while being loaded onto a cargo vessel
Cargo ship
A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade...
bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations
Pacific Theater of Operations
The Pacific Theater of Operations was the World War II area of military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, a geographic scope that reflected the operational and administrative command structures of the American forces during that period...
, killing 320 sailor
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...
s and civilian
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
s and injuring 390 others. Most of the dead and injured were enlisted African-American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
sailors.
A month later, continuing unsafe conditions inspired hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Fifty men—called the "Port Chicago 50"—were convicted of mutiny
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
and sentenced to long prison terms. Forty-seven of the 50 were released in January 1946; the remaining three served additional months in prison.
During and after the trial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
proceedings. Due to public pressure, the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945; the court affirmed the guilt of the convicted men. Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre
Cause célèbre
A is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
among African Americans and white Americans; it and other race-related Navy protests of 1944–1945 led the Navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
of its forces beginning in February 1946. In 1994, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial is a memorial dedicated in 1994 recognizing the dead of the Port Chicago disaster, and the critical role played by Port Chicago, California during World War II, in serving as the main facility for the Pacific Theater of Operations...
was dedicated to the lives lost in the disaster.
Background
Suisun Bay
Suisun Bay is a shallow tidal estuary at in northern California, USA. It lies at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, forming the entrance to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an inverted river delta...
in the estuary
Estuary
An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....
of the Sacramento
Sacramento River
The Sacramento River is an important watercourse of Northern and Central California in the United States. The largest river in California, it rises on the eastern slopes of the Klamath Mountains, and after a journey south of over , empties into Suisun Bay, an arm of the San Francisco Bay, and...
and San Joaquin River
San Joaquin River
The San Joaquin River is the largest river of Central California in the United States. At over long, the river starts in the high Sierra Nevada, and flows through a rich agricultural region known as the San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean...
s. Suisun Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
by San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
. In 1944, the town was a little more than a mile from a U.S. Navy munitions depot, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, which was later expanded and renamed the Concord Naval Weapons Station
Concord Naval Weapons Station
Concord Naval Weapons Station was a military base established in 1942 north of the city of Concord, California at the shore of the Sacramento River where it widens into Suisun Bay. The station functioned as a World War II armament storage depot, supplying ships at Port Chicago...
. The original magazine was planned in 1941 with construction beginning shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
. The first ship to dock at Port Chicago was loaded on December 8, 1942.
Munitions transported through the magazine included bomb
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
s, shells
Shell (projectile)
A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot . Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used...
, naval mine
Naval mine
A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, an enemy vessel...
s, torpedo
Torpedo
The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...
es and small arms ammunition. The munitions, destined for the Pacific Theater of Operations
Pacific Theater of Operations
The Pacific Theater of Operations was the World War II area of military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, a geographic scope that reflected the operational and administrative command structures of the American forces during that period...
, were delivered to the Port Chicago facility by rail then individually loaded
Break bulk cargo
In shipping, break bulk cargo or general cargo is a term that covers a great variety of goods that must be loaded individually, and not in intermodal containers nor in bulk as with oil or grain. Ships that carry this sort of cargo are often called general cargo ships...
by hand, crane and winch
Winch
A winch is a mechanical device that is used to pull in or let out or otherwise adjust the "tension" of a rope or wire rope . In its simplest form it consists of a spool and attached hand crank. In larger forms, winches stand at the heart of machines as diverse as tow trucks, steam shovels and...
onto cargo ships for transport to the war zones. From the beginning, all the enlisted men employed as loaders at Port Chicago were African American; all their commanding officers were European Americans. Each of the enlisted men had been trained for a naval rating during his stay at Naval Station Great Lakes
Naval Station Great Lakes
Naval Station Great Lakes is the home of the United States Navy's only boot camp, located near the city of North Chicago, Illinois, in Lake County. Important tenant commands include the Recruit Training Command, Training Support Center and Navy Recruiting District Chicago...
(NSGL) but the men were instead put to work as stevedore
Stevedore
Stevedore, dockworker, docker, dock labourer, wharfie and longshoreman can have various waterfront-related meanings concerning loading and unloading ships, according to place and country....
s. None of the new recruits had been instructed in ammunition loading.
Quality of men
At NSGL, the enlisted African Americans who tested in the top 25 to 40 percent were selected for non-labor battalion assignments. Port Chicago was manned by workers drawn from those remaining. The Navy determined that the quality of African-American petty officerPetty Officer
A petty officer is a non-commissioned officer in many navies and is given the NATO rank denotion OR-6. They are equal in rank to sergeant, British Army and Royal Air Force. A Petty Officer is superior in rank to Leading Rate and subordinate to Chief Petty Officer, in the case of the British Armed...
s at Port Chicago suffered because of the absence of high-scoring black men, and that overall levels of competence were further reduced by the occasional requirement for Port Chicago to supply drafts of men with clear records for transfer to other stations. The Navy's General Classification Test (GCT) results for the enlisted men at Port Chicago averaged 31, putting them in the lowest twelfth of the Navy. Officers at Port Chicago considered the enlisted men unreliable, emotional and lacking the capacity to understand or remember orders or instructions.
Black laborers at Port Chicago were led by black petty officers who were regarded by some workers as incompetent and ineffective in voicing their men's concerns to higher authority. Petty officers were seen as having fundamentally different aims than their men—they were described later as "slave drivers" and "Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....
s". They and their men sometimes struck an antagonistic relationship.
Captain
Captain (naval)
Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....
Merrill T. Kinne—commander of the Port Chicago facility at the time of the explosion—had served in the Navy from 1915-1922 and had returned to the Navy from civilian life in 1941 to be posted aboard a general cargo ship. Prior to his being sent to command Port Chicago, Kinne had no training in the loading of munitions and very little experience in handling them. White loading officers serving underneath Kinne had not been trained in supervising enlisted personnel or in handling munitions until they had been posted to Mare Island Navy Yard
Mare Island Naval Shipyard
The Mare Island Naval Shipyard was the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean. It is located 25 miles northeast of San Francisco in Vallejo, California. The Napa River goes through the Mare Island Strait and separates the peninsula shipyard from the main portion of the...
, after which they were considered adequate to the task by the Navy.
Speed contests and safety training
Since April 1944 when Captain Kinne assumed command of Port Chicago, the loading officers had been pushing the enlisted men to load the explosive cargoes very quickly; 10 ST (9.1 t) per hatch per hour had been set as the desired level by Captain Nelson Goss, Commander Mare Island Navy Yard, whose jurisdiction included Port Chicago Naval Magazine. Most loading officers considered this goal too high. On a prominent chalkboard, Kinne tallied each crew's average tonnage per hour. The junior officers placed bets with each other in support of their own 100-man crews—called "divisions" at Port Chicago—and coaxed their crews to load more than the others. The enlisted men were aware of the unsanctioned nature of the bets and knew to slow down to a more reasonable pace whenever a senior officer appeared. The average rate achieved at Port Chicago in the months leading up to July 1944 was 8.2 ST (7.4 t) per hatch per hour; commercial stevedores at Mare Island performed only slightly better at 8.7 ST (7.9 t) per hatch per hour.There was no system at Port Chicago for making sure officers and men were familiar with safety regulations. Two formal lectures and several informal lectures were given to the enlisted men by commanding officers, but follow-up confirmation of retained knowledge did not take place. Safety regulations were posted at a single location at the pier but not within each of the barracks—Kinne did not think the enlisted men would be able to comprehend such a list. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union
International Longshore and Warehouse Union
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii and Alaska, and in British Columbia, Canada. It also represents hotel workers in Hawaii, cannery workers in Alaska, warehouse workers throughout...
(ILWU) responded to word of unsafe practices by offering to bring in experienced men to train the battalion but Navy leadership declined the offer, fearing higher costs, slower pace, and possible sabotage from civilian longshoremen. No enlisted man stationed at Port Chicago had ever received formal training in the handling and loading of explosives into ships. Even the officers did not receive training: Lieutenant Commander Alexander Holman, loading officer at Port Chicago whose duties included officer training, had initiated a search for training materials and samples but failed to organize a training class before disaster struck.
Winch maintenance
Powered winchWinch
A winch is a mechanical device that is used to pull in or let out or otherwise adjust the "tension" of a rope or wire rope . In its simplest form it consists of a spool and attached hand crank. In larger forms, winches stand at the heart of machines as diverse as tow trucks, steam shovels and...
es were used on cargo ships to speed the handling of heavy loads. One winch was operated at each of the ship's five cargo hold
Hold (ship)
thumb|right|120px|View of the hold of a container shipA ship's hold is a space for carrying cargo. Cargo in holds may be either packaged in crates, bales, etc., or unpackaged . Access to holds is by a large hatch at the top...
s. During loading operations, the winches were worked hard, requiring steady maintenance in order to remain operable. Winch brakes—a safety feature provided for stopping the load from falling if the winch's main power was lost—were not often used by a skilled winch operator, as the load could be more quickly maneuvered using various power settings than by application of the brakes. Disused brakes sometimes seized up and stopped working. The winches on the SS E. A. Bryan were steam-powered
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
and showed signs of wear, even though the ship was only five months old.
On July 13, 1944, the day that the E. A. Bryan docked at Port Chicago, the ship's No. 1 winch brakes were found stuck in the "off" position, meaning that the winch could be operated freely, but lacked the critical stopping capability if steam pressure was interrupted. The ship's chief mate and chief engineer were called to examine the winch but it was never determined whether the brake was made operational. During loading operations on July 15 the winch at No. 2 hold began making a hammering noise. A steady application of grease quieted it through the night until its main bearing could be replaced the next morning on July 16. On the afternoon of July 17, a bleeder valve on winch No. 4 required immediate repair. Albert Carr, a civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
plumber from Pittsburg, California
Pittsburg, California
Pittsburg is a city located in eastern Contra Costa County, California, the outer portion of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 63,264 at the 2010 census....
, was called to replace it; it was his first day at Port Chicago. Carr pulled a broken nipple
Nipple (plumbing)
In plumbing and piping, a nipple is a fitting, consisting of a short piece ofpipe, usually provided with a male pipe thread at each end, for connecting two other fittings....
out of the bleeder valve and replaced both the nipple and the valve from new stock taken from Port Chicago's shop. While at work, he witnessed a man accidentally drop a naval artillery
Naval artillery
Naval artillery, or naval riflery, is artillery mounted on a warship for use in naval warfare. Naval artillery has historically been used to engage either other ships, or targets on land; in the latter role it is currently termed naval gunfire fire support...
shell two feet onto the wooden pier but there was no detonation. Carr waited until the African-American winch operator successfully tested the newly repaired winch, then hurriedly left the pier, thinking that the whole operation appeared unsafe.
Munitions handling
The enlisted men were leery of working with deadly explosives but were told by officers that the larger munitions were not active and could not explode—that they would be armed with their fuzeFuze
Fuze Beverage, commercially referred to as just Fuze , is a manufacturer of teas and non-carbonated fruit drinks enriched with vitamins. Currently the brand consists of five vitamin-infused lines: Slenderize, Refresh, Tea, Defensify, and Vitalize...
s upon arrival at the combat theater. Handling of the larger munitions such as bombs and shells involved breaking individual munitions out with levers and crowbars from boxcar
Boxcar
A boxcar is a railroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carry general freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is probably the most versatile, since it can carry most loads...
s in which they were packed tightly with dunnage
Dunnage
Dunnage is a term with a variety or related meanings. Typically dunnage is inexpensive or waste material used to protect and load securing cargo during transportation...
, lifting the heavy cylindrical shapes coated with grease, rolling them along the wooden pier, packing them into nets, lifting them via winch and boom, lowering the bundle into the hold, and then dropping the individual munitions a short distance by hand into place. This series of actions was rough enough that naval shells were sometimes damaged and began leaking identification dye from their ballistic caps.
Commander Paul B. Cronk, head of a Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
explosives-loading detail tasked with supervision of the working dock, warned the Navy that conditions were unsafe and ripe for disaster. The Navy refused to change its procedures and Cronk withdrew the detail.
Explosion
Liberty ship
Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
SS E. A. Bryan docked at the inboard, landward side of Port Chicago's single 1500 ft (457.2 m) pier at 8:15 a.m. on July 13, 1944. The ship arrived at the dock with empty cargo holds but was carrying a full load of 5,292 barrels (841,360 liters) of bunker C heavy fuel oil
Fuel oil
Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...
for its intended trip across the Pacific Ocean. At 10 a.m. that same day, seamen from the ordnance battalion began loading the ship with munitions. After four days of around-the-clock loading, about 4,600 tons (4,173 metric tons) of explosives had been stored in its holds. The ship was about 40% full by the evening of July 17.
At 10 p.m. on July 17, Division Three's 98 men were loading E. A. Bryan with 1000 pounds (453.6 kg) bombs into No. 3 hold, 40 mm shells into No. 5 hold and fragmentation cluster bombs into No. 4 hold. Incendiary bombs were being loaded as well; these bombs weighed 650 lb (294.8 kg) each and were "live"—they had their fuze
Fuze
Fuze Beverage, commercially referred to as just Fuze , is a manufacturer of teas and non-carbonated fruit drinks enriched with vitamins. Currently the brand consists of five vitamin-infused lines: Slenderize, Refresh, Tea, Defensify, and Vitalize...
s installed. The incendiary bombs were being loaded carefully one at a time into No. 1 hold—the hold with a winch brake that might still have been inoperative.
A boxcar delivery containing a new airborne anti-submarine depth charge
Depth charge
A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare weapon intended to destroy or cripple a target submarine by the shock of exploding near it. Most use explosives and a fuze set to go off at a preselected depth in the ocean. Depth charges can be dropped by either surface ships, patrol aircraft, or from...
design, the Mark 47 armed with 252 lb (114.3 kg) of torpex
Torpex
Torpex is a secondary explosive 50% more powerful than TNT by mass. Torpex is composed of 42% RDX, 40% TNT and 18% powdered aluminium. It was used in the Second World War from late 1942. The name is short for Torpedo Explosive', having been originally developed for use in torpedoes...
, was being loaded into No. 2 hold. The torpex charges were more sensitive than TNT to external shock and container dents. On the pier, resting on three parallel rail spurs, were sixteen rail cars holding about 430 ST (390.1 t) of explosives. In all, the munitions on the pier and in the ship contained the equivalent of approximately 2000 ST (1,814.4 t) of TNT.
One hundred and two men of the Sixth Division, many fresh from training at NSGL, were busy rigging the newly built Victory ship
Victory ship
The Victory ship was a type of cargo ship produced in large numbers by North American shipyards during World War II to replace shipping losses caused by German submarines...
(also spelled Quinalt) in preparation for loading it with explosives, a task which was to begin at midnight. The Quinault contained a partial load of fuel oil, some of which was of a type that released flammable fumes over time or upon agitation. The fuel, taken aboard at Shell Oil Company
Shell Oil Company
Shell Oil Company is the United States-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil company of Anglo Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 22,000 Shell employees are based in the U.S. The head office in the U.S. is in Houston, Texas...
's Martinez
Martinez, California
Martinez is a city and the county seat of Contra Costa County, California, United States. The population was 35,824 at the 2010 census. The downtown is notable for its large number of preserved old buildings...
refinery mid-day on July 17, would normally be sluiced to other fuel tanks in the following 24 hours.
A total of 67 officers and crew of the two ships were at their stations, and various support personnel were present such as the three-man civilian train crew and a Marine sentry. Nine Navy officers and 29 armed guards watched over the procedure. A Coast Guard fire barge with a crew of five was docked at the pier. An officer who left the docks shortly after 10 p.m. noticed that the Quinault′s propeller was slowly turning over and that the men of Division Three were having trouble pulling munitions from the rail cars because they had been packed so tightly.
At 10:18 p.m., witnesses reported hearing a noise described as "a metallic sound and rending timbers, such as made by a falling boom." Immediately afterward, an explosion occurred on the pier and a fire started. Five to seven seconds later, a more powerful explosion took place as the majority of the ordnance within and near the SS E. A. Bryan detonated in a huge fireball some 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter. Chunks of glowing hot metal and burning ordnance were flung over 12000 ft (3,657.6 m) into the air. The E. A. Bryan was completely destroyed and the Quinault was blown out of the water, torn into sections and thrown in several directions; the stern landed upside down in the water 500 ft (152.4 m) away. The Coast Guard fire boat CG-60014-F was thrown 600 ft (182.9 m) upriver, where it sank. The pier—along with its boxcars, locomotive, rails, cargo and men—was blasted into pieces. Nearby boxcars—waiting within their revetment
Revetment
Revetments, or revêtements , have a variety of meanings in architecture, engineering and art history. In stream restoration, river engineering or coastal management, they are sloping structures placed on banks or cliffs in such a way as to absorb the energy of incoming water...
s to be unloaded at midnight—were bent inward and crumpled by the force of the shock. The port's barracks and other buildings and much of the surrounding town were severely damaged. Shattering glass and a rain of jagged metal and undetonated munitions caused many additional injuries among both military and civilian populations, although no one outside the immediate pier area was killed. Nearly $9.9 million worth of damage ($ million in current value) was caused to U.S. Government property. Seismographs at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
sensed the two shock wave
Shock wave
A shock wave is a type of propagating disturbance. Like an ordinary wave, it carries energy and can propagate through a medium or in some cases in the absence of a material medium, through a field such as the electromagnetic field...
s traveling through the ground, determining the second, larger event to be equivalent to an earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale.
All 320 of the men on duty at the pier died instantly, and 390 civilians and military personnel were injured, many seriously. Among the dead were all five Coast Guard personnel posted aboard the fire barge. African Americans hurt and killed totaled 202 dead and 233 injured, which accounted for 15% of all African-American naval casualties
Casualty (person)
A casualty is a person who is the victim of an accident, injury, or trauma. The word casualties is most often used by the news media to describe deaths and injuries resulting from wars or disasters...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Naval personnel worked quickly to contain the fires and to prevent other explosions. Injuries were treated, those seriously injured were hospitalized, and uninjured servicemen were evacuated to nearby stations.
Aftermath
Parks Reserve Forces Training Area
Parks Reserve Forces Training Area is a United States Army facility located in Dublin, California that is currently a semi-active mobilization and training center for Army Reserve Component personnel to be used in case of war or natural disaster....
, about 30 mi (48.3 km) south, where they were assigned barracks duty until July 31, 1944. The men of Divisions One, Five and Seven were reassigned other duty in distant locations and shipped out. The cleanup detail from Division Two dug into the wreckage of the pier and began tearing out the damaged portions. Beginning in August, Divisions Four and Eight and both sections of Division Two moved to the Ryder Street Naval Barracks in Vallejo, California
Vallejo, California
Vallejo is the largest city in Solano County, California, United States. The population was 115,942 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area on the northeastern shore of San Pablo Bay...
, across a short channel from Mare Island, where they were assigned barracks duties with no ship-loading. The men were in a state of shock; all were nervous. Many of them inquired about obtaining a 30-day "survivor's leave" sometimes given by the Navy to sailors who had survived a serious incident where their friends or shipmates had died, but no 30-day leaves were granted, not even to those who had been hospitalized with injuries. White officers, however, received the leave, causing a major grievance among the enlisted men.
A Naval Board of Inquiry
Naval Board of Inquiry
A Naval Board of Inquiry is a type of investigative court proceeding conducted by the United States Navy after the occurrence of an unanticipated event that adversely affects the performance, or reputation, of the fleet or one of its ships or stations.- Convening the board :Depending on the...
was convened on July 21, 1944, to find out what had happened. The official proceeding lasted for 39 days and included interviews with witnesses who were officers, civilians and enlisted men. Ordnance experts were questioned as well as inspectors who had overseen previous loading procedures. Five African Americans were questioned, none of whom were later to refuse to load ammunition. Captain Kinne's posted division tonnage results came to light in the inquiry but Kinne stated that the competition to load the most tonnage did not make for unsafe conditions; he implied that any junior officers who said so did not know what they were talking about.
Judge Advocate General's Corps
Judge Advocate General's Corps, also known as JAG or JAG Corps, refers to the legal branch or specialty of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, and Navy. Officers serving in the JAG Corps are typically called Judge Advocates. The Marine Corps and Coast Guard do not maintain separate JAG Corps...
warned that "the loading of explosives should never be a matter of competition." The officers in charge were cleared of guilt. The report stated that the cause of the explosion could not be determined, but implied that a mistake made by the enlisted men in the handling of the ordnance was most likely at root. No mention was made of the men's lack of training in the handling of explosives.
The Navy asked Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
to give each victim's family $5,000. Representative John E. Rankin
John E. Rankin
John Elliott Rankin was a Democratic congressman from the U.S. State of Mississippi who supported racial segregation and, on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, voiced racist views on African Americans and Jews and even accused Albert Einstein of being a communist agitator.In...
(D-Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
) insisted the amount be reduced to $2,000 when he learned most of the dead were black men. Congress settled on $3,000 in compensation, and interred
Burial
Burial is the act of placing a person or object into the ground. This is accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing an object in it, and covering it over.-History:...
what little remained of the victims in a local cemetery
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
with tombstones reading "Unknown, US Navy, 17 July 1944". Years later, on March 4, 1949, the heirs of eighteen merchant seamen killed in the explosion were granted a total of $390,000 after gaining approval of their consent decree
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...
s in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San...
.
A memorial ceremony was held for the victims on July 31, 1944. Admiral Carleton H. Wright
Carleton H. Wright
-Notes:...
, Commander, 12th Naval District, spoke of the unfortunate deaths and the need to keep the base operating during a time of war. He gave Navy and Marine Corps Medal
Navy and Marine Corps Medal
The Navy and Marine Corps Medal is the second highest non-combatant medal awarded by the United States Department of the Navy to members of the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps...
s for bravery to four officers and men who had successfully fought a fire in a rail car parked within a revetment near the pier.
Wright soon began implementing a plan to have two groups of white sailors load ammunition in rotation with black sailors: one division of 100 men at Mare Island and another at Port Chicago. No plan was forwarded to use black officers to command the black sailors, and no plan included any form of desegregation. Wright sent a report of the incident to Washington, DC, telling his superior officers that the men's "refusal to perform the required work arises from a mass fear arising out of the Port Chicago explosion." Wright's report was passed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
by Secretary of the Navy
United States Secretary of the Navy
The Secretary of the Navy of the United States of America is the head of the Department of the Navy, a component organization of the Department of Defense...
James Forrestal
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense....
who added his opinion that it was "mass fear" motivating the work stoppage. Forrestal told Roosevelt that white units of munitions loaders were to be added to the rotation in order "to avoid any semblance of discrimination against negroes [sic
Sic
Sic—generally inside square brackets, [sic], and occasionally parentheses, —when added just after a quote or reprinted text, indicates the passage appears exactly as in the original source...
]". Roosevelt forwarded a copy to his wife Eleanor
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, knowing of her ongoing advocacy of civil rights for African Americans.
Initial actions
Divisions Two, Four and Eight—reinforced with replacement sailors fresh from training at NSGL—were taken to Mare Island Navy YardMare Island Naval Shipyard
The Mare Island Naval Shipyard was the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean. It is located 25 miles northeast of San Francisco in Vallejo, California. The Napa River goes through the Mare Island Strait and separates the peninsula shipyard from the main portion of the...
where there was an ammunition depot and loading piers. On August 8, 1944, the docked to be loaded with naval mines and other munitions. Three hundred twenty-eight men were asked to resume the dangerous task of ammunition loading; all said they were afraid and that they would not load munitions under the same officers and conditions as before. It was a mass work stoppage, which would have been called a strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
if the workers had been civilians.
The Navy would not countenance such conduct, especially in time of war. Seventy of the men changed their minds after their superior officers made it clear that loading ammunition was their duty. On August 9, 258 African-American sailors in the ordnance battalion continued to refuse to load ammunition. These men were taken under guard to a barge which was used as a temporary military prison
Military prison
A military prison is a prison operated by the military. Military prisons are used variously to house prisoners of war, enemy combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by the military or national authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime...
or "brig", despite having been built to accommodate only 75 men. Most of the men in the brig had not been given a direct order—they had simply been asked if they were going to load ships or not, and to step to one side if not. All said they were afraid of another explosion. Civilian stevedore contractors were called to replace the imprisoned men in loading the Sangay.
Among the prisoners, Seaman First Class Joseph Randolph "Joe" Small, a winch operator in Division Four and a natural leader who called cadence when his division marched, was asked by officers to assemble a handful of reliable men as a team of acting petty officers and to keep the other prisoners on good behavior. On August 10, there had been conflicts between the prisoners and their guards as the prisoners were marched to the mess
Mess
A mess is the place where military personnel socialise, eat, and live. In some societies this military usage has extended to other disciplined services eateries such as civilian fire fighting and police forces. The root of mess is the Old French mes, "portion of food" A mess (also called a...
hall for meals. There was also a brief fight in the mess hall, and some prisoners were seen sharpening spoons into makeshift knives. Small sensed a general air of rebelliousness among the prisoners. To counteract the rising tension and offset the disaster he saw coming, Small convened a short meeting that evening aboard the crowded barge and told the prisoners to "knock off the horseplay", stay out of trouble and obey the shore patrol guards (who were black) and the officers, because the alternative (white Marines as guards) would be worse. He said to the men, "We've got the officers by the balls—they can do nothing to us if we don't do anything to them. If we stick together, they can't do anything to us."
On August 11, 1944, the 258 men from the prison barge were marched to a nearby sports field and lectured by Admiral Wright who told them that troops fighting on Saipan
Battle of Saipan
The Battle of Saipan was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands from 15 June-9 July 1944. The Allied invasion fleet embarking the expeditionary forces left Pearl Harbor on 5 June 1944, the day before Operation Overlord in Europe was...
desperately needed the ammunition they were supposed to be loading and that continued refusal to work would be treated as mutinous conduct which carried the death penalty
Capital punishment in the United States
Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...
in times of war. Wright, who had seen nearly 400 of his men killed in 1942 in the Battle of Tassafaronga
Battle of Tassafaronga
The Battle of Tassafaronga, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Battle of Savo Island or, in Japanese sources, as the , was a nighttime naval battle that took place November 30, 1942 between United States Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy warships during the Guadalcanal campaign...
, said that although loading ammunition was risky, death by firing squad
Execution by firing squad
Execution by firing squad, sometimes called fusillading , is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war.Execution by shooting is a fairly old practice...
was the greater hazard.
After the admiral departed, the men were ordered to separate themselves into two groups, one for those willing to obey all orders and one for those not willing. To a man, Division Eight chose to obey all orders. Divisions Two and Four were split by the decisions of their men: Small and 43 others chose to form a group unwilling to obey every order. These 44 were taken back to the brig and the remaining 214 were sent to barracks. On the morning of August 12, six men from Divisions Two and Four who had put themselves in the obey-all-orders group failed to show up for work call; these six were confined to the brig, making 50 prisoners in all. These 50 were identified by the Navy as mutineers.
Throughout August, all 258 sailors were taken to Camp Shoemaker and questioned. Forty-nine of the 50 "mutineers" were imprisoned in the camp's brig. Joe Small was placed in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
. Each of the men was interviewed by officers, sometimes in the presence of an armed guard. Questions focused on identifying "ringleaders" of the work-stoppage and on what was said by whom at the meeting on the prison barge. The men were asked to sign statements summarizing the interrogation, but the officer's version rarely matched the enlisted man's recollection of the interview. Some men, upon seeing that the written statements did not reflect what they had said, refused to sign. Others felt they had no choice but to sign—they were being ordered to do so by an officer. Several men refused to give any statement at all. Others spoke freely, thinking that the officer was there as defense counsel
Criminal defense lawyer
A criminal defense lawyer is a lawyer specializing in the defense of individuals and companies charged with criminal conduct. Criminal defense lawyers can be permanently employed by the various jurisdictions with criminal courts. Such lawyers are often called public defenders. For a much more...
.
After all the interviews concluded, the group of 208 men were convicted in summary courts-martial of disobeying orders, Article 4 of the Articles for the Government of the United States Navy (Rocks and Shoals
Rocks and Shoals
Rocks and Shoals was the informal name of the Articles for the Government of the United States Navy.Justice under the Articles was swift, and tended to be harsh.It was replaced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1951.-In popular culture:...
). Each man was subject to forfeiture of three months' pay. A few of them were held as witnesses in the upcoming mutiny trial. The rest were split into smaller groups and shipped out to various places in the Pacific Theater. Carl Tuggle, one of the 208, said in 1998 that a group of prisoners including himself were assigned menial tasks such as cleaning latrines and picking up cigarette butts at a series of Pacific islands. After returning from active duty they each received bad conduct discharges which meant the loss of virtually all veterans' benefits.
Port Chicago 50
The 50 remaining men—soon to be known as the "Port Chicago 50"—were formally charged in early September 1944 with disobeying orders and making a mutiny "with a deliberate purpose and intent to override superior military authority". This was a crime punishable by death since the United States was at war. Even if the men were not given death sentences, they could get prison terms of 15 years.Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
and San Francisco. Reporters from the major and local newspapers were invited to watch the proceedings; Navy public relations officers gave reporters copies of photographs and press statements describing the trial as the first mutiny trial in World War II and the largest mass trial the Navy had ever convened. Chosen to head the seven-man court was Rear Admiral Hugo Wilson Osterhaus, United States Naval Academy
United States Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located in Annapolis, Maryland, United States...
, class of 1900. The prosecution team was led by Lieutenant Commander James F. Coakley who had recently served as deputy chief prosecutor in Alameda County
Alameda County, California
Alameda County is a county in the U.S. state of California. It occupies most of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,510,271, making it the 7th most populous county in the state...
under district attorney Earl Warren
Earl Warren
Earl Warren was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States.He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring...
. Defending the accused men were six Navy lawyers, one as leader of the team and one attorney for every 10 men. Lieutenant Gerald E. Veltmann headed the defense.
Veltmann and his team talked to the accused men prior to the trial in order to prepare their defense. They discovered that not all of the 50 were experienced ship loaders. Two of the men taken to the brig had never before loaded ammunition—they were permanently assigned as cooks because of physical conditions making them unsuited to loading. The two cooks had responded "no" when asked if they would load munitions. Another of the 50 had a broken wrist in a sling; he, too, was asked if he would load ammunition to which he replied that he would not. More importantly, Veltmann sensed that the men had not conspired to seize command from their superior officers. In a pre-trial brief, Veltmann cited the definition of mutiny from Winthrop's Military Law and Precedents and asked that the mutiny charges be dismissed as the formal charges against the 50 men failed to allege that they conspired together deliberately to "usurp, subvert or override superior military authority". Coakley opposed with a brief stating that, under military law
Military law
Military justice is the body of laws and procedures governing members of the armed forces. Many states have separate and distinct bodies of law that govern the conduct of members of their armed forces. Some states use special judicial and other arrangements to enforce those laws, while others use...
, a persistent refusal to work by two or more men—something that might be called a "strike" among civilians—was sufficient proof of a conspiracy to override superior military authority and was equivalent to mutiny. Osterhaus agreed with Coakley and refused Veltmann's motion; the trial would proceed as planned.
Prosecution
The trial started on September 14 with each of the 50 men pleading "not guilty". Coakley began his prosecution by calling officers from Port Chicago and Mare Island as witnesses. Commander Joseph R. Tobin of Ryder Street Naval Barracks said that he personally ordered six or seven of the men to load munitions on August 9 but was unable to verify if any others were so ordered. He said that the men he had spoken with were willing to follow any order except to load munitions; that each man expressed fear of another explosion. Tobin verified that the men were not aggressive or disrespectful. Lieutenant Ernest Delucchi, Commander of Division Four at Port Chicago, testified that he personally ordered only four of the 50 defendants to load munitions. Delucchi described overhearing men of Division Eight say to his men, "Don't go to work for the white motherfuckers" but, under cross-examinationCross-examination
In law, cross-examination is the interrogation of a witness called by one's opponent. It is preceded by direct examination and may be followed by a redirect .- Variations by Jurisdiction :In...
, was unable to identify who said it. Veltmann objected to this hearsay
Hearsay in United States law
Hearsay is the legal term for testimony in a court proceeding where the witness does not have direct knowledge of the fact asserted, but knows it only from being told by someone. In general the witness will make a statement such as, "Sally told me Tom was in town," as opposed to "I saw Tom in...
but was overruled after Coakley explained it was evidence toward conspiracy.
On September 15, Delucchi continued his testimony, saying that some of his men told him they would obey all orders and perform all work except loading ammunition because they were afraid of it. Delucchi confirmed that a cook and a man with a broken wrist were among the 25 men in his division that now sat among the 50 accused. Delucchi added that the cook and a second man were sailors he did not consider "up to par"; the cook in particular was prone to nervous attacks and was seen as a liability at the pier.
Later in the trial, Lieutenant Carleton Morehouse—Commander of Division Eight at Port Chicago—took the stand to say that at the first sign of problems on August 9, he assembled his men and read their names off alphabetically, ordering each man to work. Ninety-six of 104 refused and were sent to the prison barge, but all of these men agreed to work after hearing Admiral Wright's speech on August 11; none of Morehouse's men were on trial for mutiny. Morehouse confirmed to Veltmann that some of his men had said they were afraid to handle ammunition. Following Morehouse, Lieutenant James E. Tobin, Commander of Division Two, took the stand. Lieutenant Tobin (no relation to Commander Joseph R. Tobin) related that 87 of his men initially refused to work but that number was reduced to 22 after Admiral Wright talked about the firing squad. Tobin said he put three additional men in the brig the next morning when they, too, refused to work, saying they were afraid. Tobin affirmed that one of the accused men from Division Two was permanently assigned the job of cook because he weighed 104 lb (47.2 kg) and was considered too small to safely load ammo.
The next few days of testimony were filled with accounts from African-American enlisted men from Divisions Two, Four and Eight, who were not standing accused of mutiny. Some of these men had already been convicted of disobeying orders in summary courts-martial. The testimony of the men agreed on several points: that there had been talk among them of a mass work-stoppage leading up to August 9, that some men (none of the accused 50) had passed around and signed a petition to avoid loading ammunition, and that Joe Small had spoken at the meeting on the prison barge and had urged the men to obey their officers and to conduct themselves in an orderly fashion. Some men said Small's speech included words to the effect of having the officers "by the tail" or "by the ass". Coakley was challenged by Veltmann when he attempted to bring the men's signed statements in as evidence but the court allowed the statements to be used to refresh the men's memories of their answers to interrogation.
Coakley summed up his prosecution case on September 22. His aim was to show the court that a conspiracy had taken place—the mass of accounts from officers and men appeared to support the conclusion that ringleaders and agitators had forced a rebellion against authority. Veltmann pointed out that few of the accused had been ordered to load ammunition, meaning that they could not all be guilty of the charge of disobeying orders. Veltmann stressed that much of the testimony was hearsay and failed to establish a conspiracy or a mutiny. The court, however, seemed to side with Coakley on all points, settling each objection in favor of the prosecution.
Defense
Veltmann scored a victory at the beginning of his defense: he moved and was granted that each officer's testimony could only be applied to the men they had specifically named as having been given the order to work. In principle, this ruling was favorable, but in practice it would only benefit the men if the court had been attentively keeping notes for each accused man. Instead, the court was observed by reporters to be drowsy at times, with one particular judge regularly nodding off.Starting on September 23 and continuing for over three weeks, each of the accused men was brought to the witness stand to testify in his defense. The general trend of the men's responses was that all of them were willing to obey any order except to load ammunition, all were afraid of another explosion, and none had been approached by "ringleaders" persuading them not to work—each had made his own decision. Each man said that he himself had not coerced others to refuse to work. Some of the men related how, following the official interrogation at Camp Shoemaker, they had been under great pressure to sign statements containing things they had not said. Some men said that, at the meeting on the barge, Joe Small had not urged a mutiny and had not uttered any phrase to the effect of having the officers "by the balls". On the witness stand, Small himself denied saying any such thing, though he would admit to it decades later in interviews.
Coakley's cross-examinations began with an attempt to have the signed statements admitted as evidence. Veltmann objected that each statement was obtained under duress and was not voluntary. Coakley characterized the statements as not being confessions requiring voluntary conditions but merely "admissions" that had no such requirement. Osterhaus ruled that Coakley could not introduce the statements as evidence but that he could ask the defendants questions based on what each man's signed statement contained.
Some of the men who had been named as having been given direct orders to work testified that they had not been given any such order. Seaman Ollie E. Green—who had accidentally broken his wrist one day prior to the first work-stoppage on August 9—said that though he had heard an officer in prior testimony name him as one who had been given a direct order, the officer had only asked him how his wrist was doing, to which he responded "not so good."
At the end of his testimony, Green told the court that he was afraid to load ammunition because of "them officers racing each division to see who put on the most tonnage, and I knowed the way they was handling ammunition it was liable to go off again. If we didn't want to work fast at that time, they wanted to put us in the brig, and when the exec came down on the docks, they wanted us to slow up." This was the first that the newspaper reporters had heard of speed and tonnage competition between divisions at Port Chicago, and each reporter filed a story featuring this revelation to be published the next day. Naval authorities quickly issued a statement denying Green's allegation.
Another one of the men gave the surprising testimony that Lieutenant Commander Coakley had threatened to have him shot after he refused to answer some questions during interrogation at Camp Shoemaker. Seaman Alphonso McPherson held fast to his testimony even when faced by Coakley in cross-examination. Coakley denied threatening anyone, exclaiming that such an idea was a personal affront. Veltmann responded that this line of evidence was news to him, too. The next day, Coakley gave the press a statement accusing Veltmann of coaching McPherson.
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
, chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
(NAACP), sat in on the proceedings. Marshall had flown to the Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
on a special wartime travel priority arranged by Navy Secretary Forrestal. The NAACP had given the mutiny trial top importance due to the U.S. Navy's policy of putting Negroes into dirty and dangerous jobs with no hope of advancement. Although Marshall was allowed to observe the trial, as a civilian he was ineligible to take on an official role in the men's defense. After hearing five of the men defend themselves, Marshall spoke to the 50 men and then conferred with Veltmann's defense team. The next day, Marshall held a press conference, charging that Judge Advocate Coakley was handling the case in a prejudicial manner. Marshall said that, from a review of the proceedings and his conversations with the accused, he could only see these men being tried for lesser charges of individual insubordination, not mass mutiny.
The defense continued a few more days with testimony from a Navy psychiatrist who verified that the immense explosion would generate fear in each man. A black petty officer under Delucchi testified that he had heard no derogatory remarks or conspiratorial comments and that it had been a surprise to everybody when all of the men suddenly refused to march toward the docks on August 9.
Marshall held another press conference on October 17 to announce that the NAACP was requesting a formal government investigation into the working conditions that had led the men to strike. He called attention to three aspects: the Navy policy that put the great majority of African Americans into segregated shore duty, the unsafe munitions handling practices and lack of training which led to catastrophic detonation, and the unfair manner in which 50 of 258 men had been singled out as mutineers when their actions with regard to loading ammunition after the explosion were not significantly different than the other 208 men. Marshall pointed to the men of Division One who had refused to load ammunition prior to August 9 but had been shipped out and given other duty, not arrested and court-martialled.
Coakley's rebuttal witnesses consisted of officers who had interrogated the prisoners at Camp Shoemaker. The rebuttal fared poorly, as Veltmann was able to elicit from them that some of the accused men had not been informed they could refuse to make a statement, that some of the interrogations had taken place with an armed sentry standing guard, that very few of the prisoners' explanations that they had been afraid of another explosion had been laid down in the statements, and that the officers had emphasized portions of the interrogations that would satisfy Coakley's requirement for evidence of conspiracy. Coakley's last rebuttal witness testified on October 19, and the whole court took October 20 off to allow both sides to prepare closing arguments.
Closing arguments
In his closing argument, Coakley described a chronological sequence of mutinous occurrences, beginning at Camp Shoemaker shortly after the explosion when two and a half companies were mixed together for two weeks. Coakley stated that conspiratorial talk among the men about refusing to work and trying to get out of loading ammunition was the root of their August 9 mass refusal. Coakley described how the mutiny continued in the barge when Joe Small spoke to the men and asked them to stick together. Coakley entered into the record his definition of mutiny: "Collective insubordination, collective disobedience of lawful orders of a superior officer, is mutiny." He gave his opinion that men who admitted in time of war that they were afraid to load ammunition were of a low moral character and were likely to give false testimony.Veltmann denied that there was a mutinous conspiracy, saying the men were in a state of shock stemming from the horrific explosion and the subsequent cleanup of human body parts belonging to their former battalion mates. He said the conversations at Camp Shoemaker were simply those of men who were trying to understand what had happened, and that these discussions were not mutinous nor could they provide the groundwork for conspiracy. Veltmann argued that Small's brief four- or five-minute speech to the men on the barge was given in the performance of his duty to maintain order, a duty placed upon him by his superiors. Veltmann restated that the established legal definition of mutiny was a concerted effort to usurp, subvert or override military authority, and that there had been no such action or intent. Refusal to obey an order was not mutiny.
Verdict
On October 24, 1944, Admiral Osterhaus and the other six members of the court deliberated for 80 minutes and found all 50 defendants guilty of mutinyMutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
. Each man was reduced in rank to Seaman Apprentice
Seaman Apprentice
ConstructionmanvariationFiremanvariationAirmanvariationSeamaninsigniaSeaman apprentice is the second lowest enlisted rank in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, just above seaman recruit and below seaman; this rank was formerly known as seaman second class.The actual title for an E-2 in the U.S....
and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor
Hard Labor
Hard Labor is the eleventh album by American rock band Three Dog Night, released in 1974 .- Cover Artwork :The original album cover, depicting of the birth of a record album , was deemed too controversial and was soon reworked with a huge bandage covering the "birth". The cover also includes an...
to be followed by dishonorable discharge. The men were held under guard while their sentences were passed to Admiral Wright for review. On November 15, Wright reduced the sentences for 40 of the men: 24 were given 12 years, 11 were given 10 years and the five youngest sailors were given eight-year sentences. The full 15-year sentences remained in place for ten of the men including Joe Small and Ollie Green. In late November, the 50 men were transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island
Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island
Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island is a low-security prison for men located on Reservation Point on Terminal Island and in San Pedro, Los Angeles. The other Federal prison in the Los Angeles area is the Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles...
in San Pedro Bay
San Pedro Bay (California)
San Pedro Bay is an inlet on the Pacific Ocean coast of southern California, United States. It is the site of the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, which together form the fifth-busiest port facility in the world and easily the busiest in the Western Hemisphere...
near the Port of Los Angeles
Port of Los Angeles
The Port of Los Angeles, also called Los Angeles Harbor and WORLDPORT L.A, is a port complex that occupies of land and water along of waterfront. The port is located on San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, approximately south of downtown...
and the Port of Long Beach
Port of Long Beach
The Port of Long Beach, also known as Long Beach’s Harbor Department, is the 2nd busiest container port in the USA. It adjoins the separate Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for U.S.-Asian trade, the port occupies of land with of waterfront in the city of Long Beach, California...
.
Appeal and release
During the 12 days that he watched the court-martial proceedings, Thurgood Marshall began to formulate an appeal campaign. Marshall had noticed that none of the men's grievances had been aired in court. Directly after the court closed the case, Marshall sent a letter to Secretary Forrestal asking why only blacks were assigned the task of loading munitions; why had they not been trained for that task; why were they forced to compete for speed; why were they not given survivor's leaves; and why had they not been allowed to rise in rank. Forrestal replied weakly, saying that a predominance of black men were stationed at Port Chicago so of course they would be working there to load munitions. Forrestal pointed out that there was no discrimination because other naval weapons stations were manned by white crews loading munitions. The Navy Secretary said that the men had not been promoted because their time at Port Chicago had been a "trial period", and that they were not given 30-day leaves because he thought it best for men to get quickly back to duty to prevent them from building up mental and emotional barriers.Marshall—working as special counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City....
—determined that the first course of action should be a publicity campaign mounted with the aim of gathering public support for the release of the men. In November 1944, Marshall wrote an incendiary piece for Crisis magazine, published by the NAACP. Pamphlets were printed and distributed, and editorials denouncing the trial appeared from African-American publishers in January 1945. Petitions began to circulate, collecting thousands of names of citizens who demanded a reversal of the mutiny verdict. Protest meetings were held and powerful people in sympathy to the cause were asked to bring pressure to bear. Eleanor Roosevelt sent Secretary Forrestal a copy of NAACP's "Mutiny" pamphlet in April 1945, asking him to take special care in this case.
Marshall obtained written permission from each of the 50 convicted men for him to appeal their case when it came up for review in Washington, DC in front of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy. On April 3, 1945, he appeared to present his arguments. Marshall's appeal made the case that no direct order was given to all 50 of the defendants to load munitions and that even if orders had been given to certain individuals, disobeying the orders could not constitute mutiny. He said that Coakley deliberately misled the court on the definition of "mutiny" and that the mass of evidence he introduced was hearsay, thus inadmissible
Admissible evidence
Admissible evidence, in a court of law, is any testimonial, documentary, or tangible evidence that may be introduced to a factfinder—usually a judge or jury—in order to establish or to bolster a point put forth by a party to the proceeding...
. Marshall wrote that "[t]he accused were made scapegoats in a situation brought about by a combination of circumstances. [...] Justice can only be done in this case by a complete reversal of the findings." Marshall said "I can't understand why whenever more than one Negro disobeys an order it is mutiny."
The office of the Secretary of the Navy ordered Admiral Wright to reconvene the courts-martial, this time with instructions to disregard the hearsay testimony. Admiral Osterhaus once again called the court to session for deliberation and on June 12, 1945, the court reaffirmed each of the mutiny convictions and sentences. Admiral Wright stuck by his reduced sentences.
After the surrender of Japan
Surrender of Japan
The surrender of Japan in 1945 brought hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent...
and the cessation of hostilities, the Navy was no longer able to justify such severe sentences as a warning to other potentially dissident servicemen and labor battalions. In September 1945, the Navy shortened each of the 50 mutiny sentences by one year. Captain Harold Stassen
Harold Stassen
Harold Edward Stassen was the 25th Governor of Minnesota from 1939 to 1943. After service in World War II, from 1948 to 1953 he was president of the University of Pennsylvania...
recommended in October that the Navy reduce the sentences to just two years for men with good conduct records and three years for the rest, with credit for time served. Finally, on January 6, 1946, the Navy announced that 47 of the 50 men were being released. These 47 were paroled to active duty aboard Navy vessels in the Pacific Theater, where the men were assigned menial duties associated with post-war base detail. Two of the 50 prisoners remained in the prison's hospital for additional months recuperating from injuries, and one was not released because of a bad conduct record. Those of the 50 who had not committed later offenses were given a general discharge from the Navy "under honorable conditions". In all, the Navy granted clemency to about 1,700 imprisoned men at this time.
Political and social effect
The Port Chicago disaster highlighted systemic racial inequality in the Navy. A year before the disaster, in mid-1943, the U.S. Navy had over 100,000 African Americans in service but not one black officer. In the months following the disaster, the Pittsburgh Courier, a newspaper with a large nationwide subscription primarily of African Americans, related the incident and the subsequent mutiny trial in their ongoing "Double V" campaign, a push for victory over not just the Axis powersAxis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
but also over racial inequality at home. The mutiny trial was seen as underscoring the tense race relations in the armed forces at the time.
Late in 1944, under conditions of severe racism, a race riot broke out in Guam
Agana race riot
The Agana race riot took place at Agana, Guam over the two nights of 24 December-25 December, 1944 during the War in the Pacific.It was one of the most serious incidents between African American military personnel and White enlisted men during the Second World War.-Background:In July 1944, the 3rd...
at a naval base. In March 1945 a Seabee
Seabee
Seabees are members of the United States Navy construction battalions. The word Seabee is a proper noun that comes from the initials of Construction Battalion, of the United States Navy...
battalion of 1,000 African-American men staged a hunger strike at their base in Port Hueneme, California
Port Hueneme, California
Port Hueneme is a small beach city in Ventura County, California surrounded by the city of Oxnard and the Pacific Ocean. The name derives from the Spanish spelling of the Chumash wene me, meaning "Resting Place". The area was discovered by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in the mid 16th century...
, in protest of discriminatory conditions. In the weeks following the latter incident, Fleet Admiral Ernest King
Ernest King
Fleet Admiral Ernest Joseph King was Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations during World War II. As COMINCH, he directed the United States Navy's operations, planning, and administration and was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the U.S...
and Secretary Forrestal worked with civilian expert Lester Granger
Lester Granger
Lester Blackwell Granger was an African American civic leader who organized the Los Angeles, California, chapter of the National Urban League ....
on a plan for total integration of the races within the Navy. The Port Chicago disaster had helped catalyze the drive to implement new standards.
Beginning in 1990, a campaign led by 25 U.S. Congressmen was unsuccessful in having the convicts exonerated
Exoneration
Exoneration occurs when a person who has been convicted of a crime is later proved to have been innocent of that crime. Attempts to exonerate convicts are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially where new evidence is put forth after the execution has taken place.The term...
. Gordon Koller, Chief Petty Officer at the time of the explosion, was interviewed in 1990. Koller stated that the hundreds of men like himself who continued to load ammunition in the face of danger were "the ones who should be recognized". In 1994, the Navy rejected a request by four California lawmakers to overturn the courts-martial decisions. The Navy found that racial inequities were responsible for the sailors' ammunition-loading assignments but that no prejudice occurred at the courts-martial.
Freddie Meeks, one of the few still alive among the group of 50, was urged to petition the President for a pardon
Pardon
Clemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...
. Others of the Port Chicago 50 had refused to ask for a pardon, reasoning that a pardon is for guilty people receiving forgiveness; they continued to hold the position that they were not guilty of mutiny. Meeks pushed for a pardon as a way to get the story out, saying "I hope that all of America knows about it... it's something that's been in the closet for so long." In September 1999, the petition by Meeks was bolstered by 37 members of Congress including George Miller, the U.S. representative for the district containing the disaster site. The 37 Congressmen sent a letter to President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, and in December 1999 Clinton pardoned Meeks. Meeks died several years later in June 2003. Efforts to posthumously exonerate all 50 sailors have continued. In 2004, author Robert L. Allen
Robert L. Allen
Robert Lee Allen is an activist, writer, and Adjunct Professor of African-American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Allen received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, and previously taught at San José State University and...
was reported as saying "...even for today it's important to have these convictions set aside."
Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial is a memorial dedicated in 1994 recognizing the dead of the Port Chicago disaster, and the critical role played by Port Chicago, California during World War II, in serving as the main facility for the Pacific Theater of Operations...
was dedicated in 1994 to the lives lost in the explosion. The National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
(NPS) was directed to design and maintain the memorial. Congressman George Miller pushed for the memorial to be upgraded to national park
National park
A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...
status in 2002, in the knowledge that such status would help the site "become more competitive for federal funds to upgrade and enhance facilities and education materials". This effort did not result in a change of status. In 2006, a local newspaper article highlighted the precarious position of the disused chapel within the grounds of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, a chapel that had been previously dedicated to the memory of those fallen in the explosion. The 1980 chapel was said by local historian John Keibel to be unsalvageable due to lead paint
Lead paint
Lead paint or lead-based paint is paint containing lead, a heavy metal, that is used as pigment, with lead chromate and lead carbonate being the most common. Lead is also added to paint to speed drying, increase durability, retain a fresh appearance, and resist moisture that causes corrosion...
and its dilapidated condition. Keibel called attention to the stained glass windows which were crafted in 1991 as a tribute to the disaster, noting that they could be dismantled and remounted at the memorial site. In March 2008, NPS was directed by Congress to manage the memorial, after passage of a bill introduced in 2007 by Miller. On July 10, 2008, Senator Barbara Boxer
Barbara Boxer
Barbara Levy Boxer is the junior United States Senator from California . A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives ....
introduced legislation that would expand the memorial site by five acres (two hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s), if the land was judged safe for human health and was excess to the Navy's needs. The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial Enhancement Act of 2008 was not put to a vote. On February 12, 2009, Miller introduced a similar bill entitled "Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial Enhancement Act of 2009" which, in addition to calling for another five acres, allowed for the City of Concord
Concord, California
Concord is the largest city in Contra Costa County, California, USA. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 122,067. Originally founded in 1869 as the community of Todos Santos by Salvio Pacheco, the name was changed to Concord within months...
and the East Bay Regional Park District
East Bay Regional Park District
The East Bay Regional Park District is a special district operating in Alameda County and Contra Costa County, California, within the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area...
"to establish and operate a facility for visitor orientation and parking, administrative offices, and curatorial storage for the Memorial." President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
approved and signed the bill in December 2009.
The site is contained within an active military base and requires prior reservation in order to visit. Visitors are asked to allow 90 minutes per visit and are shuttled to the site in NPS vehicles from the Concord Naval Weapons Station Identification Office.
Nuclear bomb theory
The Port Chicago explosion was studied by the Los Alamos National LaboratoryLos Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
team working on the Manhattan project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
. The resulting damage was seen as being similar to the effects of a relatively small nuclear explosion
Nuclear explosion
A nuclear explosion occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from an intentionally high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission, nuclear fusion or a multistage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion based weapons have used a fission device...
with destructive power equivalent to 2,000 tons of TNT. Paul Masters—a photo technician at Los Alamos—made copies of some of the study documents and stored them at his home. In 1980, Peter Vogel discovered one of Masters' documents in a rummage sale and noticed that one section of text read "Ball of fire mushroom out at 18,000 ft in typical Port Chicago fashion". Vogel—a New Mexican
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
information officer-turned-journalist—began to research the possibility that the Port Chicago explosion was caused by a nuclear bomb. Beginning in 1982, Vogel publicly voiced his theory, raising a storm of controversy in the Bay Area press.
Vogel continued to hunt for clues for the next 20 years, eventually writing a book and, in 2002, establishing a website delineating various circumstantial reasons why the Port Chicago explosion could have been nuclear. After failing to find hard evidence to support his theory, Vogel abandoned it in 2005. Vogel's website was remounted in 2009 under a different URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
.
Vogel's theory has not had any traction amongst mainstream historians. Nuclear historians Lawrence Badash and Richard G. Hewlett
Richard G. Hewlett
Richard Greening Hewlett is an American public historian best known for his work as the Chief Historian of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.-Biography:...
, in an article from 1993, took issue both with Vogel's alleged evidence of weapons effects residues as well as Vogel's proposed timetable for the production of the bomb itself. "It is impossible that there would have been no noticeable effects that later would have been identifiable as nuclear," they wrote, "Yet rescue and investigating personnel combed the area immediately after the blast, and the ammunition depot, which was quickly rebuilt, is in use today. These activities, without any reported injuries resulting from residual radioactivity, clearly indicate that only conventional explosives were detonated." They criticized Vogel for being "silent" about all of the evidence against his theory, and found the persistence in the propagation of the Vogel theory in the media "even in the face of evidence to the contrary" as exemplifying "the process by which conspiracy theories and other astounding knowledge claims gain popular attention."
Media representations
In 1990, Will Robinson and Ken Swartz produced a documentary about the explosion and trial, interviewing mutiny convict Joe Small and his defense lawyer Gerald Veltmann as well as Percy Robinson, a seaman who returned to loading ammunition after the first work-stoppage and Robert Routh, Jr., a seaman who was blinded in the blast. Danny GloverDanny Glover
Danny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is perhaps best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.-Early life:...
provided narration for the story which included dramatized scenes depicting events as they might have occurred in 1944. The documentary was nominated for the Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
s and won an Emmy
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
.
In 1996, Dan Collison interviewed Port Chicago sailors for a radio show on This American Life
This American Life
This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...
. The men described how they were initially trained for action on ships and were disappointed when they were not assigned to ocean-going ships. Collison interspersed interviews with contemporary news reports about the explosion.
The story of the Port Chicago 50 was the basis of Mutiny, a made-for-television movie which was written by James S. "Jim" Henerson, directed by Kevin Hooks
Kevin Hooks
Kevin Hooks is an American actor, and a television and film director; he is notable from his roles in Aaron Loves Angela and Sounder, but may be best known as Morris Thorpe from TV's The White Shadow....
and included Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. He is noted for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won...
as one of three executive producers. Starring Michael Jai White
Michael Jai White
Michael Jai White is an American actor and martial artist who has appeared in numerous films and television series. He is the first African American to portray a major comic book superhero in a major motion picture, having starred as Al Simmons, the protagonist in the 1997 film Spawn...
, Duane Martin
Duane Martin
Duane Martin is an American film and television actor.-Personal life:Martin was born in Dayton OH, and went to Dunbar High school and failed the 9th grade freshman year.Then met Tisha Campbell at the New York Liberty City Awards for the World records by doing backflips.-Career:Martin had a short...
and David Ramsey
David Ramsey (actor)
David Ramsey is an American actor, best known for his roles in the Showtime TV series Dexter as Anton Briggs and the film Mother and Child.-Life and career:...
as three fictional Navy seamen, the film aired on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
on March 28, 1999.
The disaster was featured in "Port Chicago", a 2002 episode of the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
/CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
drama television series JAG
JAG (TV series)
JAG is an American adventure/legal drama television show that was produced by Belisarius Productions, in association with Paramount Network Television and, for the first season only, NBC Productions...
.
See also
- Agana race riotAgana race riotThe Agana race riot took place at Agana, Guam over the two nights of 24 December-25 December, 1944 during the War in the Pacific.It was one of the most serious incidents between African American military personnel and White enlisted men during the Second World War.-Background:In July 1944, the 3rd...
—1944 conflict between African-American sailors and white Marines - Fort Lawton RiotFort Lawton Riot”The largest and longest U.S. Army court-martial of World War II took place at Seattle's Fort Lawton. 43 U.S. soldiers, all of them African-American, were charged with rioting; three were also charged with the lynching death of an Italian prisoner of war named Guglielmo Olivotto.Some resources ...
—43 African-American defendants in the largest WWII Army courts-martial—379 sailors killed in accidental explosion in 1943 - List of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions
- Naval Ammunition DepotNaval Ammunition DepotThe Naval Ammunition Depot was the largest United States World War II naval munitions plant operating from 1942 to 1946. Construction began in July, 1942 on near Hastings, Nebraska and was completed in early 1943 with over 2000 structures including buildings, bunkers, and various other types of...
—1944 munitions explosions causing deaths of African Americans - Naval Station NorfolkNaval Station NorfolkNaval Station Norfolk, in Norfolk, Virginia, is a base of the United States Navy, supporting naval forces in the United States Fleet Forces Command, those operating in the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Indian Ocean...
—1943 truckload explosion of 24 aerial depth charges—1944 explosion of Navy ammunition ship—1943 naval explosion in Lower New York Bay - West Loch DisasterWest Loch DisasterThe West Loch Disaster was a previously secret American World War II maritime accident which led to the deaths of 163 men at the U.S. naval base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 21 May 1944...
—ammunition explosion in Pearl Harbor, two months previously
External links
- U.S. Maritime Service Veterans memorial page
- Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Monument – National Park Service site
- The Port Chicago Disaster: A Resource for Students and Teachers. Contra Costa County Office of Education
- The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History by Dan Collison