May 5, 2026 • 49 mins
On July 17, 1944, over 300 people died in a massive explosion. These weren't soldiers fighting overseas -- they were sailors and civilians near the pier, where hurried loading operations inevitably went wrong. To this day, no one knows what triggered the explosion -- but, in a terrible way, this was only the beginning of the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fill a conspiracy realist. We are returning to you with
one of our favorite classic episodes from twenty to twenty.
I'm not alone and like in Chicago, right, you guys
dig Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
When I go back to love Chicago. Some of my
favorite music bands of all time, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tortoise,
Jim Rourke, Incredible stuff out of Chicago and an amazing
place to visit the what is it the Art Institute
Museum in Chicago, Portillo's Deep Dish, pizza, sandwiches, wet sandwiches,
(00:33):
wet beef. That's not what they're called.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
The Bear, We love Chicago's amazing. One bad day to
be in Chicago was July seventeenth, nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Though oh well done. Yes, over three hundred people died
in a massive explosion. This was not necessarily a military operation.
These definitely weren't soldiers fighting overseas. These are people who
happened to be around the pier at the wrong time.
This is the story of the Port Chicago disaster. From
(01:04):
UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to know a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer,
all mission control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Our story today takes place a little
bit more than seventy six years ago. It's about thirty
(01:52):
miles north of San Francisco in the Bay. It's a
story that includes a number of proposed conspiracies and number
of proven conspiracies. And while you may not have heard
of this story before, it is a It is a
story that fundamentally changed the course of the United States.
It's known as the Port Chicago Disaster. Did you guys
(02:16):
ever hear about this before in grade school or growing up?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I don't recall learning about it in school. However, I
traveled to Valeo, California, which is right in the very
close in that area, and I learned about it after
hearing about the naval history of Mayor Island, which is
very close to there too. But that's the only time
I've ever encountered it.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, and Mayor Island's going to come up in this
story quite a bit as well. I had never heard
a peep about it, and was actually quite a surprised
to learn that the Port Chicago has absolutely nothing to
do with Illinois or the Midwest at all, or the
band Chicago even No, but it does turn out the
twenty five or six to four is when the whoever
(02:56):
the main Chicago do do is, was trying to figure
out a closing to the song and he looked at
his watch and it was twenty five or six minutes
to four, which seems like quite a large gap there,
But that's the lore of that song.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And here are the facts. So, despite the name, nothing
to do with Illinois, nothing to do with Chicago, the band,
or the metropolis. Port Chicago was a town located in California,
thirty miles north of San Francisco. It was once upon
a time called Bay Point because it was created in
part by something called the Bay Point Land Company. However,
(03:35):
Port Chicago was not like a normal town, at least
in conception.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
No, it was a town with a purpose, with a mission.
It was developed specifically to serve and support a giant
munitions facility. And that is because that island that Matt mentioned.
Mayor Island also had a naval ammunition depot there that
was starting to not quite cut it for the war
effort on its own, so they needed an additional depot
(04:03):
and factory to support the war effort out of California.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
And you know, there's the Port Chicago that has the
pier where all of that ammunitions loading and all that occurs.
But there's also a town where the people would live
that worked there if you didn't live, you know, on
the facility, like in the base. Essentially, there's a population
in that small town of around fifteen hundred and it
was located only about a mile and a half away
(04:29):
from where those ships were located.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, and this will be important to this story later.
So this is a purpose built town. In some ways,
it's similar to places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or some
of the closed cities in the former USSR. But make
no mistake, even though Port Chicago the town was relatively
small in terms of population, it was a huge deal
(04:52):
to Uncle Sam. Business was booming. By the summer of
nineteen forty four, the newly minted facility had already expanded
such that they could load two ships concurrently around the clock,
so twenty four to seven, two ships in and then
two ships out. Business was also terrible in addition to booming.
(05:18):
Whether you thought it was awesome or terrible depended on
your role in the process. Because the Navy and all
of the armed services at this time were still segregated,
and that meant the dangerous, awful, crappy jobs like loading
live munitions were typically assigned to the African American units,
(05:38):
and these guys were not what's the old saying, These
guys were not set up for success by their superiors
or command structure.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
No, it makes me think of the term cannon fodder
that you hear oftentimes, and there are, you know, hellish
stories of African American troops being put on the front
line as essentially human pawns, you know, to be kind
of to soak up the brunt of an onslaught so
that the folks in the back could maybe live on
to fight another day. And this is not dissimilar from that.
(06:08):
It's not direct combat, but it's involving the handling of
some very unstable and dangerous munitions without proper training.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, I think about that. These are high explosive materials
and projectiles essentially that they're handling without proper training. These
guys that were forced to do this work were trained
for hand to hand to combat for you know, other
combat roles with weapons and such, but they didn't have
any official training on how to do what they were
(06:39):
doing at night, in the middle of the night, after
working all day, and they were you know, they were
told to do this without training by their white superior officers.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And in addition to that, they had these incredibly hectic
loading schedules. The people on the front lines will die
if we don't get this stuff out in time, and
it always needs to be there yesterday. So safety standards,
like it's similar in some ways to the COVID problems
in productions today, safety standards were either diminished or ignored
(07:13):
out right. What could go wrong? Like this is a
bit of a tangent, but you know, I know a
lot of productions nowadays, film productions or I think TV
productions as well, there is someone who is hired as
a COVID compliance officer or something like that, and nobody
(07:35):
really listens to them. They've got a terrible job because
they're supposed to speak truth to power, and you guys, know,
the hierarchy of sets. You can't even if you're right,
you can't go up to the director, some A list
celebrity and be like, hey, you know, legally, legally it's
mask time, Morgan Freeman or whatever, You'll get fired and
(07:56):
that's what's happening.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well that's true, but yes, I agree with you, really,
but also like that it is if one person on
a set gets COVID, the whole production has to shut down.
And I've heard of that happening quite a few times,
you know, here in our little film bubble of Atlanta.
But I wanted to double back on one tiny thing
I said talking about the things they were handling being unstable.
(08:17):
There is some truth to that, but it's interesting because
munitions up until the late eighteen hundreds had been explosives
rather had been incredibly unstable. And then Nobel invented dynamite,
Alfred Nobel in the eighteen sixties, which was like a
way of stably handling explosives that were, you know, stronger
(08:39):
than black powder, which had been like the kind of
explosive du jour before that. And I learned a little
bit about this listening to the great podcast Omnibus with
Ken Jennings and John Roderick, and I think it's really
ironic and probably not lost on anybody that Alfred Nobel,
in inventing dynamite, he prevented people from blowing themse up
(09:00):
accidentally by handling munitions and things like that, but also
made it much more possible to spread the use of
these type of explosives and you know, kill people with
them on purpose. So he, in order to maybe maintain
his legacy, started the whole Nobel Peace Prize, right.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
But the philosophical question there is it's an important one.
Does that make your hands clean?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And did building the Winchester mansion in some way spiritually
exonerate the Winchester widow from all the deaths on the
other end of the Winchester repeating rifle story for another day,
But let's talk about let's talk about the ammunition. That's
a good direction to go. So on July seventeenth, nineteen
(09:44):
forty four, the guys on the evening shift to Matt.
Matt's your very important point. They were speed loading these
two merchant ships, the SS Quinnault Victory and the SS
EA Brian. The holds were being packed like four thousand
six hundred tons of various explosives, bombs, depth charges, plain
(10:07):
old ammunition. And then there were another four hundred tons
of explosives waiting nearby on railcars. Southern Pacific, by the way,
goes straight through town, so they can carry this stuff
from the factories.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And just if everyone understands I didn't fully understand this,
the cargo hold of a large ship like that is
kind of in the center and it's like a cavernous
hole that imagine one just filled with these explosives. Would
that amount I mean, if you're it has to be
at least two thousand tons each for those ships that
(10:43):
they're loading up, you know, and just like two thousand
times two thousand, good god, that is so much explosive.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, and picture so picture like a Hostess cupcake in
the sakes it barely eight today. It picture like a
Hostess cupcake, the kime with the little lace on the
top and the little cream in the middle or cream
field donut, whatever your choice. That's that's kind of this
cargo hold situation. So with two ships, with two ships,
(11:15):
with two big ships, this was a ginormous operation. There
were hundreds of people in the area. There were about
three hundred and twenty as far as we can tell,
on or near the pier. When something went wrong at
exactly ten eighteen, a series of massive explosions resounded through
(11:39):
the night, creating blasts that were felt as far away
as Nevada.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
That's right, and well, you know, we we'll talk more
about this. But those those explosions destroyed everything, everything and
killed every person who was working there that night.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, faporized them, rated them. Like we know there were
three hundred and twenty people there from records, more so
than than you know. Unfortunately, then finding a lot of
corpses though.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Not even like dental records where they could like match
the remains. Like I mean, when you say vaporized, I
mean you basically mean like turned to dust, disintegrate.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, the largest remaining pieces of the EA Brian, for instance,
which is seven two hundred ton ship itself, the largest
remaining pieces of it were about the size of a suitcase.
So there was no it's a no stone standing on
another situation, and the damage, the actual damage stretched all
(12:43):
the way south into San Francisco, somewhere between thirty and
forty eight miles. Every building remember Port Chicago towns a
mile and a half away. Every building takes this tremendous
amount of damage. There's not there's not a pane of
glass left in town. People were knocked off their feet,
(13:06):
and here's a fun fact to ruin conversations with your friends.
Despite what we see in action films, any explosion powerful
enough to knock someone off their feet also usually does
very serious damage to their bodies. Shout out to Rachel Lance,
who has been a guest on some of our shows
in the past. She is an expert, one of the
(13:27):
world's foremost experts in underwater explosions, which I did not
know is a job you could have.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
It's the coolest job, or at least the most niche job,
but also the coolest, most niche job. And really enjoy
talking to her about that.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, and so she can verify this. Oddly enough, through
some remarkable coincidence, A bunch of the town's residents are harmed,
but none are killed. They're much more lucky than the
people at the pier.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Would that have been by like flying debris perhaps, or
some kind of shockwave.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, they were harmed by shockwave. They were harmed by
all the splintering glass and all of the debris shooting
out from this sort of origin point of this series
of explosions.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
One thing that I found most memorable from our conversation
with Rachel Lance is that these shockwaves can be incredibly
damaging underwater in particular too, we're talking about the SS
Hunleay or wasn't the SS. It was just the Huntley.
It was this Civil War era submarine. And the question
was how were the people that were killed in the
(14:38):
testing of this vehicle, what wasn't testing and the use
of this very rudimentary vehicle killed And her kind of
thesis is that it was the shockwave underwater shockwave that
actually can cause like internal damage, like it can like
eviscerate your internal organs. So nothing to sneeze at these shockwaves.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
So let's imagine the explosion it's occurring, when this initial
explosion occurs, and then there's just so many more that
follow Whatever caused the biggest one, and it's most likely
that it was in the E. A.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Brian.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
With all of those tons of explosives, there was smoke
and fire that just leapt into the air. It was
almost two miles high when people were observing it. There
was a pilot in the area, who was flying about
nine thousand feet up, noticed that there were metal chunks
the size of, oh, I don't know, a house from
the explosion flying past him. The other ship, the Couinnault
(15:36):
that we were talking about it in the aftermath when
it was found there was just a tiny piece of
it that was sticking up vertically. Essentially, that was one
of the biggest pieces of wreckage that was discovered there.
Just insane when you think about the force that was
exerted from this explosion.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Right, and insane when you think that that pilot made
it through to relay the story. Yeah, this the cause
of this explosion, as he said, Matt, we don't. It
remains unknown today, and that is because all of the
evidence that would have been helpful from a forensic standpoint
(16:17):
was destroyed moments like millisecond a few seconds after that
first explosion at ten eighteen. This makes the Port Chicago
disaster the largest man made detonation in history to that
point by a healthy margin too. Like pre nuclear weaponry deployment,
(16:39):
this is the largest explosion. Nearly two thirds of the
people who lost their lives at Port Chicago that evening,
where African American enlisted men serving in the navy. This
here's another troubling statistic, and that one night, the deaths
in that one night equal fifteen percent of all African
(17:01):
Americans killed throughout the entirety of World War two. And
the people who did survive, somehow, who were far enough
away to just get out, get away with some injuries
or something, they were still treated horribly. Afterwards. The white
officers supervising them were given hardship leaves. What a terrible disaster.
(17:22):
You go take some time be with your family. But
the black survivors were ordered to clean up the base
lickety split, including picking up the remains of their dead colleagues.
So you have to go. And again this is when
we say remains, We're not talking about a coherent single body.
We're talking about pieces of people.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah, and according to stories, many of them worked for
two or three days straight attempting to clean up the
entire area.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
The absolute worst possible job that someone could be asked
to do. You know, I can't even imagine being able
to like look at my superior with a straight face
and be like sir, yes, sir. But it gets worse,
gets much worse.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, the surviving men are quickly reassigned to the nearby
Mayor Island, and they're expected to carry on, just to
carry on. That's a state of war today. We call this,
as we said, the Port Chicago disaster, but in a
very real way. That explosion is just the beginning of
(18:23):
the story. Will pause for a word from our sponsor
and dive in after this break, here's where it gets crazy.
Fast forward. It's less than a month later, the Navy
starts ordering members of these segregated units to load more munitions.
(18:50):
They still have not received the training they needed, by.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
The way, Yeah, but they wanted the training. They were
calling for the training, been asking for it. Yeah, exactly.
It's not as tho. It was something that was being
neglected by the sailors themselves. And there were two hundred
and fifty eight sailors who then went on a work
stoppage or a strike. Essentially, they caused a work stoppage.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, and you know this isn't like civilian strike. I mean,
it's essentially, you know, refusing the orders of a commanding
officer at this point, which is sort of frowned upon
in the military.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Certainly is. But you know, these are men that don't
have weapons that are essentially saying I'm I'm striking my work.
I don't know, it's it feels different than I don't
know the way it's described at least.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
No, No, I'm just saying that's how it would be viewed.
I think from the brass's perspective, you know, it's like
you are disobeying a direct order.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah, that's correct. In as you said, call it a
work stoppag er strike is a perfect description for the
civilian world. That's what everybody would call it. In the Navy,
this refusal to work did count in their mind as mutiny,
and there there were a number of detainments and arrest.
(20:15):
One building was converted into a brig to hold these people,
but it was never it was never meant to hold
two hundred and fifty eight people. There's a point there
about direct orders. One of the big questions is these
two hundred and fifty eight men directly asked to load munitions,
(20:35):
and if not, were they just saying, well, I'm not
going to volunteer for it. Right. There's a guy named
Lieutenant Gerald e. Veltman who heads the defense and he
says these accusations of mutiny are incorrect and pretty certain
that in his personal life he thought this some of
this stuff was racially motivated. He had a pre trial
(20:56):
brief wherein he cites the definition of mute from a
thing called Winthrop's Military Law and precedence, and he says, look,
the fifty people who are getting straight up charged with
mutiny said, look, there's no proof that they conspired. They
didn't get together and say we're going to usurp, subvert,
(21:20):
or override superior military authority. They just did not want
to die, right.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I always thought of a mutiny as sort of like
the equivalent of a coup on the high seas, where
you are colluding to overthrow the commander of the vessel
or the authority structure of the vessel and take over
and oftentimes with ill intent.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Right yeah, yeah, Like most of us in the US,
when we think of mutiny, the most famous one for
us would be the Mutiny on the Bounty, which led
to the creation of the nation we know as the
Pitcairn Islands today. And the Pitcairn Islands should be a story,
it should be an episode of their own. Are you
(22:03):
guys too familiar with that?
Speaker 3 (22:05):
No, it sounds so familiar, But I don't know, it's.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
A there's a long running intergenerational, uh child abuse situation
there and one of the I think the current mayor
was involved. It's still mayor was re elected. It's just
it's oh, it's it's one. It's gonna be one of
(22:31):
those episodes where we have to say at the top,
it may not be suitable for all audience members, but
in the meantime, folks do a little digging of your
own if you'd like, before we get to it. It's
just it's a shame. But that's that's that's the most
famous mutiny.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, no, for sure. Well let's uh, let's just go
back quickly to that concept of the mutine what actually occurred.
There's a video you can watch right now on YouTube.
It's called Remembering Port Chicago. It's put out there by
the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and in it there's
described one of the first actions that was taken that
was considered a mutiny or a mutinous by the commanding officers,
(23:07):
and it was literally to not I believe it was
to not turn a certain way when the commanding officer
gave them an order to turn, I guess to then
head in to the facility where they would begin working
and you know, loading munitions and things, and it literally
started there and then it just kind of snowballed exactly.
And like to Ben's point, it wasn't as though everybody,
(23:30):
at least to the historical record, it is not known
where every It is not known if there was a
big meeting or something to decide that this was going
to occur.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Right, some people got together allegedly and said, let's have
this work stoppage, you know, let's let's not let's not
repeat the mistakes that occurred in Port Chicago. But then
there were other people who were caught up in the
in the crossfire systemic racism because they were told There's
(24:00):
one account that just says, look, we were told to
stand in a line, and then our officers told us, okay,
if you don't want to, if you're not going to
load munitions, step to your you know right, or step
to your left if you are. And then the people
who just said I don't want to do that got jailed.
(24:20):
Which I feel like maybe there was a different answer
if you knew this was so much was riding on
this question. But like you guys established earlier, Veltman hits
on some consistent points. He said, many of these men,
like you said, man, have not been asked directly to
do anything, and the ones who refused often said, look,
(24:42):
I'm only refusing because I need some training, I need
safety protocols. They're not even giving these people's gloves, by
the way. And then while they were saying this, they
were carrying out other unrelated tasks, you know, maintenance, cleaning,
stuff like that. And they also made no threats, you know,
they weren't like we're going to string you up so
(25:04):
and so. So he makes a pretty good case that
whatever the definition of mutiny is, the Port Chicago fifty
as they came to be known, do not fit the definition.
Their actions don't fit the definition. But he lost that argument, didn't.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
He He did. Indeed, the prosecution, which was led by
Lieutenant Commander James F. Coakley, replied that any persistent refusal
to work by two or more men was in it
self sufficient proof of a conspiracy to override authority, and
as such was tantamount to a mutiny, which I would argue,
(25:41):
I mean, I'm not a naval lawyer or anything, but
I would argue that's some pretty creative thinking there some
very circuitous arguing.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, it's like, at what point does it become a conspiracy?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:54):
The etymology of conspiracy is just to breathe together, so
you're a whispering and silent together, I don't know. And
then how does how does the military handle this? Because
chain of command is so fundamentally important.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Right, Yeah, would just imagine the embarrassment that the United
States Navy was feeling in those months, right, the embarrassment
that the largest explosion up unto that point had occurred
on their soil, involving their you know, their own sailors
and their munitions and all. It was just a I
(26:30):
can't imagine the embarrassment. And it feels like an act
to almost I don't know, and an act to shift
blame maybe ye act right.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, absolutely, this is absolutely looking for someone to point
a finger at, even if it's not directly related to
the explosion, looking for a vulnerable group to scapegoat, well.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Like maybe almost a diversion, right, It's like, look over
here at these guys who broke the rules and obeyed
direct orders, as opposed to look at us, you know,
sitting high and mighty in our commander's chairs. Which is
a thing because it was ultimately on them to provide
the proper training, which clearly wasn't done and clearly made
these It's one thing to go into battle, one thing
(27:15):
to go into war where you know what the score is,
you know there are people literally coming at you to
kill you. You would not expect that treatment among your commanding
officers and your colleagues.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Agreed, and so although clearly it seems like the three
of us are on Veltman's side in this pre trial conversation,
he lost the argument. The trial began on September fourteenth
of that year. All fifty men pled not guilty to
the charges. But what happened next will tell you afterward
(27:49):
from our sponsor, so we have we have a pretty
extensive record of the ins and outs of the trial.
There are a lot of there are a lot of
not completely above board things that happened in this trial.
(28:13):
It came out that some of the sailors who have
been accused, during their interviews, there was an armed guard
station there. They had. One guy said the koch Ley
threatened to shoot him if he didn't have an answer.
Both sides accused the other of coaching the witnesses or
the accused. There were statements from the superior officers who
(28:37):
said things like, Okay, I directly ordered maybe the six
guys to low munitions, and they said, no, but I
can't say that I ordered fifty people to do that,
let alone two hundred and fifty eight.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Jeez.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Well yeah, and I think it's is it the same
officer or a different officer who goes on to explain
that all of the men over whom he had command
would follow well pretty much any order, any and all
orders that were given to them, besides the order to
load more munitions. I think it was the same person.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, Commander Joseph R. Tobin, he said. And he also said, look,
these nobody was being aggressive or agro at me. He
didn't say agro, but you know what I mean. And
he said, no one was being disrespectful. They just they
just didn't want to do this unless they had the
(29:31):
proper training. Because again, like I said earlier, these guys
are trained for combat, and they just got pulled into
munitions because it was a micro esque dirty job. And
increasingly race played a huge public role in this, and
some troubling facts emerged both about how the how the
(29:52):
commanding officers saw the enlisted men and then how they
treated them, right, Because there's some expl nations we found.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, and in a pretty salacious, you know, kind of
rumor milly kind of detail emerge through some hearsay that
was kind of exposed during the trial, and it was
the notion that someone was heard telling the men, quote,
don't go work for those white mothers. And you know,
(30:23):
it was just a claim and it wasn't really verifiable,
right Ben.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, you're right, Noel. There's a lot of hearsay that
takes place in this original trial. It's a lot of
well I heard the blah blah blah did that, and
it's influenced a lot by the rank of the person
testifying or speaking. But there was a troubling explanation that
(30:49):
emerged in the course of this investigation, and it explains
why there was little regard for safety. It turns out
that the officers had a kind of conspiracy or a
sport of their own, and they were using teams of
loaders as the pawns in their game.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Right, I mean, yeah, again, we were talking about that
cannon fodder situation. They were essentially cracking the whip and
seemingly for their own amusement. I mean again, this could
be taken in many different ways, but possibly as a
way of increasing productivity or maybe encouraging the men in
kind of like a playful way to outdo each other.
(31:31):
But there was this side, this concept that emerged that
the commanding officers were encouraging races or even like conducting
requiring races among the teams with zero regard for their
safety if they already had any. This was even more
of an escalation of that absolute disregard for the safety
(31:51):
of these men, and they were making bets. So it's
essentially it's the most dehumanizing treatment of these men who
were already being treated pretty inhumanely.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Maybe you could say it was meant to be like
a motivating thing, right, we're getting these out quickly, so
maybe it wasn't meant to be as dangerous as it was.
They were. Also, the Longshore Union warned them that something
bad was going to happen when they were moving these
munitions so quickly and so haphazardly. So two hundred and
(32:26):
eight of those guys don't get charged with mutiny, they
get bad conduct discharges, which affects their status as veterans.
And they have to forfeit their pay. But the other
men we.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
CALLI which by the way, forfeiting their pay affects their
status in all ways, just in life, just using all
the pay that they would have gone.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, that is absolutely correct. And the the other fifty
men that we call the Port Chicago fifty today we're convicted,
we're ultimately convicted of mutiny and they were given in
incredibly cartoonishly harsh sentences fifty years of prison along with
hard labor, along with a dishonorable discharge as a little
(33:10):
cherry on the top. So now these guys aren't just
scapegoats or they're not just a diversion right now, they
are examples to every other member of the Armed services,
an example that says, step out of line and we
will put you down.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, And it really did it. It painted these fifty
men as bad guys, and in a way, the Navy
is commenting on the three hundred and twenty men who
lost their lives in the actual Port Chicago disaster by
doing this to these fifty men. And again we're talking
about shifting and blame it. It's just pretty tragic that
(33:48):
that occurs. And when it does occur, it catches the
attention of a lot of people. It becomes a fairly
large story, and specifically one person who's see here's about
it is a civil rights activist and who was the
chief a man who is the chief counsel of the
NAACP at the time, Thurgood Marshal. And he steps in.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
And yeah, I'm just laughing because that guy is like,
that's the last person you want to be in a
disagreement with. The man's brilliant, he's driven. I wouldn't eat like,
I wouldn't even play scrabble with him. He would rock
your He's that smart. And so he also, of course
(34:31):
is guided by the principles of justice. He thinks this
court martial, the entirety of the proceedings, he thinks they're bogus.
He thinks it's a diversion the way that Matt Nolan
and I mentioned earlier. He gets special permission to fly
into California and he can sit in on the proceedings.
(34:51):
This guy is a legal legend too at this point,
so he's sitting in on the proceedings that he can't
defend anybody like he can't. The terrible comparison would be like,
you know, like a vampire can't go in your house
unless you invite them. He's the opposite of a vampire.
He's a cool dude. But he can't interfere officially because
(35:13):
he's a civilian. It's a military court. So what he
can do is advise these people or consult with them.
So imagine being that prosecutor Cokeley. You're and you're doing
some shady stuff to try to get the verdict you want,
and then you see just one day, just sitting there calmly,
(35:33):
is there, good, Marshal, He is watching you. Occasionally he'll
take out a pen write something down.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, keep watching you. Make temperature rise for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, And it's good that he was there. He he
went on a public campaign with this, and it had
public support too. One of the things he called for
was a government investigation, not to just into Port Chicago
or not just into the Port Chicago fifty, but the
naves widespread systematic practice of assigning African American service members
(36:14):
to these segregated support roles or putting them in unsafe conditions.
And for a while it seemed like this would be
a hard won battle, but a battle they could win
Eleanor Roosevelt got involved and circulated some of the pamphlets. Right.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, the first lady of the time, she joined up
with the NAACP, and they attempted to appeal the case
because we said, these men got fifteen years in prison
in hard labor and they got that dishonorable discharge. So
they went in to appeal the case, and I'm pretty
sure they lost at first, or they were unable to.
(36:50):
They're unsuccessful at appealing the case at first. But there
were two trials going on. There's a court martial proceeding,
and then there's the trial of public opinion of what
everybody is saying because of what Thurgood Marshal and several
others are writing about the subject, and the trial in
the Port Chicago disaster.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
The nation is forced to look at itself in the
mirror right through the lens of these events and confront
its various prejudicial practices. Why we ask ourselves in kitchen
tables around America at this time, why is our government
putting black men in the most dangerous jobs they can
(37:35):
or the most menial jobs, and in either case, putting
them there with no realistic hope of advancement. Or growth path.
This is a dead end job that could kill you.
And then why, you know, why are we punishing these
people when they refuse to accept this. These are good
questions and he's probably kept Marshall awake at night for
(37:59):
a long time. He poured a lot of his heart
and soul into this. He went to those fifty guys
to see if there was some way he could legally
represent them instead of just having conversations with him. And
he had to get explicit written permission from each of
these fifty men to make an appeal for them.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
And he did it, Yes, he did, indeed. And on
April third, nineteen forty five, Marshall went to DC to
present his case, and he pointed out that the prosecution
had misled the court on the definition of mutiny. I
think we all felt pretty hard from the start. He
also pointed out that the Navy had in some ways
been looking for someone to blame or scapegoat for the disaster.
(38:43):
Has also seemed pretty clear to any kind of casual
observer here. And here's a great quote from his testimony
or from his presentation quote. The 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. Wow.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, I mean it makes total sense. And what happened afterwards,
it just we'll just describe it to you. After the war,
the Navy wasn't able to justify these sentences. The Navy
was like, yeah, so we see all this writing, we
see the appeal. Yeah, okay, you know when it was wartime,
(39:27):
you know, back when we were doing all that, this
kind of made sense. Like the overly punitive sentences were
you know, setting example so that we don't lose a
bunch of other sailors or soldiers somewhere else during the
war because we kind of need everybody. And you know,
we just put fifty guys in jail for fifteen years.
But now that the war's over, hmm, yeah, maybe that
(39:48):
is a little harsh.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, Now, I don't know if we can just if
we can continue going this this hard on the punishment paint.
So in September of nineteen forty, this is you know,
as you said, man, after the close of the war,
the Navy first shortens each of these fifteen year mutiny
sentences by one year and the next month, Captain Harold
(40:12):
Stasson says, I think we reduce these sentences all the
way down to two years for people who have good conduct,
three years for the rest, and then give them credit
for time served. January sixth, nineteen forty six, the Navy
released forty seven of the Chicago Port fifty and then
(40:34):
immediately sent them to active duty aboard ships on the Pacific,
where they were often relegated to menial labor.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
That is rough, getting jailed by your employer essentially then
told all right, you're done with jail, come on back,
get on another ship, get out of here.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
I wonder what podcast jail is like or podcast prison.
Somebody's going to tell us that there's a difference between
podcasts and podcast prison. I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
I think it's just all adreads. So you have to
do ad reads all day long without stopping.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
They're all adreads about the podcast laws you broke, right,
that's it, oh boy. But the stute listeners. You'll notice
we said forty seven of these fifty men, there are
three left. Two of those fifty prisoners stayed in the
prison's hospital for months. They were recuperating from injuries, and
(41:30):
there was one guy who had a what they called
a bad conduct record. But this story, what's so weird
about this is that there first there was a conspiracy
on the part of the Navy. I think that's fair
to say, to find someone to blame. There was an
alleged conspiracy on the part of the men at Mare
(41:52):
Island to not die, which is a conspiracy we all
sort of participate in on a normal day, I imagine.
But then this series of events ultimately led to the
desegregation of the military. It ultimately gave the US military
something that other folks at first blush might think is counterintuitive.
(42:16):
It made the military a very progressive institution on paper,
at least in terms of gender, in terms of race
or religious belief etc. Because in nineteen forty eight, President
Truman desegregated the whole thing, not just the Navy, everything.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Else, the militaries at least.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
The militaries at least. Yeah, And the story doesn't end there, however, No.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
This rippled outward into practically the present day. In the
ninety nineties, Freddie Meeks, one of the few surviving members
of the Port Chicago fifty, was asked to was encouraged
to petition the President of the United States for a pardon.
And you know, this is the kind of stuff whereas
history sort of looks at things through a more progressive lens,
(43:07):
these are the types of things that pardons make a
lot of sense for, right. So, others of the Port
Chicago fifty had refused to ask for a pardon, reasoning
that it implied guilt on their part, that only guilty
people needed to receive forgiveness, like it was some kind
of absolution, acknowledging that their the crime had been committed.
(43:29):
So they continued to hold firm on that position, the
position being that they were not guilty of mutiny in
the first place, which I think we've again, through that
modern lens, pretty unequivocally proven.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Yeah, and again you can look at YouTube videos and
a bunch of writing on this right now. There's one
YouTube video from NBC Bay Area and it's called the
Port Chicago Disaster seventy five years later, where you can
hear a story from a man named William William Ross
who was who was a survivor from the Port Chicago disaster,
(44:01):
and you know, you can hear his story. You can
hear the story of several writers who have been researching
this for a long time, and you can hear that
argument against pardon, and it's a really strong argument to
say pardon is not the right thing here. Exoneration is
the only way forward for.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
This right right and that I agree that that is
a solid argument. Meeks logic for applying for a pardon
is was to bring more public awareness to these events
and to the miscarriage of justice. It was successful to
a degree. In December of nineteen ninety nine. Then President
(44:41):
Clinton pardon Meeks, who would go on to pass away
in June of two thousand and three, and efforts to
posthumously not pardon but exonerate all fifty sailors continue to
this day. The story is in. It takes us to
a better place, but it's by no means. And yet,
if you were in the area, you can check out
(45:02):
the Port Chicago Naval Magazine national memorial, which was dedicated
in nineteen ninety four to the hundreds of lives lost
in the explosion. And there for now, until we get
more news, the episode draws to a close. What do
you think, folks, It is somewhat rare. Longtime listeners, you
(45:24):
know this it is somewhat rare for us to have
an episode with a happy ending of any sort, and
this is sort of a happy ending because justice is
slowly being done and it led to tremendous I would say,
cultural advancements in this country. But it's not over. I
don't know, No, it's not over.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
And you know, there's something that we didn't touch on here,
and it's not even really worth looking into. But because
of the nature of this explosion, how large it was,
and how very little was left behind, it's very difficult
to prove what caused what what is the thing that
sparked the explosion? You know, yes, and of course you
(46:05):
could get lost in rumor and you know, just thinking
about that as whoa could it have been? You know,
an attack from the outside, and you just go down
that rabbit hole forever. But in the end, in all likelihood,
it was an accident that caused it. And that's why this,
you know, is so important to talk about the way
(46:26):
the Navy handled the men that caused an accident because
they weren't they didn't know what they were doing. But again,
there's still lies in there, the possibility that it was
something else, and I think that has fueled, that has
fueled some discussion of this disaster for quite a time.
I don't have any answers there, but it is something
(46:47):
you could look into if you're interested.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Like what if what if this was a cover up
for something even more embarrassing an attack, right, a successful
enemy attack or sabotage of poor Chicago, which in that
case makes it makes the Navy and Uncle Sam look
even worse because instead of puting up the truth, they
(47:12):
doubled down and blamed blamed these guys. That's that's terrible.
But you're absolutely right. The official the official explanation is unknown.
It's literally we don't know what happened. We just know
that something made one thing explode, which made other things explode,
(47:33):
which made other things explode.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Noep, really tragic, man.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
And and I would advance another thing here at the
at the end of our time together today. What other
stories like this are out there? I am sure there
are many. I am sure that scapegoating soldiers is not
something restricted to the United States or to the modern era.
What stories like this have you heard from your neck
(48:00):
of the global woods. Have you experienced something like this firsthand?
If so, let us know. We try to be easy
to find. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter.
Check us out at Here's where it gets Crazy, which
is our Facebook community page. But wait, you say I
hate social media? You guys are great. I just I
(48:21):
can't do it. I don't even talk to my mom
on Facebook. Well that's fine, we have another way for
you get in touch with us.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Well, first call your mom, then immediately dial one eight
three three STDWYTK and leave us a message three minutes
if you please, or less, and you might find and
let us know if it's okay to use what you
want us to call you, if it's okay to use
your audio, and you might hear yourself in one of
our weekly listener mail episodes.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
And if you don't want to do that, you can
of course. Well what's another good way to reach us? Guys? Oh?
I know there's that old fashioned email that we keep
around that a lot of you right into and we
read every week, every day, every week.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
It is conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Fill a conspiracy realist. We are returning to you with
one of our favorite classic episodes from twenty to twenty.
I'm not alone and like in Chicago, right, you guys
dig Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
When I go back to love Chicago. Some of my
favorite music bands of all time, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tortoise,
Jim Rourke, Incredible stuff out of Chicago and an amazing
place to visit the what is it the Art Institute
Museum in Chicago, Portillo's Deep Dish, pizza, sandwiches, wet sandwiches,
(00:33):
wet beef. That's not what they're called.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
The Bear, We love Chicago's amazing. One bad day to
be in Chicago was July seventeenth, nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Though oh well done. Yes, over three hundred people died
in a massive explosion. This was not necessarily a military operation.
These definitely weren't soldiers fighting overseas. These are people who
happened to be around the pier at the wrong time.
This is the story of the Port Chicago disaster. From
(01:04):
UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to know a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer,
all mission control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Our story today takes place a little
bit more than seventy six years ago. It's about thirty
(01:52):
miles north of San Francisco in the Bay. It's a
story that includes a number of proposed conspiracies and number
of proven conspiracies. And while you may not have heard
of this story before, it is a It is a
story that fundamentally changed the course of the United States.
It's known as the Port Chicago Disaster. Did you guys
(02:16):
ever hear about this before in grade school or growing up?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I don't recall learning about it in school. However, I
traveled to Valeo, California, which is right in the very
close in that area, and I learned about it after
hearing about the naval history of Mayor Island, which is
very close to there too. But that's the only time
I've ever encountered it.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, and Mayor Island's going to come up in this
story quite a bit as well. I had never heard
a peep about it, and was actually quite a surprised
to learn that the Port Chicago has absolutely nothing to
do with Illinois or the Midwest at all, or the
band Chicago even No, but it does turn out the
twenty five or six to four is when the whoever
(02:56):
the main Chicago do do is, was trying to figure
out a closing to the song and he looked at
his watch and it was twenty five or six minutes
to four, which seems like quite a large gap there,
But that's the lore of that song.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And here are the facts. So, despite the name, nothing
to do with Illinois, nothing to do with Chicago, the band,
or the metropolis. Port Chicago was a town located in California,
thirty miles north of San Francisco. It was once upon
a time called Bay Point because it was created in
part by something called the Bay Point Land Company. However,
(03:35):
Port Chicago was not like a normal town, at least
in conception.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
No, it was a town with a purpose, with a mission.
It was developed specifically to serve and support a giant
munitions facility. And that is because that island that Matt mentioned.
Mayor Island also had a naval ammunition depot there that
was starting to not quite cut it for the war
effort on its own, so they needed an additional depot
(04:03):
and factory to support the war effort out of California.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
And you know, there's the Port Chicago that has the
pier where all of that ammunitions loading and all that occurs.
But there's also a town where the people would live
that worked there if you didn't live, you know, on
the facility, like in the base. Essentially, there's a population
in that small town of around fifteen hundred and it
was located only about a mile and a half away
(04:29):
from where those ships were located.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, and this will be important to this story later.
So this is a purpose built town. In some ways,
it's similar to places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or some
of the closed cities in the former USSR. But make
no mistake, even though Port Chicago the town was relatively
small in terms of population, it was a huge deal
(04:52):
to Uncle Sam. Business was booming. By the summer of
nineteen forty four, the newly minted facility had already expanded
such that they could load two ships concurrently around the clock,
so twenty four to seven, two ships in and then
two ships out. Business was also terrible in addition to booming.
(05:18):
Whether you thought it was awesome or terrible depended on
your role in the process. Because the Navy and all
of the armed services at this time were still segregated,
and that meant the dangerous, awful, crappy jobs like loading
live munitions were typically assigned to the African American units,
(05:38):
and these guys were not what's the old saying, These
guys were not set up for success by their superiors
or command structure.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
No, it makes me think of the term cannon fodder
that you hear oftentimes, and there are, you know, hellish
stories of African American troops being put on the front
line as essentially human pawns, you know, to be kind
of to soak up the brunt of an onslaught so
that the folks in the back could maybe live on
to fight another day. And this is not dissimilar from that.
(06:08):
It's not direct combat, but it's involving the handling of
some very unstable and dangerous munitions without proper training.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, I think about that. These are high explosive materials
and projectiles essentially that they're handling without proper training. These
guys that were forced to do this work were trained
for hand to hand to combat for you know, other
combat roles with weapons and such, but they didn't have
any official training on how to do what they were
(06:39):
doing at night, in the middle of the night, after
working all day, and they were you know, they were
told to do this without training by their white superior officers.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And in addition to that, they had these incredibly hectic
loading schedules. The people on the front lines will die
if we don't get this stuff out in time, and
it always needs to be there yesterday. So safety standards,
like it's similar in some ways to the COVID problems
in productions today, safety standards were either diminished or ignored
(07:13):
out right. What could go wrong? Like this is a
bit of a tangent, but you know, I know a
lot of productions nowadays, film productions or I think TV
productions as well, there is someone who is hired as
a COVID compliance officer or something like that, and nobody
(07:35):
really listens to them. They've got a terrible job because
they're supposed to speak truth to power, and you guys, know,
the hierarchy of sets. You can't even if you're right,
you can't go up to the director, some A list
celebrity and be like, hey, you know, legally, legally it's
mask time, Morgan Freeman or whatever, You'll get fired and
(07:56):
that's what's happening.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well that's true, but yes, I agree with you, really,
but also like that it is if one person on
a set gets COVID, the whole production has to shut down.
And I've heard of that happening quite a few times,
you know, here in our little film bubble of Atlanta.
But I wanted to double back on one tiny thing
I said talking about the things they were handling being unstable.
(08:17):
There is some truth to that, but it's interesting because
munitions up until the late eighteen hundreds had been explosives
rather had been incredibly unstable. And then Nobel invented dynamite,
Alfred Nobel in the eighteen sixties, which was like a
way of stably handling explosives that were, you know, stronger
(08:39):
than black powder, which had been like the kind of
explosive du jour before that. And I learned a little
bit about this listening to the great podcast Omnibus with
Ken Jennings and John Roderick, and I think it's really
ironic and probably not lost on anybody that Alfred Nobel,
in inventing dynamite, he prevented people from blowing themse up
(09:00):
accidentally by handling munitions and things like that, but also
made it much more possible to spread the use of
these type of explosives and you know, kill people with
them on purpose. So he, in order to maybe maintain
his legacy, started the whole Nobel Peace Prize, right.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
But the philosophical question there is it's an important one.
Does that make your hands clean?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And did building the Winchester mansion in some way spiritually
exonerate the Winchester widow from all the deaths on the
other end of the Winchester repeating rifle story for another day,
But let's talk about let's talk about the ammunition. That's
a good direction to go. So on July seventeenth, nineteen
(09:44):
forty four, the guys on the evening shift to Matt.
Matt's your very important point. They were speed loading these
two merchant ships, the SS Quinnault Victory and the SS
EA Brian. The holds were being packed like four thousand
six hundred tons of various explosives, bombs, depth charges, plain
(10:07):
old ammunition. And then there were another four hundred tons
of explosives waiting nearby on railcars. Southern Pacific, by the way,
goes straight through town, so they can carry this stuff
from the factories.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And just if everyone understands I didn't fully understand this,
the cargo hold of a large ship like that is
kind of in the center and it's like a cavernous
hole that imagine one just filled with these explosives. Would
that amount I mean, if you're it has to be
at least two thousand tons each for those ships that
(10:43):
they're loading up, you know, and just like two thousand
times two thousand, good god, that is so much explosive.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, and picture so picture like a Hostess cupcake in
the sakes it barely eight today. It picture like a
Hostess cupcake, the kime with the little lace on the
top and the little cream in the middle or cream
field donut, whatever your choice. That's that's kind of this
cargo hold situation. So with two ships, with two ships,
(11:15):
with two big ships, this was a ginormous operation. There
were hundreds of people in the area. There were about
three hundred and twenty as far as we can tell,
on or near the pier. When something went wrong at
exactly ten eighteen, a series of massive explosions resounded through
(11:39):
the night, creating blasts that were felt as far away
as Nevada.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
That's right, and well, you know, we we'll talk more
about this. But those those explosions destroyed everything, everything and
killed every person who was working there that night.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, faporized them, rated them. Like we know there were
three hundred and twenty people there from records, more so
than than you know. Unfortunately, then finding a lot of
corpses though.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Not even like dental records where they could like match
the remains. Like I mean, when you say vaporized, I
mean you basically mean like turned to dust, disintegrate.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, the largest remaining pieces of the EA Brian, for instance,
which is seven two hundred ton ship itself, the largest
remaining pieces of it were about the size of a suitcase.
So there was no it's a no stone standing on
another situation, and the damage, the actual damage stretched all
(12:43):
the way south into San Francisco, somewhere between thirty and
forty eight miles. Every building remember Port Chicago towns a
mile and a half away. Every building takes this tremendous
amount of damage. There's not there's not a pane of
glass left in town. People were knocked off their feet,
(13:06):
and here's a fun fact to ruin conversations with your friends.
Despite what we see in action films, any explosion powerful
enough to knock someone off their feet also usually does
very serious damage to their bodies. Shout out to Rachel Lance,
who has been a guest on some of our shows
in the past. She is an expert, one of the
(13:27):
world's foremost experts in underwater explosions, which I did not
know is a job you could have.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
It's the coolest job, or at least the most niche job,
but also the coolest, most niche job. And really enjoy
talking to her about that.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, and so she can verify this. Oddly enough, through
some remarkable coincidence, A bunch of the town's residents are harmed,
but none are killed. They're much more lucky than the
people at the pier.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Would that have been by like flying debris perhaps, or
some kind of shockwave.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, they were harmed by shockwave. They were harmed by
all the splintering glass and all of the debris shooting
out from this sort of origin point of this series
of explosions.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
One thing that I found most memorable from our conversation
with Rachel Lance is that these shockwaves can be incredibly
damaging underwater in particular too, we're talking about the SS
Hunleay or wasn't the SS. It was just the Huntley.
It was this Civil War era submarine. And the question
was how were the people that were killed in the
(14:38):
testing of this vehicle, what wasn't testing and the use
of this very rudimentary vehicle killed And her kind of
thesis is that it was the shockwave underwater shockwave that
actually can cause like internal damage, like it can like
eviscerate your internal organs. So nothing to sneeze at these shockwaves.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
So let's imagine the explosion it's occurring, when this initial
explosion occurs, and then there's just so many more that
follow Whatever caused the biggest one, and it's most likely
that it was in the E. A.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Brian.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
With all of those tons of explosives, there was smoke
and fire that just leapt into the air. It was
almost two miles high when people were observing it. There
was a pilot in the area, who was flying about
nine thousand feet up, noticed that there were metal chunks
the size of, oh, I don't know, a house from
the explosion flying past him. The other ship, the Couinnault
(15:36):
that we were talking about it in the aftermath when
it was found there was just a tiny piece of
it that was sticking up vertically. Essentially, that was one
of the biggest pieces of wreckage that was discovered there.
Just insane when you think about the force that was
exerted from this explosion.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Right, and insane when you think that that pilot made
it through to relay the story. Yeah, this the cause
of this explosion, as he said, Matt, we don't. It
remains unknown today, and that is because all of the
evidence that would have been helpful from a forensic standpoint
(16:17):
was destroyed moments like millisecond a few seconds after that
first explosion at ten eighteen. This makes the Port Chicago
disaster the largest man made detonation in history to that
point by a healthy margin too. Like pre nuclear weaponry deployment,
(16:39):
this is the largest explosion. Nearly two thirds of the
people who lost their lives at Port Chicago that evening,
where African American enlisted men serving in the navy. This
here's another troubling statistic, and that one night, the deaths
in that one night equal fifteen percent of all African
(17:01):
Americans killed throughout the entirety of World War two. And
the people who did survive, somehow, who were far enough
away to just get out, get away with some injuries
or something, they were still treated horribly. Afterwards. The white
officers supervising them were given hardship leaves. What a terrible disaster.
(17:22):
You go take some time be with your family. But
the black survivors were ordered to clean up the base
lickety split, including picking up the remains of their dead colleagues.
So you have to go. And again this is when
we say remains, We're not talking about a coherent single body.
We're talking about pieces of people.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah, and according to stories, many of them worked for
two or three days straight attempting to clean up the
entire area.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
The absolute worst possible job that someone could be asked
to do. You know, I can't even imagine being able
to like look at my superior with a straight face
and be like sir, yes, sir. But it gets worse,
gets much worse.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, the surviving men are quickly reassigned to the nearby
Mayor Island, and they're expected to carry on, just to
carry on. That's a state of war today. We call this,
as we said, the Port Chicago disaster, but in a
very real way. That explosion is just the beginning of
(18:23):
the story. Will pause for a word from our sponsor
and dive in after this break, here's where it gets crazy.
Fast forward. It's less than a month later, the Navy
starts ordering members of these segregated units to load more munitions.
(18:50):
They still have not received the training they needed, by.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
The way, Yeah, but they wanted the training. They were
calling for the training, been asking for it. Yeah, exactly.
It's not as tho. It was something that was being
neglected by the sailors themselves. And there were two hundred
and fifty eight sailors who then went on a work
stoppage or a strike. Essentially, they caused a work stoppage.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, and you know this isn't like civilian strike. I mean,
it's essentially, you know, refusing the orders of a commanding
officer at this point, which is sort of frowned upon
in the military.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Certainly is. But you know, these are men that don't
have weapons that are essentially saying I'm I'm striking my work.
I don't know, it's it feels different than I don't
know the way it's described at least.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
No, No, I'm just saying that's how it would be viewed.
I think from the brass's perspective, you know, it's like
you are disobeying a direct order.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah, that's correct. In as you said, call it a
work stoppag er strike is a perfect description for the
civilian world. That's what everybody would call it. In the Navy,
this refusal to work did count in their mind as mutiny,
and there there were a number of detainments and arrest.
(20:15):
One building was converted into a brig to hold these people,
but it was never it was never meant to hold
two hundred and fifty eight people. There's a point there
about direct orders. One of the big questions is these
two hundred and fifty eight men directly asked to load munitions,
(20:35):
and if not, were they just saying, well, I'm not
going to volunteer for it. Right. There's a guy named
Lieutenant Gerald e. Veltman who heads the defense and he
says these accusations of mutiny are incorrect and pretty certain
that in his personal life he thought this some of
this stuff was racially motivated. He had a pre trial
(20:56):
brief wherein he cites the definition of mute from a
thing called Winthrop's Military Law and precedence, and he says, look,
the fifty people who are getting straight up charged with
mutiny said, look, there's no proof that they conspired. They
didn't get together and say we're going to usurp, subvert,
(21:20):
or override superior military authority. They just did not want
to die, right.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I always thought of a mutiny as sort of like
the equivalent of a coup on the high seas, where
you are colluding to overthrow the commander of the vessel
or the authority structure of the vessel and take over
and oftentimes with ill intent.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Right yeah, yeah, Like most of us in the US,
when we think of mutiny, the most famous one for
us would be the Mutiny on the Bounty, which led
to the creation of the nation we know as the
Pitcairn Islands today. And the Pitcairn Islands should be a story,
it should be an episode of their own. Are you
(22:03):
guys too familiar with that?
Speaker 3 (22:05):
No, it sounds so familiar, But I don't know, it's.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
A there's a long running intergenerational, uh child abuse situation
there and one of the I think the current mayor
was involved. It's still mayor was re elected. It's just
it's oh, it's it's one. It's gonna be one of
(22:31):
those episodes where we have to say at the top,
it may not be suitable for all audience members, but
in the meantime, folks do a little digging of your
own if you'd like, before we get to it. It's
just it's a shame. But that's that's that's the most
famous mutiny.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, no, for sure. Well let's uh, let's just go
back quickly to that concept of the mutine what actually occurred.
There's a video you can watch right now on YouTube.
It's called Remembering Port Chicago. It's put out there by
the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and in it there's
described one of the first actions that was taken that
was considered a mutiny or a mutinous by the commanding officers,
(23:07):
and it was literally to not I believe it was
to not turn a certain way when the commanding officer
gave them an order to turn, I guess to then
head in to the facility where they would begin working
and you know, loading munitions and things, and it literally
started there and then it just kind of snowballed exactly.
And like to Ben's point, it wasn't as though everybody,
(23:30):
at least to the historical record, it is not known
where every It is not known if there was a
big meeting or something to decide that this was going
to occur.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Right, some people got together allegedly and said, let's have
this work stoppage, you know, let's let's not let's not
repeat the mistakes that occurred in Port Chicago. But then
there were other people who were caught up in the
in the crossfire systemic racism because they were told There's
(24:00):
one account that just says, look, we were told to
stand in a line, and then our officers told us, okay,
if you don't want to, if you're not going to
load munitions, step to your you know right, or step
to your left if you are. And then the people
who just said I don't want to do that got jailed.
(24:20):
Which I feel like maybe there was a different answer
if you knew this was so much was riding on
this question. But like you guys established earlier, Veltman hits
on some consistent points. He said, many of these men,
like you said, man, have not been asked directly to
do anything, and the ones who refused often said, look,
(24:42):
I'm only refusing because I need some training, I need
safety protocols. They're not even giving these people's gloves, by
the way. And then while they were saying this, they
were carrying out other unrelated tasks, you know, maintenance, cleaning,
stuff like that. And they also made no threats, you know,
they weren't like we're going to string you up so
(25:04):
and so. So he makes a pretty good case that
whatever the definition of mutiny is, the Port Chicago fifty
as they came to be known, do not fit the definition.
Their actions don't fit the definition. But he lost that argument, didn't.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
He He did. Indeed, the prosecution, which was led by
Lieutenant Commander James F. Coakley, replied that any persistent refusal
to work by two or more men was in it
self sufficient proof of a conspiracy to override authority, and
as such was tantamount to a mutiny, which I would argue,
(25:41):
I mean, I'm not a naval lawyer or anything, but
I would argue that's some pretty creative thinking there some
very circuitous arguing.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, it's like, at what point does it become a conspiracy?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:54):
The etymology of conspiracy is just to breathe together, so
you're a whispering and silent together, I don't know. And
then how does how does the military handle this? Because
chain of command is so fundamentally important.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Right, Yeah, would just imagine the embarrassment that the United
States Navy was feeling in those months, right, the embarrassment
that the largest explosion up unto that point had occurred
on their soil, involving their you know, their own sailors
and their munitions and all. It was just a I
(26:30):
can't imagine the embarrassment. And it feels like an act
to almost I don't know, and an act to shift
blame maybe ye act right.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, absolutely, this is absolutely looking for someone to point
a finger at, even if it's not directly related to
the explosion, looking for a vulnerable group to scapegoat, well.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Like maybe almost a diversion, right, It's like, look over
here at these guys who broke the rules and obeyed
direct orders, as opposed to look at us, you know,
sitting high and mighty in our commander's chairs. Which is
a thing because it was ultimately on them to provide
the proper training, which clearly wasn't done and clearly made
these It's one thing to go into battle, one thing
(27:15):
to go into war where you know what the score is,
you know there are people literally coming at you to
kill you. You would not expect that treatment among your commanding
officers and your colleagues.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Agreed, and so although clearly it seems like the three
of us are on Veltman's side in this pre trial conversation,
he lost the argument. The trial began on September fourteenth
of that year. All fifty men pled not guilty to
the charges. But what happened next will tell you afterward
(27:49):
from our sponsor, so we have we have a pretty
extensive record of the ins and outs of the trial.
There are a lot of there are a lot of
not completely above board things that happened in this trial.
(28:13):
It came out that some of the sailors who have
been accused, during their interviews, there was an armed guard
station there. They had. One guy said the koch Ley
threatened to shoot him if he didn't have an answer.
Both sides accused the other of coaching the witnesses or
the accused. There were statements from the superior officers who
(28:37):
said things like, Okay, I directly ordered maybe the six
guys to low munitions, and they said, no, but I
can't say that I ordered fifty people to do that,
let alone two hundred and fifty eight.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Jeez.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Well yeah, and I think it's is it the same
officer or a different officer who goes on to explain
that all of the men over whom he had command
would follow well pretty much any order, any and all
orders that were given to them, besides the order to
load more munitions. I think it was the same person.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, Commander Joseph R. Tobin, he said. And he also said, look,
these nobody was being aggressive or agro at me. He
didn't say agro, but you know what I mean. And
he said, no one was being disrespectful. They just they
just didn't want to do this unless they had the
(29:31):
proper training. Because again, like I said earlier, these guys
are trained for combat, and they just got pulled into
munitions because it was a micro esque dirty job. And
increasingly race played a huge public role in this, and
some troubling facts emerged both about how the how the
(29:52):
commanding officers saw the enlisted men and then how they
treated them, right, Because there's some expl nations we found.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, and in a pretty salacious, you know, kind of
rumor milly kind of detail emerge through some hearsay that
was kind of exposed during the trial, and it was
the notion that someone was heard telling the men, quote,
don't go work for those white mothers. And you know,
(30:23):
it was just a claim and it wasn't really verifiable,
right Ben.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, you're right, Noel. There's a lot of hearsay that
takes place in this original trial. It's a lot of
well I heard the blah blah blah did that, and
it's influenced a lot by the rank of the person
testifying or speaking. But there was a troubling explanation that
(30:49):
emerged in the course of this investigation, and it explains
why there was little regard for safety. It turns out
that the officers had a kind of conspiracy or a
sport of their own, and they were using teams of
loaders as the pawns in their game.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Right, I mean, yeah, again, we were talking about that
cannon fodder situation. They were essentially cracking the whip and
seemingly for their own amusement. I mean again, this could
be taken in many different ways, but possibly as a
way of increasing productivity or maybe encouraging the men in
kind of like a playful way to outdo each other.
(31:31):
But there was this side, this concept that emerged that
the commanding officers were encouraging races or even like conducting
requiring races among the teams with zero regard for their
safety if they already had any. This was even more
of an escalation of that absolute disregard for the safety
(31:51):
of these men, and they were making bets. So it's
essentially it's the most dehumanizing treatment of these men who
were already being treated pretty inhumanely.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Maybe you could say it was meant to be like
a motivating thing, right, we're getting these out quickly, so
maybe it wasn't meant to be as dangerous as it was.
They were. Also, the Longshore Union warned them that something
bad was going to happen when they were moving these
munitions so quickly and so haphazardly. So two hundred and
(32:26):
eight of those guys don't get charged with mutiny, they
get bad conduct discharges, which affects their status as veterans.
And they have to forfeit their pay. But the other
men we.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
CALLI which by the way, forfeiting their pay affects their
status in all ways, just in life, just using all
the pay that they would have gone.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, that is absolutely correct. And the the other fifty
men that we call the Port Chicago fifty today we're convicted,
we're ultimately convicted of mutiny and they were given in
incredibly cartoonishly harsh sentences fifty years of prison along with
hard labor, along with a dishonorable discharge as a little
(33:10):
cherry on the top. So now these guys aren't just
scapegoats or they're not just a diversion right now, they
are examples to every other member of the Armed services,
an example that says, step out of line and we
will put you down.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, And it really did it. It painted these fifty
men as bad guys, and in a way, the Navy
is commenting on the three hundred and twenty men who
lost their lives in the actual Port Chicago disaster by
doing this to these fifty men. And again we're talking
about shifting and blame it. It's just pretty tragic that
(33:48):
that occurs. And when it does occur, it catches the
attention of a lot of people. It becomes a fairly
large story, and specifically one person who's see here's about
it is a civil rights activist and who was the
chief a man who is the chief counsel of the
NAACP at the time, Thurgood Marshal. And he steps in.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
And yeah, I'm just laughing because that guy is like,
that's the last person you want to be in a
disagreement with. The man's brilliant, he's driven. I wouldn't eat like,
I wouldn't even play scrabble with him. He would rock
your He's that smart. And so he also, of course
(34:31):
is guided by the principles of justice. He thinks this
court martial, the entirety of the proceedings, he thinks they're bogus.
He thinks it's a diversion the way that Matt Nolan
and I mentioned earlier. He gets special permission to fly
into California and he can sit in on the proceedings.
(34:51):
This guy is a legal legend too at this point,
so he's sitting in on the proceedings that he can't
defend anybody like he can't. The terrible comparison would be like,
you know, like a vampire can't go in your house
unless you invite them. He's the opposite of a vampire.
He's a cool dude. But he can't interfere officially because
(35:13):
he's a civilian. It's a military court. So what he
can do is advise these people or consult with them.
So imagine being that prosecutor Cokeley. You're and you're doing
some shady stuff to try to get the verdict you want,
and then you see just one day, just sitting there calmly,
(35:33):
is there, good, Marshal, He is watching you. Occasionally he'll
take out a pen write something down.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, keep watching you. Make temperature rise for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, And it's good that he was there. He he
went on a public campaign with this, and it had
public support too. One of the things he called for
was a government investigation, not to just into Port Chicago
or not just into the Port Chicago fifty, but the
naves widespread systematic practice of assigning African American service members
(36:14):
to these segregated support roles or putting them in unsafe conditions.
And for a while it seemed like this would be
a hard won battle, but a battle they could win
Eleanor Roosevelt got involved and circulated some of the pamphlets. Right.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, the first lady of the time, she joined up
with the NAACP, and they attempted to appeal the case
because we said, these men got fifteen years in prison
in hard labor and they got that dishonorable discharge. So
they went in to appeal the case, and I'm pretty
sure they lost at first, or they were unable to.
(36:50):
They're unsuccessful at appealing the case at first. But there
were two trials going on. There's a court martial proceeding,
and then there's the trial of public opinion of what
everybody is saying because of what Thurgood Marshal and several
others are writing about the subject, and the trial in
the Port Chicago disaster.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
The nation is forced to look at itself in the
mirror right through the lens of these events and confront
its various prejudicial practices. Why we ask ourselves in kitchen
tables around America at this time, why is our government
putting black men in the most dangerous jobs they can
(37:35):
or the most menial jobs, and in either case, putting
them there with no realistic hope of advancement. Or growth path.
This is a dead end job that could kill you.
And then why, you know, why are we punishing these
people when they refuse to accept this. These are good
questions and he's probably kept Marshall awake at night for
(37:59):
a long time. He poured a lot of his heart
and soul into this. He went to those fifty guys
to see if there was some way he could legally
represent them instead of just having conversations with him. And
he had to get explicit written permission from each of
these fifty men to make an appeal for them.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
And he did it, Yes, he did, indeed. And on
April third, nineteen forty five, Marshall went to DC to
present his case, and he pointed out that the prosecution
had misled the court on the definition of mutiny. I
think we all felt pretty hard from the start. He
also pointed out that the Navy had in some ways
been looking for someone to blame or scapegoat for the disaster.
(38:43):
Has also seemed pretty clear to any kind of casual
observer here. And here's a great quote from his testimony
or from his presentation quote. The 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. Wow.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, I mean it makes total sense. And what happened afterwards,
it just we'll just describe it to you. After the war,
the Navy wasn't able to justify these sentences. The Navy
was like, yeah, so we see all this writing, we
see the appeal. Yeah, okay, you know when it was wartime,
(39:27):
you know, back when we were doing all that, this
kind of made sense. Like the overly punitive sentences were
you know, setting example so that we don't lose a
bunch of other sailors or soldiers somewhere else during the
war because we kind of need everybody. And you know,
we just put fifty guys in jail for fifteen years.
But now that the war's over, hmm, yeah, maybe that
(39:48):
is a little harsh.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, Now, I don't know if we can just if
we can continue going this this hard on the punishment paint.
So in September of nineteen forty, this is you know,
as you said, man, after the close of the war,
the Navy first shortens each of these fifteen year mutiny
sentences by one year and the next month, Captain Harold
(40:12):
Stasson says, I think we reduce these sentences all the
way down to two years for people who have good conduct,
three years for the rest, and then give them credit
for time served. January sixth, nineteen forty six, the Navy
released forty seven of the Chicago Port fifty and then
(40:34):
immediately sent them to active duty aboard ships on the Pacific,
where they were often relegated to menial labor.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
That is rough, getting jailed by your employer essentially then
told all right, you're done with jail, come on back,
get on another ship, get out of here.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
I wonder what podcast jail is like or podcast prison.
Somebody's going to tell us that there's a difference between
podcasts and podcast prison. I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
I think it's just all adreads. So you have to
do ad reads all day long without stopping.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
They're all adreads about the podcast laws you broke, right,
that's it, oh boy. But the stute listeners. You'll notice
we said forty seven of these fifty men, there are
three left. Two of those fifty prisoners stayed in the
prison's hospital for months. They were recuperating from injuries, and
(41:30):
there was one guy who had a what they called
a bad conduct record. But this story, what's so weird
about this is that there first there was a conspiracy
on the part of the Navy. I think that's fair
to say, to find someone to blame. There was an
alleged conspiracy on the part of the men at Mare
(41:52):
Island to not die, which is a conspiracy we all
sort of participate in on a normal day, I imagine.
But then this series of events ultimately led to the
desegregation of the military. It ultimately gave the US military
something that other folks at first blush might think is counterintuitive.
(42:16):
It made the military a very progressive institution on paper,
at least in terms of gender, in terms of race
or religious belief etc. Because in nineteen forty eight, President
Truman desegregated the whole thing, not just the Navy, everything.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Else, the militaries at least.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
The militaries at least. Yeah, And the story doesn't end there, however, No.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
This rippled outward into practically the present day. In the
ninety nineties, Freddie Meeks, one of the few surviving members
of the Port Chicago fifty, was asked to was encouraged
to petition the President of the United States for a pardon.
And you know, this is the kind of stuff whereas
history sort of looks at things through a more progressive lens,
(43:07):
these are the types of things that pardons make a
lot of sense for, right. So, others of the Port
Chicago fifty had refused to ask for a pardon, reasoning
that it implied guilt on their part, that only guilty
people needed to receive forgiveness, like it was some kind
of absolution, acknowledging that their the crime had been committed.
(43:29):
So they continued to hold firm on that position, the
position being that they were not guilty of mutiny in
the first place, which I think we've again, through that
modern lens, pretty unequivocally proven.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Yeah, and again you can look at YouTube videos and
a bunch of writing on this right now. There's one
YouTube video from NBC Bay Area and it's called the
Port Chicago Disaster seventy five years later, where you can
hear a story from a man named William William Ross
who was who was a survivor from the Port Chicago disaster,
(44:01):
and you know, you can hear his story. You can
hear the story of several writers who have been researching
this for a long time, and you can hear that
argument against pardon, and it's a really strong argument to
say pardon is not the right thing here. Exoneration is
the only way forward for.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
This right right and that I agree that that is
a solid argument. Meeks logic for applying for a pardon
is was to bring more public awareness to these events
and to the miscarriage of justice. It was successful to
a degree. In December of nineteen ninety nine. Then President
(44:41):
Clinton pardon Meeks, who would go on to pass away
in June of two thousand and three, and efforts to
posthumously not pardon but exonerate all fifty sailors continue to
this day. The story is in. It takes us to
a better place, but it's by no means. And yet,
if you were in the area, you can check out
(45:02):
the Port Chicago Naval Magazine national memorial, which was dedicated
in nineteen ninety four to the hundreds of lives lost
in the explosion. And there for now, until we get
more news, the episode draws to a close. What do
you think, folks, It is somewhat rare. Longtime listeners, you
(45:24):
know this it is somewhat rare for us to have
an episode with a happy ending of any sort, and
this is sort of a happy ending because justice is
slowly being done and it led to tremendous I would say,
cultural advancements in this country. But it's not over. I
don't know, No, it's not over.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
And you know, there's something that we didn't touch on here,
and it's not even really worth looking into. But because
of the nature of this explosion, how large it was,
and how very little was left behind, it's very difficult
to prove what caused what what is the thing that
sparked the explosion? You know, yes, and of course you
(46:05):
could get lost in rumor and you know, just thinking
about that as whoa could it have been? You know,
an attack from the outside, and you just go down
that rabbit hole forever. But in the end, in all likelihood,
it was an accident that caused it. And that's why this,
you know, is so important to talk about the way
(46:26):
the Navy handled the men that caused an accident because
they weren't they didn't know what they were doing. But again,
there's still lies in there, the possibility that it was
something else, and I think that has fueled, that has
fueled some discussion of this disaster for quite a time.
I don't have any answers there, but it is something
(46:47):
you could look into if you're interested.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Like what if what if this was a cover up
for something even more embarrassing an attack, right, a successful
enemy attack or sabotage of poor Chicago, which in that
case makes it makes the Navy and Uncle Sam look
even worse because instead of puting up the truth, they
(47:12):
doubled down and blamed blamed these guys. That's that's terrible.
But you're absolutely right. The official the official explanation is unknown.
It's literally we don't know what happened. We just know
that something made one thing explode, which made other things explode,
(47:33):
which made other things explode.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Noep, really tragic, man.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
And and I would advance another thing here at the
at the end of our time together today. What other
stories like this are out there? I am sure there
are many. I am sure that scapegoating soldiers is not
something restricted to the United States or to the modern era.
What stories like this have you heard from your neck
(48:00):
of the global woods. Have you experienced something like this firsthand?
If so, let us know. We try to be easy
to find. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter.
Check us out at Here's where it gets Crazy, which
is our Facebook community page. But wait, you say I
hate social media? You guys are great. I just I
(48:21):
can't do it. I don't even talk to my mom
on Facebook. Well that's fine, we have another way for
you get in touch with us.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Well, first call your mom, then immediately dial one eight
three three STDWYTK and leave us a message three minutes
if you please, or less, and you might find and
let us know if it's okay to use what you
want us to call you, if it's okay to use
your audio, and you might hear yourself in one of
our weekly listener mail episodes.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
And if you don't want to do that, you can
of course. Well what's another good way to reach us? Guys? Oh?
I know there's that old fashioned email that we keep
around that a lot of you right into and we
read every week, every day, every week.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
It is conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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