July 17, 2019 • 39 mins
This was the worst stateside disaster in the United States during World War II. Apart from being a horrific tragedy, the disaster itself and its aftermath were threaded through with racism and injustice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly
frying Day's podcast is coming out on July sevent nineteen,
which is the seventy fifth anniversary of the Port Chicago disaster.
(00:23):
This was the worst state side disaster in the United
States during World War Two, and then, apart for being
just a horrific tragedy, the disaster itself and it's aftermath,
we're just threaded through with racism and injustice from beginning
to end. And this is also a listener request We've
gotten from a lot of folks, including Larry, Jeff Nicholas, Michael, William,
(00:44):
Sarah and Joanne. So for a little bit of background,
the Port Chicago Naval Magazine was on the Sissoon Bay,
roughly forty miles that's about sixty four kilometers northeast of
San Francisco. After Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and
it became clear that the Navy's existing facility at Mayor
Island wouldn't be enough to meet wartime needs on its own,
(01:07):
Port Chicago was built not far away. To help fill
that gap, The first ship was loaded there almost exactly
a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December eighth,
ninety two. Port Chicago instantly became a major supply point
for the U. S. Pacific Fleet, and its main purpose
was to move munitions. Everything from bullets to bombs was
sent to Port Chicago by rail. Then the box cars
(01:29):
would be stored behind concrete barricades until it was time
to load their contents onto a ship that was waiting
at the pier. At first, loading details were filling one
ship at a time, but in May of nineteen forty four,
the pier was widened to allow for two ships to
be loaded simultaneously. In July of nineteen forty four, eight
hundred men were working at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine.
(01:52):
There were white officers, marine guards, and civilians. The civilians
were mostly skilled workers like crane operators and locomotive engineers,
and there were also one thousand, four hundred thirty one
black enlisted men, most of whom were in their late
teens or early twenties, and they worked on loading details.
This racial segregation where everybody in one job was black
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and everybody in another job was white. That was pretty
standard for the U. S. Navy in nineteen forty four.
The Navy didn't allow black men to enlist at all
from nineteen nineteen to nineteen forty one. At that point,
the only black men in the Navy had been in
the Navy from before that, and we're allowed to stay
until they retired after nineteen forty one. Once the Navy
began allowing black recruits, all of the black recruits to
(02:35):
the Navy were assigned to the messman's service, so that
is cooking, serving food, and clearing tables. Secretary of the
Navy Frank Knox felt that assigning black men to other
parts of the Navy would quote provoke discord and demoralization,
but after a lot of advocacy from civil rights organizations,
he announced that black men would be allowed into the
(02:55):
Navy under any enlistment rating that they qualified for. That
announcedent came on April seventh of nine two, but even then,
black men didn't really have equal opportunities in the Navy.
They could not be commissioned officers, and they were primarily
assigned to do manual labor regardless of what they were
qualified or trained to doom, and that was exactly how
(03:16):
things worked at Port Chicago. There were a few black
petty officers who essentially worked as crew foreman, but otherwise
black enlisted men were doing manual labor while reporting to
white officers. The segregation at Port Chicago also went beyond
rank and work assignments. The black enlisted men had a
separate barracks which was closer to the pier than the
white men's barracks. Everyone used a common mess hall, but
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the black men had to wait until the white men
were finished before they could use it. The black seamen
also didn't have a lot of opportunities for recreation because
of the port didn't have its own recreation facility until
shortly before the disaster was badly damaged in the disaster.
The nearest town that was also called Port Chicago was
very small and it did not particular we welcome the
(04:00):
black men from the Navy. Working at Port Chicago was
a high pressure situation. Loading details worked in eight hour
shifts twenty four hours a day, and the typical work
cycle moved through three days of loading, a duty day
that involved some kind of other work or maybe a
training session or a lecture. Then there were three more
days of loading and then a day off, so in
(04:21):
each eight day period, each man worked for seven days,
including six eight hour days of loading. In addition to
this twenty four hour work cycle, the loading details were
expected to work as fast as possible. On average, the
men in Port Chicago were loading eight point two tons
of munition per hatch per hour. Port Chicago was a
(04:42):
sub command of Mayor Island and Captain Nelson Goss was
in command there. Gos set a goal of ten tons
per hatch per hour. That was more than any of
the other Navy facilities were managing, and that was more
than professional civilian stevedores could do. So the officers also
created and in increasingly competitive spirit, among all the loading details.
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In the words of Semen first Class Joseph Randolph Small
known as Joe Quote, we were always in competition to
see which division could load the most ammunition in one
eight hour shift. In April of Captain Meryl T. Kenney
started the practice of posting each shift's total. The expectation
was that when you came on duty, you would do
everything you could to beat that number. There were also
(05:25):
reports of officers placing bets against one another about whose
details could load the fastest was made. The atmosphere at
the pier extremely fast paced and even chaotic. Boxes of
ammunition and small bombs and other smaller items were often
passed hand to hand. Bucket brigade style. Large bombs were
rolled down inclines or moved with hand trucks or electric mules.
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Loads of munitions would be lowered through the ship's hatches
and big cargo nets, and then the men unloaded the
nets and stacked up their contents in the hold. It
was really common during this process for the bombs to
collide with each other, or with the wall to the hold,
or to be dropped for short distances. Men also did
things like using crowbars to shove bombs into place when
they were too high for them to reach. The men
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who were carrying out all this high speed work had
virtually no training in how to do it. They got
a little instruction on the basics of loading and unloading,
but they got almost none in how to safely handle
ammunitions and explosives. The same was true for the officers
that they reported to, most of whom were reservists who
had been called up to active duty. They had almost
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no experience handling munitions either, along with very little training
and how to command enlisted men. Although many of the
items being loaded were safe even if they were handled roughly,
there was still inherently hazardous work involved, and even a
small accidental detonation could be catastrophic. The Navy itself also
had no loading manual covering this type of work. The
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only standards that the men at Port Chicago had to
go on came from an Interstate Commerce Commission guide that
was really about moving small amounts of munitions in peacetime.
There was a coast Guard detail who was supposed to
be on site to ensure that the safety regulations that
did exist or being followed, but the leadership at Port
Chicago thought that detail was unnecessary, so virtually everyone involved
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with moving munitions at Port Chicago was learning by doing,
with a focus that was on speed rather than safety.
The International Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union repeatedly raised concerns about
this whole thing, and had offered to provide training for
Port Chicago's loading details, but that offer was apparently ignored.
Captain Goss had also made it clear that he didn't
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want to contract with civilian Stevodoors to do this work.
He thought that they were too expensive and that their
unions were going to be a pain to deal with.
He also had a poor opinion of civilian Stevodoors in general.
Many Stevodoors were black or Filipino, and in his words quote,
most of the men obtainable from these races do not
compare favorably with those of the white race. He wasn't
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happy when he learned that the enlisted men at Port
Chicago would all be black. Multiple men working at Port
Chicago in four also reported raising concerns about safety and
being told that the munitions that they were handling weren't live.
They were told things like there were no detonators in place,
so therefore these things couldn't explode no matter how they
were handled. This did lead to a sense of complacency
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at times, especially because time went on without a serious incident.
To be clear, this was unquestionably critical work. It made
a meaningful difference to the US war effort in the Pacific,
and someone needed to do it. Many of Port Chicago's
enlisted men expressed a sense of pride and accomplishment for
their ability to keep these materials moving quickly, but it
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was not the work that they had been trained to do.
They had gone through basic training to be sailors, but
instead they were working as stevedor's while being paid much
less than they would be if they were civilians. And
many expressed a sense of foreboding that at some point
all of that rushing around was going to get somebody
killed or The disaster that occurred on July seventeen ninety
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four was probably worse than any of the men imagined.
We'll get to that after a sponsor break. Two ships
were at Port Chicago on the evening of July seventeenth,
ninety four. The S S. E. A. Brian had arrived
on July and by the seventeenth it's hold was about
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half full. It was loaded with about five thousand tons
of explosives, including about one thousand, seven eighty tons of
high explosives. And there was the S. S. Quinalt Victory
that arrived at about six pm on the seventeenth and
was being prepared for loading. The actual load was scheduled
to start about midnight. Both ships were also carrying their
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fuel for the voyage across the Pacific, and there were
sixteen box cars at the pier, which contained four hundred
thirty tons of explosives that were waiting to be loaded
onto the ships. At ten eighteen PM, two explosions ripped
through the port about six seconds apart, punctuated by a
series of smaller explosi shans. One shift of men had
just gone to bed at ten PM, and survivors who
(10:05):
were still awake said the first explosion was so bright
that it looked like sunrise. Seismographs in Berkeley recorded this
as an earthquake that measured three point four on the
Richter scale. Three hundred twenty men were killed instantly. This
included every person who was on duty at the pier
or on the ships that were docked there. The blast
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itself was also so powerful that only fifty one sets
of remains were ever identified. About four hundred other military
personnel were injured, as well as some civilians. Because the
ports Sick Bay was destroyed, survivors had to be evacuated
to other military facilities in the area. Two hundred and
two of the three d and twenty men who were
killed were black. That's about two thirds of the fatalities
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and two hundred thirty three of the people injured, or
about two thirds were black as well. This one disaster
accounts for fifteen percent of the casualties among Black servicemen
in World War Two. The black men killed were all
munitions loaders. The white men killed included the crews of
both of the ships, the armed guards who were stationed
there and at the pier, several officers, and some civilians,
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including three civilian civil service employees of the U. S. Navy.
For listeners who have heard our classic episode on the
Halifax disaster, which also involved a munition ship that exploded
in a port, the destruction from this explosion is going
to sound eerily familiar. The Black Sailor's barracks sustained heavy damage,
many of the men who were seriously injured were in
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their bunks at the time, and the Brian was essentially obliterated.
It was destroyed so completely that almost none of its
wreckage was ever recovered. The Queenal was destroyed as well,
with its largest piece of wreckage blown five hundred feet
into the bay. This piece of the ship was also
rotated one degrees in the blast and flipped upside down.
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An Air Force pilot reported seeing flaming metal debris the
size of suitcases flying past his plane. The damage extended
far beyond the pier. Some of the box cars containing
munitions were destroyed and others caught fire. Several men who
arrived on the scene had to fight this fire by
climbing onto the burning cars, which were still filled with explosives,
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and running hoses through the holes that were created by
falling debris. Several men were awarded the Navy and Marine
Corps Medal, which is the Department of the Navy's highest
non combat medal, for fighting this fire. One was Pharmacist
Mate third Class John Andrew Haskins, Jr. Who was the
first black member of the Hospital Corps to earn this award.
Captain Kenney was also awarded the Bronze Star. The town
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of Port Chicago, about a mile inland, was heavily damaged
as well. One people in the town's movie theater managed
to escape before that building's roof caved in after being
struck by debris. Shrapnel was flung for miles, and a
chunk of steel weighing about three hundred pounds it's roughly
a hundred and thirty six kilograms landed in the middle
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of main Street. The disaster caused an estimated twelve million
dollars in property damn and the effects went on and on.
Coast Guard vessels that were out in the bay were
nearly swamped by a wall of water that was thrown
up by the blast. Crews had to search the landscape
for unexploded ordinance for miles. The town of Port Chicago's
only grocery store was heavily damaged and most of its
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stock had to be discarded. Windows were shattered for at
least fifteen miles or four kilometers from the side of
the blast. This was obviously an incredibly traumatic event for
everyone who worked at the port, as well as those
in the town of Port Chicago and their friends and families,
but there were immediate disparities in how that trauma was handled.
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White officers who asked for it were granted thirty days
of leave. Black seamen who made the same request were refused,
and they were instead tasked with the cleanup and recovery effort,
which included handling the remains of people that they had
known and been friends with. A memorial was scheduled for July,
and the Navy asked for the families of each of
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the men who had been killed to be given five
thousand dollars, but after learning that so many of the
men who were killed were black, Mississippi Congressman John Rankin
insisted that that amount be reduced to two thousand dollars.
Congress eventually agreed on a three thousand dollar settlement. In
the immediate aftermath of the disaster, officers, including Captain Kinney,
praised the conduct of the enlisted men who helped with
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the recovery effort and clean up. Rear Admiral Carlton H.
Wright said, quote, I am gratified to learn that, as
was to be expected, Negro personnel attached to the Naval
Magazine Port Chicago, performed bravely and efficiently in the emergency
at the station last Monday night. These men, in the
months that they served at that command, did excellent work
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in an important segment of the district's overseas combat supply system.
As real Navy men, they simply carried on in the
crisis attendant on the explosion in accordance with our services
highest traditions. But the tone changed drastically, very quickly once
the Navy started investigating the incident. A Naval Court of
Inquiry was convened on July twenty one four, with three
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senior naval officers and a judge advocate presiding. Testimony went
on for thirty nine days. They heard from a hundred
and twenty five witnesses, only five of whom were black,
and much of the Navy's testimony was inherently racist, claiming,
contrary to what had just been said, that the men
had not been provided with more training because they were
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not capable of learning. Officially, the Court of Inquiry found
no one specifically at fault for the disaster, and listed
eight different possible causes for the blast, including munitions being
handled too roughly, failure of loading gear, and sabotage. But
it also heavily implied that the munitions loaders who had
been killed bore most of the blame. To quote the
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judge advocate quote. The consensus of opinion of the witnesses
and practically admitted by the interested parties, is that the
colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally or intellectually capable of
handling high explosives. As one witness has stated, sixty of
the lowest intellectual strata of the men sent out of
Great Lakes were sent to Port Chicago. These men it
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is testified, could not understand the orders which were given
to them, and the only way they could be made
to understand what they should do was by actual demonstration.
That is an admitted fact, supported by the testimony of
the witnesses that there was rough and careless handling of
the explosives being loaded aboard ships at Port Chicago. Just
a few weeks after the disaster at Port Chicago, many
of the surviving men were ordered back to work, and
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we're going to get to what happened after that after
we paused for another quick sponsor break. In the days
after the explosion of the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, the
surviving enlisted men were traumatized and on edge. Everyone was, obviously,
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but these men were increasingly also anxious about the idea
of returning to the same job under the same conditions
as before so many of them. Some kind of major
incident had seemed inevitable, and now almost a third of
them were injured or dead, and the survivors had gotten
no explanation of what caused the accident or how to
prevent the same thing from happening again. A lot of
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the men looked up to Joe Small, who at twenty three,
was older than many of them. He also struck people
as intelligent and willing to stick up for them. So
as it started to seem increasingly likely that they were
going to be put back to workloading munitions, several of
the men asked Small what he was going to do.
Small said that he wouldn't go to workloading munitions again,
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and he and several of the men drafted a petition
asking to be transferred to some other duty, but they
never gave it to anyone. And then on August nine,
twenty eight, men who had been moved to Mayor Island
Navy Yard were ordered to go back to workloading munitions.
The details on this are a little unclear. Officers maintained
that they gave a direct order, while the enlisted men
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maintained that they were marched toward the loading pier and
stopped when they realized where they were going. Regardless of
that detail of whether a formal order was officially given,
more than two hundred fifty men refused to return to
loading the ships. Many of them said they were willing
to follow any other order that they were given. Others
said that they would start loading again if they got
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some training. Some wanted new officers, penning the blame for
the disaster on that constant pressure to load as fast
as they could. Several wanted to be transferred somewhere that
they could do the kind of work that they had
been trained to do after joining the navy, so that
they could be sailors rather than Stevedor's. They made it
clear that they were willing to risk their lives in combat.
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They were just not willing to return to work under
the exact same conditions that had just caused the deaths
of hundreds of men. In Small's words, quote I wasn't
trying to shirk work. I don't think these other men
were trying to shirk work. But to go back to
work under the same conditions with no improvements, no changes,
the same group of officers that we had, was just
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we thought there was a better alternative. On August eleven,
Admiral C. H. Right spoke to the men who were
refusing to work. He let twenty five or so of
them explain what their grievances were, and in his account,
they did so quote freely and respectfully. But his response
to them was to say, quote, they tell me that
some of you men want to go to see. I
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believe that's an expletive lie. I don't believe any of
you have enough guts to go to see. I handled
ammunition for approximately thirty years and I'm still here. I
have a healthy respect for ammunition. Anybody who doesn't as crazy.
But I want to remind you men that mutinous conduct
in time of war carries the death sentence, and the
hazards of facing a firing squad are far greater than
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the hazards of handling ammunition. The men saw this as
a death threat, and two hundred eight of them agreed
to go back to work instead. They were imprisoned in
a barge in the bay, and once they were released,
they faced summary courts martial. They were discharged for bad
conduct and forfeited three months of pay. On August, Captain
(20:04):
Goss gave a written report to Admiral Wright and which
he said that there were quote agitators, ring leaders among
these men, and that that had been the case since
the Black seamen were first assigned to Port Chicago. Goss
also considered himself to be an expert on to use
his term negroes, and he described the black sailors at
Port Chicago as unusually argumentative and sensitive about discrimination. He
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maintained that quote extreme care and patients has been exercised
both at Mayor Island and Port Chicago to avoid discrimination.
And he recommended that the fifty men who were refusing
to work be charged with mutiny. And that's exactly what happened.
Some of the fifty men were still refusing to work.
Others were perceived as ring leaders of the work stoppage,
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and a few maintained that they were neither. They were
just being punished because they were disliked. These men, nicknamed
the Port Chicago fifty, faced trial before a panel of
officers starting on September four, nineteen forty four. The trial
was held at Treasure Island Naval Base. Admiral Hugo. S.
Osterhouse presided over the seven man trial board. All of
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the trial board was white. This was the largest mass
mutiny trial in U. S Naval history. The defense's primary
strategy was to argue that what these men had done
did not qualify as mutiny and to try to have
that charge dismissed. Lieutenant Gerald E. Veltman, who led the defense,
used a definition from Winthrop's Military Law and Precedence, which
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defined mutiny as quote unlawful opposition or resistance to or
defiance of superior military authority with a deliberate attempt to usurp, subvert,
or override the same. He argued that the men had
simply refused to follow an order, that they had not
tried to usurp, subvert, or override anything. He also reiterated
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that many of the men said that they had never
actually been given an actual order. The prosecution countered with
a different definition from the same source tread quote collective
in subordination or simultaneous disobedience of a lawful order by
two or more persons is an endeavor to make a
revolt or mutiny. So if two people refused to work,
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that's mutiny. The trial board ultimately decided that this second
definition was the one that stood, and they did not
dismiss the mutiny charge. Future Supreme Court Justice, They're good.
Marshall was the chief Council for the n Double A
CP at the time, and he arrived in San Francisco
on October tenth. He observed the trial for twelve days
and interviewed all of the fifty defendants. Then Double A
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CP also held a press conference at which they're good.
Marshall said, quote, this is not fifty men on trial
for mutiny. This is the Navy on trial for its
whole vicious policy toward negroes. Negroes in the Navy don't
mind loading ammunition. They just want to know why they
are the only ones doing the loading. Marshall also noted, quote,
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they have told me they were willing to go to
jail to get a change of duty because of their
tour rific fear of explosives, But they had no idea
that verbal expression of their fear constituted mutiny. Afterward, the
a c P also published a pamphlet publicizing this whole
case and the fact that the men had not been
refusing to work period. They had just been refusing to
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work without some changes that might protect their lives. By
the end of the proceedings, the defense had noted that
the men on trial had been respectful and had obeyed
every other order they had been given, something that was
acknowledged by officers on the stand. They had also gotten
expert testimony from a Navy psychiatrist who had argued that
the explosion was so traumatic that the men could reasonably
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be expected to refuse their orders out of sheer self preservation.
This psychiatrist Lieutenant P. H. Pembroke also pointed out that
no sort of psychiatric assistance had been offered to any
of the enlisted men in the days that followed this
horrific disaster. Chaplain J. M. Flowers had also taken the
stand and said that he had spoken to some of
the men about trying to put aside their fears to
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help their fellows, using the analogy of being in the
same foxhole as someone else. He reported that one of
the sailors had answered quote, in the foxholes, a man
has a chance to fight back. Throughout all of this,
the defense did not try to build a case that
the men had been the targets of discrimination based on
their race, but it is clear that the men themselves
believed that they had been the nu A CP, which
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had existed for thirty five years at this point, thought
the same. And it is possible that at least some
of the men on trial thought that their work stoppage
might lead to civil rights gains within the Navy beyond
just the safety issues. But if they did, that wasn't
something that they talked about at the trial. From the
prosecution's standpoint, the men who were on trial had repeatedly
refused to follow orders, and they had encouraged others to
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do the same, and that constituted mutiny. The Poor Chicago
fifty were all found guilty of mutiny on October nine,
after about eighty minutes of deliberation that included a lunch
break that was less than two minutes of deliberation per charge. Initially,
all fifty of them were sentenced to fifteen years in prison,
including hard labor, but ultimately some of the sentences were
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reduced because of the men's youth and their lack of
previous conduct issues. More than half of them were under
twenty one years old. In the end, ten of them,
including the ones who were described as ring leaders, were
sentenced to fifteen years, and that included semen small. Thirty
five were sentenced to between ten and twelve years, and
the remaining were sentenced to eight years. They were all
incarcerated at Terminal Island Disciplinary Barracks in San Pedro, California. Meanwhile,
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Navy leadership maintained that race was not a factor in
decisions at Port Chicago or in the mutiny proceedings, but
in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. They had noted
that the all black loading details could quote create an
appearance of discrimination. Admiral Wright had recommended that white details
relieve the black loading crews from time to time, and
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in the end, two white units were assigned to Port
Chicago when it was up and running again. Third Good
Marshall filed an appeal brief in April of nineteen forty five,
and by this point the Double A CP had been
covering the disaster and the trial and its magazine, The Crisis,
and Eleanor Roosevelt had sent a copy of the Double
A CPS pamphlet on the incident to Secretary of the
Navy James V. Forrest All, encouraging him to take quote
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special care in the case. Although Marshall's request for an
appeal was denied, the Navy did re examine one aspect
of the case. The prosecution's case had included hearsay evidence,
which had been admitted. The trial board considered what the
case would have looked like without that evidence on June twelfth.
In the end, the Navy upheld the convictions and sentences.
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The Port Chicago fifty were the only people who faced
charges After this disaster, there was never really any examination
of whether the officer's actions or the Navy's policies had
played a role That hearsay evidence is basically that some
of the officers said that they had heard the enlisted
men encouraging each other not to go back to work,
but none of them a pinpoint any particular person that
(27:02):
they heard this from, but that was still considered admissible
in nive. The Navy started desegregating its ranks, including announcing
that training facilities would be integrated. In June of that year,
Black crews were assigned to a few small combat ships
as well. Then that December, Secretary forest All announced that
quote in the Administration of Naval Personnel, no differentiation shall
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be made because of color. This was motivated not just
by the Port Chicago case, but also by other racial
conflicts within the Navy, including a riot involving black seabees
and white Marines on Guam in December of nineteen four.
The Port Chicago fifty remained incarcerated until the end of
World War two. First, their sentences were reduced by a year,
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and then in January of nineteen forty six, all but
three were released In return to the Navy. Two of
the men who were not released were in the hospital
at the time, and one was not released because of
his conduct while incarcerated. From there, they were sent overseas
to work for a year as rehabilitation. The CBS who
had been part of the riot on Guam went through
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a similar process. After that, they were discharged under honorable conditions.
That's not the same thing as an honorable discharge, and
some of the men maintained that it kept them from
being able to collect veterans benefits afterwards, which is something
that the Navy has denied. The mutiny convictions still stood, though,
and that made it hard for a lot of the
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men to find work once they returned to civilian life.
A lot of them also talked about carrying a sense
of shame and anger about it for the rest of
their life. On February six, the Navy banned segregation and
formally made black sailors quote eligible for all types of assignments,
in all ratings, in all facilities, and in all ships.
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More than two years later, on July President Harry S.
Truman signed Executive Order one, which desegregated the US Armed Forces.
The Navy was already compliant with the order when Truman
signed it. That doesn't mean that there was no discrimination
or racism in the Navy, just that the Navy had
already complied with the technical points of the order. Eventually,
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the military facility at Port Chicago was repaired and it
became an even bigger port for munitions loading, but the
town of Port Chicago was determined to be too close
to the port for safety. This led the Navy to
file a series of lawsuits petitioning to have it torn down.
The Navy was finally successful in nineteen sixty eight, and
it purchased all the property through Eminent domain and then
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raised the buildings. The base was later renamed Conquered Naval
Weapons Station and now it's Military Ocean Terminal Conquered. Although
the Port Chicago disaster was a major news story when
it happened and led to protests and advocacy on behalf
of the men on trial and black sailors in general,
for decades afterward, information about it was classified. The secrecy
(29:55):
contributed to a conspiracy theory that the explosion was caused
by a nuclear device. This theory grew after a document
called History of the ten thousand Ton gadget was found
in a box of photography supplies at a rummage sale
in nineteen eighty. That box was reportedly donated by a
man who had worked at Los Alamos, and the document
describes a mathematical model for a nuclear detonation and ends
(30:18):
with step eleven quote ball of fire, mushroom out at
eighteen thousand feet in typical Port Chicago fashion. So the
logical explanation for this is that after the disaster, scientists
from Los Alamos came to Port Chicago to study the
effects of an explosion that was similar in power to
what they were trying to develop. That definitely happened. Captain
(30:39):
William Parsons, ordinance director at Los Alamos, arrived on July
twenty then submitted a memo summarizing his findings on July.
His memorandum cites several eyewitnesses as reporting that a column
of fire rose up and then mushroomed out from the explosion.
But the conspiracy theory maintains that quote typical Port Chicago
fashion is not a reference to a mushroom cloud created
(31:02):
by the accidental detonation of conventional weapons that was as
powerful as a nuclear blast. Instead, it is supposedly a
reference to a mushroom cloud created by an actual nuclear
detonation in Port Chicago and then covered up. Yes, some
people go so far as to say that it was
an actual intentional nuclear debt nation basically bombing apport on
(31:25):
purpose to see what the effects would be. But there's
never been any evidence of any other like indication of
nuclear activity, any of the types of post nuclear explosion
issues you would have. No, the person who has been
the biggest uh advocate of this whole conspiracy theory wrote
a whole book about it, piecing all kinds of stuff together.
(31:49):
But like, it's one of those things that's so far
fetched that there's not a lot of historians that are
like rebutting it because it's so far, so far off
the realm of what's reasonable or imaginable. Um. But like
a lot of nuclear scientists have said no, this, Like
(32:09):
part of the argument has to be whether there was
enough nuclear material available to make a bomb of this
type in ninety four, and a lot of nuclear scientists
are like, no, there wasn't. UM. People have also noted,
like we when we did our our podcasts about the
Thousand Cranes and the bombings of Heroshman and Nagasaki, Like
(32:31):
we talked about how the nuclear after effects went on
for years and years and these uh spikes and all
kinds of cancers and like that, And there's no radiation
sickness associated with Port Chicago to the no UM, especially
not among all of the people in the town who
were a mile away and would have had that would Yeah,
(32:52):
it's I can totally see how these pieces of these
like little pieces of data, like the fact that it
says Port Chicago and that document and um, the huge
magnitude of the explosion, Like I can see how people
would piece these things together and draw that conclusion. But
at the same time, especially the idea that the United
(33:15):
States would have intentionally bombed one of its own ports
during wartime as an experiment, like, yeah, that's a little
bit of a long walk, Yeah, a mission critical port
during wartime, like it was how munitions were getting like
the vast majority of munitions were getting to the Pacific.
In the nineteen nineties, the Navy reviewed the Port Chicago case,
and on January the Board for Correction of Naval Records
(33:39):
acknowledged that racism was present in the Navy and at
Port Chicago in Nino, but maintained that it did not
play a part in the events that transpired. The Secretary
of Defense at the time was William J. Perry, who said, quote,
sailors are required to obey the orders of their superiors,
even if those orders subject them to life threatening danger.
(33:59):
In nineteen any nine, President Bill Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks,
who had been part of the Port Chicago fifty Meeks
was one of a very few survivors still living at
the time, and he was the only one to apply
for a presidential pardon. In the words of Joe Small
back in when the Navy stood by their convictions, quote
we don't want a pardon because that means you're guilty,
(34:21):
but we forgive you. We want the decisions set aside
and reimbursement of all lost pay. In two thousand nine,
the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was dedicated. It's
part of the National Park System, but it's also on
an active military base, so if you want to visit there,
you have to have advanced reservations and a government issue
I d H and go through a security check to enter.
(34:43):
The security is a lot tighter than at most other
monuments of a similar sort because it is on an
active base. There are a lot of moments of holding back,
growling and expletives in that episode. Yeah. Um, people have
been asking us the talk about this for a really
long time, and because it is so similar to the
(35:04):
Halifax disaster in terms of the nature of the explosion
and the damage that it caused, Like Halifax was a
lot more destructive in terms of how much property was
destroyed and how many people were killed. Because the Halifax
is that disaster happened like right there in Halifax, and
there were a lot of populated buildings immediately around the
area and like a lot more people, a lot more
civilians there that the docks. But Port Chicago was not
(35:29):
nearly as well populated, and then the shape of the
landscape stopped the spread of the explosion from going as far.
So like the death toll is not as staggering as
in Halifax, but if you look at the pictures, it's
really similar in terms of things just being flattened. And
one of the things that was frustrated and researching it
(35:51):
is how how like there were these clear, discriminatory, segregated
tears through the whole entire thing that played out in
the same way as like so many other segregated situations
that we have talked about on the show, but unlike
some of them that have been later investigated, Like we've
(36:13):
talked about a lot of knowledge, We've talked about a
lot of incidents that like, when they happened, it was
clear that like racism was a factor, and then fifty
years later, uh, somebody will go back through the whole
records and have like a truth and Reconciliation commission or
something like that and say, Okay, this is the documentation
of how this played out and how discrimination played a
(36:33):
part in it. And with this particular thing, it's been
more like, yeah, they're discrimination existed, but it didn't really
affect this, but that wasn't part of this. Yes, it
kind of comes across that way. Frustrating. Yeah, hopefully in
a more upbeat zone. Do you have some listener my
own I view? It's from Katrina. It is a little
more uh. It is also about a disaster, but it
(36:55):
is more upbeat and it says my name is Katrina.
I am a longtime listener from Perth, Australia. Just dropping
you a line after I listened to the general slocum disaster.
My little tidbit of trivia is much more lighthearder than
the episode though, and it's all to do with cork.
Inferior cork is the reason why most wine bottles in
Australia have metal caps. Apparently there was a war between
(37:17):
some European wine labels and Australian labels around the nineteen seventies.
This was as the Australian wine industry started making some
waves and getting noticed. To try to block this these
new upcomers, some of the older European brands convinced cork
suppliers to send inferior corks to the Australian market, so
the wineries in Australia were forced to invent a new
(37:38):
closure into the screw cap. I think this is also
why we have wine in a bag, although I'm not
entirely sure on that one. Unfortunately, I can't remember the
documentary in which I saw this, so my details may
be wrong, but and I cannot send you something with
more information. But either way, it's a cute story. Keep
up the good work, ladies. I'm always impressed with a
sensitivity and enthusiasm to approach each topic, especially the ones
(38:00):
The reveal histories that have been hidden for so long
due to racism, sexism, and homophobia. And then she goes
on with some podcast suggestions. Uh, your friend in history, Katrina,
thank you so much for this email, Katrina. I did
not go through and like verify the trajectory of screw
caps and cork, but the idea of needing a different
(38:23):
type of closure for the bottle because of poor quality
cork is definitely a thing. Like in more recent years
there have been worldwide cork shortages. Uh, and that is
why a lot more a lot of wine bottles and
things now instead of having a cork closure will have
a like a more rubber stopper or a screw cap
or something like that. So thank you Katrina for sending
(38:43):
a more lighthearted aspect of poor quality cork. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast or a history podcast at how stuff Works
dot com. And then we're all over social media at
miss in History. That is where you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,
and Twitter. You can come to our webs which is
missed in History dot com and find show notes about
the episodes Holly and I have worked on together and
(39:05):
a searchable archive of every episode ever, and you can
subscribe to our show on Apple podcast, i heart Radio
app and wherever else do you get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of my
heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(39:27):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly
frying Day's podcast is coming out on July sevent nineteen,
which is the seventy fifth anniversary of the Port Chicago disaster.
(00:23):
This was the worst state side disaster in the United
States during World War Two, and then, apart for being
just a horrific tragedy, the disaster itself and it's aftermath,
we're just threaded through with racism and injustice from beginning
to end. And this is also a listener request We've
gotten from a lot of folks, including Larry, Jeff Nicholas, Michael, William,
(00:44):
Sarah and Joanne. So for a little bit of background,
the Port Chicago Naval Magazine was on the Sissoon Bay,
roughly forty miles that's about sixty four kilometers northeast of
San Francisco. After Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and
it became clear that the Navy's existing facility at Mayor
Island wouldn't be enough to meet wartime needs on its own,
(01:07):
Port Chicago was built not far away. To help fill
that gap, The first ship was loaded there almost exactly
a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December eighth,
ninety two. Port Chicago instantly became a major supply point
for the U. S. Pacific Fleet, and its main purpose
was to move munitions. Everything from bullets to bombs was
sent to Port Chicago by rail. Then the box cars
(01:29):
would be stored behind concrete barricades until it was time
to load their contents onto a ship that was waiting
at the pier. At first, loading details were filling one
ship at a time, but in May of nineteen forty four,
the pier was widened to allow for two ships to
be loaded simultaneously. In July of nineteen forty four, eight
hundred men were working at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine.
(01:52):
There were white officers, marine guards, and civilians. The civilians
were mostly skilled workers like crane operators and locomotive engineers,
and there were also one thousand, four hundred thirty one
black enlisted men, most of whom were in their late
teens or early twenties, and they worked on loading details.
This racial segregation where everybody in one job was black
(02:13):
and everybody in another job was white. That was pretty
standard for the U. S. Navy in nineteen forty four.
The Navy didn't allow black men to enlist at all
from nineteen nineteen to nineteen forty one. At that point,
the only black men in the Navy had been in
the Navy from before that, and we're allowed to stay
until they retired after nineteen forty one. Once the Navy
began allowing black recruits, all of the black recruits to
(02:35):
the Navy were assigned to the messman's service, so that
is cooking, serving food, and clearing tables. Secretary of the
Navy Frank Knox felt that assigning black men to other
parts of the Navy would quote provoke discord and demoralization,
but after a lot of advocacy from civil rights organizations,
he announced that black men would be allowed into the
(02:55):
Navy under any enlistment rating that they qualified for. That
announcedent came on April seventh of nine two, but even then,
black men didn't really have equal opportunities in the Navy.
They could not be commissioned officers, and they were primarily
assigned to do manual labor regardless of what they were
qualified or trained to doom, and that was exactly how
(03:16):
things worked at Port Chicago. There were a few black
petty officers who essentially worked as crew foreman, but otherwise
black enlisted men were doing manual labor while reporting to
white officers. The segregation at Port Chicago also went beyond
rank and work assignments. The black enlisted men had a
separate barracks which was closer to the pier than the
white men's barracks. Everyone used a common mess hall, but
(03:39):
the black men had to wait until the white men
were finished before they could use it. The black seamen
also didn't have a lot of opportunities for recreation because
of the port didn't have its own recreation facility until
shortly before the disaster was badly damaged in the disaster.
The nearest town that was also called Port Chicago was
very small and it did not particular we welcome the
(04:00):
black men from the Navy. Working at Port Chicago was
a high pressure situation. Loading details worked in eight hour
shifts twenty four hours a day, and the typical work
cycle moved through three days of loading, a duty day
that involved some kind of other work or maybe a
training session or a lecture. Then there were three more
days of loading and then a day off, so in
(04:21):
each eight day period, each man worked for seven days,
including six eight hour days of loading. In addition to
this twenty four hour work cycle, the loading details were
expected to work as fast as possible. On average, the
men in Port Chicago were loading eight point two tons
of munition per hatch per hour. Port Chicago was a
(04:42):
sub command of Mayor Island and Captain Nelson Goss was
in command there. Gos set a goal of ten tons
per hatch per hour. That was more than any of
the other Navy facilities were managing, and that was more
than professional civilian stevedores could do. So the officers also
created and in increasingly competitive spirit, among all the loading details.
(05:03):
In the words of Semen first Class Joseph Randolph Small
known as Joe Quote, we were always in competition to
see which division could load the most ammunition in one
eight hour shift. In April of Captain Meryl T. Kenney
started the practice of posting each shift's total. The expectation
was that when you came on duty, you would do
everything you could to beat that number. There were also
(05:25):
reports of officers placing bets against one another about whose
details could load the fastest was made. The atmosphere at
the pier extremely fast paced and even chaotic. Boxes of
ammunition and small bombs and other smaller items were often
passed hand to hand. Bucket brigade style. Large bombs were
rolled down inclines or moved with hand trucks or electric mules.
(05:47):
Loads of munitions would be lowered through the ship's hatches
and big cargo nets, and then the men unloaded the
nets and stacked up their contents in the hold. It
was really common during this process for the bombs to
collide with each other, or with the wall to the hold,
or to be dropped for short distances. Men also did
things like using crowbars to shove bombs into place when
they were too high for them to reach. The men
(06:08):
who were carrying out all this high speed work had
virtually no training in how to do it. They got
a little instruction on the basics of loading and unloading,
but they got almost none in how to safely handle
ammunitions and explosives. The same was true for the officers
that they reported to, most of whom were reservists who
had been called up to active duty. They had almost
(06:29):
no experience handling munitions either, along with very little training
and how to command enlisted men. Although many of the
items being loaded were safe even if they were handled roughly,
there was still inherently hazardous work involved, and even a
small accidental detonation could be catastrophic. The Navy itself also
had no loading manual covering this type of work. The
(06:51):
only standards that the men at Port Chicago had to
go on came from an Interstate Commerce Commission guide that
was really about moving small amounts of munitions in peacetime.
There was a coast Guard detail who was supposed to
be on site to ensure that the safety regulations that
did exist or being followed, but the leadership at Port
Chicago thought that detail was unnecessary, so virtually everyone involved
(07:14):
with moving munitions at Port Chicago was learning by doing,
with a focus that was on speed rather than safety.
The International Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union repeatedly raised concerns about
this whole thing, and had offered to provide training for
Port Chicago's loading details, but that offer was apparently ignored.
Captain Goss had also made it clear that he didn't
(07:35):
want to contract with civilian Stevodoors to do this work.
He thought that they were too expensive and that their
unions were going to be a pain to deal with.
He also had a poor opinion of civilian Stevodoors in general.
Many Stevodoors were black or Filipino, and in his words quote,
most of the men obtainable from these races do not
compare favorably with those of the white race. He wasn't
(07:57):
happy when he learned that the enlisted men at Port
Chicago would all be black. Multiple men working at Port
Chicago in four also reported raising concerns about safety and
being told that the munitions that they were handling weren't live.
They were told things like there were no detonators in place,
so therefore these things couldn't explode no matter how they
were handled. This did lead to a sense of complacency
(08:18):
at times, especially because time went on without a serious incident.
To be clear, this was unquestionably critical work. It made
a meaningful difference to the US war effort in the Pacific,
and someone needed to do it. Many of Port Chicago's
enlisted men expressed a sense of pride and accomplishment for
their ability to keep these materials moving quickly, but it
(08:40):
was not the work that they had been trained to do.
They had gone through basic training to be sailors, but
instead they were working as stevedor's while being paid much
less than they would be if they were civilians. And
many expressed a sense of foreboding that at some point
all of that rushing around was going to get somebody
killed or The disaster that occurred on July seventeen ninety
(09:00):
four was probably worse than any of the men imagined.
We'll get to that after a sponsor break. Two ships
were at Port Chicago on the evening of July seventeenth,
ninety four. The S S. E. A. Brian had arrived
on July and by the seventeenth it's hold was about
(09:22):
half full. It was loaded with about five thousand tons
of explosives, including about one thousand, seven eighty tons of
high explosives. And there was the S. S. Quinalt Victory
that arrived at about six pm on the seventeenth and
was being prepared for loading. The actual load was scheduled
to start about midnight. Both ships were also carrying their
(09:42):
fuel for the voyage across the Pacific, and there were
sixteen box cars at the pier, which contained four hundred
thirty tons of explosives that were waiting to be loaded
onto the ships. At ten eighteen PM, two explosions ripped
through the port about six seconds apart, punctuated by a
series of smaller explosi shans. One shift of men had
just gone to bed at ten PM, and survivors who
(10:05):
were still awake said the first explosion was so bright
that it looked like sunrise. Seismographs in Berkeley recorded this
as an earthquake that measured three point four on the
Richter scale. Three hundred twenty men were killed instantly. This
included every person who was on duty at the pier
or on the ships that were docked there. The blast
(10:25):
itself was also so powerful that only fifty one sets
of remains were ever identified. About four hundred other military
personnel were injured, as well as some civilians. Because the
ports Sick Bay was destroyed, survivors had to be evacuated
to other military facilities in the area. Two hundred and
two of the three d and twenty men who were
killed were black. That's about two thirds of the fatalities
(10:47):
and two hundred thirty three of the people injured, or
about two thirds were black as well. This one disaster
accounts for fifteen percent of the casualties among Black servicemen
in World War Two. The black men killed were all
munitions loaders. The white men killed included the crews of
both of the ships, the armed guards who were stationed
there and at the pier, several officers, and some civilians,
(11:10):
including three civilian civil service employees of the U. S. Navy.
For listeners who have heard our classic episode on the
Halifax disaster, which also involved a munition ship that exploded
in a port, the destruction from this explosion is going
to sound eerily familiar. The Black Sailor's barracks sustained heavy damage,
many of the men who were seriously injured were in
(11:31):
their bunks at the time, and the Brian was essentially obliterated.
It was destroyed so completely that almost none of its
wreckage was ever recovered. The Queenal was destroyed as well,
with its largest piece of wreckage blown five hundred feet
into the bay. This piece of the ship was also
rotated one degrees in the blast and flipped upside down.
(11:52):
An Air Force pilot reported seeing flaming metal debris the
size of suitcases flying past his plane. The damage extended
far beyond the pier. Some of the box cars containing
munitions were destroyed and others caught fire. Several men who
arrived on the scene had to fight this fire by
climbing onto the burning cars, which were still filled with explosives,
(12:12):
and running hoses through the holes that were created by
falling debris. Several men were awarded the Navy and Marine
Corps Medal, which is the Department of the Navy's highest
non combat medal, for fighting this fire. One was Pharmacist
Mate third Class John Andrew Haskins, Jr. Who was the
first black member of the Hospital Corps to earn this award.
Captain Kenney was also awarded the Bronze Star. The town
(12:34):
of Port Chicago, about a mile inland, was heavily damaged
as well. One people in the town's movie theater managed
to escape before that building's roof caved in after being
struck by debris. Shrapnel was flung for miles, and a
chunk of steel weighing about three hundred pounds it's roughly
a hundred and thirty six kilograms landed in the middle
(12:54):
of main Street. The disaster caused an estimated twelve million
dollars in property damn and the effects went on and on.
Coast Guard vessels that were out in the bay were
nearly swamped by a wall of water that was thrown
up by the blast. Crews had to search the landscape
for unexploded ordinance for miles. The town of Port Chicago's
only grocery store was heavily damaged and most of its
(13:16):
stock had to be discarded. Windows were shattered for at
least fifteen miles or four kilometers from the side of
the blast. This was obviously an incredibly traumatic event for
everyone who worked at the port, as well as those
in the town of Port Chicago and their friends and families,
but there were immediate disparities in how that trauma was handled.
(13:38):
White officers who asked for it were granted thirty days
of leave. Black seamen who made the same request were refused,
and they were instead tasked with the cleanup and recovery effort,
which included handling the remains of people that they had
known and been friends with. A memorial was scheduled for July,
and the Navy asked for the families of each of
(13:59):
the men who had been killed to be given five
thousand dollars, but after learning that so many of the
men who were killed were black, Mississippi Congressman John Rankin
insisted that that amount be reduced to two thousand dollars.
Congress eventually agreed on a three thousand dollar settlement. In
the immediate aftermath of the disaster, officers, including Captain Kinney,
praised the conduct of the enlisted men who helped with
(14:20):
the recovery effort and clean up. Rear Admiral Carlton H.
Wright said, quote, I am gratified to learn that, as
was to be expected, Negro personnel attached to the Naval
Magazine Port Chicago, performed bravely and efficiently in the emergency
at the station last Monday night. These men, in the
months that they served at that command, did excellent work
(14:41):
in an important segment of the district's overseas combat supply system.
As real Navy men, they simply carried on in the
crisis attendant on the explosion in accordance with our services
highest traditions. But the tone changed drastically, very quickly once
the Navy started investigating the incident. A Naval Court of
Inquiry was convened on July twenty one four, with three
(15:05):
senior naval officers and a judge advocate presiding. Testimony went
on for thirty nine days. They heard from a hundred
and twenty five witnesses, only five of whom were black,
and much of the Navy's testimony was inherently racist, claiming,
contrary to what had just been said, that the men
had not been provided with more training because they were
(15:25):
not capable of learning. Officially, the Court of Inquiry found
no one specifically at fault for the disaster, and listed
eight different possible causes for the blast, including munitions being
handled too roughly, failure of loading gear, and sabotage. But
it also heavily implied that the munitions loaders who had
been killed bore most of the blame. To quote the
(15:46):
judge advocate quote. The consensus of opinion of the witnesses
and practically admitted by the interested parties, is that the
colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally or intellectually capable of
handling high explosives. As one witness has stated, sixty of
the lowest intellectual strata of the men sent out of
Great Lakes were sent to Port Chicago. These men it
(16:09):
is testified, could not understand the orders which were given
to them, and the only way they could be made
to understand what they should do was by actual demonstration.
That is an admitted fact, supported by the testimony of
the witnesses that there was rough and careless handling of
the explosives being loaded aboard ships at Port Chicago. Just
a few weeks after the disaster at Port Chicago, many
of the surviving men were ordered back to work, and
(16:31):
we're going to get to what happened after that after
we paused for another quick sponsor break. In the days
after the explosion of the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, the
surviving enlisted men were traumatized and on edge. Everyone was, obviously,
(16:54):
but these men were increasingly also anxious about the idea
of returning to the same job under the same conditions
as before so many of them. Some kind of major
incident had seemed inevitable, and now almost a third of
them were injured or dead, and the survivors had gotten
no explanation of what caused the accident or how to
prevent the same thing from happening again. A lot of
(17:16):
the men looked up to Joe Small, who at twenty three,
was older than many of them. He also struck people
as intelligent and willing to stick up for them. So
as it started to seem increasingly likely that they were
going to be put back to workloading munitions, several of
the men asked Small what he was going to do.
Small said that he wouldn't go to workloading munitions again,
(17:37):
and he and several of the men drafted a petition
asking to be transferred to some other duty, but they
never gave it to anyone. And then on August nine,
twenty eight, men who had been moved to Mayor Island
Navy Yard were ordered to go back to workloading munitions.
The details on this are a little unclear. Officers maintained
that they gave a direct order, while the enlisted men
(17:59):
maintained that they were marched toward the loading pier and
stopped when they realized where they were going. Regardless of
that detail of whether a formal order was officially given,
more than two hundred fifty men refused to return to
loading the ships. Many of them said they were willing
to follow any other order that they were given. Others
said that they would start loading again if they got
(18:19):
some training. Some wanted new officers, penning the blame for
the disaster on that constant pressure to load as fast
as they could. Several wanted to be transferred somewhere that
they could do the kind of work that they had
been trained to do after joining the navy, so that
they could be sailors rather than Stevedor's. They made it
clear that they were willing to risk their lives in combat.
(18:40):
They were just not willing to return to work under
the exact same conditions that had just caused the deaths
of hundreds of men. In Small's words, quote I wasn't
trying to shirk work. I don't think these other men
were trying to shirk work. But to go back to
work under the same conditions with no improvements, no changes,
the same group of officers that we had, was just
(19:00):
we thought there was a better alternative. On August eleven,
Admiral C. H. Right spoke to the men who were
refusing to work. He let twenty five or so of
them explain what their grievances were, and in his account,
they did so quote freely and respectfully. But his response
to them was to say, quote, they tell me that
some of you men want to go to see. I
(19:21):
believe that's an expletive lie. I don't believe any of
you have enough guts to go to see. I handled
ammunition for approximately thirty years and I'm still here. I
have a healthy respect for ammunition. Anybody who doesn't as crazy.
But I want to remind you men that mutinous conduct
in time of war carries the death sentence, and the
hazards of facing a firing squad are far greater than
(19:43):
the hazards of handling ammunition. The men saw this as
a death threat, and two hundred eight of them agreed
to go back to work instead. They were imprisoned in
a barge in the bay, and once they were released,
they faced summary courts martial. They were discharged for bad
conduct and forfeited three months of pay. On August, Captain
(20:04):
Goss gave a written report to Admiral Wright and which
he said that there were quote agitators, ring leaders among
these men, and that that had been the case since
the Black seamen were first assigned to Port Chicago. Goss
also considered himself to be an expert on to use
his term negroes, and he described the black sailors at
Port Chicago as unusually argumentative and sensitive about discrimination. He
(20:27):
maintained that quote extreme care and patients has been exercised
both at Mayor Island and Port Chicago to avoid discrimination.
And he recommended that the fifty men who were refusing
to work be charged with mutiny. And that's exactly what happened.
Some of the fifty men were still refusing to work.
Others were perceived as ring leaders of the work stoppage,
(20:48):
and a few maintained that they were neither. They were
just being punished because they were disliked. These men, nicknamed
the Port Chicago fifty, faced trial before a panel of
officers starting on September four, nineteen forty four. The trial
was held at Treasure Island Naval Base. Admiral Hugo. S.
Osterhouse presided over the seven man trial board. All of
(21:09):
the trial board was white. This was the largest mass
mutiny trial in U. S Naval history. The defense's primary
strategy was to argue that what these men had done
did not qualify as mutiny and to try to have
that charge dismissed. Lieutenant Gerald E. Veltman, who led the defense,
used a definition from Winthrop's Military Law and Precedence, which
(21:29):
defined mutiny as quote unlawful opposition or resistance to or
defiance of superior military authority with a deliberate attempt to usurp, subvert,
or override the same. He argued that the men had
simply refused to follow an order, that they had not
tried to usurp, subvert, or override anything. He also reiterated
(21:51):
that many of the men said that they had never
actually been given an actual order. The prosecution countered with
a different definition from the same source tread quote collective
in subordination or simultaneous disobedience of a lawful order by
two or more persons is an endeavor to make a
revolt or mutiny. So if two people refused to work,
(22:12):
that's mutiny. The trial board ultimately decided that this second
definition was the one that stood, and they did not
dismiss the mutiny charge. Future Supreme Court Justice, They're good.
Marshall was the chief Council for the n Double A
CP at the time, and he arrived in San Francisco
on October tenth. He observed the trial for twelve days
and interviewed all of the fifty defendants. Then Double A
(22:34):
CP also held a press conference at which they're good.
Marshall said, quote, this is not fifty men on trial
for mutiny. This is the Navy on trial for its
whole vicious policy toward negroes. Negroes in the Navy don't
mind loading ammunition. They just want to know why they
are the only ones doing the loading. Marshall also noted, quote,
(22:55):
they have told me they were willing to go to
jail to get a change of duty because of their
tour rific fear of explosives, But they had no idea
that verbal expression of their fear constituted mutiny. Afterward, the
a c P also published a pamphlet publicizing this whole
case and the fact that the men had not been
refusing to work period. They had just been refusing to
(23:16):
work without some changes that might protect their lives. By
the end of the proceedings, the defense had noted that
the men on trial had been respectful and had obeyed
every other order they had been given, something that was
acknowledged by officers on the stand. They had also gotten
expert testimony from a Navy psychiatrist who had argued that
the explosion was so traumatic that the men could reasonably
(23:39):
be expected to refuse their orders out of sheer self preservation.
This psychiatrist Lieutenant P. H. Pembroke also pointed out that
no sort of psychiatric assistance had been offered to any
of the enlisted men in the days that followed this
horrific disaster. Chaplain J. M. Flowers had also taken the
stand and said that he had spoken to some of
the men about trying to put aside their fears to
(24:01):
help their fellows, using the analogy of being in the
same foxhole as someone else. He reported that one of
the sailors had answered quote, in the foxholes, a man
has a chance to fight back. Throughout all of this,
the defense did not try to build a case that
the men had been the targets of discrimination based on
their race, but it is clear that the men themselves
believed that they had been the nu A CP, which
(24:24):
had existed for thirty five years at this point, thought
the same. And it is possible that at least some
of the men on trial thought that their work stoppage
might lead to civil rights gains within the Navy beyond
just the safety issues. But if they did, that wasn't
something that they talked about at the trial. From the
prosecution's standpoint, the men who were on trial had repeatedly
refused to follow orders, and they had encouraged others to
(24:46):
do the same, and that constituted mutiny. The Poor Chicago
fifty were all found guilty of mutiny on October nine,
after about eighty minutes of deliberation that included a lunch
break that was less than two minutes of deliberation per charge. Initially,
all fifty of them were sentenced to fifteen years in prison,
including hard labor, but ultimately some of the sentences were
(25:08):
reduced because of the men's youth and their lack of
previous conduct issues. More than half of them were under
twenty one years old. In the end, ten of them,
including the ones who were described as ring leaders, were
sentenced to fifteen years, and that included semen small. Thirty
five were sentenced to between ten and twelve years, and
the remaining were sentenced to eight years. They were all
incarcerated at Terminal Island Disciplinary Barracks in San Pedro, California. Meanwhile,
(25:34):
Navy leadership maintained that race was not a factor in
decisions at Port Chicago or in the mutiny proceedings, but
in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. They had noted
that the all black loading details could quote create an
appearance of discrimination. Admiral Wright had recommended that white details
relieve the black loading crews from time to time, and
(25:55):
in the end, two white units were assigned to Port
Chicago when it was up and running again. Third Good
Marshall filed an appeal brief in April of nineteen forty five,
and by this point the Double A CP had been
covering the disaster and the trial and its magazine, The Crisis,
and Eleanor Roosevelt had sent a copy of the Double
A CPS pamphlet on the incident to Secretary of the
Navy James V. Forrest All, encouraging him to take quote
(26:18):
special care in the case. Although Marshall's request for an
appeal was denied, the Navy did re examine one aspect
of the case. The prosecution's case had included hearsay evidence,
which had been admitted. The trial board considered what the
case would have looked like without that evidence on June twelfth.
In the end, the Navy upheld the convictions and sentences.
(26:40):
The Port Chicago fifty were the only people who faced
charges After this disaster, there was never really any examination
of whether the officer's actions or the Navy's policies had
played a role That hearsay evidence is basically that some
of the officers said that they had heard the enlisted
men encouraging each other not to go back to work,
but none of them a pinpoint any particular person that
(27:02):
they heard this from, but that was still considered admissible
in nive. The Navy started desegregating its ranks, including announcing
that training facilities would be integrated. In June of that year,
Black crews were assigned to a few small combat ships
as well. Then that December, Secretary forest All announced that
quote in the Administration of Naval Personnel, no differentiation shall
(27:24):
be made because of color. This was motivated not just
by the Port Chicago case, but also by other racial
conflicts within the Navy, including a riot involving black seabees
and white Marines on Guam in December of nineteen four.
The Port Chicago fifty remained incarcerated until the end of
World War two. First, their sentences were reduced by a year,
(27:46):
and then in January of nineteen forty six, all but
three were released In return to the Navy. Two of
the men who were not released were in the hospital
at the time, and one was not released because of
his conduct while incarcerated. From there, they were sent overseas
to work for a year as rehabilitation. The CBS who
had been part of the riot on Guam went through
(28:07):
a similar process. After that, they were discharged under honorable conditions.
That's not the same thing as an honorable discharge, and
some of the men maintained that it kept them from
being able to collect veterans benefits afterwards, which is something
that the Navy has denied. The mutiny convictions still stood, though,
and that made it hard for a lot of the
(28:27):
men to find work once they returned to civilian life.
A lot of them also talked about carrying a sense
of shame and anger about it for the rest of
their life. On February six, the Navy banned segregation and
formally made black sailors quote eligible for all types of assignments,
in all ratings, in all facilities, and in all ships.
(28:51):
More than two years later, on July President Harry S.
Truman signed Executive Order one, which desegregated the US Armed Forces.
The Navy was already compliant with the order when Truman
signed it. That doesn't mean that there was no discrimination
or racism in the Navy, just that the Navy had
already complied with the technical points of the order. Eventually,
(29:14):
the military facility at Port Chicago was repaired and it
became an even bigger port for munitions loading, but the
town of Port Chicago was determined to be too close
to the port for safety. This led the Navy to
file a series of lawsuits petitioning to have it torn down.
The Navy was finally successful in nineteen sixty eight, and
it purchased all the property through Eminent domain and then
(29:34):
raised the buildings. The base was later renamed Conquered Naval
Weapons Station and now it's Military Ocean Terminal Conquered. Although
the Port Chicago disaster was a major news story when
it happened and led to protests and advocacy on behalf
of the men on trial and black sailors in general,
for decades afterward, information about it was classified. The secrecy
(29:55):
contributed to a conspiracy theory that the explosion was caused
by a nuclear device. This theory grew after a document
called History of the ten thousand Ton gadget was found
in a box of photography supplies at a rummage sale
in nineteen eighty. That box was reportedly donated by a
man who had worked at Los Alamos, and the document
describes a mathematical model for a nuclear detonation and ends
(30:18):
with step eleven quote ball of fire, mushroom out at
eighteen thousand feet in typical Port Chicago fashion. So the
logical explanation for this is that after the disaster, scientists
from Los Alamos came to Port Chicago to study the
effects of an explosion that was similar in power to
what they were trying to develop. That definitely happened. Captain
(30:39):
William Parsons, ordinance director at Los Alamos, arrived on July
twenty then submitted a memo summarizing his findings on July.
His memorandum cites several eyewitnesses as reporting that a column
of fire rose up and then mushroomed out from the explosion.
But the conspiracy theory maintains that quote typical Port Chicago
fashion is not a reference to a mushroom cloud created
(31:02):
by the accidental detonation of conventional weapons that was as
powerful as a nuclear blast. Instead, it is supposedly a
reference to a mushroom cloud created by an actual nuclear
detonation in Port Chicago and then covered up. Yes, some
people go so far as to say that it was
an actual intentional nuclear debt nation basically bombing apport on
(31:25):
purpose to see what the effects would be. But there's
never been any evidence of any other like indication of
nuclear activity, any of the types of post nuclear explosion
issues you would have. No, the person who has been
the biggest uh advocate of this whole conspiracy theory wrote
a whole book about it, piecing all kinds of stuff together.
(31:49):
But like, it's one of those things that's so far
fetched that there's not a lot of historians that are
like rebutting it because it's so far, so far off
the realm of what's reasonable or imaginable. Um. But like
a lot of nuclear scientists have said no, this, Like
(32:09):
part of the argument has to be whether there was
enough nuclear material available to make a bomb of this
type in ninety four, and a lot of nuclear scientists
are like, no, there wasn't. UM. People have also noted,
like we when we did our our podcasts about the
Thousand Cranes and the bombings of Heroshman and Nagasaki, Like
(32:31):
we talked about how the nuclear after effects went on
for years and years and these uh spikes and all
kinds of cancers and like that, And there's no radiation
sickness associated with Port Chicago to the no UM, especially
not among all of the people in the town who
were a mile away and would have had that would Yeah,
(32:52):
it's I can totally see how these pieces of these
like little pieces of data, like the fact that it
says Port Chicago and that document and um, the huge
magnitude of the explosion, Like I can see how people
would piece these things together and draw that conclusion. But
at the same time, especially the idea that the United
(33:15):
States would have intentionally bombed one of its own ports
during wartime as an experiment, like, yeah, that's a little
bit of a long walk, Yeah, a mission critical port
during wartime, like it was how munitions were getting like
the vast majority of munitions were getting to the Pacific.
In the nineteen nineties, the Navy reviewed the Port Chicago case,
and on January the Board for Correction of Naval Records
(33:39):
acknowledged that racism was present in the Navy and at
Port Chicago in Nino, but maintained that it did not
play a part in the events that transpired. The Secretary
of Defense at the time was William J. Perry, who said, quote,
sailors are required to obey the orders of their superiors,
even if those orders subject them to life threatening danger.
(33:59):
In nineteen any nine, President Bill Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks,
who had been part of the Port Chicago fifty Meeks
was one of a very few survivors still living at
the time, and he was the only one to apply
for a presidential pardon. In the words of Joe Small
back in when the Navy stood by their convictions, quote
we don't want a pardon because that means you're guilty,
(34:21):
but we forgive you. We want the decisions set aside
and reimbursement of all lost pay. In two thousand nine,
the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was dedicated. It's
part of the National Park System, but it's also on
an active military base, so if you want to visit there,
you have to have advanced reservations and a government issue
I d H and go through a security check to enter.
(34:43):
The security is a lot tighter than at most other
monuments of a similar sort because it is on an
active base. There are a lot of moments of holding back,
growling and expletives in that episode. Yeah. Um, people have
been asking us the talk about this for a really
long time, and because it is so similar to the
(35:04):
Halifax disaster in terms of the nature of the explosion
and the damage that it caused, Like Halifax was a
lot more destructive in terms of how much property was
destroyed and how many people were killed. Because the Halifax
is that disaster happened like right there in Halifax, and
there were a lot of populated buildings immediately around the
area and like a lot more people, a lot more
civilians there that the docks. But Port Chicago was not
(35:29):
nearly as well populated, and then the shape of the
landscape stopped the spread of the explosion from going as far.
So like the death toll is not as staggering as
in Halifax, but if you look at the pictures, it's
really similar in terms of things just being flattened. And
one of the things that was frustrated and researching it
(35:51):
is how how like there were these clear, discriminatory, segregated
tears through the whole entire thing that played out in
the same way as like so many other segregated situations
that we have talked about on the show, but unlike
some of them that have been later investigated, Like we've
(36:13):
talked about a lot of knowledge, We've talked about a
lot of incidents that like, when they happened, it was
clear that like racism was a factor, and then fifty
years later, uh, somebody will go back through the whole
records and have like a truth and Reconciliation commission or
something like that and say, Okay, this is the documentation
of how this played out and how discrimination played a
(36:33):
part in it. And with this particular thing, it's been
more like, yeah, they're discrimination existed, but it didn't really
affect this, but that wasn't part of this. Yes, it
kind of comes across that way. Frustrating. Yeah, hopefully in
a more upbeat zone. Do you have some listener my
own I view? It's from Katrina. It is a little
more uh. It is also about a disaster, but it
(36:55):
is more upbeat and it says my name is Katrina.
I am a longtime listener from Perth, Australia. Just dropping
you a line after I listened to the general slocum disaster.
My little tidbit of trivia is much more lighthearder than
the episode though, and it's all to do with cork.
Inferior cork is the reason why most wine bottles in
Australia have metal caps. Apparently there was a war between
(37:17):
some European wine labels and Australian labels around the nineteen seventies.
This was as the Australian wine industry started making some
waves and getting noticed. To try to block this these
new upcomers, some of the older European brands convinced cork
suppliers to send inferior corks to the Australian market, so
the wineries in Australia were forced to invent a new
(37:38):
closure into the screw cap. I think this is also
why we have wine in a bag, although I'm not
entirely sure on that one. Unfortunately, I can't remember the
documentary in which I saw this, so my details may
be wrong, but and I cannot send you something with
more information. But either way, it's a cute story. Keep
up the good work, ladies. I'm always impressed with a
sensitivity and enthusiasm to approach each topic, especially the ones
(38:00):
The reveal histories that have been hidden for so long
due to racism, sexism, and homophobia. And then she goes
on with some podcast suggestions. Uh, your friend in history, Katrina,
thank you so much for this email, Katrina. I did
not go through and like verify the trajectory of screw
caps and cork, but the idea of needing a different
(38:23):
type of closure for the bottle because of poor quality
cork is definitely a thing. Like in more recent years
there have been worldwide cork shortages. Uh, and that is
why a lot more a lot of wine bottles and
things now instead of having a cork closure will have
a like a more rubber stopper or a screw cap
or something like that. So thank you Katrina for sending
(38:43):
a more lighthearted aspect of poor quality cork. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast or a history podcast at how stuff Works
dot com. And then we're all over social media at
miss in History. That is where you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,
and Twitter. You can come to our webs which is
missed in History dot com and find show notes about
the episodes Holly and I have worked on together and
(39:05):
a searchable archive of every episode ever, and you can
subscribe to our show on Apple podcast, i heart Radio
app and wherever else do you get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of my
heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts. For my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(39:27):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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