Port Chicago was a Navy loading area near San Francisco. It was located about a mile from the Port Chicago Naval Magazine. Trains would bring bombs and other explosives to the liberty ships. Most of the loaders were African-Americans who were given no training for the job. They had been trained for combat, but were given the extremely dangerous job of loading bombs onto ships. There was only one posting of the safety regulations and it was in the barracks. The men were falsely told that because the bombs were not fused, they could not explode. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (fearing a disaster) offered to train the men, but the Navy turned it down. The black petty officers were incompetent and uncaring. The loaders had a bad relationship with them and likened them to slave drivers. The overall commander was a white Captain Merrill Kinne. He had no training or experience in loading explosives. The men were pressured to load quickly in a competition between the loading groups. The officers bet on whose division could load the fastest. On July 17, 1944, the liberty ship USS E.A. Bryan was being loaded. It already had 5,292 barrels of fuel oil on board. Some of the bombs were incendiaries which did have fuses. Anchored nearby the USS Quinault Victory was being loaded. At 10:18, a massive explosion occurred. It was equivalent to 5,000 tons of TNT and was the largest man-made explosion in history up until then. (The Hiroshima atomic bomb was equivalent to 17,000 tons of TNT.) The force of the blast was felt 20 miles away in San Francisco. A Coast Guard fireboat was hurled 600 feet. All 320 men on the pier died instantly. 202 were black. This was 15% of black casualties in the war. Only 51 of the 302 men could be identified. None of the surviving blacks were given the standard 30 day survivors leave. The white officers were given the leave. The blacks were assigned to clean up the mess, including the dead bodies. A Board of Inquiry was unable to determine the cause. Most likely it was a mistake in the handling of the bombs. But faulty equipment (ex. the cranes) was also a possibility. Capt. Kinne insisted the competition was not a factor. All officers involved were exonerated. The Navy asked Congress to pay $5,000 to the dead men’s families. When a Congressman found out it was mostly blacks, he proposed the amount be reduced to $2,000. Congress compromised with $3,000. Many of the survivors were reassigned to Mare Island Navy Yard to continue loading explosives onto ships. They had still not been given any training. On August 8, 1944, 258 black loaders went on strike because of the danger of another accident. After a pep talk and threats of punishment, 50 still refused to load. 208 were given dishonorable discharges and the 50 were given 8-15 years of hard labor. Two years later, they were given clemency. The disaster and the court-martial were factors in Pres. Truman issuing an executive order desegregating the armed forces in 1948. In 2019, the House of Representatives passed a resolution exonerating the Port Chicago 50, but the Senate failed to pass it!
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/port-chicago-disaster
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/port-chicago-exoneration-thurgood-marshall-jr-john-lawrence
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