Honoring the Port Chicago Veterans

FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

For the history behind the tragedy of Port Chicago, we turn to Robert Allen. He authored a book call "The Port Chicago Mutiny."

Professor, welcome.

Professor ROBERT ALLEN (Author, "The Port Chicago Mutiny"): I'm glad to join you.

CHIDEYA: In some ways, this is a story about military segregation. And how did that affect the working conditions before the explosion and during the mutiny?

Prof. ALLEN: Well, the conditions there were really terrible. They - keep in mind that this was a segregated base; only African-Americans were assigned to loading the ammunition. No African-American could become an officer. All of the officers are white. And so it's the classic segregated situation there as it was at other military bases at the time.

And the sailors who had been trained - and these sailors were young, we're talking about 17, 18, 19 years of age - teenagers, basically - had no training in handling ammunition. Even though they had been trained at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, they were not given any training in handling ammunition, and neither were the officers. It was a sort of catch-us-catch-can, literally, unfortunately, a situation there where the men were simply expected to learn from watching others.

So you had the situation then of racial discrimination. Only African-Americans were assigned to this dangerous and backbreaking work. And at the same time, there was improper or lack of, entirely, training. And the behavior of the officers contributed to the problem.

CHIDEYA: What do you mean by that?

Prof. ALLEN: Well, the officers forced the black working divisions there to race against each other in loading ammunition. They encouraged competition and racing. And the officers actually bet on the outcome. And this is - it was totally insane because, of course, it contributed then to the danger of the work and the likelihood of a disaster there.

CHIDEYA: So what exactly happened with the explosion?

Prof. ALLEN: Well, it was the night of July 17, 1944, and they were loading two ships there at the base. One was almost fully loaded with some 5,000 tons of high explosives. And at about 10:18 that night - they worked around the clock, by the way, three shifts. And at 10:18 that night, something went wrong. And there was a terrible explosion as the ship that was fully loaded blew up like one gigantic bomb.

In fact, it was the biggest human-made explosion up until that time. And the only thing that would be larger would be the atomic bomb. Anyway, this destroyed, of course, the ships, the base. Three hundred and twenty men were killed, most of them African-Americans, 202 of them African-American. And no one who was close enough to see the precise cause lived to tell about it because they were all killed.

CHIDEYA: How did the survivors of this tragedy, where 320 sailors were killed, react afterwards?

Prof. ALLEN: They were horrified. They were traumatized. They were in a state of shock. They had lost - all of them had lost, of course, friends in the disaster. And then in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, the survivors were required to go out and pick up the remains, which were literally bits and pieces of their friends, whatever could be found. Very few bodies were found intact. The ships were literally vaporized. And the - so, it was a horrible situation afterwards to be working in the cleanup, in addition to the trauma of the explosion itself. And the men never knew what was the cause - that is the survivors never knew what was the cause of the explosion; they were not told anything by the officers. They were just left in a state of trauma. There was, of course, no counseling or anything like that.

For several days after the explosion, not knowing what had happened, not knowing what would happen to them, hoping that maybe there would be a change of conditions there at the base in terms of the officers and the working conditions and so on. But none of that would happen. Instead, they would be - ordered to go back to work, loading ammunition again under the same officers and the same conditions.

CHIDEYA: So what did they do?

Prof. ALLEN: Some of them like Joe Small, who was accused of being the ringleader of the so-called mutiny and, basically, made up his own mind that he was not going back to work under those conditions. Many of the others did not actually make a real - a conscious decision there, but they were in such a state that when the work stoppage took place everybody departed it. And…

CHIDEYA: Now the Navy reacted quite severely what happened in that day.

Prof. ALLEN: The Navy - the reaction was just out of all proportion. The - there was no - that was a work stoppage. It was a peaceful protest. There was no violence. There was no - nothing of that sort. And the men obeyed all of the orders.

CHIDEYA: So what happened in the trial?

Prof. ALLEN: Well, the trial was a mockery. They were tried, you know, en masse. The defense, who - had military shrouds, so they did not have (unintelligible) and attorneys, they had military attorneys who is themselves, of course, under the control of the military. Thurgood Marshall was able to observe the trial, but not to participate as a civilian.

And the men(ph) were basically railroaded. All of them were found guilty of mutiny after only 80 minutes of deliberation by the court, which means, as Thurgood Marshall pointed out, about a minute and a half of deliberation (unintelligible).

So that tells you something about the quality and the court-martial proceedings. So basically, the men were railroaded and scapegoated by the conditions that the Navy allowed to exist at that base.

CHIDEYA: What was their sentence?

Prof. ALLEN: They were, ultimately, they did - all sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, initially. Subsequently, some of the sentences were reduced because there was a real public expression of outrage. I found in the files, literally, hundreds of letters, thousands of names on petition from people all over the country, (unintelligible), saying that these mutiny convictions were outrageous. And also asking why is it that only black men were being assigned to doing this work. And there was this public campaign, public pressure, I think, that really compelled the Navy to begin the process of desegregation, introducing white troops, white sailors to do the work of loading ammunitions. But later on, (unintelligible) beginning to desegregate the training facilities and the ship as well.

This is what comes out and that, the terrible situation there, the beginning of the process of desegregation in the U.S. Navy.

CHIDEYA: Robert Allen, thank you so much.

Prof. ALLEN: Thank you.

CHIDEYA: Robert Allen is a professor of African-American and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He's also the author of "The Port Chicago Mutiny," the story of the largest mass mutiny trial in U.S. naval history.

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