Black men exonerated after mutiny charges during WWII

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Eighty years ago today, on July 17, 1944, and at the height of World War II, a terrible tragedy took place at a U.S. Naval facility in the San Francisco Bay area. A huge explosion tore through the Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station where hundreds of Black sailors had been working to load munitions onto ships. Three-hundred-twenty men, mostly Black sailors, were killed instantly. Hundreds more were injured. It was the worst homefront disaster of the war.

In the aftermath, 50 survivors, all Black, refused to return to work loading munitions in protest over what they said were unsafe working conditions and a lack of training. They were charged with mutiny during wartime, and they were thrown in prison.

This week, the Navy officially exonerated the Port Chicago 50. All of the men have since died. But almost 30 years ago, independent producer Dan Collison spoke to five of them for a documentary called "The Port Chicago 50." Dan Collison will join us in a few minutes, but first, here's a piece of that documentary.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE PORT CHICAGO 50: AN ORAL HISTORY")

FREDDIE MEEKS: It made you kind of nervous. You always was uneasy about handling all that ammunition, bombs, torpedoes.

JOE SMALL: First time I saw any ammunition was when we were called out of the barracks and lined up and marched to the dock.

MEEKS: You'd be down in the hole. Here come the big bombs and things coming down the ramp way.

SMALL: We were told that it wasn't dangerous.

ALBERT WILLIAMS: We was told that so much we had to be did that night - it was a rush, rush.

MEEKS: The white officers - they didn't have much to do with us no more than to stand around and see that we load that ammunition.

SMALL: But we knew they were betting. A hundred dollars or so that my division will put on more ammunition than your division.

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Frequently, the urgent need for ammunition forced the depot to load two ships at the same time at the same pier. So it was on the night of July 17, 1944. Three-and-a-half million pounds of explosives were aboard or waiting nearby on the pier. Everything was normal until 10:19.

ROBERT ROUTH: I said my prayers and leaped up in the rack. Shortly after that, here comes an explosion, filling the sky with all kinds of lights and colors like at a Fourth of July celebration.

PERCY ROBINSON: The sky lit up, and it's just like the sun rose. Everything was bright. You can see all the buildings for a second.

ROUTH: Shortly after that, here comes the second explosion.

Glass was everywhere. It was just bedlam.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Officials say that 337 persons are known dead or missing and presumed dead, more than 300 others injured as the result of last night's explosion of two ammunition ships at Port Chicago in upper...

ROUTH: Then I noticed that I couldn't see clearly. That was the beginning of the end and caused me to be a blind person.

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: In the waterfront barracks and administration area, buildings crumpled like cardboard. Roofs blown off, walls gone. In the vicinity of the loading piers - total destruction, both ships broken, twisted hulks.

MEEKS: That was a shocking thing, to see those ships tore up, and I was standing watch over all those dead bodies.

WILLIAMS: They told us they had a ship that had to be loaded. They gave us a ultimatum. Would you load ammunition? And I told them myself, I am absolutely afraid, which I were. I'm afraid to load ammunition. You step over there, then. Then he'd call another one. He asked them the same thing. You step over there. And when the end of the day was over, I think just about all of us had stepped over there.

MEEKS: We felt like we was getting a raw deal because we was the one that was doing the dirty work. We was the one that's fooling with the ammunition. So why shouldn't we have a leave of absence to get away, to get your nerves settled? But that didn't happen.

SMALL: I just knew that I didn't want to work under the same conditions that I did work under and advance the chance of the same thing happening again.

MEEKS: He told us that you could be charged with mutiny if you don't go back to work. Fifty of us decided we wasn't going to go back and load no more ammunition.

WILLIAMS: That's when we was charged with mutiny.

CHANG: That was from a radio documentary on the Port Chicago 50 produced by Dan Collison, who joins us now. Welcome.

DAN COLLISON: Hi, Ailsa.

CHANG: Hi. Well, I understand the Navy - at the time, they did conduct a fairly extensive investigation, like, right after the Port Chicago disaster in 1944. What exactly did they find at the time?

COLLISON: Well, the Navy wasn't able to determine what caused the explosions, but they did imply that mistakes were made by the Black soldiers. For example, the Navy reports, quote, "rough handling of the munitions by an individual or individuals," end quote. There was no mention made in the investigation report of the fact that the Navy failed to train the men for this dangerous work they were doing.

And the white officers got off scot-free, no responsibility, even though they weren't trained either. They did get a slap on the hand for betting on how fast and how much the Black sailors could load.

CHANG: I'm so embarrassed to say that I have never heard of the Port Chicago 50 disaster until this week when I was prepping for this interview with you. I never learned about in school - nothing. I'm just curious, how much attention did this whole case get at the time?

COLLISON: Well, it didn't get much national attention. That could have been because the war was ramping up. Now, the mutiny trial did get a lot of attention. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke out in favor of the 50 men.

The NAACP sent a young attorney by the name of Thurgood Marshall, who would, of course, go on to serve on the Supreme Court. He observed the trial, and then he appealed. He wrote an appeal and said, quote, "there is no set rule as to what a mutiny is and that racism did play a role in the decisions," end quote.

The trial lasted six weeks - about six weeks, and all the men were found guilty of mutiny, and they were sentenced to 15 years in prison. Marshall's appeal was rejected after six months, and most of the men served about a year and a half and were released under a general amnesty granted by the Navy after the war ended.

CHANG: Well, then what happened? After these men were released and tried to return to their lives, how did that go?

COLLISON: Yeah, they tried to put it behind them. Not easy - some of them never talked about it with their family or with their friends. The Navy made it a policy not to talk about the Port Chicago 50 after that 1944 investigation. But 50 years later, Congress pressured the Navy to conduct another investigation of the disaster. There have been efforts over the years to clear the names of the Port Chicago 50, all unsuccessful until this week.

CHANG: Indeed. Independent producer Dan Collison, speaking to us about the case of the Port Chicago 50 who were officially exonerated this week by the U.S. Navy. Thank you so much for your work, Dan.

COLLISON: You're welcome. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF COMMON, KANYE WEST AND JOHN LEGEND SONG, "THEY SAY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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