"A racially segregated base — here in California," Allen says, his wonder at the discovery still evident. "And segregated by federal law at that." The sailors, he adds, "were basically locked in a prison called Port Chicago Naval Depot."
And though neither enlisted men nor officers were trained to handle bombs, they faced constant, round-the-clock pressure to ship ammunition from Port Chicago, built in response to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The odds of a catastrophic accident were not lost on the men.
After the worst finally happened — an explosion so violent it blew a 440-foot Navy vessel to bits, along with any clues to the accident's cause — the survivors were understandably fearful of returning to work.
"Keep in mind that half of them are teenagers," Allen says. "These are kids, terrified of going back to work and getting killed in another explosion."
Joseph Small, who was 23 when the Bryan blew and respected by most of his younger crewmates, recalled in interviews with Allen how the survivors were expected simply to return to their regular jobs: "The men said, 'Well, what are you going to do?' And he said, 'I'm not going back to the same work under the same conditions under the same officers.'
"That’s the language of a strike. That’s exactly what the stevedores would have said on the waterfront here if they were engaged in a wildcat strike," Allen says. "But there’s no such thing in the military. And so they get put on trial for mutiny, and for their very lives."
Labeled a "ringleader," Small was among the 50 sailors convicted by a panel of admirals. Their defense counsel, a white Navy lieutenant, argued that the men — many of whom acted heroically in the wake of the accident — may have refused to follow orders, but had made no concerted effort to seize command from established military authorities, and so were not guilty of mutiny.
‘This is the Navy on trial’
Outside the San Francisco courtroom, meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall was raising broader issues. "This is not 50 men on trial for mutiny," he declared. "This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy toward Negroes."
Nonetheless, after barely an hour of deliberation, all 50 men were sentenced to 15 years in prison, to be followed by dishonorable discharge from the Navy. (The end of the war brought their early release.) But they also won a crucial victory. The notoriety of their plight — which had prompted Eleanor Roosevelt to send a copy of Marshall's pamphlet to Navy Secretary James Forrestal, with the wish that "in the case of these boys special care will be taken" — led to two white divisions sharing the work of loading ammunition at Port Chicago.
"That's the very first step in beginning to desegregate the Navy, when they bring in these guys to do the same work that only blacks were doing before," Allen says. Over the next year the Navy would permit mixed crews of black and white sailors, though initially limiting black sailors to 10 percent of crews on some auxiliary vessels, and 30 percent at ammunition depots. (The other military branches remained segregated until 1948.)
With the dawn of the postwar era, the explosion and subsequent trial — not to mention their larger significance — were relegated to footnotes in history. "So by the time I was onto it, it was really lost to memory," Allen says. "And I became interested in trying to find out what had happened."
It would be 13 years before The Port Chicago Mutiny was completed. Its publication quickly led to an Emmy Award-winning KRON documentary, and then to a spate of other articles, movies and books. (Steve Sheinkin, who recently published a book on the topic for younger readers, is scheduled to speak at Diablo Valley College next week.)
As media attention grew, so did public interest and political efforts to "remember Port Chicago." Prodded by Lawrence — now a visiting professor at the UC Washington Center — Rep. Miller and others pushed Congress to create the Port Chicago National Memorial at the site of the explosion in 1994, and helped persuade President Clinton to pardon one of the few surviving convicted sailors in 1999.
Yet the Navy has refused to exonerate them, and Allen’s not optimistic about Congress. He’s pinning his hopes on a proclamation by President Obama — and on the spotlight from events like Thursday's symposium.
Though none of the 50 are still alive, "it would be important to the families to remove this stigma, and it’s important to the nation," he says. "Because then the nation could say, 'OK, we understand it. These guys did something that was technically illegal. But they did it in a way that brought about change for the better, just as the civil-rights activists did in the South.'
"The government may not necessarily want to paint them as heroes, but it can no longer paint them as demons," he adds. "When we look at the process of desegregation in the military, one of its sources is what happened at Port Chicago. We should stop penalizing these sailors for having done something that we now recognize was for the benefit of the country.
"It's time," Allen says, "to exonerate these fellows."
For more details, visit The Port Chicago Disaster at 70: A Symposium on Race and the Military During World War II.
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- National Archives Records Lay Foundation for Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
- Nichola D. Gutgold - The Most Private Roosevelt Makes a Significant Public Contribution: Ethel Carow Roosevelt Derby
- Oppenheimer: July 28 UC Berkeley Panel Discussion Focuses On The Man Behind The Movie
- "Henry Ford Innovation Nation", a Favorite Television Show
- Jo Freeman Reviews Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality
- Women at War 1939 - 1945, The Imperial War Museums: Queen Elizabeth
- Julia Sneden Wrote: Going Forth On the Fourth After Strict Blackout Conditions and Requisitioned Gunpowder Had Been the Law
- Jo Freeman Reviews: Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict Over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920 – 1963
- Jo Freeman Writes: It’s About Time
- Jo Freeman Reviews: Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight