Victims of Wartime Blast to Be Remembered

More than 300 servicemen and civilians who died when a huge explosion rocked a Navy ammunition depot finally will receive permanent recognition today, 45 years after the worst home-front disaster of World War II.

“They’ve been forgotten, but they died during wartime, doing their duty to their country like anyone else. It’s certainly a recognition that is due them,” said Gordon Koller of San Jose, who was then a chief bosun’s mate at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine.

Koller, 73, and four other survivors will take part in a service and dedication of a memorial at the depot--now the Concord Naval Weapons Station--30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

A simple marker, the first part of a planned memorial, stands on the shore of Suisun Bay, where 10,000 tons of ammunition exploded on July 17, 1944. It killed 320 people and injured another 390, some as far as 15 miles away.

Koller, whose job was loading ammunition on ships, was headed for work, waiting for a bus in Concord, five miles away, when the blast occurred.

“We got a great deal of underground concussion in the place I was waiting. It shook one quite hard, like someone took you by the shoulders and shook you,” Koller said Friday. “Then the over-ground concussion came and it was like someone slapped you across the face.”