A Question of Honor : Survivors of a 1944 Naval Tragedy Say They Were Wronged by Courts-Martial--and Racism of the Era

The mutineers are all old men now. Until recently, most of them have said little about their ordeal 50 years ago: the deadly explosion, the bigotry, and the time they spent in prison.

But now, these survivors of the tragedy at Port Chicago--the deadliest stateside disaster of World War II--are part of a growing movement to repudiate the racism of the era and clear their names.

“What we were charged with was just phony,” Los Angeles resident Freddie Meeks, 74, one of 50 African American sailors convicted of mutiny, said bitterly. “We did not even commit mutiny.”

Today is the 50th anniversary of the explosion at Port Chicago, the naval munitions base on Suisun Bay near Concord where black sailors in segregated units were assigned to load explosives onto ships around the clock.

The blast killed 320 people--including more than 200 African American seamen--and injured 390. It was so powerful that it destroyed two ships, maimed sailors in their barracks and broke windows in the St. Francis Hotel 35 miles away in San Francisco.

Afterward, 258 surviving African American seamen refused to resume loading munitions, seeking safer working conditions and leave to visit their families like white sailors had received.

Fifty black seamen were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years. The rest were court-martialed for disobeying orders and sentenced to short terms in the stockade. After the war, under pressure from NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, the Navy reduced the sentences.

Now, six Democratic members of Congress from California, contending that the convictions were tainted by prejudice, are calling on President Clinton to clear the names of the convicted men.

“We should put this sorry chapter in racial relations behind us, and allow these remaining men to complete their lives knowing that they have the esteem and regard of their countrymen for their service during World War II,” the elected officials said in a letter to the President last month.

Among those signing the letter were Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland). House Natural Resources Chairman George Miller (D-Martinez), who is leading the drive to expunge the convictions from the seamen’s records, said the 258 men were the victims of bigotry and were unjustly found guilty.

“The court-martials would never have occurred if not for the issue of race,” Miller said. “These men have lived with this scar on their record throughout their lives. They have been viewed as having less than honorable service, which they clearly did not.”

Today, survivors of the disaster, Miller, Navy officials and the National Park Service will dedicate a memorial to the dead at Port Chicago, now a part of the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

A new monument lists all of those who died in alphabetical order--black and white side by side as they never were in life. A rusty, bent piece of metal recovered from one ship is mounted nearby, not far from the chunks of concrete and wood pilings that remain from the blast.

During World War II, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine was the biggest munitions depot on the West Coast. Crews of African American seamen, supervised by white officers, served as stevedores loading the explosives on ships bound for the Pacific Theater.

The seamen never received training on how to handle munitions but were under heavy pressure to load the ships as quickly as possible. Munitions ranging from rifle rounds to 2,000-lb. shells were loaded by winch, slid down ramps or rolled on dollies. Some officers bet on which crew would load the fastest, and losing crews were punished with reduced liberty.

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On the night of July 17, 1944, there were two explosions five seconds apart at the loading pier. The first was small. The second demolished two ships and the pier, killing everyone within 1,000 feet of the blast.

Both ships, the Bryan and the 11,000-ton Quinault Victory, were thrown into the air and broken into small pieces. Arms, legs, heads and other body parts were strewn among the rubble. Many of the dead were never found.

With more than 4,600 tons of explosives packed into the Bryan, the blast was more than a third as large as the explosion caused by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima a year later.

The detonation measured 3.4 on the Richter scale and was felt as far away as Nevada. It caused heavy damage in the nearby town of Port Chicago and for miles around, prompting the filing of 10,000 claims by civilians.

No one ever determined what caused the explosion, but some survivors believe the rush to load the ships contributed to the disaster.

With the loading pier destroyed, the surviving seamen were assigned to clear the debris and collect the body parts of their fellow seamen. While white officers and seamen were given leave to visit their families, the African American seamen were shipped to nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo.

At the time of the explosion, Seaman Percy Robinson was in his bunk. He suffered lacerations on his face and arm and was hospitalized for a week. Less than a month after the explosion, he was among a group of 258 men told they would resume loading munitions.

“I was upset because I wasn’t allowed to come home on leave after I got wounded,” said Robinson, now 70 and living in Los Angeles. “I was still bandaged at the time I was ordered to go back to work. I knew other sailors on our base who got wounded and they went home. None of the blacks who were wounded were allowed to go home.”

Robinson and the other 257 men all refused to load munitions. But after the admiral in charge of the depot warned them they would be shot if they continued to refuse, he was among 208 seamen who agreed to go back to work.

Instead of loading ships, however, they were sent to the stockade and court-martialed for disobeying orders. Robinson was sentenced to three months in the stockade and served 71 days.

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Afterward, he received an honorable discharge and went on to become a senior staff research engineer at Hughes Aircraft, but he could never be rid of the stain on his record. Until recently, he never mentioned it to his wife or children, but every time he applied for a security clearance he had to explain his conviction.

“It’s always there,” he said, “but you learn to live with it.”

Seaman Meeks was on liberty in San Francisco when the blast occurred. He heard on the radio that he was supposed to return to the base, but did not go back immediately. On his return, he was put in the brig and then assigned to guard the bodies.

Weeks later, ordered to go back to work and facing the admiral’s threat, Meeks joined 49 others and refused to budge.

“We decided we would not go back and load the ships under those conditions,” recalled Meeks, who went on to work for Los Angeles County and is now retired. “They only had the blacks loading and unloading the ammunition. The whites didn’t have to touch it. It would scare you to death the way we had to handle it.”

At their mutiny trial--the Navy’s largest ever--the prosecutor argued that in time of war, the seamen’s concern over unsafe conditions and fear of another explosion were not sufficient grounds for refusing to obey an order.

After more than a month of testimony, the Navy judges took 80 minutes to reach their verdict: All 50 were guilty of mutiny. The mutineers were sentenced to hard labor and imprisoned on Terminal Island in San Pedro.

Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP attorney who was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, spent weeks observing the trial and protested that the men were charged “solely because of their race and color.”

“I can’t understand why whenever more than one Negro disobeys an order it is mutiny,” Marshall said.

Eleanor Roosevelt joined with Marshall in urging the Navy to be more lenient. In 1946, the Navy reduced the mutineers’ sentences and released them after they had served about 16 months in prison.

Nearly all the men were reassigned to other Navy duties and given a chance to redeem themselves. Most of the mutineers received a discharge “under honorable conditions,” which gave them some veterans benefits but fell short of the coveted honorable discharge.

The Port Chicago case prompted the Navy to overhaul its procedures for handling ammunition--and to begin ending segregation even before President Harry S. Truman ordered the military’s integration in 1948.

Five years ago, a book by Robert Allen titled “The Port Chicago Mutiny” and a subsequent documentary by KRON-TV in San Francisco revived the memory of the mutiny and called into question the treatment the men received.

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Under orders from Congress to review the case, the Navy issued a report this year concluding that racial discrimination played a part in the seamen’s work assignments and living conditions. But the Navy found that racial prejudice did not affect the courts-martial, convictions or sentences.

“The (review) panel concluded that there was nothing unfair or unjust in the final outcome of any of the Port Chicago court-martials,” the Navy said in a statement.

Now, the effort to expunge the record of the mutineers has the backing of Port Chicago survivors who obeyed orders and went back to work, such as Morris Soublet, then a second-class bosun’s mate who supervised loading of the ships.

Most of the men had signed up to fight the enemy and found themselves working as laborers without proper training and in unsafe conditions, he said.

“They weren’t afraid of getting on a ship and getting shot at,” said Soublet, 73, who lives in Oakland. “They just didn’t want to handle ammunition.”