Navy exonerates Black sailors charged in Port Chicago disaster 80 years ago

Eighty years after explosions ripped through the Port Chicago naval facility in California, killing 320 sailors, Coast Guard personnel and civilians, the secretary of the Navy announced Wednesday the full exoneration of African American sailors who were charged in 1944 with mutiny and refusing orders to return to work in dangerous conditions loading ammunition.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in an interview that the decision to exonerate the sailors came after a Navy investigation found legal errors made during the 1944 courts-martial trial of 258 Black sailors who had been subjected to threats of execution for refusing to return to work after the July 17, 1944, explosions.

The cause of the explosions, which injured 400 people, destroyed two ships and a train, and flattened the nearby town of Port Chicago, was never determined. The disaster at Port Chicago has been called by Naval historians the single worst home-front disaster during World War II.

After the explosions, White supervising officers were given hardship leave. But Black sailors who survived the blast were ordered back to work loading ships with ammunition. Because of the dangerous conditions and lack of training, hundreds of Black sailors, who had been subjected to racism in a segregated Navy, refused to return to work. Fifty were charged with mutiny. Two hundred eight were charged with disobeying orders.

Del Toro told The Washington Post the charges were “a tremendous wrong” that has haunted many survivors and their family members. “I have made the decision,” Del Toro said, “inherent within my authority dating to the laws of the time, to set aside the court-martial results of all sailors convicted as part of the Port Chicago incident.”

The exoneration of the African American sailors, Del Toro said, “clears their names, restores their honor and acknowledges the courage they displayed in the face of immense danger.”

At the time, the Navy’s personnel policies at the time barred Black sailors from most seagoing jobs, so the battalions at Port Chicago consisted largely of Black enlisted personnel and White officers, according to a statement the Navy released Wednesday. The Black sailors worked under dangerous conditions loading ships with ammunition in brutal 24-hour shifts. The White officers supervising them often bet on which shifts could load more ammunition, the Navy found.

The exoneration announced Wednesday covers 256 of the 258 sailors who were convicted in 1944. The remaining two sailors’ convictions had been previously set aside by former Navy secretaries because of insufficient evidence and a determination that one sailor did not have the capacity to understand the gravity of a refusal to obey orders in the Navy.

The new investigation ordered by Del Toro, who was sworn in as secretary in 2021, found that 258 African American sailors had been erroneously tried in 1944 as a group. The legal review also concluded the sailors had not been given appropriate counsel. Their attorneys had been assigned to defend large groups of sailors who had been grouped alphabetically.

“The trial lawyers did not have time to properly prepare for the case,” Navy general counsel Sean Coffey said in an interview.

The disaster at Port Chicago began about 10:19 on the night of July 17, 1944, when two massive blasts, seconds apart, obliterated the U.S. naval magazine at Port Chicago in California, according to Regina T. Akers, a historian at the Naval History Heritage Command Histories and Archives Division.

The blasts destroyed two cargo ships - the SS Quinault Victory and the SS E.A. Bryan - which had been berthed at the pier where more than 4,600 tons of antiaircraft ammunition, aerial bombs, high explosives and smokeless powder had been loaded, according to a Navy report.

The blasts demolished virtually everything within a 1,000-foot radius of the facility, including nearby cargo ships, the port’s pier, boxcars, a 45-ton locomotive, a Coast Guard barge and a wharf that was still under construction, according to the Navy.

The impact of the explosions was equivalent to 5,000 tons of TNT and would have felt like an 3.4-magnitude earthquake. “Witnesses reported seeing an immense column of fire that mushroomed, creating a magnificent yellow-orange light,” Akers said.

After the blasts, the search for survivors almost immediately turned into a recovery mission. “Only 51 bodies remained intact for identification,” according to the Navy, “and the smell of burning flesh hung in the air.”

Hundreds of the dead were unrecognizable. “All the men who survived were traumatized,” Akers said. “They were asked to go through the debris to look for possible survivors. They ended up picking up limbs.”

Of the 320 sailors killed in the blasts, 202 were Black, representing one-fifth of all African American naval casualties during World War II, according to a congressional account.

Before the explosions, African American sailors had reported the dangerous conditions and asked the Navy to provide work gloves, but the request was refused. Some of the sailors wrote home, asking their families to send gloves. They also wrote to the NAACP and the National Urban League, describing dangerous working conditions.

After the explosions, surviving sailors at Port Chicago were sent to nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard, about 23 miles northeast of San Francisco in Vallejo, Calif.

The Navy began an immediate investigation and summoned a court of inquiry. Investigators interviewed 120 witnesses, according to the Navy. At the end of the 39-day investigation, the Navy cleared all the White officers at Port Chicago of any culpability or liability.

The Navy declared “it could not confirm the exact cause of the initial explosion,” according to the Navy report. “The court’s 1,200-page report implied that, whatever the blast’s origin, the African American ammunition handlers must have had something to do with it.”

“Eventually they get an order to go back to work,” Akers said. “They were very, very concerned that another explosion might occur unless there was a change in procedures and policies. That was the chief reason for not wanting to return.”

After many of the men expressed concerns about the dangerous work conditions, 258 of them were arrested and confined to a large barge tethered to a pier.

They were threatened with prosecution, court-martial and execution if they refused to return to work and continue loading ammunition.

After the threat of execution, 208 sailors returned to work. But 50 sailors continued to refuse. Those 50 were charged with mutiny. The other 208 were charged with disobeying a lawful order. All were subjected to what naval historians says was the largest mass mutiny trial in naval history.

On Oct. 24, 1944, after a jury deliberated 80 minutes, the 50 sailors were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to up to 15 years’ hard labor.

Thurgood Marshall, who was then NAACP general counsel, appealed the case, arguing that the sailors had not been given a fair trial in a racially segregated Navy.

After appeals and widespread protests, in January 1946, the “Port Chicago 50,” as they had come to be called, were released from prison. But the convictions remained on their records.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton pardoned Frederick Meeks, one of the sailors. “Other survivors and many of the families were not interested in pardons because accepting a pardon includes an admission of guilt,” said Lt. Kyle Hanton, spokesperson for the secretary of the Navy. “They did not feel they were guilty.”

Del Toro said the decision to exonerate the sailors means there is no longer a finding of guilt. “It is simply the right thing to do based on the evidence we discovered,” Del Toro said. “The Port Chicago 50, and the hundreds who stood with them, are no longer with us, but their story lives on, a testament to the enduring power of courage and the unwavering pursuit of justice.”