Black sailors rehabilitated 80 years after deadly World War II disaster

Eighty years after a deadly explosion rocked a California port, the U.S. Navy has rehabilitated black sailors who were wrongfully tried and convicted for refusing to return to work after the tragic accident.

On Wednesday, the military announced that Navy Minister Carlos Del Toro had officially acquitted all 256 black soldiers who were punished in connection with the explosion.

None of the men are alive today, but the release could help their surviving family members find some closure. The move marks “the end of a long and arduous journey for these Black sailors and their families who fought for a nation that denied them equal justice under the law,” said a statement from President Joe Biden.

“May we all remember their courage, sacrifice and service to our country,” he adds.

The explosion occurred on July 17, 1944, in the Californian port of Chicago in Suisun Bay, about an hour’s drive northeast of San Francisco. The port supplied the American forces in the Pacific with ammunition during World War II.

At that time, racial segregation still existed in the US armed forces and the black sailors working in the port were supervised by white officers.

On the day of the accident, the soldiers were busy loading ammunition onto the SS. EA Bryan Cargo ship. For unknown reasons, some of the ammunition detonated, igniting 5,000 tons of explosives. The accident killed 320 sailors and civilians, most of them black, and injured about 400 people. It was the worst disaster on the home front during the entire conflict.

Black sailors were subsequently forced to clear debris and recover human remains from the pier, while white officers were granted special leave.

Black sailors had previously raised concerns about the safety of loading operations at the port, but shortly after the deadly explosion they were asked to return to work. Concerned about working conditions, some of the men refused, saying they needed more training and protective equipment.

At first, 258 black sailors refused to return to work. But after being threatened with punishment, 208 of them returned to their posts. The Navy nevertheless convicted the 208 men of insubordination and sentenced them to discharge for dishonest conduct. They were not paid for three months.

The 50 men who continued to refuse were tried as a group and convicted of conspiracy to mutiny. The so-called “Port Chicago 50” were dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a military prison. Their pay was completely canceled and their military ranks were demoted.

The men’s sentences were later reduced. Two convictions were overturned: one because the sailor was found mentally incompetent, the other for lack of evidence.

In their appeals, the Port Chicago 50 were represented by Thurgood Marshall, then a defense attorney for the NAACP. Two decades later, Marshall was appointed the first black justice to the Supreme Court.

Marshall died in 1993, but his son, Thurgood Marshall Jr., was there this week when Del Toro signed the papers officially exonerating the black sailors. He described the exonerations as “deeply moving,” reports Tara Copp of the Associated Press (AP).

In the 1990s, then-Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton declined to acquit the men. At the time, a Navy review found that racism had not influenced the outcome of the courts-martial, but it concluded that the assignment of black men to manual labor jobs was “clearly racially motivated and based on the false notion that they were intellectually inferior,” according to the New York Times reported in July 1994.

Now, however, the US Navy has concluded that the courts-martial were “fundamentally unfair, riddled with legal errors and marked by racial discrimination,” Biden’s statement said.

Ultimately, the Port Chicago accident – ​​and the ensuing fight for equal treatment – ​​“helped force the Navy and the military as a whole to desegregate,” said Matthew F. Delmont, a historian at Dartmouth College and author of the 2022 book Half-American.

“The Port Chicago 50 and the hundreds who stood with them may no longer be with us today, but their story lives on, a testament to the enduring power of courage and the unwavering pursuit of justice,” Del Toro said in a statement. “They are a beacon of hope, always reminding us that the fight for what is right can and will prevail, even in the face of overwhelming odds.”

This week’s exoneration is more than just symbolic. Because the men’s dishonorable discharges have been converted to honorable ones, “surviving families can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs about past benefits they may be entitled to,” the AP reports.