Later that day, Sikes stopped in to check on his living quarters. Since he had been promoted from a boxcar inspector to shore patrol, his room was in the jail. Although much of the building was destroyed, the room was still standing. What he saw nearly made his legs buckle. Stuck in his pillow, blanket, and mattress were dozens of razor-sharp shards of glass. Had he not made the last-minute decision to shave and shower and head for town, he would likely be a dead man.
Sammie Boykin had much the same feeling. He knew that had the explosion taken place an hour or so later, he, too, would have died and the list of those killed or wounded would have been nearly twice as high as it was. By 11:30 p.m., the 1st and 2nd Divisions would have been assembling at the pier, preparing to relieve the 3rd and 6th Divisions. Four divisions would have been down at the river instead of two.
In the days after the explosion, many of the seamen who had survived the blast without injury were taken to Camp Shoemaker in Dublin, California, thirty miles east of Oakland. By that time, the picture of what had happened had become fairly clear: the blast that had destroyed much of the Port Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot detonated with the force of nearly two and a quarter kilotons of TNT (one fifth the explosive fury of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima just over a year later), carving out a crater under the Bryan that measured 600 feet across. The E. A. Bryan, the boxcars sitting on the pier, and the locomotive had all disintegrated, and the 1,200-foot pier ceased to exist. The force of the explosion broke the Quinault Victory into a number of large pieces, hurled her twenty-ton stern through the air, and dumped it upside down 500 feet from the dock. The blast lifted the Coast Guard fire barge into the sky and flung it two hundred yards upriver.
Had the explosion occurred above the waterline rather than below, which reduced the blast output, the damage would have been massive. Had it spread to the revetment area or happened closer to a busy seaport like San Francisco or San Diego, the loss of life would have been incalculable. Comparing the Port Chicago explosion to the Halifax disaster of 1917, Captain William Parsons, who, shortly after the disaster, investigated the incident for the Office of Chief of Naval Operations and the Los Alamos Laboratory, said that the loss of life would have been far greater if not for the Navy’s choice of an isolated site for the depot. “Port Chicago,” he said, “was designed for large explosions.”
As it was, everyone on or near the pier, including Lieutenants White and Blackman, and on the E. A. Bryan, the Quinalt Victory, and the Coast Guard fire barge, died within seconds of the two explosions. Three hundred twenty men were killed, including 202 black enlisted men. Another 390 military personnel and civilians were injured. Two hundred thirty-three of them were black.
CHAPTER 35
Down the Barrel of a Gun
The day after the explosion, Morris Rich, whose injuries had amounted to a collection of cuts, was sent out to sea. He had no idea how many of his buddies aboard the Quinault Victory had died in the blast, but guessed that none of them had survived. In the ensuing months he was transferred so often that he became convinced that he had been shanghaied, that the Navy did not want him anywhere near California, where he might tell what he knew about the explosion.
Power and telephone linemen strung new wires, and Army demolition squads searched the area for unexploded ordnance. Meanwhile, two hundred black seamen who volunteered to remain at the depot assisted with the monumental cleanup effort, which included transferring ammunition from damaged boxcars to certified cars under the guidance of bomb-disposal officers. Dewhitt Jamison, who had survived the blast, did not like the work one bit. He had finally been able to reach his parents in South Carolina to let them know that he was still alive, but now he wondered if that phone call might have been premature.
For Spencer Sikes, the days after the disaster were a time of mourning. Although he was grateful to be alive, the explosion that he had dreaded since coming to Port Chicago in late 1942 had taken many of his good friends.
On July 19 the San Francisco Chronicle opened with the headline BLAST DEATH TOLL NOW 377; 1000 INJURED! The story quoted Captain Goss, who said, “We have no basis for giving any cause of the explosion, as there are no survivors to give evidence of what happened.”
Another Chronicle article titled CHRONICLE PLANE SURVEYS DESTRUCTION: RECONSTRUCTION ALREADY IS IN EVIDENCE began, “Less than twelve hours ago, the burned and blackened scene was a site where thousands of men labored and sweated to load war materiel for the fighting fronts on the Pacific. Now all such activity is halted.… The desolation is hard to describe.”
Two days later, Captain Kinne was informed that he had been awarded the military’s fourth-highest award, the Bronze Star, for “heroic or meritorious achievement.” In turn, he issued a statement praising all the seamen of Port Chicago for their response to the disaster. “Under those emergency conditions,” he wrote, “regular members of our complement and volunteers from Mare Island displayed creditable coolness and bravery.”
The new commandant of the Twelfth Naval District, Rear Admiral Carleton Wright, who had come to California directly from the war in the Pacific, where half his cruiser flotilla had been lost to Japanese destroyers, echoed Kinne’s sentiments: “I am gratified to learn that, as was to be expected, Negro personnel attached to the Naval Magazine Port Chicago performed bravely and efficiently in the emergency at that station last Monday night. These men, in the months they served at that command, did excellent work in an important segment of the District’s overseas combat supply system. As real Navy men, they simply carried on in the crisis … in accordance with our Service’s highest traditions.” Of the men who perished, he said, “Their sacrifice could not have been greater had it occurred on a battleship or a beach-head.”
On July 21, at 10:00 a.m., a Naval Court of Inquiry, made up of three naval officers and a judge advocate, met for its first session to “inquire into the circumstances attending the explosion.” Captains Goss and Kinne were forced to join the proceedings as “interested parties,” which meant that, although Kinne had been awarded the Bronze Star, he and Goss were under suspicion of dereliction of duty.
Meanwhile, teary-eyed wives of Port Chicago men feared lost in the blast waited at the depot pass gate for word about their husbands. Some carried babies and begged the guards to let them go to the barracks and find out for themselves if their husbands were alive or dead. The women, according to the black-owned Pittsburgh Courier, which was one of the first newspapers on the scene, “faced a dark future.”
Nine days later, on July 30, memorial services were held for the men who died in the explosion. Captain Goss brought in swing bands and USO shows to comfort the survivors. Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 miles to the east, Congress was considering a proposal to compensate the families of the victims. Eventually it decided on a maximum allowable benefit of just $3,000. The surviving seamen were outraged. Their lives were worth only a measly $3,000?
Many of Port Chicago’s residents were similarly disappointed by the Navy’s response. They had hoped that the Navy would cover the cost of repairing the town’s houses, stores, restaurants, and other businesses in addition to a payment for physical and emotional suffering. Instead, the Bureau of Ordnance, having set aside $20 million, publicly announced its plan not to close the ammunition depot, but to initiate an expansion program that would make Port Chicago not just a loading and transfer center, but one of the largest ammunition storage bases in the country. The undertaking would add two additional ship piers, which, together with the reconstructed Pier No. 2, would give the depot six berths and the capacity to load 100,000 tons of ordnance per month. The plan also envisioned the construction of twenty high-explosive magazines and fifteen gun ammunition magazines in addition to eleven five-car barricaded sidings. Ironically, in the eyes of the bureau, the explosion had raised Port Chicago’s status, justifying the bureau’s original decision to “locate an ammunition loading station at a relatively isolated locality, in contrast to the congested lower San F
rancisco Bay Area or Mare Island.”
On that same day, July 31, as the Oakland Tribune ran photos of the memorial assembly at Port Chicago, many of the black seamen billeting at Camp Shoemaker were transferred. The 1st and 2nd Divisions, minus Sammie Boykin, who was still in the hospital, went back to Port Chicago, and the 4th and 8th Divisions were sent to the Mare Island Naval Barracks (formerly the Ryder Street Naval Barracks) in Vallejo, the site of the April 1943 race riots in which armed Marine guards opened fire on a group of black seamen. Until their transfers, many of the seamen had hoped—and expected—that like the white officers and enlisted men who survived the blast, they would be granted survivor’s leave. They also believed that they would be sent to other stations or ships or even overseas to fight. Most of them agreed that anything would be better than loading ammunition again.
At the Mare Island Naval Barracks, a group of men approached Joe Small seeking his advice: What was he going to do—what should they do—if ordered to handle ammunition again? Small made it clear that he would refuse. The group sought out other leaders and received similar answers: to work under the same conditions and under the same officers was suicidal.
A petition listing the names of those unwilling to handle ammunition and requesting a transfer of duty circulated among the men. Sixty seamen had included their names, but when it came to Joe Small, he may or may not have destroyed it. One thing was for sure: he wanted no part of putting his name on any piece of paper that the Navy could later use against him.
Meanwhile the Court of Inquiry proceeded. Although it would eventually hear testimony from 125 witnesses, including Port Chicago personnel and ordnance experts, only five black enlisted men were called before the court. The court examined the possibility of sabotage, equipment malfunction, organizational inadequacies, rough handling by inexperienced black enlisted men, and the characteristics and dangers of various ordnance, but speed versus safety became the real hot-button issue, with Captains Goss and Kinne going toe-to-toe with Captain Davis, Captain of the Port for the Port of San Francisco. Captain Davis reiterated for the court what he had told Goss in late October 1943. Worried about safety lapses at Port Chicago, Davis had informed Goss that if there was an accident, he would be held accountable.
When the court discovered that no Coast Guard observers were present on the night of the explosion, it pressed Captain Goss for an explanation. Goss did not attempt to conceal his contempt for either the Coast Guard personnel or representatives of Captain Davis’s office. In his opinion they had little experience with loading operations—especially with wartime turnaround schedules—and were incapable of assuming even an advisory role.
The court also pressed Kinne regarding the posting of tonnage figures on the blackboard. Kinne responded that it was no different from displaying scores at the rifle range, dismissing the opinion of officers who contended that it encouraged an unhealthy spirit of competition. The court was not buying his explanation, and scolded Captain Kinne, contending that the “loading of explosives should never be a matter of competition.”
On Monday, August 7, the day Percy Robinson was discharged from the Mare Island Hospital, a petty officer handed out work gloves to the 4th Division. What the men did not know was that Secretary Forrestal and Bureau of Personnel heads had decided that sending the seamen back to load was the “preferred method of preventing them from building up mental and emotional barriers which, if allowed to accumulate, become increasingly difficult to overcome.” Surely they were also concerned about the upcoming Marine assault on Peleliu and MacArthur’s plan to take Morotai. Other California depots, at Seal Beach, Fallbrook, and Long Beach, might be able to pick up the slack. Indian Island in Washington’s Puget Sound might, too. The fact was, however, that much of the ordnance for Morotai and Peleliu had already been shipped from depots across the country to Mare Island. Rerouting those boxcars to other depots would take time.
On August 8 the ammunition carrier USS Sangay docked at Mare Island’s Pier 34 East and was rigged for loading. Her holds were empty. The following morning, Wednesday, August 9, just twenty-three days after the explosion at Port Chicago, the men of the 4th Division were ordered to fall in. The petty officers called muster, and then Joe Small marched the division off, as he always did, at sixty-two steps per minute. When the division reached a juncture in the road, Lieutenant Delucchi, who had survived the explosion, gave the command “Column left.”
Every man in the division had been hoping that Delucchi would order them to march right, in the direction of the parade ground. To the left rested the ferry, the Oakland, that would take them across the Napa River to the Mare Island loading dock, where they would load ships as if the explosion never happened. Now they knew that nothing was going to change. Delucchi would send them back to work and was going to push them as he always had.
Percy Robinson stopped dead in his tracks. In the hospital he had formally requested a survivor’s leave. When it was denied, he made up his mind that he would never load ships again.
When Delucchi shouted, “Forward march—column left!” for a second time, not a soul moved.
Delucchi stomped off to the administration building to report to the personnel officer at Mare Island that his division had “refused to obey his lawful order.” In turn, the personnel officer called Lieutenant Commander Charles Bridges, Mare Island Naval Barracks’ executive officer, who informed Lieutenant Delucchi that he was again to give his men the order to load. Then Lieutenant Commander Bridges found Commander Joseph Tobin, head of the Mare Island Naval Barracks, who was in a meeting with Captain Goss. Tobin had given the division heads the original order to begin loading the Sangay. Together Bridges and Tobin made their way to the parade ground.
Meanwhile, an officer climbed up to the platform on the parade ground and called out Joe Small.
“Front and center,” he said. All eyes were on Small as he walked to the platform.
“Are you going back to work?” the officer asked.
“No, sir,” he answered.
“Why not?”
Small answered that he was afraid.
Then another seaman shouted from the ranks, “If Small don’t go, we’re not going, either.” Whether Small wanted it or not, the men were now looking to him for leadership.
At 11:40 a.m., Commander Tobin and Lieutenant Commander Bridges arrived, and Tobin talked with Lieutenant Commander Jefferson Flowers, the base chaplain, and asked him if he could speak with the men.
At noon, Lieutenant Commander Flowers addressed the seamen in front of their barracks. When Flowers walked up, the men were milling around, talking among themselves, obviously frightened and confused.
“Gather round me,” he said. “What’s the trouble?”
Percy Robinson and a number of others spoke up. “We don’t want to load ammunition. We’re scared.”
Lieutenant Commander Flowers tried to be gentle but matter-of-fact and told them that they did not have a choice; it was their duty, and failure to do that duty meant dire consequences, likely a court-martial.
Flowers could see that the men were not persuaded, so he tried a different tack, appealing to their “race pride,” telling them that they were “letting down the loyal men of their race” and abandoning the men overseas whose lives depended on the ammunition they refused to load.
Percy Robinson saw right through the chaplain. He was trying to shame them into going back to work, but the seamen “stood tall and strong.” They would obey any other order, but they would not go back to toting bombs.
Chaplain Flowers then told them that he, too, was afraid of ammunition, but that he and the other officers would go down to the ship with them and would remain there while they loaded. He was grasping at straws now. The men knew that the offer was a ruse; the officers would come down and then they would leave as soon as they could. They had seen it before.
Recognizing that he had “exhausted his arguments,” Lieutenant Commander Flowers reported back to Commander Tobin, add
ing that he believed that in private some of the men would agree to go back to work.
Two petty officers again assembled the men on the parade ground. They were standing there when Lieutenant Delucchi ascended the platform. “We have never had any trouble like this,” he said. “You are letting your people down. Besides, you took an oath to obey orders.” Delucchi reminded them that there were many people fighting for the Negro cause who might withdraw their support if they found out how the seamen were acting.
At 1:00 p.m., the seamen were ushered into the recreation hall, where Commander Tobin and Lieutenant Commander Bridges hoped to interview them one by one about why they would not load ammunition. Delucchi and Flowers also participated in the interviews. By the end of the day they had only questioned a small portion of the men in the division.
Lieutenant Carleton Morehouse, commanding officer of Division No. 8, was up against much the same. Having assembled his men, he ordered them to go to work. His division then became, in his words, a “milling, talking mob.” Thirty minutes later he mustered the division on the base’s outdoor basketball courts and asked each man to step forward in alphabetical order. “I order you to load with me,” he said to each of them. “You may answer yes or no. Think carefully. A no means severe disciplinary action. Will you load with me? Yes or no?” Ultimately, 87 out of 110 refused.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant James Tobin was en route with his Division No. 2 to Mare Island from Port Chicago. Earlier he had ordered the division members to pack their seabags, inspect the barracks, and prepare to load ships when they arrived at their destination.
The Color of War Page 31