The Quinault docked at Port Chicago at 6:00 p.m. that evening. There was a shortage of eight-inch lines to keep the ship snug against the pier. The ship wanted to pull away from the dock. By 9:00 p.m., however, because of changing tides, the Quinault was resting against the dock.
Ringquist saw that the men were having trouble rigging the Quinault due to what he called her “non-standard equipment.” He also noticed that a number of the cargo whips, which ran through heel and head blocks to the winches, were on backwards. He instructed the division’s walking bosses to have them corrected. Other than a pile of oily rags and some lubricating oil in drums, which he ordered to be taken off the ship, everything seemed to be in order.
Robert Allen says that loading on the Quinault was supposed to begin at midnight. Lieutenant Commander Holman, however, testified that it was supposed to begin at 2300 hours on July 17.
Captain Kinne believed that Port Chicago was an altogether safer place. He had sent some of his officers to loading school, others to observe loading operations at military and commercial ports across the country, and still others, like Lieutenant Woodland, to Great Lakes for a class run by Navy psychologists in “handling Negro personnel.” As for the black seamen, he was convinced that the large new recreational facility would bolster morale. He was also certain that the shorter shifts (divisions were working eight-hour shifts with one hour for lunch) and a regular liberty schedule (the seamen got one twenty-four-hour liberty pass every eight days) were helping to improve working conditions.
There’s a discrepancy among the various documents regarding the number of cars on the pier. The Los Alamos diagram shows sixteen, but among the Port Chicago explosion records at Los Alamos there is a document that identifies only ten cars. On page 640 of the Court of Inquiry, Lieutenant Commander Holman testifies that “[i]t was not the practice to have more cars on the pier than was necessary, because of the limited space.” Defense, however, questioned him about what he meant by “more than was necessary.” It became clear that “more than was necessary” was very subjective. Loading interruptions were discouraged. The “accumulation of explosives” was a common practice at ammunition depots across the country, and was standard operating procedure at Port Chicago.
A 1,000-pound armor-piercing bomb filled with TNT was called an M33. Opposite the Bryan’s No. 2 hold were two cars carrying another 108 tons of 350-pound Mk-47 bombs.
Shipping bombs with fuzes was considered dangerous. If a bomb was dropped, the fuze could ignite the smaller bombs in the cluster. There were two main types of fuzes: the ignition fuze and the detonating fuze. The first one contained an initiating explosive and a magazine of black powder. The action of the initiator ignited the black powder and that, in turn, either ignited the explosive filler (black powder or a mixture of black powder and TNT) or initiated the action of an auxiliary detonating fuze, which induced the detonation of a high-explosive filler. The detonating fuze contained an initiating explosive and a booster. Once detonated, the booster detonated the projectile filler.
Although the Port Chicago Navy Court of Inquiry mentions M7 or Mk-7 incendiary bombs, the extensive and “confidential” U.S. Navy Bomb Disposal School book (United States Bombs and Fuzes), dated June 1, 1944, does not mention these bombs. Peter Vogel says there was no World War II–era incendiary cluster bomb with that name. In Chapter 10 of his book The Last Wave from Port Chicago, Peter Vogel speculates that the M7 was actually the 500-pound M17, a cluster of 110 four-pound M50 magnesium incendiary bombs, or the 220-pound M19, a cluster of thirty-six six-pound jellied oil M69 bombs.
On June 14, 1944, Captain Kinne posted his new safety regulations.
Lieutenant Woodland considered the 3rd Division the best when it came to “all around handling of ammunition, carefulness, knowledge of stowing and all.” His winch drivers, petty officers, carpenters’ mates, and junior officers were “top-notch.”
On July 17, Lieutenant Woodland was on liberty. While he rested at his home in Walnut Creek, he knew that White and Blackman understood what was expected of them. Lieutenant White wrote in a letter to his parents on July 17, just after returning from Lake Tahoe, that Lieutenant Woodland had fallen ten feet into the hold of a ship and broken his arm. White was just back from Lake Tahoe after a week’s holiday with his wife, Inez.
Lieutenant Vernon Shaner, the 6th Division’s head officer, did not think highly of his men. Lieutenant Shaner, expressing dismay about the men assigned to him by Lieutenant Commander Holman, said to Lieutenant John Kelly that the 6th Division “got all the rogues in the country.”
During the rigging of the ship and loading, officers were supposed to remain down at the pier. Woodland was critical of other division heads who returned to the barracks or allowed their junior officers to do the same.
Woodland gave White and Blackman specific instructions. He knew that prior to loading, the lieutenants would assemble the men and “explain explicitly” how they wanted the ordnance handled, especially the large bombs, the M7s with the fuzes, primers, detonators, and anything packed with Torpex. Woodland cautioned the officers to be aware of the “hundreds of little problems.” Don’t worry about the tonnage, he told them; “the tonnage will come.” Apparently the division had shaped up since the mutiny that Inez White referred to.
Captain Kinne wrote his officers in May commending them for their “excellent work in loading the USS Rainier.” Lieutenant Woodland, in turn, praised Captain Kinne for his efforts to make Port Chicago a better place.
Navy and Army depots across the country employed contract stevedores, but perhaps owing to Captain Goss’s distrust of them, Port Chicago and Mare Island did not.
During his testimony, Lieutenant Tobin said, “I think that anybody that is around this ammunition has a feeling of concern.… I personally believed that this ammunition would explode and I felt that there was a high probability.” Lieutenant Michael Hart, who was in charge of Division 5, a general working division that the men called the “Suicide Squad,” later testified that the men were “inadequate for the hazardous job.”
Lieutenant Tobin said that Captain Goss’s visits to the pier were very rare. However, he did see him there on May 5 to inspect the new pier shortly after it had been widened.
During the trial, Captain Kinne said, “I would very seriously object to having a Coast Guard officer sent to police any activity over which I have command or over which I was in charge.”
CHAPTER 34: END OF THE WORLD
Disaster-relief organizations were at the depot and in town by early morning on July 18.
Percy Robinson was transferred to the Mare Island Naval Hospital with lacerations to the forehead.
The towns of Pittsburg, Concord, Walnut Creek, and Martinez also suffered damage. Windows were broken in San Mateo County, more than twenty miles across the bay. Reverberations from the explosion were felt seventy miles east in Stockton, California. Shell casings were found miles from the depot.
According to the July War Diary, the fire occurred in Barricade B-206. Peter Vogel says there were only 140 cars in the revetment area.
Details of the wave hitting the lighthouse are from Peter Vogel. By the time the wave hit, it had lost much of its power.
One hundred nine people in the town of Port Chicago suffered injuries, mostly lacerations from flying glass. Eye injuries were common. Many also suffered damage to their eyes from looking at the intense flash of light. Miraculously, no one was killed. Most of Port Chicago’s businesses and 90 percent of its homes suffered damage. The Red Cross brought in 80,000 board feet of lumber for repairs.
After weeks of hunting, search parties eventually discovered only fifty-one bodies that could be identified. Only a few identifiable pieces of the Bryan were ever found.
According to Peter Vogel, the crater underneath the Bryan was oval-shaped and 600 feet from point to point, and 300 feet across. The Port Chicago and Halifax explosions were considered to be of the same order of magnitude.
Captain
William Parsons wrote a report on the explosion called “Memorandum on Port Chicago Disaster, Preliminary Data, 24 July 1944.” It can be found in Box 671, World War II Command File, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
CHAPTER 35: DOWN THE BARREL OF A GUN
After the explosion, Morris Rich was transferred to five or six ships, which reinforced his belief that he had been “shanghaied.”
On July 19, the San Francisco Chronicle opened with the headline BLAST DEATH TOLL NOW 377; 1,000 INJURED! The second paragraph of the story began, “Destruction of the huge Army arsenal at Benicia, only seven miles from the scene of the Port Chicago catastrophe, was averted by miraculous chance. The blast according to military officials caused damages there (at the Benicia Army arsenal) estimated at $150,000 to the arsenal facilities and injured six persons.”
The cleanup at Port Chicago included transferring ammunition from damaged boxcars to certified cars. This was done by the black enlisted men. According to the War Diary, Navy Seabees and 42nd Construction Battalion also assisted.
During his testimony, Lieutenant Tobin insisted that he had given every man a direct order to return to work, claiming that he had said, “I am going to give each one of you an order to ‘turn to’ for the purpose of carrying out your regularly assigned duty of loading ships … there is no reason to fear the ammunition which we are going to handle here as much as you might fear some of the ammunition we handled at Port Chicago. We will handle no depth charges or bombs.… I want each of you to consider carefully the consequences of refusal to obey orders because all of you who refuse will be charged with refusal to obey the lawful order of a superior officer.” Tobin then walked up to each man and said, “I am ordering you to turn to for the purpose of loading ships. If you obey that order, step to the rear, if you refuse to obey that order, give your name to Lieutenant Clement.”
Details regarding Captain Goss’s report to Admiral Wright are from Leonard Guttridge.
Mississippi Representative John Rankin petitioned to reduce the maximum compensation for the families of the victims to $3,000. Some said that his rejection of the $5,000 grant was racially motivated.
The Bureau of Ordnance thought that if it abandoned its “policy of operating the station with 100 percent colored enlisted personnel,” it could achieve 100,000 tons per month with “no difficulties.”
In his book Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection, Leonard Guttridge writes, “The mental stresses accumulated during life-and-death crises can work their harm later as a kind of insidious aftermath, a post-action proneness to even the smallest grievance. And the absence of some restorative, ideally in the form of home furlough if not complete release from active service, becomes a grievance of itself, with the appropriate potential for mutiny.”
Regarding the “don’t work” petition, Joe Small told author Robert Allen, “I knew—I guess mostly from instinct—that anything in writing is more damaging to you than a verbal conversation. And when you put your name on a list, then you become a supporting part of whatever that list stands for. And there’s very little chance of your changing your mind even if you wanted to.”
Details on Admiral Wright’s speech are from Leonard Guttridge’s article “Port Chicago Mutiny,” from Readings in American Naval History, fifth edition.
Wright’s exact quote is from Revolutionary Worker no. 1092 and from my interview with George Booth. What the admiral did not say was that he alone had the power neither to decide whether the men had committed mutiny nor to have them put before a firing squad. They would need to go before summary courts-martial, whereupon two thirds of the members would need to agree that the punishment warranted death. The president of the United States would also have to agree.
The coercion of statements would become an issue during the mutiny trial. Seaman Second Class Martin Bordenaze said, “I knew the statement Lieutenant Briggs took down was wrong, but I signed it because I thought I had to.” This quote is from an article in the October 10, 1944, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, “Three on Trial for Mutiny Tell of Fear.” Lieutenant Patrick Gilmore Jr. admitted that he did not take detailed notes concerning the defendant’s version of the affair, but wrote them later as nearly as possible in the charged individual’s own words. Details regarding Gilmore’s admission are from the Chronicle of October 19, 1944. According to various testimonies in the trial transcript, the interrogating officers said the Navy would “go lighter and easier” on them if they made statements.
Women made up 13 percent of the shipbuilding industry in 1943, the peak year of ship construction in the United States. That number was 18 percent by the end of 1944. Most women were recruited as a result of the U.S. government’s famous “Rosie the Riveter” campaign. Women started as clerks or as canteen and cleaning workers, but many became welders. By the middle of 1943, black workers made up 10 percent of Marinship’s workforce.
Acetylene gas explosions and fires were fairly common occurrences despite the rigid safety practice codes, though few people actually died. Later, however, many of the people whose job it was to insulate the ships’ pipes and parts of the ships’ engines with asbestos suffered and died from asbestosis and cancers related to exposure.
CHAPTER 36: PROVING MUTINY
Most of the details of the trial are taken from the trial transcript provided by the Naval History and Heritage Command.
After the war, Coakley would hold Earl Warren’s position as district attorney and would establish a reputation for his dogged prosecution of anti–Vietnam War activists and Black Panthers.
On September 14, 1944, newspapers from San Francisco to New York were chock-full of war news from the front. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article with the headline 5,000 PLANES DROP 10,000 TONS ON REICH. The New York Times led with three headlines: AMERICANS OUTSIDE AACHEN, WIN A REICH TOWN; THIRD ARMY FORGES AHEAD ON MOSELLE FRONT; PHILIPPINES AIR BATTLE COSTS FOE 200 PLANES. Another headline proclaimed, TRIUMPH IN FRANCE VICTORY OF SUPPLY. “This is our kind of war now,” the article said. “With a supply line stretching more than 500 miles from the Normandy beaches to the German frontier, all the skills peculiar to peacetime America are being called into play to keep the soldiers at the front supplied with gasoline, bullets and food.… It is the steady flow of war materials to the front that has enabled our army to move forward faster than the Germans or the Russians.”
Not long into the process, Lieutenant Veltmann’s lawyers discovered that two of the so-called mutineers were seamen who, because of physical limitations that made them unfit for loading, had been made cooks. When asked if they would be willing to load ammunition, the two had answered “no.”
William Winthrop’s quote is from Guttridge.
In Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection, Leonard Guttridge explores the various definitions of mutiny and how they had been applied in naval history. The Uniform Code of Military Justice with its Manual for Courts Martial became effective on May 31, 1951. It established that preconceived intent applied to only a one-man mutiny. In its other form, “collective insubordination,” no intent was required. Winthrop’s necessity of conspiracy was abandoned. Nevertheless, the Navy continued to resist using the mutiny charge, preferring, instead, to use phrases such as “combat refusal,” “strike,” “work stoppage,” “demonstration of grievance.”
On September 16, 1944, the New York Times reported on another explosion at the Naval Ordnance Depot in Hastings, Nebraska. The headline read, HASTINGS NAVY DEPOT BLAST KILLS 3 SAILORS; 56 INJURED AND A MAIN BUILDING WRECKED. The article continued, “Two victims were Negro sailors and the third a Coast Guardsman.… The explosion tore a crater in the ground 550 feet long and twenty-five feet deep. The blast was heard at McCook, 125 miles away, and at Jamestown, Kan[sas], 100 miles distant.”
Near the end of the trial, another officer confessed that he had edited many of the statements of the seamen, adding words and sentences that he thought would help Judge Advocate Coakley, and extr
acting others.
Lieutenant Commander Coakley was incensed by Alphonso McPherson’s charge. Later he lashed out at Lieutenant Veltmann for coaching the witness. Coakley then tried to tag McPherson as a liar and a coward. The lieutenant claimed that McPherson had made up the shooting charge just as he had lied about being in too much pain to load ammunition. McPherson maintained that he had suffered internal injuries in the explosion. Coakley accused McPherson of being someone who “was always complaining about one kind of ailment or another.” Two days later he was vindicated when he was rushed to the hospital with a double hernia.
Details of McPherson’s testimony are in the October 5, 1944, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.
On October 5, Lieutenant Coakley began the day by issuing a “categorical denial” that he had ever told any of the Port Chicago men that they would be shot if they refused to load ammunition. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Coakley’s denial in its October 6 issue in an article headlined THE MUTINY TRIAL: COAKLEY DENIES MAKING THREATS.
CHAPTER 37: PUTTING THE NAVY ON TRIAL
The Color of War Page 51