At long last, a great injustice has been addressed: On July 17, 2024, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced the complete exoneration of 256 sailors, reversing their convictions, changing their discharges to honorable, and providing compensation to their families for pay they lost while incarcerated.
Eighty years earlier, on July 17, 1944, bombs being loaded onto a cargo ship at California’s Port Chicago exploded, killing 320 civilians and sailors, more than 70% of whom were Black. Despite the explosion, the Navy continued to neglect training sailors in loading munitions safely. Three weeks later, when Black sailors were called on to load another ship, 70 complied and 258 refused. The 258 sailors were isolated for a few days to reconsider. They were then asked again to load munitions, and 208 agreed, but were immediately arrested, convicted, and fined three months’ pay for their initial refusal. The remaining 50 refused to load and were charged with conspiracy to commit mutiny.
African American sailors performed all of California’s Port Chicago’s physically demanding hazardous duty of unloading munitions from boxcars, re-loading them onto pallets, and stacking them by hand in the holds of Liberty Ships. None received any safety training. While surviving Black sailors were assigned to clear the wreckage from the explosion and retrieve body parts, some of their white officers were granted leave to recuperate from this domestic war zone.
Before WWII, the Navy never considered African American sailors capable of performing any duties other than as cooks, waiters, unskilled laborers, and officers’ stewards. In June 1942, the Navy agreed to train 277 Black sailors for a week for other duties. In March 1944, the Navy commissioned its first 13 Black officers.
I mention these statistics to emphasize the Navy’s plantation-era mindset toward African American sailors.
The Port Chicago 50 were represented by five attorneys who met briefly with their clients. The court martial revealed important facts.
- There was no organized resistance to naval authority—a necessary element to sustain a mutiny charge.
- Port Chicago’s commanding officer had no prior experience in supervising munitions loading.
- The sailors weren’t properly trained in munitions loading and safety.
- Safety lapses were magnified when bored white officers occasionally bet on whose crew could load more munitions during an eight-hour shift.
- At least three sailors were physically incapable of performing any physical labor on the day in question.
- Coast Guard officers had warned Navy officers of prior safety deficiencies they had observed.
- A Longshoreman’s Union representative had been rebuffed when he offered to have his men train the sailors in safe munitions loading.
Not mentioned at the court martial was a military secret that Navy safety personnel knew: Hawaii’s West Loch Explosion of May 21, 1944, had caused the deaths of more than 300 sailors, soldiers, and Marines. Although no blame was officially assessed, Army officials believed untrained Black Army munitions loaders were responsible.
After six weeks of testimony, the 50 sailors were convicted of mutiny and received sentences of up to 15 years. The NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall appealed their convictions several times and managed to reduce their sentences to about 18 months.
The “mutineers” received general discharges under honorable conditions, entitling them to GI Bill benefits. I believe these general discharges were awarded to assuage the Navy’s guilt for blaming the sailors for the Navy’s own negligence. Otherwise, why allow someone convicted of mutiny to receive GI Bill benefits?
The sailors didn’t enjoy the positive feeling that most members of the “Greatest Generation” had. Some were so angry and embarrassed about their imprisonment that they didn’t discuss their wartime service with family members.
A Navy webpage about Port Chicago acknowledges that “[t]he men’s insistence on safer working conditions and better leadership, however, changed the Navy and probably saved many other lives. The court-martial…underscored the Navy’s discriminatory policies…”
In 1999, one sailor applied for a pardon, which then-President Clinton granted. When another “mutineer” was asked if he wanted a pardon, he replied with a firm “No” because an acknowledgment of guilt must accompany a pardon request. He felt he hadn’t done anything wrong, and that the Navy owed him an apology.
There are undoubtedly other injustices that have happened to Black members of the military. It’s incumbent on the Defense Department to thoroughly investigate these long-ago incidents to finally make our nation a home reflective of “liberty and justice for all.”
Paul L. Newman is an amateur historian of African American history who recently completed a miniseries docudrama about the African American Civil Rights Movement of the first half of the 20th century. He also produced a 1999 award-winning Learning Channel documentary about the Port Chicago disaster and the alleged mutiny.