Isn't It Time to Right the Wrong?
—By Tom Seligson
In the summer of 1944, Port Chicago—a Navy base 30 miles northeast of San Francisco—was the scene of a devastating explosion. Hundreds of lives were lost in what's considered the deadliest home-front disaster of the war. Most of the dead and injured were African-Americans, put in harm's way by a segregated military little concerned for their safety. Worse, racism lay at the heart of the disaster and later of an that has been called one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in our history.
At the time, Port Chicago was the busiest ammunition depot on the West Coast. The sailors worked around the clock, loading bombs, depth charges and torpedoes onto ships headed for the Pacific theater. In the segregated U.S. Navy, the job of loading the deadly ammunition was performed only by black sailors.
'To find yourself loading ammunition was a disappointment,' recalls Robert Routh, an African-American sailor from Memphis who was 19 at the time. 'We all wanted to be actually fighting. But we knew that what we did was essential to the war.'
Essential but risky. 'Loading ammunition was extremely erous,' explains Robert L. Allen, author of The Port Chicago Mutiny and the foremost authority on the s. 'The sailors were given no training for it. On top of that, it was common practice for the officers to pit the men against each other, betting to see who could load their boat the fastest.'
A Coast Guard detail working at the port warned the Navy that these unsafe conditions could lead to a disaster. The Navy refused to change its procedures, and the Coast Guard withdrew its men.
The Night Calm Was Shattered
On the evening of July 17, 1944, two cargo ships were tied up at the pier. The E. A. Bryan was almost fully loaded with 4600 tons of cluster bombs, depth charges and 40 millimeter shells. The Quinalt Victory had just docked. Robert Routh and fellow sailor Percy Robinson, 18, from Chicago, were in their barracks. At 10: 19, the night calm was shattered.
'I was in my bunk when the explosion occurred,' recalls Robinson. 'I was looking out the window, and all of a sudden everything turned to sun light. 1 jumped up to see what was happening, and then I felt the concussion. I instinctively covered my face with my arms. Then a second explosion lifted me up and knocked me to the floor.'
Robert Routh also turned toward the window at the first explosion. 'It was the greatest fireworks you ever wanted to see,' he recalls. It also was the last thing he ever saw. 'With the second explosion, glass went everywhere. It was a combination of the glass and the concussion that destroyed my eyes.'
The second explosion was so powerful that seismographs (地震仪) at Berkeley recorded it as an earthquake. The E.A. Bryan was blown into tiny pieces. The Quinalt Victory was ripped apart, and Port Chicago's wooden pier was completely destroyed. The human cost was even worse. Everyone on the pier and aboard the two ships was killed. Of the 320 fatalities, 202 were black. And of the 390 injured, 233 were black.
As bad as it was, though, the disaster might not have made history if it weren't for what followed.
The Navy's Insult
A Navy court of inquiry ruled out sabotage. It heard testimony about the unsafe conditions at the port, but its final report absolved the white officers of any responsibility and blamed the tragedy on 'rough handling' of the ex plosives by the black sailors. Then the white officers were granted 30-day leaves. 'None of the black sailors were granted leaves,' says Robinson, who suffered lacerations (裂伤) to his face, head

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