WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The US Navy has acquitted 256 black sailors who were wrongly punished in 1944 after a terrible harbor explosion in which hundreds of soldiers were killed and racist double standards among the then still segregated ranks.
On July 17, 1944, ammunition being loaded aboard a freighter exploded, triggering secondary explosions that detonated 5,000 tons (4,535 metric tons) of explosives at the Navy’s Port Chicago weapons base near San Francisco.
The explosion killed 320 sailors and civilians, nearly 75 percent of whom were black, and injured another 400 personnel. Surviving black sailors were assigned to remove human remains and clean up the explosion site, while white officers were allowed to recover.
The pier was an important ammunition supply point for the forces in the Pacific during WWIIand the task of loading those ships was left mainly to black sailors, under the supervision of white officers.
Before the explosion, the black sailors working on the dock had voiced concerns about the loading operations. Shortly after the explosion, they were ordered to return to loading ships, even though no changes had been made to improve their safety.
The sailors refused, saying they needed training to handle the bombs more safely before they returned.
What followed affected the rest of their lives, including punishments that prevented them from being honorably discharged, while the vast majority returned to work at the pier under immense pressure and served for the entire war. Fifty sailors who persisted in their demands for safety and training were tried as a group on charges of conspiracy to commit mutiny and were convicted and sent to prison.
The entire event was unfair and none of the sailors received the legal process they were entitled to, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in an interview with The Associated Press.
It was “a terrible situation for the remaining black sailors,” Del Toro said. The Navy General Counsel’s Office investigated the military judicial procedures used to punish the sailors and found “so many inconsistencies and so many legal violations that came to the forefront,” he said.
Thurgood Marshall, then a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, defended the 50 sailors convicted of mutiny. Marshall became the first black justice on the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the Port Chicago disaster, Del Toro officially signed the papers exonerating the sailors, who are now dead. Del Toro handed the first pen to Thurgood Marshall Jr., the late judge’s son.
The acquittals “are deeply moving,” Marshall Jr. said. “They’re all gone, of course, and that’s a painful aspect of it. But so many have fought for so long for that kind of fairness and recognition.”
The events have haunted surviving family members for decades, but an earlier attempt in the 1990s to pardon the sailors failed. Two other sailors had previously been acquitted: one was found mentally incompetent to stand trial, and another was acquitted based on insufficient evidence. Wednesday’s action goes beyond a pardon and reverses the military trials that were conducted against all the men in 1944.
“This decision clears their names, restores their honor and recognizes the courage they showed in the face of immense danger,” Del Toro said.
The racism The challenges faced by black sailors reflected the views of the military at the time: ranks were segregated and the Navy had only reluctantly opened up a number of positions it deemed less attractive to black service members.
The official investigating magistrate who investigated why the explosion occurred acquitted all the white officers, praising them for the “great effort” they had had to make to run the port. It left open the suggestion that black sailors were to blame for the accident.
Del Toro’s action changes the discharges to honorable ones, unless there were other circumstances. After the Navy upgrades the discharges, survivors can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs to determine any prior benefits that may be owed, the Navy said.
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