The significance of the Great Port Chicago Explosion

A little bit of important history took place almost next door 70 years ago. Historians are starting to recognize that the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces began in a small unknown base in Port Chicago, just a few miles from where I live.

The deadliest home front disaster occurred in 1944 and took the lives of 322 sailors, 220 of them African American. The Port Chicago Weapons Magazine, later to be known as the Concord Naval Weapons Station, was the main munitions supply depot for the war in the Pacific Theater during WWII and during the Korean War.

The black sailors who volunteered to fight the enemy were instead assigned the unglamorous job of loading ammunition aboard ships. It was dangerous work and the sailors - without any proper training -- were encouraged to speed up their already unsafe work. When the sailors refused to work under dangerous conditions, they were threatened with court martial. Most of them returned to work but 50 remained steadfast in their refusal. Those 50 were placed in the brig and eventually court martialed, 

Years later, 49 of the 50 sailors were pardoned (but, not exonerated.) The one holdout maintained that what they did was not treasonous and refused the pardon.

The blast leveled the surrounding area in a mile radius and could be heard as far away as Vallejo, a distance of about 25 miles. (Unsubstantiated rumors say there was a nuclear device involved because that was about the time the U.S. began testing the nuclear bomb drop out in the Pacific.)

The explosion and the aftermath fought to the forefront the segregation that existed in the U.S. military through World War II. (That's why we had the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed 442nd Regiment made up of second-generation Japanese American,  and the 1st Filipino Regiment.

The Navy was the first branch of the U.S. military to desegregate which led to President Truman's order to desegregate all the Armed Forces. Many of the black soldiers, sailors and airmen who fought for our country came back home to a country that deprived them of the rights they fought for. They  came to realize the gap between the military opportunities and the way they were treated in civilian life. As part of the Greatest Generation, they helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement.

Here's a great column about the Port Chicago explosion by Tom Barnidge of the Contra Costa Times: http://www.contracostatimes.com/barnidge/ci_26179065/barnidge-civil-rights-lessons-port-chicago-disaster-still