Port Chicago Explosion Remembered

89 y.o. Louis Waring, who has had a very successful life after going into Navy at age 14 (his Father "confirmed" he was 17) and was 16 when this happened. He was fortunate in that he was on leave 8 miles away but still damage done to bldg. he was in and he received a few lacerations. He said when he joined Navy, that he and others were hoping to be on ocean-going ship, however he and the rest were treated more like stevedores. My initial interview was about a year ago, I went back today to deliver the raw (unedited) interview to him. I found out that he had paid a buddy $2.00 to take his place that night, so he could go dancing. He never saw that friend again. He had survivors guilt because of it.The white survivors were given the routine 30 day leave, but not the Black Sailors. They were ordered right back to work at Mare Island a few miles away. Mr. Waring maintained that even the barracks there had all of their windows blown out.

The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitions explosion that occurred on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, United States. Munitions detonated while being loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations, killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring 390 others. Most of the dead and injured were enlisted African-American sailors. A month later, unsafe conditions inspired hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Fifty men—called the "Port Chicago 50"—were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to long prison terms. Forty-seven of the 50 were released in January 1946; the remaining three served additional months in prison. During and after the trial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the court-martial proceedings.[1] Due to public pressure, the United States Navy reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945; the court affirmed the guilt of the convicted men.[2] Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre among African Americans and white Americans; it and other race-related Navy protests of 1944–45 led the Navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation of its forces beginning in February 1946.[3][4][5] In 1994, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was dedicated to the lives lost in the disaster.