Memorial Honors Port Chicago Disaster Fallen

A memorial ceremony Saturday marked the 67th anniversary of an explosion that took the lives of 320 men and injured 394 at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in 1944. 

“I felt the ground tremble,” said Chaplain John Berger, who delivered the invocation for the service. “I heard the thunder roar. I felt the breeze, living in Vallejo at the time — I still feel it.”

Nearly 5,000 tons of explosives were ignited accidentally while being loaded into World War II ships, taking the lives of 320 men, 202 of whom were African American, according to the National Park Service.

"[My grandfather] was stationed [at Port Chicago] but he luckily was not called to work that day,” said Paul McGehee, speaking of Samuel Boykin, who survived the incident and died in 2009. "So, he survived, but otherwise he would have been loading the ammunition like everybody else and probably would have been killed." 

Boykin was supposed to work on July 17, the day of the explosion, but "a last-minute schedule change" is what left him able to tell the story, said McGehee.

Members of the staff from the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO), which works in connection with UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library to preserve the stories and accounts of individuals who survived the incident, were at the memorial event.

“Having first-hand accounts of how society has changed ... is fascinating,” said Javier Arbona, who works with ROHO. “I think it is really rewarding when people, in a way, don’t realize they have something in their memories and after a long interview ... you get at something that is subconscious."

ROHO seeks individuals with first-person accounts of the Port Chicago explosion to gather a deeper understanding of details from the event.

Tom Leatherman, general superintendent of the Port Chicago site, in addition to three other units in the National Park Service, recognized the importance of capturing first-person accounts of July 17, 1944.

“We are in a critical time right now because we have some of the people who are still alive, who lived through the event … as we move forward we won’t have those people anymore and we won't be able to hear from them first-hand,” said Leatherman.

Racial disparity

"The military at the time was a mirror of civilian society in America," the flier handed out by NPS read.

When survivors refused to return to work three weeks after the explosion, 50 were charged with mutiny. The NPS brochure explained that all of the men were found guilty and were sentenced to 15 years in prison in the fall of 1944.

Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court, represented the convicted men in an unsuccessful appeal. 

The Navy later took steps towards desegregation in the summer of 1945 and in January 1946, and according to the National Park Service, the convicted were granted clemency.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, a bell from a submarine that served in World War II, the USS Pampanito, was rung 21 times to honor the 320 individuals who lost their lives.

A memorial wreath was then placed in the water.

“Who is going to carry on?" said Chaplain Berger. "Remember. That was the word. Remember. Remember.”