On 20 December 2019, the President signed into law the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, a part of which addresses the 1944 Port Chicago Explosion and subsequent court-martial of surviving sailors for refusing to resume loading ammunition. Section 540N of the bill reads: “The American people should recognize the role of racial bias during the era in which the prosecution and convictions of the Port Chicago 50 took place for mutiny . . . and in light of the well-documented challenges associated with uniformed service by African Americans during this era, the Secretary of the Navy should, as appropriate, recommend executive action in favor of the 49 remaining Sailors with general court-martial convictions and the 207 remaining Sailors with summary court-martial convictions.”
While this bill marks a major milestone in what has been a decades-long effort to clear the names of the Port Chicago 50—all of whom are now deceased—the issue is not yet settled. The Department of the Navy now must decide whether to exonerate the sailors involved in the incident and upgrade the general and summary discharge of each sailor to honorable discharge. This might seem like a simple matter, but to do so would force the Navy to reexamine its judgments concerning some of the most volatile matters in military law: mutiny and obedience to lawful orders.
The Port Chicago incident has long been a blemish on U.S. naval history and one of the least understood events in the civil rights movement. The Navy should seize on the passing of the 2020 Defense Authorization Act as an opportunity for healing, for learning, and for strengthening the fleet for generations to come. Reexamining the difficult moments in its history with openness, honesty, and remorse can be a catalyst for identifying and addressing systemic issues and furthering the pursuit of organizational excellence.
The Disaster
On the evening of 17 July 1944, two successive explosions tore through the Port Chicago Naval Magazine on Suisun Bay, about 27 miles northwest of San Francisco. The explosions sent a fireball more than 7,000 feet in the air and created shockwaves equivalent to an earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter magnitude scale. The destruction was massive: two ships and millions of dollars of ammunition and equipment lost and severe damage to the port facilities, the buildings on base, and large portions of the nearby town of Port Chicago. The human toll was worse, with 320 men killed and some 400 others seriously injured.
A 40-day inquiry led by three Navy captains adjourned on 30 October 1944. Among the most notable points in the inquiry report was the opinion that “the explosions and the consequent destruction of property, death and personal injuries were not due to the fault, negligence or inefficiency of any person in the naval service or connected therewith or any other person.”
This was a surprising assessment, especially given that following the explosion 258 of the surviving sailors refused to resume ammunition-handling duties on the grounds of unsafe working conditions. Their refusal to obey orders culminated in the largest court-martial in U.S. history and the eventual conviction and imprisonment of 50 men for conspiracy and mutiny on 2 September 1944.
While the inquiry seemed to cast the event as a harsh reminder of the cost of doing the business of war, by the time the war ended in 1945 the Navy not only had overhauled its munitions-handling regulations, but also was moving full speed toward the total integration of the service, a task it would complete in 1946. This integration effort was spurred in large part by the NAACP, which used the work stoppage and subsequent courts-martial of the Port Chicago 50 as a key part of its efforts to fight discrimination and racism in the armed forces.
More to the Story
Despite the signs that there clearly was more to the Port Chicago incident than the Navy was ready to admit, the story largely passed from public consciousness until the 1993 publication of The Port Chicago Mutiny, a book by civil rights activist Robert L. Allen. The book took a deep dive into the events surrounding the explosion. It detailed everything from the recruitment and training of the sailors stationed at the base, to the day-to-day working conditions of ammunition handlers, to the exact orders issued on the day of the mutiny and the minutiae of the legal proceedings that followed. Through his investigation, Allen brought to light the uncomfortable truth that the Navy of 1944, despite all its tremendous achievements, was still in many ways a deeply troubled organization.
The book makes several issues particularly clear. The racially discriminatory policies surrounding naval recruitment and training prior to and during the war affected both morale and readiness within the force. Equally obvious, the around-the-clock ammunition handling, insufficient training and oversight, ammunition-handling races encouraged by overzealous junior officers, and loading quotas that were substantially higher than those recommended by professional longshoremen stevedores all contributed to incredibly unsafe working conditions that were far outside the norm even for wartime demands. Further, there is no question that racism and discrimination were inherent in the decision-making process at every level of command and authority, from the allowance of recovery leave only to white officer survivors of the blast to the congressional decision to reduce beneficiary payments from $5,000 to $3,000 once certain southern legislators learned the vast majority of those killed were black.
There is one point, however, that the book leaves unclear, and it is the basis of the Navy’s resistance to exoneration of the 50 sailors convicted of mutiny in October 1944. In spite of the fact that just three weeks had passed since hundreds of their shipmates had perished; in spite of the fact that as survivors, they had been charged with the traumatic duty of cleaning up the human remains; in spite of the fact that they were returning to the same unsafe working conditions that had led to the explosion, and that they had been lied to about the volatility of the munitions they were handling; in spite of the fact that the Navy gave recovery leave to their white counterparts and refused it to them; in spite of all that, the ammunition-handling battalions at Port Chicago were uniformed sailors in the U.S. Navy, and they were given a direct and lawful order.
This point deserves reflection—more than has been given by most who have commented on the event over the years. It may sound cliche, but good order and discipline are the bedrock of warfare and warfighting organizations, and one of the fundamentals of good order and discipline is that the military gives the benefit of the doubt in all cases to the chain of command. There is no room for hesitation or disbelief; for evaluating how good an order is before for deciding whether to follow it. As long as an order is not plainly illegal, by law, it must be carried out.
This is true in peacetime, especially true in times of war, and certainly must have weighed heavily on the minds of Navy leaders in 1944 as it still does today. At the time of the Port Chicago work stoppage, millions of U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines were in harm’s way around the world. For more than two years they had been carrying out orders that often meant nearly certain death.
At the Battle of Midway in 1942, the 15 torpedo bombers of Torpedo Squadron 8 attacked the Japanese fleet in obsolete aircraft with no supporting cover and suffered near total losses, with only 1 of the 45 crewmembers surviving. In 1943, the expected survival rate of B-17 crews flying over Germany was approximately 12 percent at completion of the mandatory 25 missions per airman. In June 1944, the first companies of soldiers that landed on Omaha beach experienced effective casualties of up to 96 percent killed or wounded.
These are just a few examples of sailors, airmen, and soldiers who were expected to follow orders because, regardless of whether they were bound for success or even survival, military necessity demanded those orders be carried out.
A Better Rationale
What, then, is the rationale behind the ongoing efforts to exonerate the sailors who refused to work on the ammunition loading docks?
The first inclination is to argue that the order to go back to work fit the criteria of an unlawful order. It is possible this is the case, but it would be incredibly difficult to prove. To do so would require proof that the order was not “reasonably necessary to accomplish a military mission, or safeguard or promote the morale, discipline, and usefulness of members of a command and directly connected with the maintenance of good order in the service.”1 That would mean obtaining evidence that there were other methods available at that time to load ammunition in a safer way, at equal cost in time and material to the Navy and the government, and that using those methods would not in any way diminish good order and discipline among the ammunition-handling teams.
The better rationale lies in the fact that the Navy, and U.S. society as a whole, has to be able to recognize and admit to its failures and mistakes if it hopes to learn from them. Ultimately, that is what the Port Chicago Explosion and the subsequent events were: a series of failures in which the Navy let down those sailors. It subjected the ammunition-handling battalions to leadership that was substantially less than they deserved. It set them up for failure and punished them when they failed. The Navy broke the rules regarding the responsibility of military command, and it needs to claim the burden of responsibility for what happened at Port Chicago.
Going Forward
Today, the Navy remembers Port Chicago as a case study in explosive safety; first in a long list of ammunition-handling disasters that have paved the way for a safer and more effective naval service. But there is more to be learned from the incident, and much more that the Navy and society at large should be discussing. Just as the Navy admitted the ammunition-handling techniques at the port were problematic and used that as a way to create a better force, so too should it take this chance to admit the leadership mistakes made in Port Chicago 75 years ago.
From those mistakes come lessons about respect, equality, diversity, caution, and bravery.
If anyone believes the Navy already has absorbed all those lessons, that it is as good as it can be in each of those areas, they need to spend a little more time on the deckplates. Just as there are mistrusts, prejudices, and even hatreds that continue to exist in society, so too do those same issues fester and occasionally raise their ugly heads in the fleet. But in the same way the Navy served as an example to the other services and the country by becoming fully integrated in 1946, so too must it lead today.
The service strives to promote and protect its personnel through measures such as Command Management Equal Opportunity, Equal Employment Opportunity, and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response. These programs align with the Navy’s core values of honor, courage, and commitment, and they speak to why the Navy should support exonerating those 50 sailors convicted of mutiny. More than just admitting a past mistake, this is an opportunity for the Navy to reinforce to the sailors of today and tomorrow its promise that never again will it let down any sailors the way it let down the ammunition-handling battalions of Port Chicago.
1. United States v. McDaniels, 50 M.J. 407 (C.A.A.F. 1999) (order to not drive personal vehicle after diagnosis of narcolepsy).