Port Chicago Mutiny:
Black Sailors Exonerated

Aug 5, 2024

This July, eighty years after 256 mostly black sailors were unjustly convicted, the U.S. government finally decided to exonerate them, though merely for technical reasons. These sailors had refused orders to return to work in dangerous conditions at the Port Chicago naval facility near Sacramento, California.

On July 17, 1944, sailors were loading munitions under unsafe conditions onto two Navy ships for the war in the Pacific. The munitions exploded, killing 320 sailors and civilians, injuring at least 390 others, and flattening Port Chicago.

This was not an “accident.” Before the explosions, black sailors had reported these dangerous conditions to the Navy. These sailors had been loading munitions individually by hand, crane, and winch to the ships in brutal 24-hour shifts. None of them had been trained for this dangerous work, nor had their white supervising officers. The longshoreman’s union warned an explosion was likely and offered to train the sailors. The Navy ignored the offer. Instead, the officers placed $5 bets on which shifts could load more ammunition.

A month later, the continued unsafe conditions prompted hundreds of sailors to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. A U.S. military court convicted 256 of them on various charges, sentencing 50 of these men‍ to 15 years of prison and hard labor for mutiny. These sailors had every right to refuse to work under such crazy and dangerous work conditions.

The U.S. Navy higher-ups were the actual criminals responsible for the Port Chicago explosion, killings, and destruction because they knowingly forced these laborers into this lethal trap. Instead, the court whitewashed these higher-ups, blaming everything on the sailors.

This year, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, after what he called a “new investigation,” found that these black sailors were erroneously tried as a group and had not been given appropriate counsel. He decided to exonerate them on such technical grounds, instead of correctly indicating the guilty party.

This is an election year, and the U.S. politicians know very well how to look good by exploiting every opportunity. The sailors’ memory deserves so much better!