Navy exonerates 256 Black sailors unjustly punished after deadly 1944 port explosion

The Navy on Wednesday exonerated 256 Black sailors found to be unjustly punished in 1944, after a deadly California port explosion revealed racial disparities in the military, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced.

The explosion, which took place exactly 80 years ago on July 17, 1944, at Port Chicago Naval Magazine outside San Francisco, killed 320 people and injured 400 others when munitions being loaded onto a cargo ship detonated.

After the blasts, white supervising officers at Port Chicago were given hardship leave while the surviving Black sailors — at the time, barred from nearly all seagoing jobs in a segregated force — were ordered back to work clearing debris and removing human remains from the critical World War II ammunition supply site.

As it was yet unknown what had caused the explosion and no changes had been made to improve safety, 258 Black sailors refused to resume ammunition handling. The Navy threatened disciplinary action, after which 208 of the men returned to work, but the service still subsequently convicted all 208 at a summary court-martial for disobeying orders.

The other 50 sailors, who came to be known as the “Port Chicago 50,” were charged with and convicted of mutiny at a mass general court-martial. Each one received a dishonorable discharge, were forced to give up their pay and sent to prison.  

Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the Supreme Court, at the time defended the 50 sailors as a defense attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

“The Port Chicago 50, and the hundreds who stood with them, may not be with us today, but their story lives on, a testament to the enduring power of courage and the unwavering pursuit of justice,” Del Toro said in a statement. “They stand as a beacon of hope, forever reminding us that even in the face of overwhelming odds, the fight for what’s right can and will prevail.”

After the Navy’s office of general counsel reviewed the case, it found that there were “significant legal errors during the courts-martial,” and the defendants were “improperly tried together despite conflicting interests and denied a meaningful right to counsel.”

Further, the courts-martial took place before a Navy report on the explosion was finalized, which “would have informed their defense and contained nineteen substantive recommendations to improve ammunition loading practices.” 

All Black sailors involved are now deceased, but Del Toro’s move will change their discharges to honorable. After the records are altered, surviving family members can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs to see if past benefits are owed, according to the Navy.