It is an honor
to stand here today on this hallowed ground and reflect
on the profound significance of the events that took place 78 years ago.
I know some of you are quite familiar with this story.
While many of you may be hearing it for the first time.
Together, let's revisit the details.
Much of this history is not pleasant.
It contains truths that are inconvenient
for some and uncomfortable for others.
But it is vital that we shine a bright light on these aspects of the past.
For they hold lessons that are crucial
to forging a new path for the future.
As World War Two raged throughout Europe, the U.S.
Navy had already identified the need for an additional munitions
shipping depot on the West Coast.
Prior to the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7th of 1941.
Port Chicago Naval Magazine was formally authorized
in February 1942, selected as an ideal location
for constructing a new large munitions loading base.
This was due to its deep water ports, which is still utilized by the US Army
today and also its relative isolation from the surrounding population centers.
Although the small town of Port Chicago was approximately one and a half
miles away.
With construction completed in November of 1942,
Port Chicago Naval Magazine quickly became a vital link in the delivery chain
of ordnance to American forces in the Pacific Theater.
The original pier was soon widened
so that two ships could be loaded simultaneously.
Greatly increasing the output of tonnage from the base.
However, all branches of the armed
forces were segregated at this time.
Although racially integrated forces did fight
in the Revolutionary War, the official U.S.
military policy of racial segregation was established in the War of 1812.
Since then, with a few notable exceptions,
such as the Army's famous Buffalo Soldier, Cavalry and infantry units.
Up until the start of World War Two, African American soldiers traditionally
served as the laborers and menial workers of the American military machine.
Even as the Army
Air Corps began to experiment with training black pilots
who would become the lauded Tuskegee Airmen,
the Navy was particularly insistent on maintaining segregated roles
within their ranks.
Black Navy enlisted men were trained in separate service schools
and were not considered qualified or capable
of performing higher level tasks.
Here at Fort Chicago, black sailors were assigned to handle munitions
working around the clock, unloading arriving missiles, ammunition
and bombs from railcars into and out of storage magazines,
and then reloading them back onto cargo ships.
White commanding officers oversaw the work and directed the loading operations, but
all of the sailors who directly handled the ordnance were black.
It was hard work, very physically challenging,
especially in the summer heat, and it was also extremely dangerous.
Sailors were told
that they were handling inactive munitions that lacked detonators,
but in reality they were loading bombs
equipped with warheads.
The sailors at Port Chicago were performing the same
type of work as civilian stevedores who were highly trained and experienced.
But the Navy did not see
fit to provide their sailors with any formal instruction in munitions
loading or any safety training on how to properly handle sensitive ordnance.
To make matters worse, many of the white junior officers
overseeing the loading operations, emphasized speed above all else.
Going so far as to race various crews against each other
and insisting that they had to maintain loading speeds at an even faster rate
than the professional professional civilian stevedores.
The patriotic, dedicated Port Chicago sailors complied with these orders
and loaded the Navy ships at an impressive pace., but many of them,
as well as some outside observers, knew that this situation was a disaster.
Just waiting to happen.
On the night of July 17, 1944,
two ships were docked here at the loading pier at Port Chicago.
The Liberty Ship SSEA Bryan had been there for four days
and was almost loaded to full capacity with ordnance, including shells, cluster
bombs, depth charges, 1000 pound bombs and sensitive incendiary bombs.
The victory ship. S.S.
Colonel Victory had arrived earlier that day and was being rigged
for loading due to begin at midnight.
16 railcars sat on the pier
containing additional explosives.
In all the munitions on the pier and in the ship
contained the equivalent of approximately 2000 short
tons of TNT.
At approximately 10:18 p.m., a tremendous explosion occurred,
followed seconds later by a much larger blast that reverberated
throughout the East Bay, illuminating the night sky with a fireball,
approximately three miles in diameter.
The force of
the accompanying shockwave was felt for 40 miles,
shattering windows as far away as San Francisco.
Pieces of glowing hot metal and burning ordinance were sent hurtling over 12,000
feet into the air before raining down on the base and surrounding communities.
Seismographs at the University of California, Berkeley
registered the shockwaves traveling through the ground, measuring the second
blast as a 3.4 on the Richter scale as if it were
an earthquake.
All 320 men working on
or near the pier that day died instantly.
They included 202
African-American enlisted personnel working as loaders.
Nine of their officers.
.64 U.S.
Maritime Service members who were crewmen on the E.A.
Bryan and the Quinault victory.
33 members of the U.S.
Navy armed Guard.
Three civilian Navy workers and three civilian contractors.
Five Coast Guard fire boat crewmen.
And the Marine on guard duty that night.
The E.A.
Bryant was complete destroyed, and the Quinault victory was blown
out of the water, torn into sections that were thrown in several directions.
The pier, along with the boxcars, locomotive
rails and cargo, were blasted into pieces.
And today, these pilings are what remains.
The Coast Guard fire boat was thrown 600
feet upriver where it sank.
Now, the rest of the base, including the barracks
where many surviving sailors were thrown out of their beds by the explosion,
was severely damaged, as was the nearby town of Port Chicago.
90% of the small communities homes
sustained damage, along with almost all of its businesses.
Although no one outside of this immediate pier area was killed.
390 civilians and military personnel were injured,
many of them seriously.
Now, as you can imagine,
the aftermath of the explosion was horrific for all involved.
Surviving
personnel had the gruesome task of cleaning up
and starting the process of rebuilding the base.
Out of the 320 men who were lost.
Only 51 could be identified.
Corpses and body parts littered the bay, and the port.
Survivors were in a state of shock,
traumatized by the disaster and completely on edge.
They did not know exactly what had caused the explosion,
and that created an extreme amount of anxiety.
Incredibly, the Naval Court
of inquiry investigating the cause of the explosion
would lay the bulk of the blame at the feet of the black enlisted sailors
who lost their lives, stating that they were, quote,
neither temperamentally or intellectually capable of handling
high explosives, unquote, and that, quote, rough and careless
handling of the explosives had likely caused the explosion.
Even in the midst of tragedy,
the Navy's ingrained discriminatory practices held fast.
White officers were granted 30 days survivors leave,
which is given out to sailors who survived a serious incident
where their friends or shipmates had died and were then transferred to other duty.
Black sailors, however, were not granted this leave.
Not even those who had been hospitalized with injuries.
Instead, they were transferred to the naval barracks in Vallejo,
near Merritt Island.
And three weeks later, on August 9th, the fourth, eighth
and second divisions were ordered to fall in for work
as they reached the junction, where they were
then ordered to turn left down to a ferry to reach the ammunition loading dock.
The entire divisions of men sat cold.
They were terrified to return
to doing the same dangerous work that had gotten their friends killed.
Loading munitions in a robust and unsafe manner
without any changes in protocol or procedures.
This work stoppage forced the Navy to quickly
try to contract civilian stevedores in order to continue to load the ships.
Out of 328 men in the three divisions,
258 of them refused to handle munitions
and were imprisoned for three days.
After being then threatened
with death by firing squad
for refusing to follow an order during wartime, which the Navy
considered mutinous conduct., 208 of them yielded,
and after serving out their time, received bad conduct discharges.
However, 50 men,
including enlisted man Joe Small, who served as a spokesman for the sailors
and was subsequently accused of being a ringleader of the work stoppage,
continued to refuse to load munitions.
They were all court-martialed
and tried in the largest mass mutiny trial in U.S.
naval history.
This trial made headlines across the country
and was thoroughly covered by several nationally circulated black
newspapers, as well as the local San Francisco press.
The Navy was determined to argue that the work stoppage
was a conspiracy among the men and therefore constituted mutiny.
Despite the best efforts of ACP attorney Thurgood Marshall,
who consulted with the defense and drew widespread media attention
to the lax safety practices in place at the base, all 50 men
were convicted of mutiny and given prison sentences of 8 to 15 years.
Marshall mounted a vigorous legal appeal, garnering
even more public support and attention, particularly from the White House.
But it was to no avail.
The convictions were upheld.
After the war, the men were granted clemency,
with most of them serving only 1 to 2 years in prison.
And many, even ironically, finished out their enlistments on naval ships.
However, their convictions
still stand today.
Despite the outcome of the Mutiny trial., the disgraceful working conditions,
rampant racial discrimination and systemic injustices
that the trial exposed, could no longer be ignored.
The Navy was forced to implement a more rigorous safety training program
and to change the practice of having only black enlisted men load munitions.
By February 1946, the Navy, which had been the most exclusionary
and segregated branch of all of the armed forces, ironically
became the first to officially eliminate all racial barriers in its ranks.
And in 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981
ordering the complete racial integration of the armed forces.
This was a major advance in civil rights in our country,
and it laid bare the inevitable question: If a large, traditional institution
like the military could desegregate,
then why couldn't other American institutions follow suit?
Over the next two decades, with the Brown versus Board of Education
Supreme Court decision galvanizing the civil rights movement,
racial discrimination and segregation were declared unconstitutional.
Throughout many aspects of American life.
Here at Port Chicago Naval Magazine,
the base was rebuilt, as was the town of Chicago.
But the Navy immediately planned for an expansion
aiming to increase and secure their munitions storage capacity
and create a wider buffer between their operations in nearby communities.
After many years of discussion and protest,
the Navy officially took over the town of Port Chicago in 1968,
using eminent domain to buy it out and tear it down.
Their expanded facility became known as the Concord Naval Weapons Station,
which continued to support U.S.
war efforts during the Korean War., the Vietnam War and the Gulf War
before its eventual closure in 2008.
And now here we stand today, 78 years after the disaster.
Looking back into the past and turning towards the future.
This history continues to capture the hearts
and minds of more people than ever before.
Our long held vision of creating a world class joint visitor center
is finally taking off at the new "Thurgood Marshall Regional Park:
Home of the Port Chicago 50".
We... (Pause for applause and clapping)...
that is definitely worth applause.
We are thrilled to partner with the friends of Port Chicago and East
Bay Regional Park District along with many other organizations.
In beginning this exciting journey to elevate the Port Chicago story
to new levels,
As well, our colleagues at Treasure Island
Museum have been actively interpreting this story, and,
this is news to many of you, have recently been able to identify
the actual location of the Mutiny trial site.
I want to acknowledge Walt Bilofsky, Vice president of the Treasure
Island Museum Association, for his tenacious determination
and inspire in detective work.
It exemplifies just how much is still possible
to discover about this history.
Clearly, the significant support for Chicago Naval
Magazine is much larger than the memorial itself.
This unthinkable disaster has continued to directly
impact the lives of thousands of people, particularly
the descendants of those who perished and those who lived through it.
It has helped to reshape the very fabric
of our country in ways we can now fully appreciate.
in retrospect.
The themes of loss, accountability
and continued injustice continue to resonate with us.
And today, in the era of Black Lives Matter,
they take on a renewed urgency.
The National Park Service Honors this legacy
by helping the American public form connections with this site,
finding meaning and reflecting on the past and how it connects to the future.
As we pay tribute today to the brave men of Port Chicago
and the sacrifices that so many people made as a result of the disaster,
we pledge to continue to elevate their stories,
to spread the knowledge and understanding of this history,
and to help prepare the next generation of Americans
to thoughtfully and critically examine these issues
that strike at the essence of who we are as a society.
Every day, we give our best in honoring this vitally important history.
We will make sure that their heroism and sacrifices are never forgotten.
Thank you.