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On
the quiet night of July 17, 1944, an explosion equal in force
to that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima nearly leveled the
California town of Port Chicago and its navy base in the worst
American disaster of World War II. By the fall of that year
50 black Navy seamen from the Port Chicago base were being
court martialed for refusing to go back to work - a mutiny.
The
Port Chicago Mutiny is the story of how the lives of those
men were forever changed by one act of stubborn defiance.
It is a story that raises the question of what is heroism
and honor versus what is betrayal and mutiny in a segregated
army. The dead totaled 320, 202 of them black men. This single
stunning disaster accounted for more than fifteen percent
of all black US naval casualties during the war. It made the
front page of the New York Times, but it was quickly replaced
by other news of the war. Strong speculation still persists
that the explosion may have been nuclear.
After
the explosion, fifty black surviving munitions loaders refused
an order to return to work at the nearby base and all were
convicted of mutiny, sentenced up to fifteen years of hard
labor. Their defending attorney, later to become a U.S. Supreme
Court Justice, was Thurgood Marshall. Only when the war ended
was the US military finally desegregated, as a result in large
measure to the impact of the Port Chicago trial. The mutineers
had their sentences suspended as part of a general amnesty
and the men returned to civilian life. Angry, ashamed, and
afraid they would be fired from their jobs or seen as unpatriotic,
some did not talk about the case, even to family members,
for more than fifty years.
This
stirring courtroom drama and portrayal of the disaster itself
is based on recreations from the NBC-TV movie, "Port Chicago"
(which aired March 26, 1999), archival footage of the explosion
(including a Navy recreation of the event), actual trial documents,
material recently declassified by the Navy, and interviews
with key black seamen who have borne the injustice of the
Port Chicago Mutiny for over fifty years along with Dr. Robert
Allen, author of "The Port Chicago Mutiny".
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