An American Mutiny in WWII

Summary

HISTORY This Week: An American Mutiny in WWII – Detailed Summary

Episode Released: October 7, 2024 by The HISTORY® Channel

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Introduction

In the episode titled "An American Mutiny in WWII," hosted by Sally Helm, HISTORY This Week delves into a pivotal yet often overlooked moment in American military history—the Port Chicago Mutiny of 1944. This episode explores the harrowing events that led to the trial of 50 Black sailors accused of mutiny, the pervasive racism within the U.S. Navy, and the enduring legacy of their struggle for justice and equality.

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Setting the Scene: Port Chicago and Its Significance

The story begins on the San Francisco Bay Navy base at Port Chicago, California, a critical hub for loading ammunition onto ships destined for the Pacific Theater during World War II. In July 1944, Joe Small, a 22-year-old Black sailor working at Port Chicago, experiences a catastrophic explosion while loading ammunition, resulting in the deaths of 320 sailors, 202 of whom were Black.

Key Details:

• Segregation in the Military: In 1944, the U.S. Navy was entirely segregated, with Black sailors relegated to menial and hazardous tasks without adequate training.
• Dangerous Working Conditions: According to Steve Schenkin, author of The Port Chicago 50, the lack of training and faulty equipment led to unsafe working conditions. Schenkin notes, “The Navy considered them second class citizens” (08:06).

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The Explosion and Its Aftermath

On the night of July 17, 1944, an explosion devastates the Port Chicago barracks. Joe Small survives by taking shelter under his mattress and later assists fellow sailors despite his own injuries. The explosion obliterates the dock, killing over 300 sailors instantly.

Notable Quote:

"You can imagine the terror... everyone on the dock was killed instantly." – Steve Schenkin (08:58)

The disaster exposes the reckless endangerment of Black sailors, who were unaware that the red liquid seeping from the bombs was merely harmless dye used for targeting purposes.

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Seeds of Resistance: The Birth of Mutiny

In the aftermath, surviving Black sailors are pressured to continue loading ammunition without any improvements in safety measures. Frustrated by the persistent unsafe conditions and systemic racism, these men, led by Joe Small, contemplate mutiny—a grave offense in the military.

Matthew Delmont, a Dartmouth history professor, provides context on the racial dynamics:

“They were consistent in describing their work as being on a chain gang... treated like slaves.” (09:55)

On August 9, 1944, during a daily march, Lieutenant Ernest Delucci orders the sailors to proceed to the waterfront. Recognizing the pattern of unsafe orders, Joe Small defies this command, prompting 258 out of 328 Black sailors to refuse orders and form what would be known as the Port Chicago 50.

Key Quote:

“They choose protests as a way to remember their fallen sailors and to not have those deaths be in vain.” – Matthew Delmont (18:52)

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The Trial: Port Chicago 50 on Trial

The 50 sailors are swiftly arrested and tried in a hastily assembled wooden courtroom composed entirely of white officers and lawyers. Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney for the NAACP and future Supreme Court Justice, arrives to observe the proceedings, although he cannot represent the sailors directly in the military tribunal.

Key Highlights:

• Unfair Trial Environment: The tribunal lacked Black representation, ensuring a biased judgment.
• Prosecution’s Case: The Navy labeled the refusal to follow orders as mutiny, a charge that could result in execution. Lieutenant Delucci’s testimony suggested a conspiracy orchestrated by Joe Small, despite insufficient evidence.
• Defendants’ Defense: Joe Small maintained his innocence, stating, “I never talked anyone into doing anything or taking any sort of stand” (23:48).

Notable Quote:

“The panel of officers deliberated, if you could call it that, for 80 minutes... they had made up their mind ahead of time to convict everyone.” – Steve Schenkin (27:13)

After a swift and biased trial, all 50 men are convicted of mutiny and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, a significant reduction from the death penalty but still a grave injustice.

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Thurgood Marshall’s Advocacy and Appeal

Despite the initial conviction, Thurgood Marshall becomes a vocal advocate for the Port Chicago 50. Although he cannot represent them directly in the military court, Marshall leverages his influence with the NAACP and the press to highlight the sailors' plight and the systemic racism within the Navy.

Marshall’s Strategy:

• Media Campaign: Marshall’s public pressure contributes to the Navy’s eventual acceptance of integration experiments.
• Legal Appeal: In April 1945, Marshall presents an appeal to a Washington panel, but it is rejected. Nonetheless, his efforts help shift public opinion towards supporting military integration.

Key Quote:

“The real injustice here is the way the Navy is treating these young black men.” – Steve Schenkin (26:44)

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Aftermath and Long-Term Impact

The advocacy surrounding the Port Chicago 50 catalyzes the first steps towards desegregating the U.S. military. In May 1944, the Navy begins integrating Black sailors in certain capacities, a move that precedes President Truman’s 1948 executive order to desegregate the entire armed forces.

Consequences for the Sailors:

• Hard Labor: The convicted sailors served their sentences under harsh conditions, unable to access benefits like the GI Bill.
• Post-War Struggles: Many, including Joe Small, faced lifelong repercussions due to their convictions, hindering their ability to secure employment and loans.

Key Developments:

• Recognition and Pardon: Over decades, efforts to pardon the sailors gained momentum. In 2024, on the 80th anniversary of the explosion, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro officially sets aside the court martial results, clearing the sailors' names posthumously.

Notable Quote:

“We all owe a great debt to the generation that served in the war... especially the black Americans who served under hostile circumstances.” – Matthew Delmont (32:20)

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Legacy and Historical Significance

The Port Chicago Mutiny underscores the dual struggle of Black Americans during World War II—fighting external enemies while combating internal racism. It challenges the traditional narratives of the war and the Civil Rights Movement, illustrating that the fight for equality was ongoing and deeply embedded within the military framework.

Matthew Delmont emphasizes:

“Port Chicago in 1944... it doesn't fit neatly into the traditional stories we tell about World War II or the civil rights movement.” (32:10)

The sailors’ defiance and subsequent trial became a catalyst for broader military integration and highlighted the enduring fight for civil rights, laying groundwork for future advancements in equality and justice.

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Conclusion

"An American Mutiny in WWII" sheds light on a critical episode where courage and resistance within the Black military community confronted entrenched racism. The Port Chicago 50's legacy is a testament to the relentless pursuit of justice and equality, influencing both military policy and the broader Civil Rights Movement. Through expert insights and historical analysis, HISTORY This Week provides a comprehensive understanding of how these events reshaped the United States, ensuring that the sacrifices and resilience of the Port Chicago sailors are rightfully acknowledged and remembered.

Final Quote:

“None of The Port Chicago 50 lived to see this moment. But 80 years later, their names are officially cleared.” – Sally Helm (34:33)

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to guests Matthew Delmont, Professor of History at Dartmouth College and author of Half the Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, and Steve Schenkin, author of The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights. Production was handled by Ben Dickstein and produced and story edited by Sally Helm for Back Pocket Studios.

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For more insights into pivotal historical moments, stay tuned to HISTORY This Week, a production of Back Pocket Studios in partnership with the History Channel.

Transcript

[Sally Helm]

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[Sally Helm]

Hello everyone. My name is Wesley Levasse from the History of the Second World War podcast. Join me on a journey through the most destructive conflict in human history. A journey that will take us not just through the famous campaigns and cataclysmic battles, but also to the lesser, well known corners of the war that touched millions all over the world as we try and answer not just the questions of what and where, but how and why. You can find history of the Second World War on all major podcast platforms or at historyofthesecondworld war.com the holiday season officially starts when you get that first card in the mail. Shutterfly makes it easy to add more meaning to the everyday with hundreds of holiday card designs that can be personalized in seconds with your favorite photos from this year. Select your greeting, customize the color, and even add little extras like personalized foil to make a holiday card that really shines. Enjoy 40% off with code. Smile [e-mail] and send something meaningful this year. See site for more details. July 17, 1944 A sailor named Joe Small is lying in bed in his barracks. He's young, 22. Before the war, he was a truck driver, and he'd served as a lieutenant in the Civilian Conservation Corps, helping to maintain national parks. Now he's in the Navy, stationed at a place called Port Chicago Port Chicago, confusingly, is not in Chicago. It's in California, near San Francisco. And Small's job there is to load ammunition onto ships, ships headed for the Pacific to fight the Japanese. It's an important job and a tough one. He works an eight hour shift, so, so that night he's ready to sleep. But at 10:18pm he hears explosions in the distance. And then the force of the blast knocks down the walls of the barracks. Joe Small was thrown off his bed onto the floor protected by his mattress as the building collapsed around him. All the men in Joe Small's barracks that night were black. Because in 1944 the entire US military is segregated. And in the Navy, black sailors are typically doing menial work, often menial, dangerous work. At Port Chicago, ammunition has to get loaded onto ships. Steve Schenkin is the author of the Port Chicago 50. He says black sailors showed up at Port Chicago and learned they would be the ones doing this dangerous work.

[Steve Schenkin]

The first thing they said was, of course there's going to be some training. There's a manual we can read, there's some kind of course.

[Sally Helm]

No, just start, just start stacking up torpedoes and artillery shells and bombs.

[Steve Schenkin]

I mean, in civilian life you need years of training to do this properly. So why aren't we being trained? And of course, of course they knew why. You know, the Navy considered them second class citizens.

[Sally Helm]

White sailors didn't load ammunition themselves, but they did oversee the black men doing this work. The white officers kept Port Chicago running around the clock 24 hours a day with three 8 hour shifts. The officers even sometimes made the work into a game.

[Steve Schenkin]

They were betting on whose division could load the fastest. And it just created a lot of chaos. The equipment wasn't very good. They were using winches which kept breaking. And these were things that were lifting these 500 pound bombs. And they were always told, ah, well, you know, they're not armed. It's probably not just going to explode spontaneously, you know.

[Sally Helm]

Not the most reassuring thing to hear. One day as a bomb is being hoisted into the cargo hold, it slips out of its net, clangs against the side of the ship and starts hissing. A red liquid is seeping out.

[Steve Schenkin]

You can imagine the terror. You know, people are running around jumping on each other, trying to get out of there.

[Sally Helm]

Four sailors break their legs as they're trying to climb the ladder out of the cargo hold. Then they realize other men on the dock don't seem worried. It turns out that red liquid is a harmless dye there to help gunners see where the shells are hitting and aim better at their targets. The black sailors loading these bombs didn't know about that. No one told them they couldn't get.

[Steve Schenkin]

Through to the officers when they would ask for training and better equipment. They were always just told, ah, you know these guys out there, they need these bombs. We got to get moving.

[Sally Helm]

So these black soldiers are loading ammunition overseen by white officers. Matthew Delmont is a professor at Dartmouth college and a historian of civil rights. He said these sailors were well aware that they were part of a very old racist dynamic.

[Matthew Delmont]

They're being given commands by officers who in many cases aren't calling them by the rank or by the last name, but calling them boy, calling them first name, or in the worst cases, calling them with racial epithets. They were consistent in describing their work as being on a chain gang, describing it as though they're being treated like dogs, not like men, or in some of the worst cases, being treated as though they were slaves.

[Sally Helm]

And the men at Port Chicago were not quiet about the dangers they faced.

[Matthew Delmont]

They're writing to the naacp, writing to local newspapers, saying, look, this is not safe, and it's only a matter of time before something terrible happens. And they were right. It was only a matter of time before something terrible happened.

[Sally Helm]

After the explosion, Joe small gets out from under his mattress and tries to help the other wounded men. He puts a tourniquet on one sailor's arm, helps another whose feet are bleeding. Small gives him his shoes. Steve Shankin says a lot of the men assume at first that they're under attack, that the Japanese have reached Port Chicago, but they're wrong.

[Steve Schenkin]

There's no exact eyewitness description of what happened or even what went wrong. There are no eyewitnesses because everyone on the dock was killed instantly. And that was over 300 people.

[Sally Helm]

10 million pounds of ammunition had detonated, killing 320 sailors. 202 of them were black men. If any of the sailors in the barracks had happened to have the night shift, they would have been killed.

[Steve Schenkin]

The entire dock was gone. It's hard to imagine this amount of force, but these massive ships were blown to tiny pieces at the time.

[Sally Helm]

It's one of the largest man made explosions in history. In San Francisco, 20 miles away, people thought there had been an earthquake. And obviously this story immediately makes the news. It's the biggest casualty event on the homefront outside of Pearl Harbor. But it is not as big a story as you might think.

[Steve Schenkin]

Part of that was just the timing. This was not so long after D day, and of course, that invasion was still gearing up as well as massive fighting in the Pacific. So there were huge World War II headlines every day.

[Sally Helm]

Also, the Navy is more than happy to keep the story quiet. They don't let press photographers get anywhere near the blast site. But they do launch their own investigation into the explosion. And very quickly, they reach a conclusion. Quote, the consensus opinion of the witnesses is that the colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally nor intellectually capable of handling high explosives. End quote. The Navy blames the black sailors who had been loading the ammunition, citing their race as the underlying cause. Matt Delmont says this type of explicit racism was the norm.

[Matthew Delmont]

An Army War College document, still taught in the 1930s and 40s, draws on a bunch of racial pseudoscience to say that black Americans have a smaller cranial capacity, that they're scared of the dark, that they'll run away at the first sign of combat.

[Sally Helm]

After the explosion, the surviving white officers are given three weeks of leave to recover. But the black sailors are expected to get right back to work. They're reassigned and sent to Mare Island, a nearby naval base. No one tells them what their next job is going to be. Instead, every day they're just ordered to exercise. But then they're issued new work gloves, and they can feel what's coming.

[Steve Schenkin]

They kind of knew they're going to send us back to load ammunition. And then the question became, well, what are we going to do?

[Sally Helm]

These men have just seen their fellow sailors killed. Some of them had the gruesome task of recovering what they could of the bodies, and they still have had no additional training about how to do this job safely. They start to talk amongst themselves about what to do. And many begin to turn to Joe Small.

[Steve Schenkin]

He was just a natural leader. He should have been a young officer. But that option wasn't available.

[Sally Helm]

Small, remember, is just 22 years old, but a lot of these men are even younger. Some are as young as 17. And they ask Small for guidance.

[Steve Schenkin]

You know, what are you going to do? And he said, well, you know, I don't tell anybody what to do. That's not my way, but I'm not going back. And they said, what do you mean? We're in the Navy. You don't get to decide what you do for a job. And he said, I know, but they need to change.

[Sally Helm]

An idea begins to form. What if we just refuse? Don't go to work. It's a dangerous thought in the Navy. You don't disobey orders. But asking themselves, are we really just going to keep loading explosives day after day like this? The Navy hasn't announced any new safety precautions, anything to prevent another blast from happening. They start to think we need to take a stand. And this is in many ways part of a broader trend of black resistance. During World War II. Organizations like the NAACP have promoted something called the Dark Double V campaign. V for Victory. Not just abroad, but also at home. Equal treatment.

[Matthew Delmont]

You have Double Victory chapters forming across the country. It wasn't just a clever rhetorical device or clever slogan. It was really palpably how black people thought about the war, that they really saw it as a two front battle.

[Sally Helm]

August 9th. Every day, Joe Smalls, Division 4 marches from their barracks down a road at Mare island towards their work.

[Steve Schenkin]

They knew they were going to come to a tee in the road. It couldn't be more literal, fork in the road kind of a thing.

[Sally Helm]

Every day, Lieutenant Ernest Delucci gives the order, column right. And then the men turn towards the exercise area. But today he says, column left. That order is meant to turn them towards the waterfront, probably to load more ammunition.

[Steve Schenkin]

And a bunch of people stopped. A bunch of people didn't stop. There was no plan, certainly no conspiracy. People banged into each other, looked at each other in confusion. What are we doing? Why are we stopping?

[Sally Helm]

Delucci is furious.

[Steve Schenkin]

Started shouting at them and telling them, what are you doing? Keep marching.

[Sally Helm]

Everyone knows that Joe Small is the leader of the group. So Delucci confronts him and said, are.

[Steve Schenkin]

You going to work? What are you doing? And he said, no, sir. No, I'm not.

[Sally Helm]

Other divisions hear what happened. And by the end of the day, of the 328 soldiers ordered to load ammunition, 258 have refused. Officers march them onto a baseball field at the base and then onto a prison barge. These men don't know what's going to happen to them, but they know it's not going to be good. Tensions are very high. Fights begin to break out about what they should do. And Joe Small decides he needs to step up, make a speech.

[Steve Schenkin]

You know, we've crossed the line now. Let's stick together and make our demand. They'll have to back down because they need us to go back to work. And he felt that for just a small moment in time, these guys had some power, some leverage. Maybe he was wrong, but he felt at that moment that they did, and he wanted them to use it.

[Sally Helm]

A few days later, the men are marched back out onto that baseball field. A jeep pulls up carrying Admiral Carlton Wright. He oversees their entire naval district. And as he steps out of the car, he's already shouting, you Guys are.

[Steve Schenkin]

Letting down the country, you're letting down your race. Questioning their manhood, their patriotism, everything he could think of.

[Sally Helm]

Then Wright gets to his point.

[Steve Schenkin]

I think you're all guilty of mutiny and I'm going to have you all shot.

[Sally Helm]

Mutiny. It sounds like an old timey charge. It did to the sailors then too.

[Steve Schenkin]

It's like mutiny. Isn't that where you take over a ship? It's like something that happened in the 1700s in England or something that there's no mutiny.

[Sally Helm]

But mutiny is in fact the most serious charge the Navy has. It is an act to usurp, subvert or override military authority. Admiral Wright offers the men one more chance to avoid this charge. If you go back to work, he says, you won't be prosecuted. It must have seemed like an impossible choice. Go back to work where you could get blown up or face this mutiny charge, which carries the death penalty. Ultimately, Matt Delmont says exactly 50 sailors.

[Matthew Delmont]

Hold out and I think importantly for them it meant something to stand together, to say that we, we've seen what happened. They chose protests as a way to remember their fallen sailors and to not not have those deaths be in vain.

[Sally Helm]

This group is going to become known as the Port Chicago 50. And soon they will be put on trial. Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu. Bored at home? Head over to Chumba Casino and join.

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[Matthew Delmont]

There simply aren't any black officers to be able to serve in judgment. There aren't any black naval lawyers to be able to hear the case. It's not an exaggeration to say the entire system is set up to not recognize the kind of experiences that black men in the Navy would have had prior to going to that courtroom. And so there's no reason they would think that they were going to get a fair trial once they got there.

[Sally Helm]

On September 14, the men file into the little courtroom. One by one, they're asked how they plead to the charge of mutiny, and they all say not guilty. The men are allowed to take the stand to testify in their own defense.

[Steve Schenkin]

Everyone that will have a chance, but not really, because you're not allowed to talk about segregation in the military. You're not allowed to talk about conditions on the pier. You're not allowed to talk about incompetent officers. All you can talk about is whether on this specific day, at this time, you follow this particular order.

[Sally Helm]

The prosecution's case basically boils down to this. These sailors refuse to turn left and go back to work at the docks. That was mutiny. And they try to argue that one man is the mastermind behind it, Joe Small.

[Steve Schenkin]

They wanted to make it clean and clear, to turn it into a really simple story of Joe Small being this malcontent leader amongst the men who talked them all into this conspiracy to mutiny.

[Sally Helm]

When the white officers testify, one of them, the commanding officer of Joe Small's division, Ernest Delucci, he says that he overheard the men earlier that day talking about defying orders. Now, the question of whether there was a conspiracy, whether the men planned this, or whether they just all independently decided not to turn left that day, that is a key question in the trial. And that piece of evidence from Delucci suggests that there was a conspiracy. No one corroborates the testimony. And in a normal trial, it might be considered hearsay inadmissible. But this is a military tribunal. The rules are different. When Joe Small is on the witness stand, he isn't afraid to push back.

[Steve Schenkin]

He was just a feisty guy, so he wasn't gonna back down. And he didn't make it easy on himself by simply saying what the Navy wanted him to say.

[Sally Helm]

The prosecution tries to get Small to admit to organizing the mutiny, but he holds the line. He says, I may have told people what I was going to do, but I did not tell them what they should do.

[Steve Schenkin]

I never talked anyone into doing anything or taking any sort of stand. He just didn't see that as his place.

[Sally Helm]

This trial is being covered by the press, but it's not a huge story. Still, an important person is taking note. As lead attorney for the naacp, Thurgood Marshall has seen this pattern of racism play out across the US military since the country entered World War II.

[Matthew Delmont]

Hundreds and hundreds of letters that black troops write to the NAACP and write to Thurgood Marshall, asking for help at army bases in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia, as far away as Pearl harbor, talking about the kind of conditions and kind of treatment they're receiving in the service of their country.

[Sally Helm]

Marshall gets involved in as many of these cases as he can. He travels to 10 different military bases in the spring of 1943 alone. And he soon becomes famous in the black community for this work.

[Matthew Delmont]

His pedigree, his background, his stature. He's a big guy with a big, booming voice, and so he gives a lot of confidence to black communities. For white people in power, white politicians, white lawyers, they don't necessarily see him as a peer.

[Steve Schenkin]

The guy is fearless. I mean, he would take on cases in the Deep south, have to sleep in his car, you know, because he was constantly. His life was constantly being threatened. And he heard about this story, and he said, well, this sounds like something. Something I need to be involved in.

[Sally Helm]

Marshall asks the Navy for permission to attend the trial. Somewhat surprisingly, they say yes. And so on day 22 of the trial, Thurgood Marshall arrives at the military base in San Francisco Bay.

[Steve Schenkin]

I don't know how seriously the Navy took him. They let him come, and they must have done that because they respected him and they knew. They thought maybe it would make less trouble if they just let him sit in and he'll see that it's a fair trial. I guess they were hoping that would be the perception, but he didn't see it that way at all. He saw all kinds of holes in the case. Different guys got different orders. Many of them Never really literally disobeyed an order. And they were all lumped together in this one case and tried together as if they were one unified group.

[Sally Helm]

As a civilian, Marshall is not allowed to represent the 50 men on trial, but he watches. He writes to the NAACP office saying that the prosecutor is vicious and dumb, and he goes to the press.

[Matthew Delmont]

He brings almost a PR machine with him that helps make sure this isn't something that the Navy is going to be able to handle behind closed doors.

[Sally Helm]

Marshall highlights all of the issues that. That aren't being discussed in the courtroom.

[Matthew Delmont]

Why were the majority of those crews black? Why were two thirds of those who lost their lives in that explosion black sailors?

[Steve Schenkin]

This shouldn't be these guys on trial. This should be the Navy on trial. The real wrong here, the real injustice here is the way the Navy is treating these young black men. And that's not the Navy's invention. This is a symptom of the racism in this country.

[Sally Helm]

So Marshall makes his case to the press, and the lawyers make their case in the courtroom. The trial lasts for six weeks. After closing statements, the deliberations begin.

[Steve Schenkin]

The panel of officers deliberated, if you could call it that, for 80 minutes. And that did include a lunch break. So it might not have been a full 80 minutes. And that was for 50 defendants. So we know they didn't consider the cases in any real serious way. They had made up their mind ahead of time to convict everyone, and that's what they did.

[Sally Helm]

All 50 men are found guilty of mutiny. They head back to the brig, and the reality of a possible death sentence starts to sink in. But a few days later, they're called back to the courtroom for sentencing, and none of them will be sent to the firing squad. Instead, they are sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

[Steve Schenkin]

They're going to spend their entire 20s and into their 30s in some miserable prison, breaking rocks or doing some menial labor. And again, for what? For, in their mind, for being right.

[Sally Helm]

While the sailors begin to serve out their sentence, Thurgood Marshall continues to prepare an appeal.

[Matthew Delmont]

He tries to gather new evidence. So he speaks to the men, he speaks to other survivors, and then is able to draw on the larger experience of black Americans in the Navy as well.

[Sally Helm]

In April of 1945, he presents his appeal brief to a panel of officers in Washington.

[Steve Schenkin]

And so it was beautifully done, but it was not taken too seriously by the Navy. It was rejected.

[Sally Helm]

Marshall has now exhausted all of the legal options, but his media campaign is beginning to have some results, in part because of public pressure and Negative publicity. The Navy has begun to make some changes. They quote, unquote, experiment on a few select ships in 1944. They have black sailors serve in an equal capacity with white sailors. Momentum towards desegregation in the military is picking up steam.

[Matthew Delmont]

A lot of average Americans could just recognize the wrongness of it. It's costly, it's wasteful. It's redundant for the military to have to do everything in duplicate. Segregated bases, segregated latrines, segregated dining facilities, segregated troop transport.

[Sally Helm]

And the Port Chicago trial helps to make the Morrill case too, because it.

[Matthew Delmont]

Received so much attention. It was one of the cases that helped to sway average public opinion in favor, slowly in favor of the integration of the military.

[Sally Helm]

Public pressure also helps change the fate of the Port Chicago 50 as they toil away at their hard labor. Black newspapers are still talking about them. So are some members of Congress. Eleanor Roosevelt, the First lady, even writes a letter to the Secretary of the Navy encouraging him to reconsider the case. And In January of 1946, four months after the end of World War II, the the port Chicago sailors are told they're shipping out. They're being released from their sentence of hard labor, but that doesn't mean they're free.

[Steve Schenkin]

They said, oh, by the way, you're still in the Navy, so you have to serve out your time. And they put them up on ships.

[Sally Helm]

The vast majority of the Port Chicago sailors serve aboard Navy ships stationed in the South Pacific. And if you think about it, the assignment is a little contradictory.

[Steve Schenkin]

These are mutineers, supposedly mutineers, the most dangerous criminals imaginable. They obviously did not think of them as dangerous criminals.

[Sally Helm]

One month later, the Navy becomes the first branch of the US Military to begin the process of integration, which is progress. The rest of the military wouldn't integrate until two years later, when President Truman would issue an executive order. The Navy was first, in large part because of the actions of The Port Chicago 50.

[Steve Schenkin]

The Port Chicago incident as this huge, huge, dramatic story that the Navy just didn't want to ever happen again. Maybe that's not the greatest motivation, but it was a pretty powerful one.

[Sally Helm]

For the Port Chicago sailors. The incident never goes away. When they finally finish their service, they aren't given full honorable discharges. And that has very real consequences.

[Steve Schenkin]

They didn't have access to things like the GI Bill, which was so essential to rebuilding and improving lives for these young guys after the war. And yeah, they were really angry about it because they felt they had done their part and had earned the benefits that you would earn by serving in the military in this time of war.

[Sally Helm]

For Joe Small, the alleged ringleader, having this crime on his record is a big issue.

[Steve Schenkin]

Joe started a successful construction company in New Jersey. He was just always going to succeed as a person. But it was much harder for him just to get loans, anything that involved paperwork, where they were going to see his record. It was a real hindrance to him throughout his whole life.

[Sally Helm]

Matt Delmont says the story of The Port Chicago 50 adds an important layer to our understanding, really our collective memory of World War II.

[Matthew Delmont]

We all owe a great debt to the generation that served in the war and to help win the war. But I think we also owe it to that generation, particularly the black Americans who served, to recognize that they did it in really hostile circumstances, in many cases, that they were both fighting foreign enemies, but also fighting their own countrymen who treated them in this way.

[Sally Helm]

It doesn't fit neatly into the way we think about historical eras. You know, American history often gets put into these clean cut buckets like Reconstruction, the Gilded age, the roaring twenties.

[Matthew Delmont]

I think something like Port Chicago in 1944 is. It doesn't fit as neatly in the traditional stories we tell about World War II, but also the traditional stories we tell about the black civil rights movement. We start the story of civil rights in the 1950s, traditionally with the Montgomery bus boycott or Rosa Parks story. There's a lot of truth to that narrative and the kind of quote, unquote, golden age of the civil rights movement. But historians for generations now have been trying to push against that narrative and talk about the long civil rights movement, talk about how black Americans have been fighting for. For freedom and for equality well before the start of World War II and well after it.

[Sally Helm]

Ever since the sailors were freed in 1946, there has been an ongoing movement for the US government to right this wrong, overturn these convictions. One sailor, Freddy Meeks, applies for and receives a pardon from President Bill Clinton in 1999. But a pardon comes with an admission of guilt. And most of the sailors just aren't willing to do that.

[Steve Schenkin]

That's kind of the opposite of what we're asking for. We want the government to admit that they were the ones who were guilty.

[Sally Helm]

Finally, just recently, in 2024, something big happens in the case of the Port Chicago 50. On the 80th anniversary of the explosion, July 17, the Navy makes an announcement. Secretary Carlos Del Toro puts out a video statement. The Secretary of the Navy. I have made the decision inherent within my authorities, dating to the laws of the time, to set aside the courts martial results of all sailors convicted as part of the Port Chicago incident.

[Steve Schenkin]

This is much more than a pardon. He wiped out the convictions entirely.

[Sally Helm]

This decision clears their names, restores their honor, and acknowledges the courage they displayed in the face of immense danger. But this action is about more. None of The Port Chicago 50 lived to see this moment. But 80 years later, their names are officially cleared. Thanks for listening to History this Week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel. To stay updated on all things History this Week, sign [e-mail] and if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an [e-mail] Special thanks to our guests, Matthew Delmont, professor of history at Dartmouth College and author of Half the Epic Story of African Americans fighting World War II at home and Abroad, and Steve Schenkin, author of the Port Chicago 50 disaster, mutiny and the Fight for Civil Rights. This episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein and produced and story edited by me, Sally Helm for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producers are Ben Dickstein and David Weisbord from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eating Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler. Don't forget to follow, rate and review History this Week wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week. Hey listeners, we just want to let you know that as we head into the holidays, History this Week is not going anywhere. You will have plenty of new stories to share with family and friends, so when you're showing off everything you learned, make sure to tell them you got it from History this Week.