The original magazine was planned in 1941 with construction beginning shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is now called the Military Ocean Terminal Concord. Navy munitions depot, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, which was later expanded and renamed the Concord Naval Weapons Station. In 1944, the town was a little more than a mile from a U.S. Suisun Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by San Francisco Bay. The town of Port Chicago was located on Suisun Bay in the estuary of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Marshy tidal zones separate the munitions pier from barracks buildings near the personnel pier and near the town. The munitions loading pier curves to the left beyond 20-odd revetments. The lower left shows utility and personnel piers extending toward the two sections of Seal Island. The town of Port Chicago is in the upper right. In 1994, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was dedicated to the lives lost in the disaster.īackground African American sailors of an ordnance battalion preparing 5-inch shells for packing at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in 1943 Aerial photograph, looking eastward, taken between 19. Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre among Americans opposing discrimination targeting African Americans it and other race-related Navy protests of 1944–45 led the Navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation of its forces beginning in February 1946. Owing to public pressure, the United States Navy reconvened the courts-martial board in 1945 – that board re-affirmed convictions. Forty-seven of the 50 were released in January 1946 the remaining three served additional months in prison.ĭuring and after the mutiny court-martial, questions were raised about the fairness and legality of the proceedings. Fifty men-called the " Port Chicago 50"-were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to 15 years of prison and hard labor, as well as a dishonorable discharge. Two-thirds of the dead and injured were enlisted African American sailors.Ī month later, the unsafe conditions prompted hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Munitions while being loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations, detonated killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring 390 others. Bryan on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, United States. The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitions explosion of the ship SS E.
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