The name Port Chicago will
forever carry with it the memory of the explosion that occurred on July 17 th,
1944. However, before the Navy colonized this area of central Contra Costa
County, Port Chicago was known as Seal Bluff and was a quiet area where lumber
ship companies came searching for western sales yards. The freight trains had already
established a trail close to the water's edge and the river was perfect for the
barges which would be needed to carry cargo up and down stream.
The travelers from Coos
Bay, Oregon came first with their schooners and desire to build. The C.A. Smith
Lumber Company of Coos Bay purchased 1,500 acres on one and a half miles of the
river's marshland frontage from the Cunningham Estate and converted it into a
freight yard in 1907. The C.A. Smith Lumber Company built a planning mill, a
dry kiln, and a drying shed. It had the largest finishing mill in the United
States and attracted workers from the Oakland-Berkeley area, as well as near by
Martinez. It had an annual payroll of roughly $300,000.
The firm established "The City of Bay Point" and
retied the name "Seal Bluff Landing"; which was the name given to the
area five miles above the county seat of Martinez. As the labor force
increased, so too was the demand for housing and community services. These
demands were met by the firm until the fire of 1913 which destroyed all of the
improvements. The firm closed its operations and in 1915 it reopened its doors
as the Coos Bay Lumber Company. Coos Bay Lumber operated until 1932, when the
yard closed as a result of the great depression. Around the year 1917, the city
of Bay Point housed roughly one thousand people. In 1917 the United States War
Department awarded a contract to the Pacific Coast Shipping Company to build ten
10,000-ton freighters to replace those which had been destroyed by German
U-boats. The Pacific Coast
Shipping Company decided on the Port Chicago area and founded the town of
"Clyde" which was just a few miles south of Port Chicago on the
Concord Channel.
The company broke ground
for eight shipways on the 6 th of January 1918, building plate shops and
auxiliary buildings. Workers came from all over the bay--from Oakland,
Berkeley, Antioch, and other areas along the eastern Contra Costa line. At the end of the war, the Pacific
Coast Shipping Company laeft the town of Clyde and Coos Bay Lumber later moved
to Oakland. However, most of the
residents of the area stayed as they had opened business. Other residents were employed in
Concord or worked at the oil refineries at Avon and Martinez. New businesses eventually came to the
township such as Bay Point Iron Works and a newspaper called The Bay Point
Breeze .
In 1931 the town of Bay
Point, in an effort to attract more industry to the area, changed its name to
Port Chicago and incorporated the towns of Clyde and Nichols. As California and the Bay Area were
becoming more industrialized, Port Chicago became a site that offered more than
most areas for industrial development.
There was an abundance of fresh water coming from the Contra Costa
Canal, adequate electric power, warehousing, and it was served by three
railroads and hence, stood as an ideal location for any industry with shipping
needs. Perhaps it was these things that drew the War Department's attention
back to this area of the Bay after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1942, the United States
War department established its naval ammunition depot and built loading docks
for its ships on the waterfront of Port Chicago. The shape of the Suisun provided a safe harbor for the navy
and the islands of Seal, Roe, Ryer, and Simmons served as a buffer that
hindered the view of activities taking place on the base from the Benicia side
of Suisun Bay. Yet, the occupation
of the waterfront by the navy would forever change Port Chicago.
The navy implemented
racialized labor practices, assigning to blacks the most dangerous jobs in the
navy--the job of loading and handling ammunition. The men were often untrained
and not given the proper tools or supervision to handle the munitions safely.
Cargo loaders often complained about the nature of the work, even the coast
guard reported that the munitions handling on the base would cause a deadly
accident. The white officers who oversaw the cargo loaders would often have their
units race each other to see whose unit could load the most munitions the
fastest. Munitions were loaded in three 8 hour shifts, which meant that there
was not a moment during the day when they were not being loaded.
The date was July 17, 1944.
Only two years after the Navy established their presence, two ships (the SS
E.A. Bryan and the Quinalt Victory) were tied up on opposite sides of the
loading dock exploded while waiting to receive ammunition. The holds were
packed with high explosives and incendiary bombs, including depth charges and
ammunition. There were sixteen railcars sitting on the pier holding
approximately 428 tons of munitions. 320 workers--cargo holders, crewmen, and
sailors were working in the area at the time of the explosion. At 10:20p.m, the
Port Chicago Naval Magazine exploded. Six seconds after the first explosion,
the contents in E.A.Bryan detonated as one massive bomb causing an even bigger
explosion than the first, and sent a massive ball of smoke and fire into the
air stretching two miles over the area of Port Chicago. The seismic shock was
felt from all areas in the bay, and as far away as Boulder City, Nevada.
Everything in the blast was destroyed, leaving only a small section of the E.A.
Bryan which was the size of a suitcase. Between five and ten thousand tons of
ammunition killed 320 sailors and vaporized many more. Almost all of the
victims were black.
Following the explosion, 50
African American men who refused to return to work loading munitions under the
same supervisors and same conditions were charged with "mass mutiny".
The men were represented by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, but were
all found guilt, assigned prison sentences of 8 to 15 years and were
dishonorably charged. The prisoners were released from Prison in 1946, a year
after the war ended. All of the "mutineers," however had to remain in
the Navy and were sent to the South Pacific for a "probationary
period" before being gradually released one-by-one. Due to the high press
coverage of the Port Chicago 50, President Truman submitted an executive order
to end segregation in the military in 1948.
At the time of the blast, Port Chicago contained 660 homes,
three hotels, a movie house, and a shopping district. Most residents stayed and
rebuilt and collected on average $1,300 each for damage to homes in the town.
Between the years 1966-1968, the United States government bought 5,000 acres of
land in the Port Chicago area. The Navy first purchased land to serve as a
buffer between the docks and ammunition depot. Later, the Navy purchased the
town of Port Chicago itself, evicting the last owner in the town in 1969. The
town of Port Chicago, including the areas known as Clyde and Nichols was
demolished and turned into the Concord Naval Weapons Facility. In 1992, after pressure from Berkeley
Professor Robert Allen, Port Chicago survivors, and Congressman George Miller,
the United States Congress passed a bill to create the Port Chicago memorial.
In 1999, President Clinton granted a pardon to the last remaining survivor of
the Port Chicago 50.