John Berger stood in the stiff wind on the Port Chicago dock Saturday morning as the staccato flap of an American flag punctuated the words he spoke to the crowd gathered at the water's edge.
"I felt the ground shake," he said. "I heard the loud roar. I still feel it."
Though nearly seven decades had passed, the 91-year-old chaplain and retired Navy man could not forget the devastation when 5,000 tons of explosives were accidentally detonated as they were loaded onto two World War II ships, killing 320 men, almost all African American, and injuring 400 others.
"Remember - that was the word," Berger said at the memorial event for the 67th anniversary of the blast at the Contra Costa County naval port. "The mantle is passed to you. This is sacred ground."
Near the front of some 200 people who attended the ceremony was Dewhitt Jamison, his 88-year-old frame hunched in a wheelchair, struggling against his age and the wind to hear the words.
His memories of July 17, 1944, however, were crystal clear.
"I remember everything, really," he said.
The lights had just gone outabout 10 p.m. and Jamison was in his bunk after finishing his shift down at the dock earlier in the evening.
As the night crew loaded munitions onto cargo ships bound for battles in the Pacific, a bomb dropped on the dock, exploded and set off a chain reaction through tons of TNT.
The explosion knocked Jamison to the floor. Within a day, he was sent to collect the strewn body parts of friends and fellow Navy seamen, said his grandson, Randy Jamison, who accompanied his grandfather to the ceremony. Not long after the blast, the elder Jamison was transferred to serve in Hawaii.
While the initial blast was felt as far away as Nevada, the event would later send racially charged shock waves across the entire country.
The port, part of the former Concord Naval Weapons Station on Suisun Bay, was used as the primary munitions depot during the war. African American enlisted men, racially segregated and generally prohibited from serving in combat roles, were the primary workers used to load the bombs onto the ships.
Conditions were poor and safety was lax at the port, where higher-ranking supervisors pushed the men to rush, placing bets on which crews could load the most munitions in a shift.
After the explosion, more than 200 of the African American survivors refused to return to work loading bombs until safety issues were addressed. Among those, 50 were charged and convicted of mutiny and sentenced to prison for up to 15 years at hard labor.
They were released after about 16 months, the war over and their lives turned upside down.
Public outrage at the incident helped push the Navy to desegregate its ranks in 1946 and would ultimately provide one of the sparks for the civil rights movement.
All of those imprisoned received clemency upon their release and one, Freddie Meeks, received a pardon from then-President Clinton in 1999.
But none has been exonerated.
Two years ago, under President Obama, the Port Chicago site became part of the National Park System. Planning is under way to develop a visitor center and to increase access to the memorial, which now requires reservations and government clearance.
For years, a nonprofit called the Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial has fought to keep the story alive - to remember those lost, those jailed, and those who lived out the rest of their lives ashamed to speak of the black mark of mutiny attached to their names.
Only a handful of the African American men who survived the blast are still alive, teenagers at the time and now in their late 80s or early 90s.
"We want to tell the whole story," said Diana McDaniel, president of the Port Chicago nonprofit. "We want to clear the record of those convicted of mutiny."
At Saturday's memorial, Chuck Kohler, 87, was among the attendees. Also a World War II Navy veteran, he came because he knew what it meant to live when so many others died and he wanted to make sure people remembered it all.
Wearing a Pearl Harbor survivor's jacket and hat, Kohler said he felt a deep kinship with the Port Chicago men.
"They lost their lives aboard ships doing what was necessary at the time," he said. "They died for their country."
For more information about the park or how to visit Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, go to nps.gov/poch/index.htm.
E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment