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Volume 076-4 - October 2022 (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
NCHS Bulletin October 2022
Letter to the Editor
September 14, 2022
Dear Editor,
Yesterday, here in Santa Rosa, centered less than two
miles from my mobile home, we had two very loud
and bumpy earthquake shocks within the span of one
minute of each other. The first was 4.4 and the second 4.3 on the Richter scale. It happened at 6:39 p.m.
while I was sitting in my living room working on the
Union newspaper from August 1883. We were jumping, I can tell you! Nothing harmed or broken, except
my mood.
It made me think of the wartime explosion in Contra
Costa County on July 17, 1944, when our family was
living in Walnut Creek. My parents were downtown
at choir practice in the Methodist Church when it happened about 10:20
p.m. and my
sisters and I were
]
QFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH
WOT TO BE RELEASED
; (TV \FOR PUBLICATION
getting ready \¥ YY YARO MARE. ISLAND, CALE
for bed. Even i
though the blast 1
was some fifteen
miles away it
knocked me over
onto my bed and
bent the frame on
a window which
usually opened
outwardly, but
now was bent into
the dining room.
My parents said
every plate glass
window in the
downtown stores
broke into pieces.
They were frightAftermath of the damage.Courtesy Wikipedia Commons
for the Pacific theater troops blew up. Another 390
others were injured. It was WWII’s worst home front
disaster. The explosion lit up the night sky and was felt
throughout the East Bay. Approximately two thirds of
the dead were Black sailors who had not received formal training in the handling and loading of explosives
into ships. The sailors had been told that the larger
munitions such as bombs and shells were not live
when in fact they were. (See photo on page 6).
A month later, similarly unsafe conditions inspired
hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions,
an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. Fifty
men—called the “Port Chicago 50”—were convicted
of mutiny and sentenced to fifteen years of prison
and hard labor as well as given dishonorable discharges. During and after the trial questions were
raised about
the fairness
and legality of
court-martial
proceedings.
The courts-martial board was
reconvened in
1945, but the
convictions
were affirmed.
Throughout the
1940s the Navy
delt with several race-related
protests which
eventually led
the service to
desegregate
its forces
beginning in
February 1946.
ened of what they
supposed might be an enemy attack. This happened
when I was in high school. Three months after the
explosion I enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
The blast was from a massive munition explosion
at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine located on the
southern banks of Suisan Bay. 320 men were instantly
killed when two ships being loaded with ammunition
In 1994 the Port
Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was
dedicated to the lives lost in the disaster. The memorial is located at the Concord Naval Weapons
Station. On June 11, 2019, a concurrent resolution
was introduced in the U.S. Congress that officially
exonerated the 50 men court martialed by the Navy.
— Dave Comstock