When family history informs us about American History

[csziggy]

I've been scanning my Dad's letters home during World War II. The letters begin in 1942 when he was at the Michigan School of Mining and Technology (now known as Michigan Tech). He'd signed up for the US Naval Reserve, volunteered for active duty but was sent back to college until he was called up.

The sequence is not clear to me and I haven't correlated the letters with his service record, which I have already scanned but he was eventually called up. He spent a while in Washington DC as a draftsman. He then attended midshipsman school at Columbia University in New York, submarine school at New London, Connecticut, and was assigned to a brand new submarine before it was commissioned at Mare Island, Vallejo, California.

While at Mare Island, on July 19, 1944, he wrote home:

Dear Folks,
We had quite a big blow out here the other night. Port Chicago is only 15 miles away and we really felt the thing here. Concussion broke about have the plate glass in town. There was no noise but a rapid pressure rise for a few seconds./div]

The event was the Port Chicago Disaster on July 17, 1944:

1944
Port Chicago disaster

An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing 332 people on this day in 1944. The United States’ World War II military campaign in the Pacific was in full swing at the time. Poor procedures and lack of training led to the disaster.

Port Chicago, about 30 miles north of San Francisco, was developed into a munitions facility when the Naval Ammunition Depot at Mare Island, California, could not fully supply the war effort. By the summer of 1944, expansion of the Port Chicago facility allowed for loading two ships at once around the clock. The Navy units assigned to the dangerous loading operations were generally segregated African-American units. For the most part, these men had not been trained in handling munitions. Additionally, safety standards were forgotten in the rush to keep up frenetic loading schedules.

On the evening of July 17, the SS Quinault Victory and SS E.A. Bryan, two merchant ships, were being loaded. The holds were being packed with 4,600 tons of explosives–bombs, depth charges and ammunition. Another 400 tons of explosives were nearby on rail cars. Approximately 320 workers were on or near the pier when, at 10:18 p.m., a series of massive explosions over several seconds destroyed everything and everyone in the vicinity. The blasts were felt as far away as Nevada and the resulting damage extended as far as San Francisco. Every building in Port Chicago was damaged and people were literally knocked off their feet. Smoke and fire extended nearly two miles into the air. The pilot of a plane flying at 9,000 feet in the area claimed that metal chunks from the explosion flew past him.

Nearly two-thirds of the people killed at Port Chicago were African-American enlisted men in the Navy – 15 percent of all African-Americans killed during World War II. The surviving men in these units, who helped put out the fires and saw the horrors firsthand, were quickly reassigned to Mare Island. Less than a month later, when ordered to load more munitions, but still having received no training, 258 African-American sailors refused to carry out the orders. Two hundred and eight of them were then sentenced to bad conduct discharges and pay forfeiture. The remaining 50 men were put on trial for general court martial. They were sentenced to between eight and 15 years of hard labor, though two years later all were given clemency. A 1994 review of the trials revealed race played a large factor in the harsh sentences. In December 1999, President Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks, one of only three of the 50 convicted sailors known to be alive at the time.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/port-chicago-disaster

I'd never heard of the Port Chicago disaster and certainly not the horrendous loss of life for African-American enlisted men in an American port. That the survivors were expected to repeat the same actions that caused so many deaths was callous to the extreme. What an absurd loss of life and ridiculous response to real worries about the methods used to load munitions!

[elleng]

1. WOW!

[csziggy]

2. I know - I guess so many deaths were just written off as part of the war

But it is appalling to think about.

[elleng]

3. Yes it is appalling.

My daughter's done family research recently, which brings back our good fortune. One uncle enlisted in '42 as a Private in the Air Corps, and Dad served as legal officer in the Navy, and was stationed in Hawaii.

[csziggy]

4. I'm lucky - I inherited a lot of family research

We have a letter written to my great-great-grandfather in the 1870's discussing family history. By 1911 my grandmother (his granddaughter) had done enough research to join DAR. When Mom married into that family she worked on researching her family - which was easy because they had settled in one part of Alabama between 1819 and 1834 and stayed.

Now I have inherited the records for my husband's family which was begun about seventy five years ago. His mother researched her maiden name and compiled a book that tried to include everyone with that surname that ever lived in the United States!

Mostly I am trying to get digital records and digitize everything we have. When Mom and grandmother were researching, they didn't have access to original census pages, just the indexes - plus they knew where their ancestors lived, so they seldom even looked at those records.

My parents were both stationed in Hawaii during the war - Dad was in submarines and Mom was a Navy Nurse. That's how they met.

[oasis]

5. 1944 Port Chicago disaster. 332 lives lost.

No training to load munitions?

More than likely, President Clinton's 1999 pardon of one of the convicted African American sailors, opened up much more research and discussion of the incident.