Week 37
September 10 - September 16
|
|
1944 -- 200 Black Sailors Die in Munitions Blast
Washington Afro American, July 22, 1944
In one of the most tragic events of World War II more than 200 Black Navy men were killed in an explosion at the Port Chicago, Calif. naval depot.
San Francisco, Cal – The number of known dead in the Port Chicago, Calif., naval depot blast was placed at 203 by Lieut. Com. L. L. Lovette, chief of the office of public relations of the Navy Department here early Tuesday.
Commander Lovette told the AFRO that the explosion of two ammunition-laden
ships Monday night had caused the instant death of both crews and a detail of 200 colored enlisted men and had brought injury in 200 others.
The total of 250 casualties, he said, had been definitely established with the number of missing and unaccounted for reaching from an additional 600 to 1,000 persons, military and civilians.
The disaster, unparalleled in American naval history, occurred 50 miles north of this city, immediately killed were the men assigned to the detail loading ammunition on one of the two destroyed ships together with their nine white officers.
Less than one mile from the dock stood barracks of 1,485 colored enlisted men and a $2,500 recreation hall completed only last week. Total deaths and injuries in these buildings have not been ascertained though they are expected to be high.
All Red Cross and available medical and nursing personnel and disaster equipment in Central Costa County were immediately rushed to the scene.
Hundreds of the injured have been evacuated in the Mare Island Naval Hospital and the Army hospital at Camp Stoneman.
The exact number of Naval casualties will be determined later following a general muster. Lieut. Com. Lovette declined to identify any of the dead. He said he could not yet ascertain the number of civilian casualties, although one of the ships whose crew was wiped out carried a complement of 70 men.
. . . As the blasted and dazed personnel of the depot and residents of the war-
boomed town of Port Chicago attempted to take toll of their damage the early estimate of dead continued to rise.
Virtually every building in the little town was flattened or twisted on its foundation. The area was ordered evacuated and its residents were moved to Camp Stoneman or Martinez. Fleets of ambulances, Army and Navy trucks, taxicabs and other vehicles jammed the roads between the stricken town and others in the vicinity.
Power lines, gas and water mains were damaged by the explosion. Army, Navy, Red Cross and civilian personnel worked under the light of hastily rigged floodlights and automobile headlamps to aid the wounded. Legionnaire, auxiliary, State, Navy and military police worked side by side searching the debris and aiding the victims.
. . . Traditional Jim Crow barriers vanished as all facilities of neighboring
communities were made available to the injured. Hospitals which never before accepted colored patients made room for injured of all nationalities.
|
