CONCORD — One hour meant the difference between life and death for Morris Soublet Sr., a 22-year-old sailor assigned to load ammunition at Port Chicago, a distant naval base between Martinez and Pittsburg in Contra Costa County, during World War II.
By returning to his Marine barracks sooner than usual on the evening of July 17, 1944, he narrowly avoided being included on the list of 320 men—lots of them black—who were killed in a series of devastating explosions that virtually reduced the Marine base to dust.
After the disaster, tons of of black sailors who refused to return to work loading cluster bombs, munitions, mines and other explosives onto ships sure for the Pacific were charged with mutiny and disobeying war orders.
On Saturday morning, Soublet's son, Richard, and greater than 400 other members of the family, community activists and elected officials gathered near the stays of the loading dock where his father had led crews loading munitions to commemorate the Navy's decision to completely rehabilitate all men on the eightieth anniversary of the explosion, the worst military disaster on the American mainland during World War II.
After several people spoke concerning the tough fight for rehabilitation, a wreath was laid in Suisun Bay and people present threw dozens of flowers in her memory.
Richard was a young person when he first heard bits and pieces of his father's memories from Port Chicago, but Soublet, now 78, didn’t learn the total story until he returned home from his own military service in Vietnam.
“He said it was one of the most horrific things he had ever experienced,” said Soublet, who lives in Oakland. He said his father, who died in 2004 at age 82, followed orders to return to work, motivated by a way of duty to his country and his fellow soldiers in World War II. “I hope we never forget that it was unconscionable to convict these sailors of mutiny. I hope we always remember that they gave their lives for their country.”
In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, many traumatized sailors reported feelings of panic and unease, based on oral histories and in-depth interviews. These fears continued to simmer because the Navy was unable to offer a transparent explanation for the reason behind the explosion.
Many black military personnel stationed at Port Chicago had long suffered racial injustice, lax training protocols, excessive war quotas, and disrespect from all-white officers on the rank and file.
But the physical and psychological shock of the explosion in July 1944 caused 258 of those black soldiers to rethink their duty and, despite death threats from their superiors, to channel their anger and fear right into a collective, non-violent work stoppage.
However, naval prosecutors quickly labeled this resistance as mutiny, thereby banning any questioning of the legitimacy of military authority.
By September, 258 sailors who finally agreed to return to work were convicted of insubordination, and 50 men who continued to withstand despite harassment and death threats were imprisoned in the course of the war. All were found guilty.
Soublet, who was born two years after the explosion, said that in his long fight for justice he channeled the emotions that had built up over time by addressing naval officials directly and arguing that rehabilitation was the one solution to properly honor the sailors' memory and their actions.
That dream became a reality last week when Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro acquitted each of those men of all charges – exactly 80 years after the horrific disaster.
“I'm conflicted that it's taken us so long to get to this point, but I'm happy that we're finally here,” Soublet said. “This is a happy day, an uplifting moment.”
Del Toro said these soldiers weren’t rebelling but simply pleading for his or her lives and people of their comrades after the Navy failed in its obligation to guard them. On Saturday, he vowed to the descendants of the Port Chicago sailors that these men would never again be remembered as “mutineers.”
“They committed a desperate act of self-preservation, refusing to participate in further destruction and bloodshed,” said Del Toro, his voice briefly faltering with emotion. “Tragically, their stand was met with suspicion, hostility and criminal charges. These men – who had sworn to defend their country – were now ostracized, their voices drowned out by the roar of a system that refused to admit its own mistakes.”
He thanked the family and community members who never overpassed the Port Chicago disaster and fought for long-overdue justice, including the Rev. Diane McDaniel, president and founding father of Friends of Port Chicago, and Robert Allen, an investigative reporter and historian who devoted much of his life to documenting the sailors' experiences. Allen died exactly one week before the Navy announced the rehabilitation.
“For eight decades, the story of Port Chicago has been a stark reminder of great injustice,” Del Toro said. “This event marks a turning point in our nation's history – a moment when we confront our ghosts and embrace the promise of greater justice.”
For Robert Harris and his family, too, this was long overdue.
In 2016 — many years after the Navy announced that his uncle, Eugene Coffee Jr., had died in a ship explosion — Harris learned through genetic ancestry testing that the 22-year-old World War II sailor was actually considered one of the boys killed within the catastrophic explosions. The previous assumption was not that he had died at Pearl Harbor.
Harris stays bitter that an all-black crew was relegated to such dangerous, backbreaking labor on the shores of Suisun Bay – a mirrored image of the long history of mistreatment of African Americans within the military and elsewhere – but he said Saturday's memorial finally provided a way of closure.
“Our stories seem to be lost in history, but there is no time limit for telling the truth — no time limit for justice,” said Harris, standing next to the last remnants of Port Chicago. “Now that (the Navy) is acknowledging and righting past wrongs, it is connecting facts to history — the truth of what happened here.”
Originally published:
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