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07:40 - 10 January 2005
re-run from july
good morning everybuddy! Now, because i just cant think of anything to say today, i decided to run a repeat entry from july! TV is running repeats, so why not me!

Port Chicago explosion still echoes 60 years later

Robert Edwards Sr. touched a hand to the back of his head to show where a chunk of flying debris left a large, nearly fatal gash 60 years ago during the Port Chicago explosion.

"I thought I was going to die," Edwards, 78, said recently while sitting in his Oakland home.

Today, more than 240 people, including more than a dozen survivors, will gather to commemorate the anniversary of the July 17, 1944, explosion of 5,000 tons of ammunition at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Contra Costa County, an event that helped to desegregate the nation's armed forces.

African American sailors were routinely assigned to load ships at the munitions depot, a dangerous task made even more deadly when white officers pushed them to work faster and with minimal safety measures, according to former ammunition loaders whose accounts were published in numerous books and news reports.

Some likened it to a "slave labor" camp, where black sailors had to walk a half-mile to use the bathroom because they weren't allowed to use bathrooms aboard the ships they were loading.

The explosion occurred when a munitions ship blew up during loading operations. The force of the blast rattled windows more than 100 miles away.

Three hundred and twenty people -- 202 of them African American enlisted men -- were killed and 400 more wounded in the incident.

Almost immediately after clearing away debris and the bodies of their fallen comrades, black sailors were ordered to resume loading operations with no changes to the rules and procedures that many felt led to the tragedy. Meanwhile, white officers were given 30-day leaves to visit their families.

When several of the men refused to report to the loading dock, 50 were imprisoned and tried for mutiny. Those men were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Edwards can still remember being knocked out of his bed by the explosion as he was reading a science-fiction book, the confusion and the rows of wounded filling a nearby hospital on that chilling night.

Then an 18-year-old yeoman, Edwards had arrived at the base just two months earlier to work as an office clerk.

After being released from the hospital, Edwards was sent back to active duty and told he would be loading ammunition as a replacement for the mutineers.

"I could hardly walk," Edwards recalled. "I told the lieutenant I'd go back to being a yeoman."

The Navy responded to Edwards' refusal by putting him in the brig for five days and giving him an undesirable discharge. He then went on with his life, starting a career with the railroads as a dining car waiter, getting married and raising a family.

For years, he suffered from migraine headaches and pain in his feet, which were shredded by shards of glass in the explosion.

But like many other survivors, he did not talk about his experience at Port Chicago with friends or even members of his family because the black sailors there had all been branded mutineers.

Harry J. Baker, 84, past president of the WWII Black Naval Veterans association, says the events of Port Chicago strengthened the movement to desegregate the nation's armed services.

"We were all going through the same thing," Baker said of the way African Americans were treated in the military during the war. "Segregation was everywhere."

In recent years, activists fought to clear the names of the Port Chicago mutineers. Freddie Meeks, who died last year, was the only one of the "Port Chicago 50" to receive a pardon, which he accepted in 1999 from President Bill Clinton.

To receive a pardon, the survivors were required to request one. Forty- eight of the 50 mutineers had already passed away. The only other surviving mutineer declined to participate in the pardon effort, port officials said.

The Port Chicago Naval Magazine was dedicated as a national memorial in 1994 to honor the sailors, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, Merchant Mariners and others who died in the blast, the largest homeland disaster of World War II.

"These men, and hundreds more, lived most of their lives without adequate recognition for their service during World War II," said Rep. George Miller, D- Martinez, who lobbied for the pardon and to get the sailors' convictions overturned. "I am so pleased that they were able to see this memorial during their lifetimes and know that their experience has become the subject of books, papers and films."

At today's event, participants will drop red, white and blue carnations along the shore while dignitaries present a wreath at the memorial for the fallen men. Letters written by an officer to his family the day after the explosion also will be read aloud.

Edwards, who plans to attend the service with his family, said that while it would be an emotional event, he is looking forward to the gathering.

Dozens of family pictures fill the walls of Edwards' home, including one wall that is lined from one end to the other with pictures of his children and grandchildren in their high school and college graduation gowns.

Others are the photos of fellow sailors who served at Port Chicago.

"Those men were scapegoats," Edwards said of the convicted mutineers and victims of the explosion. "They're gone, 18-, 19-year-old kids that never had a chance to live."

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