S
Snark8
Guest
LONG BUT INTERESTING READ
Were hundreds of black seamen sacrificed in atomic bomb test?
In my view, such mistreatment cannot ever be forgiven. I'm not sure how the Blacks in this country have managed to tolerate this thus far.
by Steve Pope
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ON THE evening of July 17 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Munitions base on San Francisco Bay, California, the largest WWII military disaster on the US mainland occurred.
It was the biggest single loss of black Navy seamen. The SS E.A. Bryan, after four days of loading, was packed with 4,606 tons of ammunition and explosives. Also docked at the pier was the SS Quinault Victory, being loaded for its maiden voyage. On the pier were 16 railcars with another 430 tons of bombs waiting to be loaded. Working in the area were 320 cargo handlers, crewmen, and sailors.In an instant, one of the biggest explosions of the war occurred. The 320 men nearby were literally blown to pieces and another 390 men on the base were injured. The explosion accounted for 15 per cent of all the black casualties in the Second World War, as 202 of the dead were black US Navy personnel. In addition, of the 390 men injured, 233 were black. The E.A. Bryan and the structures around the pier completely disintegrated. A pillar of smoke and fire stretched over two miles into the sky above Port Chicago. A plane flying at 9,000 feet reported seeing chunks of white hot metal flying past. No identifiable pieces of the SS E.A. Bryan remained; 25,000,000 pounds of ship and ammunition were gone. SS Quinault Victory was blown into the air. Witnesses reported seeing a 200-foot column on which rode the bow of the ship, its mast still attached. Its remains crashed back into the bay 500 feet away. The largest remaining pieces of the 7,200-ton ship were the size of a suitcase. The search for bodies was grim work. One survivor recalled the experience: “I was there the next morning. We went back to the dock. Man, it was awful; that was a sight. You'd see a shoe with a foot in it, and then you'd remember how you'd joked about who was gonna be the first one out of the hold. “You'd see a head floating across the water, just the head, or an arm. Bodies... just awful.” The small town of Port Chicago, only 30 miles from San Francisco, also suffered tremendous damage. Chunks of smouldering metal weighing hundreds of pounds and even un-detonated bombs rained down upon the community, damaging over 300 structures and injuring over 100 people. Miraculously, none of the bombs exploded, and no residents of the town of Port Chicago were killed. It was not mere coincidence that so many of the casualties were black seaman. At that time the US Navy was racially segregated, and black seaman who volunteered thinking they would see action were assigned to non-combat duties. The black seaman at Port Chicago were put into service loading munitions on to supply ships. They did the job with limited training and without proper equipment such as gloves. At a subsequent US Navy investigation, the blame for the explosion was put at the door of the black seaman. The ‘rough and careless handling of munitions by negro seamen’ was the official cause of the explosion. The fact that white officers ran speed-loading competitions, where men were pushed to load the greatest amount of weight in the shortest time, was not seen as having any major part to play in the cause. That terrible day on July 17 remains a largely forgotten incident of WWII. But now a few but increasingly vocal voices in the States are re-opening interest in the incident and posing the most shocking of questions. Was this gigantic explosion a secret atomic bomb test using the seaman as guinea pigs, and not the result of a munitions accident? While many have dismissed the notion as just another crazy conspiracy theory, the detailed and painstaking research over 20 years of one man, Peter Vogel, has given the idea a degree of credibility that has prompted others to start their own investigations into the incident. Vogel, a former investigative journalist began his research into the Port Chicago blast by accident. After purchasing photographic paper at a car boot sale in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1980, he discovered a United States Air Force film canister with notes marked, ‘ball of fire mushroomed out in typical Port of Chicago fashion.’ Contained in the notes was information on the construction of an atomic bomb. Los Alamos was the original headquarters of the scientific team that officially created the world’s first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The note was enough to catch the interest of Vogel who at the time had not heard of the Port Chicago incident. He started to collect documents about the testing of the atomic bomb, whose official detonation was at the end of July 1945 in the New Mexico desert. He then started to investigate the Port Chicago incident. After two decades of research, Vogel believes what happened on that day was a deliberate test explosion using a secret atomic weapon called the ‘Mark II’. This was a gun detonated atomic weapon which supporters of Vogel’s theory believe was fired from either on board one of the ships or from an empty railway car on the dock. Vogel told The Voice: “The larger detonation of conventional munitions effectively concealed the proof of Mark II, except for the unique manifestations of the nuclear fission explosion fireball. It was then considered important by U.S. military planners and strategists that the proof of large scale nuclear fission weapons, proven at Port Chicago, be maintained secret as long as possible.” He believes that fears the atomic bomb programme would be passed on to Russia, Germany, or Japan caused the US president to authorise the testing of an atomic weapon. For Vogel there was another reason the port was chosen as a test site. “Mark II was proof fired at Port Chicago, rather than remotely somewhere in the desert,” because “at the Port Chicago facility the effects of a very large explosion could be very accurately measured and analyzed.” So, what is the ‘evidence’ of an atomic blast occurring at Port Chicago that has led Vogel and others to believe this is exactly what happened almost a year before the official test?
* Observers of the explosion noted a single, very bright white flash. One reported that, "the landscape was illuminated as if in daylight". A large mushroom cloud of gas also rose above the explosion. These are the typical characteristics of an atomic blast rather than the reddish, orange blast colour of conventional explosives.
* Previous explosions involving TNT, which was the main explosive material on the ship, have usually been caused by fire, or an enemy shell/ bomb hitting a ship. It is still not clear to this day how exactly the ‘rough handling’ of TNT, which is a very stable explosive, would have led to an explosion. There were in theory no detonators in any of the bombs being handled.
* Conventional explosives would have caused a very rapid sequence of explosions, as the heat generated by one exploding bomb ignited another and so on, rather than the single blast that was reported by observers.
* Before the explosion a pilot flying in an Army C-49 plane south of the blast had been ordered to fly line-of-sight toward the Port of Chicago and to report anything he saw. No one has ever explained why this order was given.
* The US government claimed there was not enough uranium-235 available to make a bomb at the time of the explosion. This is now known to have been a lie – recently declassified information shows there was enough for 15.5 kilograms of U-235 needed for a bomb. The December 1943 inventory was 74 kg of U-235.
* Two doctors in Los Angeles, Vogel claims, told him they were interns at the Naval hospital where many of the burn victims from the port were taken. They were mystified by the burns, having seen nothing like them until they later got into their radiologic studies.
* In the first British nuclear test in 1953 off the west coast of Australia, a 25-kiloton bomb was moored offshore in an old frigate and detonated in order to test the effects in case an accident should some day occur at port. That well-documented study showed that there was essentially no drift of radiation away from ground-zero. So, this could explain why traces of radiation were not found at Port Chicago.
While many want to dismiss Vogel as just another conspiracy theorist, his startling claims are based on scientific theory. The British government sent tens of thousands of troops to their certain death in WW1 trench warfare, and Stalin let millions of Russians die to strengthen his own political position. Some argue it is not such an unthinkable notion that the US government would sacrifice a few hundred lives, if it was seen as necessary for victory in a war that had already cost millions of lives. If what happened on that day in July 1944 was indeed an atomic bomb test, it is likely that at some time the truth will eventually come out.
“I believe we're getting there,” Vogel told The Voice. “There are now three television documentary historical films in production.”
Peter Vogel’s internet book, The Last Wave from Port Chicago is at www.portchicago.org/
MUTINY
The Port Chicago explosion is a chapter of African-American history that is filled with drama. Weeks after the explosion, 300 black seaman refused to go back to work loading ammunition at the Mare Island Naval base.The sailors were not given counselling to deal with the shock of losing so many of their friends on July 17, and denied shore leave unlike many white sailors. Concerned that no improvements had been made to safety procedures, they simply refused orders. Over 250 men were arrested and jailed for three days in a barge moored to the pier. They were threatened by their white officers with mutiny charges punishable by death during wartime. Eventually 200 went back to work, but 50 remaining black enlisted men who still refused to load munitions under unsafe conditions were charged with mutiny and given sentences of between eight to 15 years in jail. However, after the war the men were released from jail. Despite a long campaign by black civil rights groups such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the convictions were never overturned. In 1994, 24 members of Congress petitioned the USNavy to review the circumstances surrounding the Port Chicago convictions. The Navy Board of Review admitted that race had played a role in assigning only African-American sailors to load ammunition, and the subsequent mutiny proceedings illustrated the costs of racial discrimination. However, the Navy still refused to overturn the convictions.
Actor and film producer Morgan Freeman made a TV movie in 1999 called Mutiny to highlight what he sees as an injustice that too few people know about. Freeman said: “There have been many incidents that happened to blacks that we haven't heard of. I think they were waiting for us to come and tell the story.” In December 1999, then US President Bill Clinton officially pardoned the men.
SOURCE:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/7037
ANOTHER ARTICLE ON THE SAME SUBJECT:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80-1.htm
