The State - News from July 17, 1989

More than 300 people who were killed when ships at a Navy ammunition depot in Port Chicago near Concord exploded during World War II finally received a permanent memorial, 45 years after the tragedy. The servicemen and civilians who died in World War II’s worst stateside disaster were remembered with a half-hour service and dedication of a simple marker at the Bay Area site of the July 17, 1944, blast. Many of those killed were untrained black recruits in a segregated Navy, which assigned them to load ammunition. After the explosion, many black sailors refused to continue working under existing conditions, and dozens were court-martialed as mutineers in a case that became a cause celebre among blacks during the war.