what happened to none of the explosion
were there any survivors well there are
many things that we do know about the
night of the explosion but there are
some things that we don't know and we'll
never know what we do know is that at
approximately 1018 on night of explosion
which was July 17th 1944 there were two
explosions that happened first one
happened last one explosion happened and
then a larger one about seven seconds
later we don't know exactly what caused
those explosions we do know that the end
result was that the pier area here at
port Chicago was more or less
obliterated there were two ships at the
time the SS EA Brian and the SS quit an
old victory and they were side by side
being loaded one was almost fully loaded
and the other one had just arrived and
was was in the process of being loaded
so when the explosion occurred it was
huge it the entire area shook windows
were shattered as far away as San
Francisco people were shaken out of bed
the town of Port Chicago which was
nearby was heavily damaged and they
produced this massive cloud that
extended about 12,000 feet up into the
air this was a massive explosive event
that shook didn't register at the entire
area and no one knew it was happening at
first I think everyone thought that we
might have been under attack but in fact
we were not under attack it was just
that something had happened at the base
with the munitions and both for those
ships and thousands and thousands and
tons of explosives and 320 men had been
had been blasted away only weeks after
the explosion the witnesses and
survivors were all sitting back to work
back to the same dangerous job of
loading ammunition with no regard for
safety or military protocols as the men
were information to head down to the
pier some hesitated and stopped when
they received the order so what happened
to those who refused
explosives everyone who survived was
severely traumatized because they were
involved in the cleanup of this area and
so there were remains of some of the
deceased that they had to clean up and
it was it was very traumatic for those
who survived they had what we like to
call survivor's guilt
you know because many of them lost
certain friends and the white sailors
were given sick leave and allowed to
take time off to try to recover mentally
from this event but the black sailors
after the very brief period during which
they were involved in the cleanup were
ordered back to work much more