Port Chicago Isn't There Anymore - But We Still Call It Home
by Ken Rand
"We had to destroy the village to save it."
On July 17, 1944, two ammunition ships blew up at the docks of the Port Chicago Naval Magazine on the south shore of Suisun Bay east of San Francisco. The blast killed 320 people, injured 390, and caused property damage 35 miles away. Port Chicago, population about 1,500, a mile south of the piers, sustained property damage and a few injuries. In 1967, claiming fear of a repeat explosion, but bigger because of the Vietnam War, the Navy tried to buy the town and evacuate it—to save the town from the Navy.
But nobody in town had died in 1944, the town was there first (it was born as Bay Point in 1908), and the ammunition depot was supposed to go away after the war.
Port Chicagoans fought a David & Goliath struggle to save their community from the Navy's relentless, ruthless buyout campaign. But in 1968, the Navy won and Port Chicago was evacuated and bulldozed into the ground.
Written by 35-year veteran reporter and former Port Chicago resident Ken (Whitmore) Rand, this is the complete story—accurate and unabashed—of how this tiny town and its humble citizens fought to preserve their homes, how the town died—and how it lives on in the hearts and memories of those who loved it.
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