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eBook Category: History
eBook Description: In 1967, 24 years after the July 1944 ammunition ship explosion at Port Chicago, California, which killed 320 sailors, the U.S. Navy moved to buy the nearby town of 2,000 people to protect it from another explosion ("We had to destroy the village in order to save it."). The Navy eventually won and Port Chicago isn't there anymore, but townspeople did fight back, saying the Navy should move, not the town. Among other efforts, they wrote protest letters to local newspapers, many engaging in political discourse for the first times in their lives. Those letters are collected in this short book, unedited.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Media Man! Productions, 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2007

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [51 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [95 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [28 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [206 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [30 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [103 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [99 KB] , hiebook (KML) [120 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [125 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [25 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [32 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [90 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [47 KB]
Words: 9191
Reading time: 26-36 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The Port Chicago Magazine ammunition ship explosion of July 17, 1944 that killed 320 and injured 390 has been studied and documented thoroughly. The mutiny that the explosion prompted has received even greater attention; it's rightly perceived as a turning point in American history, changing the nation in a profound way.

The buyout of the small San Francisco Bay Area town that occurred 24 years later ("We had to destroy the village in order to save it."), remains unheralded. Few people even know it happened. Google up "Port Chicago" and "mutiny" or "explosion" and you'll be there all day. Try "Port Chicago" and "buyout" or "purchase" or "eminent domain" and you get next to nothing.

As former resident Velda Mattson put it, "What happened in 1944 was an accident; what happened in 1968 was a crime." It would be an even greater crime if it were forgotten.

Fortunately, an effort is being made to remember. You're holding part of that effort.

Soon after the Budget Bureau approved the $19.8 million Navy buyout of Port Chicago in early 1967 and until late 1969 when the last residents were gone (the Bidelmans), many reader letters appeared on editorial pages of Bay Area newspapers remarking on the issue. The Letters-to-the-Editor section presented a ready public forum for ordinary people to speak out. Most letters came from town supporters; many were boldly engaging in public and political discourse for the first times in their lives. A few Navy supporters stepped up, but only a few.

The letters present, in the words of those most affected, the emotional trauma of losing their community, their home. The letters are reprinted here unedited.

I got these letters, along with other newspaper articles and other material, from several former residents when I approached them in the mid-1980s for research for my book Port Chicago Isn't There Anymore--But We Still Call It Home (unpublished, as this is written). My thanks to Pam Hawthorne, Laura Register, Mabel Bidelman, Ginny Groves, Marcia Lesley and Marti Aiello particularly for helping with this material.

Most of the letters in my files didn't have the source newspaper or date attached; I've noted source and date when available. Some letters appeared in more than one newspaper. (There may be more, but probably not many more.)

Here are those letters, in no particular order.