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U.S. Navy exonerates Black sailors unjustly punished in WWII Port Chicago explosion aftermath

The Port Chicago 50, a group of Black sailors charged and convicted in the largest U.S. Navy mutiny in history, were exonerated by the U.S. Navy on Wednesday, which called the case "fundamentally unfair."

The decision culminates a mission for Carol Cherry of Sycamore, Ill., who fought to have her father, Cyril Sheppard, and his fellow sailors cleared.

The Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, said the sailors' court martial contained "significant legal errors that rendered them fundamentally unfair."

"Yet, for 80 years, the unjust decisions endured. Now, I am righting a tremendous wrong that has haunted so many for so long."

Sheppard was a third-class gunner's mate in the Navy in Port Chicago, California. He and fellow Black sailors in the Bay Area were tasked with a dangerous job they weren't trained to do – loading live munitions onto ships.

"The dangers under which those sailors were performing their duties, loading those ammunition ships without the benefit of proper training or equipment. Also being requested to load those ships as quickly as they possibly could without any sense of the dangers that itself would present, it's just an injustice that, you know, is just wrong," Del Toro told CBS News Chicago.

After Sheppard left work one night, there was an explosion. And then another. Three hundred twenty were killed, and 390 were hurt on July 17, 1944. It was the worst home-front disaster of World War II.

When Sheppard and other Black sailors were ordered to resume the same dangerous work, they refused. 

The Port Chicago 50 were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to prison. Cherry said her father was in prison for nearly two years. 

Another 206 sailors, who eventually agreed to return to work after being threatened, were convicted on a lesser charge of refusing an order. Two other sailors had their cases dismissed. 

Following the 1944 explosion, white supervising officers at Port Chicago were given hardship leave while the surviving Black sailors were ordered back to work. The Navy's personnel policies at the time barred Black sailors from nearly all seagoing jobs. Most of the Navy ordnance battalions assigned to Port Chicago had Black enlisted men and white officers.  

None of the sailors lived to see this day. 

Wednesday's action goes beyond a pardon and vacates the military judicial proceedings carried out in 1944 against all of the men.  

Del Toro's action converts the discharges to honorable unless other circumstances surround them. After the Navy upgrades the discharges, surviving family members can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs on past benefits that may be owed, the Navy said.

When reached by CBS News Chicago, Carol Cherry was boarding a flight from O'Hare International Airport to San Francisco for a ceremony marking 80 years since the disaster. 

"The Navy had reached out to me," Cherry said. "I had two different officers call, and they're going to meet me in San Francisco because they have some good news to share.  

"We are so delighted. Our dad would be very happy about this. The men and their families are all very deserving of acknowledgment and exoneration. That's the biggest thing.

"He had nothing to be ashamed of. He had nothing to be afraid of. They did the right thing, so I wish he had gotten to the point where he thought he would be seen as a hero, but it was a heroic thing that they did."

In:
• Chicago
• U.S. Navy
• San Francisco