Hospice workers come several times a week to 81-year-old Arthur Shoulders Jr.’s Tanner home to help ease the suffering of his final days.

But while Shoulders is no longer able to give an interview, his family can attest that each day of Shoulders’ life for more than 60 years has been a gift.

Reported lost in the July 17, 1944, Port Chicago explosion, 18-year-old Arthur’s mother, the late Susie Garrison Shoulders, refused to give her son up for dead.

According to the Naval History Center Web site, 5,080 tons of ammunition and high explosives ignited at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, 35 miles north of San Francisco. Two explosions six seconds apart at 10:18 p.m. totally demolished two merchant ships, the ship’s pier, a 45-ton diesel locomotive, a joiner ship, a building, an adjacent wharf, and a Coast Guard fire barge.

The blast, which could be felt throughout a 50-mile radius, killed 319 people outright and injured 255. Of the 202 Naval enlisted personnel killed, most of them were black.

Shoulders’ daughter, Pearline Burke, said that her father told her he was plucked from the ocean more than a day after the explosion, where, injured, he bobbed in a lifejacket.

Shoulders’ sister, Eula Long, said Arthur had spoken of the explosion and his rescue infrequently over the years.

“He didn’t tell Mama everything,” said Long. “I haven’t ever heard the whole story because folks then didn’t talk much about it.”

But Long remembers vividly the day Red Cross workers ventured into the field where her family was chopping cotton to deliver the grim news.

“I was 6, almost 7, when they came and said that Arthur had been killed,” said Long. “Mama said, ‘My child is not dead!’ Then they came back two weeks later and said that he was safe.”

Today, it’s hard to imagine that it would have taken the Navy two whole weeks to identify Shoulders as a survivor and inform his parents. Granted, communication was slower 60 years ago, but Long said that her brother said that he had never been issued dog tags.

Long said the government told her mother that the explosion resulted from Japanese having boarded, most likely the SS E.A. Bryan, which had just returned from her first voyage, and planted the charge that set off the explosion.

However, none of the Web sites that describe the explosion mentions Japanese infiltration.

This is an account by the Naval Historical Center:

“Construction at Port Chicago began in 1942. By 1944, expansion and improvements to the pier could support the loading of two ships simultaneously. African-American Navy personnel units were assigned to the dangerous work at Port Chicago. Reflecting the racial segregation of the day, the officers of these units were white. The officers and men had received some training in cargo handling, but not in loading munitions. The bulk of their experience came from hands-on experience. Loading went on around the clock. The Navy ordered that proper regulations for working with munitions be followed. But due to tight schedules at the new facility, deviations from these safety standards occurred. A sense of competition developed for the most tonnage loaded in an eight-hour shift. As it helped to speed loading, competition was often encouraged.

“On the evening of 17 July 1944, the empty merchant ship SS Quinault Victory was prepared for loading on her maiden voyage. The SS E.A. Bryan, another merchant ship, had just returned from her first voyage and was loading across the platform from Quinault Victory. The holds were packed with high explosive and incendiary bombs, depth charges, and ammunition – 4,606 tons of ammunition in all. There were sixteen rail cars on the pier with another 429 tons. Working in the area were 320 cargo handlers, crewmen and sailors.

At 10:18 p.m., a hollow ring and the sound of splintering wood erupted from the pier, followed by an explosion that ripped apart the night sky.

“Witnesses said that a brilliant white flash shot into the air, accompanied by a loud, sharp report. A column of smoke billowed from the pier, and fire glowed orange and yellow. Flashing like fireworks, smaller explosions went off in the cloud as it rose. Within six seconds, a deeper explosion erupted as the contents of the E.A. Bryan detonated in one massive explosion. The seismic shock wave was felt as far away as Boulder City, Nev.

“The E.A. Bryan and the structures around the pier were completely disintegrated. A pillar of fire and smoke stretched over two miles into the sky above Port Chicago. The largest remaining pieces of the 7,200-ton ship were the size of a suitcase. A plane flying at 9,000 feet reported seeing chunks of white hot metal “as big as a house” flying past. The shattered Quinault Victory was spun into the air. Witnesses reported seeing a 200-foot column on which rode the bow of the ship, its mast still attached. Its remains crashed back into the bay 500 feet away.”

The Port Chicago explosion accounted for 15 percent of all African-American casualties of World War II, according to the Web site. The Navy opened to blacks in 1942, but men served in segregated units supervised by white officers. The men assigned to the ordinance battalion were black.

Less than a month after the explosion the surviving men where ordered to Mare Island to begin loading munitions. Of the 328 men in the ordnance battalion, 258 black sailors refused to load ammunition. Of those, 208 faced summary courts-martial and were sentenced to bad conduct discharges and the forfeit of three-month’s pay for disobeying orders.

The remaining 50 were singled out for general courts martial on grounds of mutiny. While they could have been sentenced to death, they received between 8-and-15 years at hard labor. However, soon after the war all the men were given clemency. In December 1999, President Clinton pardoned one of the last surviving members of the 50.

Arthur Shoulders was not one of those ordered to Mare Island because he was in the hospital recovering from his injuries, according to Long.

In the subsequent investigation it was determined that the Port Chicago men were ill equipped—not even gloves—and that they were under trained. President Harry Truman ordered the integration of the armed services in 1948 as a direct result of the Port Chicago explosion.

After spending three months in Mare Island Naval Hospital, Shoulders received a medical discharge from the Navy in November 1944. He returned to the Tanner area where he worked as a truck driver until his retirement. He is the father of 13 children.