Nancy Gilliland Firsthand Account and Eugene Coffee Jr. Gravesite

Article written by Nicole Martin, PhD

The night of July 17, 1944 was hot. So hot that all the windows were open in the 800 square foot house thirteen-year-old Nancy Gilliland lived in with her parents and three siblings in Concord, California. Her two younger brothers had even opted to sleep outside in the backyard. Nancy was just getting ready to sleep when a flash of bright light lit up the room.

“[The light] was followed by a tremendous explosion which threw me against the door. I think there was another blast, but my brothers were screaming and I thought a bomb had been dropped in our backyard and they were hurt. My father came running to rescue my brothers.”1

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For Nancy, a young white girl living in suburban tract housing several miles from the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, the munitions explosion was a scary, visceral experience. For a few brief minutes, she believed her home was being invaded. When she looked back at that night decades later, she described it as “a night to remember.”2 Her personal experience tapped into a significant wartime fear about losing one’s home that many people at the time shared. For the sailors involved and their families, though, it was both a personal and political tragedy. It represented a systemic denial of home – a self-inflicted wound – that reflects America’s historic and ongoing racial inequality.

Voices Calling Out From the Grave

When Robert Harris walked amongst the gravestones of the Port Chicago disaster victims at Golden Gate National Cemetery in 2018, he was overcome seeing so many of the young men whose hopes and dreams had been cut short. He explained, “[I]t’s like their voices [are] calling out from the grave. For the truth to be told and justice to be done.”3

Harris was visiting the gravesite of his uncle, Eugene Coffee, Jr., who was one of many enlisted African American sailors serving at the naval magazine in a segregated work unit. While working at the largest ammunition transshipment facility on the West Coast, the almost 1,500 African Americans serving at Port Chicago experienced systemic racism, including limited roles despite combat training, unsafe working conditions, and racial slurs and indignities from their white counterparts. Relegated to the role of stevedores under the supervision of white officers, the Navy failed to provide any specialized training on loading the dangerous explosives.4

1941 portrait of Eugene Coffee, Jr. NPS Collections - POCH 43

When two cargo ships exploded on that hot night in 1944, it became the deadliest home front disaster of WWII. The explosion claimed the lives of the 320 and injured hundreds more. The blast registered 3.4 on the Richter scale and was felt more than 450 miles away.5 Nancy’s father, who worked for PG&E, found pieces of shrapnel from the explosion when repairing power lines over a mile away from the munitions depot.6

A majority of those killed in the Port Chicago explosion were young African American sailors, including the twenty-two-year-old Eugene Coffee, Jr. His remains were one of only a few dozen to be identified. Those who survived faced the horror of cleaning up the disaster, doing the “very grim work” of “picking up parts of bodies,” as one man remembered.7

After the explosion, the surviving African American sailors expected the same treatment as white officers: leave and transfers to other duties. However, contrary to the ideals of the nationally recognized Double V Campaign, which advocated for victory over both foreign enemies and domestic discrimination, the Navy transferred these sailors to the nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard to resume loading ammunition. When 258 sailors refused to return to work, protesting unsafe working conditions and racial discrimination, the Navy placed all the men on a prison barge. Eventually they collectively charged and convicted 50 men – the “Port Chicago 50” – of mutiny in the largest trial of its kind in U.S. Navy history. After decades of organized efforts by the sailors and their families, the Navy exonerated the men on July 17, 2024 – eighty years to the day after the explosion.8

To Feel at Home

While the courageous protests of the Port Chicago 50 helped push the Navy toward eventual racial integration, which in turn helped inspire the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the Port Chicago explosion has largely been forgotten by Americans today. Robert Harris and his family, knowing only that Eugene had died in an explosion on a ship, had assumed he died at Pearl Harbor. Robert had never even heard of the Port Chicago explosion. When growing up, his mother always told stories about his uncle, prompting Robert later in life to undertake a genealogical search. That search eventually led him to Eugene’s headstone in Golden Gate National Cemetery.9

To feel at home

Excerpt from an interview with Robert Harris, whose uncle Eugene Coffee, Jr. died in the munitions explosion at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.

Credit / Author:
Interview by Isabel Ziegler and Anna Christie, National Park Service, July 25, 2023

Date created:
07/25/2023

If a man can’t feel at home somewhere, he can’t make a home anywhere – And African American people, in over 400 years of our history here, we’ve never been allowed to feel at home. But in spite of all of that, you know, I feel with God as our witness, that this is our home. You know, as much as any other people we have earned the right to say that.

When interviewed for this exhibit, Robert expressed little surprise that so few, including himself, had ever heard of the Port Chicago explosion. Significant events involving African Americans, he explained, are so rarely taught in schools or remembered. For Robert, decades of racism made possible the events of Port Chicago. The devaluation of his uncle’s sacrifice is just one instance of many that continue the work of excluding African Americans from feeling at home in the U.S.10

What America must be

Excerpt from an interview with Robert Harris, whose uncle Eugene Coffee, Jr. died in the munitions explosion at Port Chicago Naval Magazine.

Credit / Author:
Interview by Isabel Ziegler and Anna Christie, National Park Service, July 25, 2023

Date created:
07/25/2023

We’ve been victimized, brutalized, and marginalized, you know, beginning with slavery. I think this is one of the great crimes against humankind. In spite of all of that, we’ve still been able to actually give our lives for this country, our labor, our devotion, our service, our love for this country. And it’s not about what America is, it’s about what it can be – and really, what it must be.

When asked why so many in his family have served to protect the American homeland despite systemic racism and blatant disregard for African American lives, Robert explained that they serve to push the nation to what it can and must be. “[T]his whole idea, of making America live up to what it says it is, is the reason why my uncle enlisted. It's kind of a home, the real home that we fight for.” By home, Robert means the promised home, where African Americans are accepted and treated as citizens and where all Americans – Black, white, and others – will work together to combat issues of racism and greed.11

The Port Chicago explosion represented a terrifying and vulnerable moment where Americans on the home front, like Nancy, felt a real sense that their homes were endangered. For many African Americans like Eugene, the discriminatory treatment by the Navy reflected how they had long been barred from feeling at home. For Robert, finally learning the truth about his uncle and visiting Eugene’s gravesite has helped to provide closure for his family. In no small part it has been a long-awaited homecoming.

The real home that we fight for

Excerpt from an interview with Robert Harris, whose uncle Eugene Coffee, Jr. died in the munitions explosion at Port Chicago Naval Magazine

Credit / Author:
Interview by Isabel Ziegler and Anna Christie, National Park Service, July 25, 2023

Date created:
07/25/2023

You know, throughout slavery, its aftermath and fallout – and out of one of the greatest lies ever told, God brought forth one of the greatest truths: that in fact, all men have the right, the God given right, to be free.

And this whole idea, of making America live up to what it says it is, is the reason why my uncle enlisted. It's kind of a home, the real home that we fight for. It’s the flag that we fly, it’s why we wrap ourselves in the flag.

Home and Homelands Exhibition

This project was made possible through the National Park Service in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

1 Nancy Gilliland, firsthand account, recorded by Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, National Park Service, July 22, 2019 (POCH 43). Also Kirsten Plomgren, email obtained by the National Park Service, April 23, 2023.

2 Gilliland, firsthand account.

3 Robert Harris, interview by Isabel Ziegler and Anna Christie, National Park Service, July 25, 2023.

4 “The Port Chicago Story: Lighting the Fuse to Civil Rights,” online exhibit, Treasure Island Museum, https://www.treasureislandmuseum.org/portchicago-1.

5 Foundation Document Overview: Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, February 2015.

6 Gilliland, firsthand account.

7 “Oral History Interview with Mr. Dewhitt Jarnison, Port Chicago Sailor, 1942-1944,” An Oral History of Port Chicago, Tracey E. Panek, Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, National Park Service, August 13, 1999, 15 (POCH 20).

8 “The Port Chicago Story: Lighting the Fuse to Civil Rights, online exhibit, Treasure Island Museum, https://www.treasureislandmuseum.org/portchicago-1.

9 Harris, interview.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid. Robert Harris, phone conversation with Isabel Ziegler, Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, March 1, 2024.

Part of a series of articles titled
Home and Homelands Exhibition: Politics.

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Betty Hardison and the American Dream

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