PLACE-MAKING AT THE MARE ISLAND NAVAL SHIPYARD DURING WORLD WAR II

In 1941, on the peninsula adjacent to the city of Vallejo, California known as Mare Island, the first publication of the newly established Mare Island Grapevine monthly newspaper reached its viewers. The paper’s slogan read, “Published Monthly in the Interests of The Ships and Men of Mare Island Navy Yard” and remained that way into 1942.1 With the United States’ entrance into World War II, roles in the workplace began to shift, especially when it came to military production. During World War II, the United States’ need for manpower rose substantially, and civilians at home felt its demands. The mobilization of the home front opened employment to those previously unconsidered such as white women and African Americans. However, the experiences of these groups at Mare Island varied dramatically. By January of 1943, due to the increased population and importance of Mare Island, the paper was published weekly and came with a new slogan, “Published weekly in the Interests of the Ships and Shipbuilders of Mare Island.”2 The slogan’s change symbolized the more accepting nature of Mare Island that white women workers experienced during the war. However, the newspaper’s claim to be in the interests of the naval workers neglected to acknowledge African Americans who significantly contributed to the war efforts at the shipyard and led me to the question: how did the experience of African Americans during World War II at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard conflict with the narrative pushed by the Mare Island Grapevine?

In this paper I will argue that the narrative put forth by the Mare Island Grapevine focused heavily on white men and women’s contribution to the war effort while disregarding African Americans’ contributions and struggles against segregation and mistreatment in the work environment. Combined with the political power given to the government-run paper, the Mare Island Grapevine’s projection of place and African American’s sense of place presented two wildly different perspectives of Mare Island during World War II.

In the years following World War II, much of the scholarly work involving Mare Island tended to focus on its military history. Arnold S Lott’s A long line of ships: Mare Island's Century of Naval Activity in California told the history of Mare Island through an examination of the vessels built at the naval yard alongside Sue Lemmon’s Sidewheelers to nuclear power: a pictorial essay covering 123 years at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard which focused on the history of the ships by looking at who built them. While these historians have told the history of Mare Island as one story, fewer scholars have deviated from looking at Mare Island as a whole, in favor of looking at the stories through the perspective of minority contributions often overlooked. At its height, Mare Island employed over forty thousand workers bringing together people of many different backgrounds and ethnicities from across the country for economic, patriotic, and other personal reasons. Every state except Vermont contributed families to the Mare Island migration with families coming from as far away as the East Coast in the hundreds.3 Due to the strong allure of employment, diversity at the naval yard excelled, offering endless possibilities for historical work. In more recent decades, historians have shifted away from military history towards scholarship on the minority experience at Mare Island during World War II. Historians in their work on Mare Island have primarily focused on three minority groups who made their way to the naval base in the 1940s: Chinese, Filipinos, and African Americans.

Chinese historians Laura Wong and Xiaojian Zhao focused on the impact that working at Mare Island had for the Chinese communities and individuals of Vallejo and the surrounding Bay Area. In her work "VALLEJO'S CHINESE COMMUNITY, 1860-1960," Laura Wong focused on the Chinese experience and argued that work at Mare Island in blue-collar jobs and the population boom caused by the hiring of thousands of people enabled Vallejo’s Chinese population to establish legitimate businesses during the war.4 Furthermore, Xiaojian Zhao looked at the success that individuals found as a result of joining the war effort. In her work "Chinese American Women Defense Workers in World War II," Zhao directed her attention to Chinese women, such as Maggie Gee, whose ability to work at Mare Island allowed her to save money and pursue her dream of going to aviation school, eventually becoming one of only two Chinese American women in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program (WASPS).5 Scholarly work on the Chinese experience highlighted the positive impact that wartime had on Chinese Americans, but for other minorities, Mare Island was not as pleasant.

Historians such as Mel Orpilla and Japheth Aquino in their work have pointed out Filipino involvement at Mare Island. Focusing on the economic incentives which fueled the migration of Filipinos to Vallejo to work at the naval shipyard, Orpilla in Filipinos in Vallejo analyzed the experience and movement of Filipinos to understand how a growing community found its start.6 While Orpilla noted the naval yard’s ability to create community, Japheth Aquino focused on the discrimination in the workplace affecting Filipinos. Aquino in Mare Island Naval Shipyard: Manongs and Their Families beyond the Field pointed out that life at Mare Island had setbacks due to racial prejudices facing both Filipino men and women. He argued that while Mare Island provided higher wages than other jobs available to Filipinos at the time, in terms of which occupations they held, Filipinos were closer to African Americans who occupied many of the unskilled positions at Mare Island than to Chinese workers who were more likely to be placed in higher-paying occupations.7 Aquino’s work referred to African Americans as a point of comparison in determining the quality of life experienced at Mare Island and highlights the mistreatment that blacks endured during World War II.

Albert Buchanan was one historian who looked at the African American experience during World War II and its outcomes. Buchanan in Black Americans in World War II noted that the war opened up occupations that had previously been inaccessible for African Americans. He argued that black participation in the war effort destroyed the myth that they were inferior to whites in terms of production; damaging the double standard of wages for the same kind of work and resulted in significant gains for African American civil rights.8 Emphasizing African Americans' desires for a double victory in the war and at home, Buchanan took a broad approach to understand black involvement in World War II.

Historians like Robert Allen and Charles Wollenberg took the discussion on black treatment during World War II done by scholars like Buchanan and centered it on the Port Chicago explosion and mutiny at Mare Island. Allen’s The Port Chicago Mutiny built a narrative based on the events at Port Chicago and Mare Island, and argued them to be a starting point in the struggle of African Americans for civil rights in the Navy.9 Wollenberg’s article "Blacks vs. Navy Blue: The Mare Island Mutiny Court Martial" continued along a similar line of thought as Allen and argued that the protest by those at Mare Island after the Port Chicago explosion influenced a shift in the Navy’s racial policies away from racial segregation and towards integration.10 While offering a snapshot of African American lives at the naval yard during World War II, I find that historians whose research revolved around the black experience at Mare Island have tended to focus on the contribution towards civil rights and have passed on the opportunity to look at the experience of African Americans through the lens of place.

Place as a historical lens is understood through work done by historians like David Glassberg or Dolores Hayden and opens the doors to larger discussions about society as perceived by others. According to David Glassberg’s understanding of place, we attach values to places based on our history and interactions with it. He argued that the meaning assigned to place was determined by an individual’s experiences and therefore resulted in divergent interpretations of any given place. In Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life, Glassberg described the exclusivity of places as determined by one’s social characteristics including things like race, religion, sexual orientation, economic position, and social class and argued that, “we experience place differently depending on where we are in society, as well as how much control we have over where we are.”11 Additionally, Dolores Hayden, in her work The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, pointed out the reality of spatial barriers and spatial segregation, which limits one’s access to places and therefore shapes place-making ability.12 What these historians came to understand was that people with different backgrounds could and would develop different understandings of any specific place.

Historians William Deverell and Douglas Flamming centered their discussion around the contestation of place and the interaction between different groups by focusing on how white and black boosters created different place narratives about Los Angeles. Deverell and Flamming in "Race, Rhetoric, and Regional Identity: Boosting Los Angeles, 1880-1930," found that white boosters in Los Angeles actively erased blacks from the history of the city’s origins while black boosters attempted to write themselves back into the narrative and demonstrates the real-world impact that different interpretations of place allows.13 Historians working with place additionally look at situations in which social, economic, and political power dictates whose story is told and how a place is presented. Power in society changes hands over time and places are destroyed, transformed, preserved, or created at the expense of the previous inhabitants who are left in a state of placelessness, which Glassberg refers to as “the feeling of belonging in no particular place.”14 In American history, the struggle for the power to determine place exists on both the macro scale, for instance, Anglo Americans versus Native Americans, and the micro-scale like within the perimeter of a city or in the case of my topic, a naval shipyard.15

By comparing the African American experience at Mare Island with the narrative put out by the Mare Island Grapevine, I will argue that two distinct perceptions of Mare Island emerged adding to the study of minority groups at Mare Island as well as the historiography revolving around the concept of place and the emergence of contested sites. However, to understand my argument, a summary of the Port Chicago explosion and resulting Mare Island mutiny, which I will reference in my discussion is needed to provide context and explain why a look at African American treatment at Mare Island gained attention and led to the production of oral histories used in this paper.

On July 17th 1944, Port Chicago, an ammunition depot down the way from the Mare Island Naval Base, suffered a catastrophic failure resulting in an explosion killing over three hundred people, of whom two hundred two were African American.16 Following the explosion, African Americans, rather than being given a leave of absence, were sent down to the main Mare Island base and directed to take up the ammunition loading duties at the shipyard. Fifty of those ordered back to work refused and were subsequently labeled mutineers, and in September 1944, Admiral Carleton Wright officially charged the men with conspiring to make a mutiny.17 Oral histories by the Port Chicago explosion survivors and the investigation by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s special counsel Thurgood Marshall, produced in the aftermath of these events, offer outlets for understanding the African American experience at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

From their arrival at Mare Island, African Americans faced systematic discriminatory practices by white officials and administration workers. An excerpt from Josh White’s song “Uncle Sam Says,” written in 1941, encapsulated the situation that African Americans who desired to join the Navy faced.

Airplanes flying 'cross the land and sea,

Everybody flying but a Negro like me.

Uncle Sam says, "Your place is on the ground,

When I fly my airplanes, don’t want no Negro 'round."

The same thing for the Navy, when ships go to sea, All they got is a mess boy’s job for me.

Uncle Sam says, "Keep on your apron, son,

You know I ain’t gonna let you shoot my big Navy gun."18

Due to the population boom, which brought in over forty thousand workers to Mare Island, housing shortages became a persistent issue throughout the war period. In response, Mare Island and the city of Vallejo created a set of housing projects to accommodate those in need. However, placement in the housing projects for African Americans tended to clump them together and separate them where possible from white workers. For example, despite the scarcity of available housing, from 1942-1944, Federal Terrace, one of the housing projects, existed as a purely white community.19 Additionally, Amador Apartments and Northside Dormitories restricted black entry to only sixteen and thirty-five residents respectively, while the majority of African Americans were placed together in the Chabot Terrace and Solano Apartments.20 Segregated housing spaces acted as a fitting introduction to the racial discrimination which African Americans lived through during World War II.

From the outside, what Mare Island had to offer benefited African American and white workers alike, but once integrated into the workforce, their experiences diverged. “United We Win” read a propaganda poster from World War II that depicted a black man and a white man side by side in the war effort, a claim far from reality when it came to positions given out at the naval yard.21 Once settled into their segregated living spaces, African Americans arrived at the naval base to work in some of the least wanted and most dangerous jobs that needed to get done. Work at the ammunition depots was one task primarily given to African Americans without proper training. At Port Chicago, the ammunition bay down the seaways from Mare Island, the unpreparedness of African American workers did not continue without consequences but instead culminated in the Port Chicago explosion of 1944.

In the aftermath of the Mare Island mutiny, which followed the Port Chicago explosion, Thurgood Marshall, special counsel for the NAACP, set out to investigate the circumstances of the blast and the overall treatment of African Americans in Naval District Twelve, headquartered at the Mare Island Naval Base. After conducting his study, Marshal wrote a letter to James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, based on what he had found. What Marshall unveiled was unsettling, and he turned to Forrestal to understand how the level of racial discrimination present at Mare Island and Port Chicago was allowed to exist. Marshall posed several questions about the African American experience to Forrestal which he considered to be unacceptable including “Why is it that Negro seamen with no prior experience in ammunition were given the job of hatch tender in the loading of ammunition” or “Why is it that these men were not given any training whatsoever in the dangers found in loading ammunition or the proper methods to be used in loading ammunition?”22 Despite having been trained for duty at other positions on the naval yard, white command discriminately selected African Americans for the responsibilities of loading ammunition. As evident by the explosion that wiped out Port Chicago, ammunition handling was a dangerous occupation, one which African Americans were forced into by naval officers and were consequently unprepared. In Forrestal’s response to Marshall about the working conditions at the Twelfth Naval District, he refused to address questions dealing with black unpreparedness at the ammunition depots.23 Letters between Marshall and Forrestal paint a picture of the African American experience at Mare Island, where not only did Marshall argue that African Americans were thoroughly underprepared for the task of ammunition loading, but he found that African Americans were the only ones loading it.

African Americans resented the fact that they were placed at the bottom of the naval hierarchy and were the only ones tasked with loading ammunition. Through his investigation, Marshall found that the only naval personnel loading ammunition regularly were African Americans, except for those in charge such as the officers and petty officers.24 Command was a whites-only occupation at the ammunition loading docks of Port Chicago and Mare Island and African Americans in these positions were well aware of the segregation and discrimination they faced. Reflecting on his experience as an ammunition loader, Freddie Meeks expressed his grievances for life as an African American in the Navy, “We felt like we was gettin' a raw deal, because we was the one that was doin' the dirty work.”25 An invisible line was drawn at the ammunition depots between the jobs that whites and blacks held. Martin Bordenave, an African American worker at both Port Chicago and Mare Island, likened his ammunition loader’s uniform to a slave outfit.26 Despite Forrestal’s claim that the ammunition grounds were not “racially contrived,” the divided nature of black workers and white officers hindered the credibility of Forrestal's statement.27 Racist practices replaced aspirations for equality and opportunity, and the Navy’s reaction in the aftermath of the Port Chicago explosion painted a clear picture of the attitude towards African Americans at Mare Island.

Despite the tragedy that occurred at Port Chicago, African Americans were not given a leave of absence but instead sent to Mare Island, where they were coerced and physically threatened to continue their jobs at the ammunition depot at Mare Island. Thurgood Marshall, during his investigation, discovered that a member of the United States Navy testified that an explosion like that which occurred at Port Chicago “would have a lasting effect upon the minds of the men who were near the explosion.”28 Regardless of these warnings, Forrestal and the Navy claimed that immediately going back to work was the only way to deal with it. However, African American survivors disagreed with the Navy’s take on the issue. Jack Critten, one survivor of the Port Chicago explosion, described his reaction to being forced back to work as more scared for his life than angry. He recalled a conversation with Lieutenant Tobin who had instructed him that he was to go back to work in which he said, “Just Transfer me. I’m through with this ship business … man, I got a chance over there with the enemy. But I ain’t got no chance in that hold.”29 Although Critten emphasized his fear by saying he would be willing to take his chances in the war, his pleas fell on deaf ears. In another case, the district admiral threatened to shoot Martin Bordenave, another African American worker scarred by the events at Port Chicago, if he did not return to work.30 Only black workers at Mare Island were threatened with physical violence and death by their commanding officers. In the end, the protests of Critten and Martin, along with the other forty-eight African Americans who refused to go back to work, made little difference as non-cooperative African Americans faced trial for mutiny.

The experience of African American workers at the ammunition docks of Port Chicago and Mare Island offers a way to understand how their experience differed from white workers and resulted in a different view of Mare Island as a place. From being ill-prepared to do the work assigned in a racially divided workplace to threats of abuse and a lack of compassion for the well-being of African Americans, black workers understood that the ammunition centers represented sites for racial oppression. However, for African American workers at Mare Island, racial discrimination did not exist solely at the ammunition docks but was in some shape or form a part of everyday life.

Discrimination against blacks by naval officers was most apparent in the lack of upward mobility and recognition for the work they did during the war. African American contributions and placement in higher positions at Mare Island were disregarded by the naval hierarchy despite the longevity and effort of black workers. Thurgood Marshall’s letters to Forrestal on the conditions of African Americans pointed out the discrepancies between the qualifications of black workers and the work they were given and asked: “Why is it that Negro seamen, many of whom have had special training in such schools as gunnery schools, were nevertheless relegated to the duty of ammunition?”31 Despite being trained for a variety of different naval professions, few African Americans received jobs in the area of their training, and most had little or no opportunity to improve their position and advance through the ranks. In Forrestal’s defense, he claimed that whites and blacks alike needed to go through a “trial period” of at least one year to assess their capabilities before being given additional responsibilities.32 However, for many African Americans, the trial period never ended, and unlike their white counterparts, their movement through the ranks at Mare Island stagnated. Put in jobs below their qualifications, African Americans were given little opportunity to make the situation better for themselves. Edward Waldrop, an African American worker at Mare Island during World War II, pointed out the stagnation and discrimination against black advancement in his interview with Robert Allen in 1977. Black workers were placed in jobs lower on the hierarchical scale, and even those who worked in their jobs for three to four years could not get a rating.33 From ammunition loaders to carpentry and crane operators, African Americans were given little to no possibility of promotions while whites climbed to higher ranks in less time and stood over them in managerial positions.34 Stagnation and the lack of choice in where to work stung more due to the misconception of what their role was going to be at Mare Island. Visions of equal opportunity disappeared once African Americans arrived at the naval yard where upward advancement was nonexistence.

A lack of recognition for the work that African Americans did at Mare Island remained a constant complaint through the end of the war. The majority of black men and women who came to work at Mare Island during World War II ended up in non-skilled labor positions, and for many, their training and background did not align with the jobs they held. For instance, African Americans at the ammunition docks believed that because of the training given, they were being prepared to take on the roles of regular tasks and were thus disappointed in where they landed.35 Workers such as Robert Routh was one of those lured and then disappointed by the opportunities promoted by Mare Island, “We really thought that we would be serving in some capacity aboard ships. We were reduced to stevedores.”36 Among issues with life at Mare Island, the lack of mobility or acknowledgment of Routh’s contributions to the war effort were those that resonated with him years later, during his interview with Robert Allen. The struggles of African American men and women to improve their status and gain the recognition they deserved persisted through the end of World War II. However, rather than being rewarded for their contributions towards the war effort with better pay or positions, the allied victory in 1945 diminished employment demand at Mare Island and African Americans were the first out the door.

While the start of the United States’ involvement in World War II brought with it increased employment, by September of 1945, the need to maintain wartime level production became unnecessary, resulting in substantial layoffs to which African Americans were the most vulnerable. Many African Americans who worked at Mare Island during World War II saw the Port Chicago explosion and Mare Island mutiny as the beginning of a shift in the Navy’s treatment of black naval workers. Donald Proguiske, a survivor of the Port Chicago explosion, expressed this belief in his interview with Javier Arbona in 2010, “I think that’s one thing that came out of the explosion itself, was that this is the beginning of desegregation that was to come in later years.”37 However, the progress towards equal treatment did not happen with much haste as even a year later, when the war ended, discriminatory treatment remained a reality for black workers at Mare Island, signified by the process in which the workforce was reduced. During the war, Mare Island grew to more than double what it was in the years prior to 1941; however, layoffs started almost immediately after the war ended despite the Mare Island Grapevine’s claim that the West Coast, “will be busier for the next two or three years after the completion of the Japanese war than any time during it.”38 Looking at the process of how the naval base determined who was allowed to stay and whom the Mare Island officers saw as expendable made clear that by 1945, the racist practices of the Mare Island command persisted.

On September 28th, 1945, the Mare Island Grapevine published Mare Island’s process for determining eligibility for continued employment post-World War II which heavily favored non-African American workers. As noted in the “Summary of Mare Island’s Layoff Plan,” the Industrial Relations Division was in charge of deciding who was to be laid off and placed naval workers into one of the two groups, group A and group B. Within each group there were subgroups labeled 1-4 with A 1 given the most priority for retaining their jobs and B 4 were the first to go.39 Those who worked at Mare Island before the war were slotted in group A while those who joined during the war were placed into group B. From there which subgroup one placed in was determined by one’s efficiency rating and was supplemented by the number of years served.40 The Mare Island Shipyard’s focus on seniority directly threatened African Americans’ chances of retaining their jobs after the war. It was only in April of 1942 that the Navy declared that African Americans would be allowed to enlist in general service, and therefore, the majority of black workers could not fall under group A due to the Navy’s restrictions prior to 1942. The result was that those who had better ratings but less seniority were in danger of losing their job. An African American placed in group B, because of the Navy’s racist practices, with an efficiency score of 97 would be laid off before a worker listed under group A with a much lower score of 75. The result was that white men at the naval yard were protected against the layoffs while African Americans performing exceptionally were nonetheless the first to go and the policy enacted represented a fitting end to black worker’s experience at Mare Island.

The experience of African Americans in both the ammunition docks and the production shops did not match up to their expectations for Mare Island. Hoping that employment at Mare Island would offer better economic opportunities and allow them to enlist in occupations previously prohibited, African Americans, once they arrived, were quickly disillusioned to the reality of life at the naval shipyard. Black workers fought for their country while simultaneously dealing with a lack of equal treatment or support for their physical and mental well-being. They were treated as second class workers despite their contributions and rarely saw their efforts rewarded with better pay and better standing in the naval hierarchy. While Donald Progulske claimed that the conditions at the naval base started to improve after the war, the tactic of last hired, first fired left many African Americans without a job when the war was over, regardless of their contributions.41 A life filled with struggle for African Americans in their battle against Jim Crow tactics at Mare Island cemented the shipyard as a place of mistreatment and segregation.

When compared with the African American experience, the government-run Mare Island Grapevine’s portrayal of Mare Island as a place resulted in a starkly different perspective that stemmed from the desire to present the naval base as a socially progressive, productive, and American (white) shipyard performing at its peak for the war effort. Staffed by an all-white crew of Navy recruits, The Mare Island Grapevine was the military’s tool to present the shipyard in its own image, to the detriment of African American workers. On March 9th, 1945, under the recreation section of the Mare Island Grapevine was a photo of Shop 56’s undefeated all-white basketball team celebrating a championship win. The caption attached to the photograph read “Hail The Heros” and, while innocent enough on its own, unintentionally reflected the newspaper’s representation of the white American contribution as the heroes on the basketball court just as they were in the workplace.42 From the sports section to the front page, the Mare Island Grapevine actively downplayed the participation of African Americans and pushed a narrative of life at the naval base that focused primarily on the white contribution to the war effort.

The newspaper’s biased take on white participation during World War II shined through in the paper’s weekly segment focusing on the inventions and suggestions of Mare Island workers. The contributions highlighted in the Mare Island Grapevine covered the work of many different shops around the naval base. From designs such as the split woodruff key by Hallie C. Kidder to improvements on a steel door straightener by Loma Shafer, the inventors were celebrated by the paper for saving time, eliminating waste, and improving production rate with compensation for their efforts.43 The inventors and inventions section of the Mare Island Grapevine remained a constant feature from the paper's creation in 1941 to the end of the war in 1945. Other contributions not directly tied to production were also celebrated by the paper's writers as aiding the war effort and rewarded those such as Fred Winther whose slogan, “Mare Island Ships are Fighting Everywhere” resulted in a $25 prize.44 Despite featuring contributors from across a majority of the shops at Mare Island, African Americans did not find their photo in these sections of the weekly paper regardless of the multiple articles describing their efforts at Mare Island. For example, Eddie Benton, an African American machinists’ helper at Shop 02, who invented a jig for assembling periscope light shields, was left out of the photograph attached to an inventors and inventions article and was instead listed below it along with tens of other names.45 The paper’s attention favored white contributors as African American inventors ever only found their names in lists and never in the photographs. While the newspaper could not stop African Americans from being rewarded for their efforts, it could very much downplay it. The invention segments focused on the work of whites and were just one of the many instances of the Mare Island Grapevine’s construction of life at Mare Island, which distanced white workers from their black counterparts.

Furthermore, the Mare Island Grapevine aimed to differentiate the status of white workers from that of African Americans through segments portraying the generational efforts at Mare Island. The Grapevine focused on the intergenerational efforts during the war and celebrated white naval workers and their families for their continued loyalty to the naval base. “Warring Waltons” was one such article looking at wartime families and focused on the contributions to the war effort of Jim Walton and his three family members working alongside him.46 Another example titled “A Fighting Family” was devoted to Clayton Knier and his sons and daughters, who all spent time at Mare Island during the war.47 Through the inclusion of segments focusing on family, the Mare Island Grapevine highlighted the sense of history of white Americans who worked at the shipyard, which created a different understanding of Mare Island as a place compared to African Americans. Prior to 1942, African Americans had limited opportunities to enlist at shipyards like Mare Island due to the Navy’s restrictive policies against their recruitment. Instead, the majority of African Americans made their way to Mare Island in the months and years after the Navy did away with its recruitment restrictions. Thus African Americans did not have the same sense of history that white workers did, and the Mare Island Grapevine’s inclusion of family histories was a way to push the paper’s white war effort narrative.

Another recurring feature of the Mare Island Grapevine in 1943 was the inclusion of “Know Your Mare Island Shops” sections, which looked at the different shops and their roles at Mare Island while continuing the exclusion of an African American presence. Despite the seemingly inclusive nature in this section of the paper, African Americans were literally and figuratively left out of the picture. From patternmakers to shipyard metal constructors, the photos taken were of white workers, making it seem as if African Americans were not there at all.48 Of the many “Know Your Mare Island Shops” articles, an African American presence was nearly nonexistent. The segment downplayed African American involvement and ignored the ammunition stations in its coverage of Mare Island and other shops in which African Americans made up the majority of the workers. “Know Your Mare Island Shops” was not the only instance of the Mare Island Grapevine actively erasing African American’s presence at the naval base but was a part of the paper’s overall attempt to downplay black participation as it did not coincide with its narrative of a white effort at Mare Island.

At the same time that the Mare Island Grapevine actively suppressed acknowledgment of black contribution, white women saw themselves elevated to the front pages of the newspaper and celebrated for doing their part to aid in the war. During wartime, women’s performance and participation at Mare Island gained attention in the Mare Island Grapevine to levels rivaling the coverage of white men. From celebrating the graduation of women trainees to acknowledging the naval yard’s first rated woman driller Ada Reid, the Mare Island Grapevine made clear that acknowledgement of white women's participation was a main priority.49 Headlines of the weekly paper pushed a narrative of women workers as equally effective in the production shops as men. “Keeping Old Glory Bright,” “Women Do “Man-Sized” Jobs,” and “Punch Packin Mama” were just some of the headlines celebrating women's involvement at the Mare Island shipyard.50 Additionally, the Mare Island Grapevine published dialogues and discussed the problems facing white women at Mare Island.51 The transformation of the paper’s attitude towards women workers from the paper's inception into the warring years marked an outstanding victory for white women, but again, the color line drawn in the Mare Island Grapevine excluded African American women’s presence.

Despite the Mare Island Grapevine’s social progression through telling the story of women, white faces were the only ones printed alongside empowering headlines, and from 1942 to 1945, African American women found their reflection in the newspaper only a handful of times. Although both women (of all races) and African Americans were relatively new employees at Mare Island during the war, the paper emphasized the presence of white women as evidence of wartime social progression. Thus African American men and women found themselves in a similar place, victims of the shipyard’s discriminatory practices. The hypocritical nature of the paper’s attempt to present Mare Island’s social progression was another indication of the divided meaning of the naval base.

Outside of the production line, the narrative pushed by the Mare Island Grapevine focused on white men and women’s equal contribution in regards to their efforts towards selling war bonds. War bond propaganda throughout the paper focused on white contribution and continued the narrative of the white victory unfolding at the Mare Island docks. The paper made a point to highlight women’s contribution to the war bond raising effort, such as their participation in the Mare Island Follies, a show put on to promote the sale of war bonds. Groups such as the “Blue Jacket Parade Girls,” an all-white ensemble of girls participating in the Mare Island Follies, were featured proudly on the front pages of the Mare Island Grapevine in the weeks leading up to the performance.52 Production shops also made headlines in the weekly paper for fulfilling their patriotic duty through their promotion and purchasing of war bonds. For instance, W. I. Lindsay’s Joining and Repair Shop found praise in the Grapevine for their 100% participation and 20% investment in the war bond campaign and the accompanying photograph of the shop workers featured an all-white cast.53 Because a majority of African Americans remained in unskilled positions during the war, their salaries earned remained substantially lower than those of white workers in skilled and leadership occupations. As a result, African Americans had less ability to invest in war bonds, and thus the Grapevine’s coverage on the topic of war bonds focused on whites who had more purchasing power. The paper painted a picture to its readers through celebration of top contributors in the war bonds efforts, which favored the economically advantaged white workers while disregarding African American participation. While only a small part of the paper’s weekly publication, the Mare Island Grapevine’s war bonds segments supported the narrative of Mare Island’s participation in World War II as a white effort.

In the Mare Island Grapevine’s publications, white workers found their faces from cover to cover in the weekly paper attached to stories of their contributions to the war effort in ways in which different ethnic groups, especially African Americans, never achieved despite their participation. Through its reporting on the naval production shops, the inventions and suggestions of individuals, emphasis on women’s increasing role in the war effort, and even the selling of war bonds, coverage in the Mare Island Grapevine developed a white filter which lacked adequate acknowledgment of African American’s presence at Mare Island. However, the Mare Island Grapevine’s disregarding of the black experience went even further when it came to events or conditions which directly contradicted the story the paper told.

One way in which the Mare Island Grapevine’s presentation of the naval yard conflicted with the experience of African Americans was in its reporting about safety at Mare Island. The work given to African Americans put them at higher levels of danger than other workers at Mare Island as we have seen. Black workers were the ones whose lives were at risk with improper training and little regard for their safety. However, while African Americans feared for their lives, the Grapevine ran various articles noting the shipyard’s success in ensuring the safety of its workers. Reports such as “Workers’ Health Guarded” and “Health Hazards Fought” ignored the conditions of African Americans who felt that their safety was not a priority.54 The narrative of life at Mare Island by the Grapevine did not align with the actual experiences of the naval yard’s black workers, and issues that threatened the paper’s presentation of Mare Island as a place were either altered or ignored entirely. An examination of the Mare Island Grapevine’s reporting on the Port Chicago explosion and lack of reporting on the Mare Island mutiny are telling indications of the paper's desire to promote a specific narrative of life at Mare Island. The paper turned coverage of the Port Chicago explosion, which killed over two hundred African Americans, into a way to talk about the need for maintaining high levels of production and claimed that the disaster was a reminder of the loss of war materiel overseas during the Normandy landings.55 Given only two paragraphs, the paper paid little attention to the lives lost and made no mention of the number of African Americans killed in the explosion. The Mare Island Grapevine shifted the blame for the accident away from the naval command at Port Chicago and instead accused the workers, who were predominantly African American, for a “slackening” in the production effort.56 With no follow up after the initial reporting about those killed, the paper wanted to downplay what the explosion revealed about working conditions for African Americans, considering it went against the “Workers’ Health Guarded” narratives pushed out to the workers at Mare Island. Additionally, the Grapevine made no mention of the resulting Mare Island mutiny, which occurred a month after the explosion, whatsoever.57 The paper overlooked events that challenged the image of the naval base that it attempted to project and portrayed working conditions which contradicted the experience of African Americans. The paper purposefully avoided mentioning one of the most significant mutiny charges in naval history because it did not fit with the Mare Island Grapevine’s version of Mare Island as a place and left African Americans powerless to voice their grievances about the working conditions they endured.

In both unintentional and deliberate ways, the Mare Island Grapevine’s neglecting of African Americans resulted from the naval command’s overall plan to promote Mare Island as progressive, American(white), and wholly dedicated to the cause. As a result, the contradicting African American mistreatment, contributions, and disobedience (e.g., the Mare Island mutiny) remained absent in the newspaper’s weekly editions. The Mare Island Grapevine instead promoted the efforts of white men and women equally in production shops, war bond sales, and their inventions that benefited the war effort, and the result was a split understanding of Mare Island as a place.

The way African American workers understood Mare Island was shaped by their experience filled, from their arrival to their departure, with racial discrimination. From where they lived to where they worked, African Americans experienced Mare Island differently from the white workers who worked towards the same goal. As a result of segregated housing, mistreatment, and unskilled low paying positions with little to no advancement despite their efforts, African American’s understanding of Mare Island did not match their expectations of improved employment opportunities. From the outside, African Americans saw Mare Island as a place that offered a social and economical solution to the issues they faced. Once integrated into Mare Island, African Americans learned that the naval base was just another institution which followed racist practices to continue the suppression of black workers and their experience was in stark contrast with that promoted by the Mare Island Grapevine.

Published by a crew of white reporters and editors, the military-run Mare Island Grapevine presented a predominantly white perspective of Mare Island. The paper’s run from 1941 to 1945 focused on the life and contributions of white workers while ignoring the African American presence. From war bonds to the naval shops, black presence was lost in the narrative the paper produced. In regards to significant events for African Americans such as the Port Chicago explosion and Mare Island mutiny, the Mare Island Grapevine reframed and left out of its pages facts that were detrimental to the image of Mare Island as a place of social progress and full commitment to war-time production. The Mare Island Grapevine’s political power as a government entity enabled their version of life at Mare Island to remain unchallenged despite the different experience of African Americans.

Thus, despite inhabiting the same space for the same cause, black workers and the Mare Island Grapevine developed two distinct understandings of Mare Island during World War II. Stemming from the influence that race had on determining one’s placement at Mare Island, African Americans’ experiences contradicted the Mare Island Grapevine’s interpretation of place. Consequently, the paper's presentation of life at Mare Island’s shipyard demonstrated the power it held and the subsequent powerlessness of African Americans of the time, which allowed their idealized and biased depiction to go unchallenged and resulted in two simultaneously existing meanings of place.

“The Grapevine,” Mare Island Grapevine (Vallejo, CA), Feb. 27, 1942.
“Grapevine,” Mare Island Grapevine, Jan. 1, 1942
Housing Authority of the City of Vallejo, These Are The Houses Same Built: First Report of The Housing Authority of the City of Vallejo for the Fiscal Year July 1, 1942 - June 30, 1943, Vallejo, California, 1944.
Laura Wong, “VALLEJO'S CHINESE COMMUNITY, 1860-1960,” in Chinese America History and Perspectives no. 8 (1988): 164-166
Xiaojian Zhao, "Chinese American Women Defense Workers in World War II," in California History 75, no. 2 (1996): 148-150, doi:10.2307/25177576.
Mel Orpilla, Filipinos in Vallejo (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005), 37-51.
Japheth Aquino, “Mare Island Naval Shipyard: Manongs and Their Families beyond the Field,” Master’s thesis, San Francisco State University, 2002, 54.
Albert Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II (Santa Barbara, California: Clio Books, 1977), 42-43.
Robert Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny (New York, NY: Warner Books, 1989), 145.
Charles Wollenberg, “Blacks vs. Navy Blue: The Mare Island Mutiny Court Martial,” California History 58, no. 1 (1979): 64, doi:10.2307/25157889.
David Glassberg, “Place and Placelessness in American History,” in Sense of history: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 121.
Dolores Hayden, “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space,” in The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass, 1995), 42-43.
William Deverell, Douglas Flamming, “Race and Regional Identity: Boosting Los Angeles, 1880-1930,” in Power and Place in the American West, ed. Richard White and John Findlay (Settle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1999), 132-133.
David Glassberg, “Place and Placelessness in American History,” 118.
For further readings dealing with the power struggle over place-making refer to the following scholarly works: James Ronda, “Coboway’s Tale: A Story of Power and Places along the Columbia,” in Power and Place in the American West, ed. Richard White and John Findlay (Settle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1999); Jared Farmer, On Zions Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Lee M.A.Simpson and Lisa C. Prince, “The Invention of Old Sacramento: A Past for the Future,” in River City and Valley Life: An Environmental History of the Sacramento Region (Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013).
Robert Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny, 21.
Allen, 92.
Joshua White, “Uncle Sam Says,” track 2 on Southern Exposure, 1941, compact disc.
Housing Authority of the City of Vallejo, These Are The Houses Same Built: First Report of The Housing Authority of the City of Vallejo for the Fiscal Year July 1, 1942 - June 30, 1943, Vallejo, California, 1944.
Housing Authority of the City of Vallejo, These Are The Houses Sam Built.
Alexander Liberman, “United We Win,” The National Archives (1943) https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/united_we_win/united_we_win.html
Robert Allen, Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, October 10, 1944, Letter, From Dr. Robert Allen Port Chicago Papers collection, Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, https://calisphere.org/item/9f688f5b-5cb1-4b0b-9c0a-3ec73dcbfa97/.
Robert Allen, Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, November 17, 1944, Letter, From Dr. Robert Allen Port Chicago Papers collection, Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, https://calisphere.org/item/9f688f5b-5cb1-4b0b-9c0a-3ec73dcbfa97/.
Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, October 10, 1944.
Long Haul Productions, Transcript of an oral history conducted 2019, in The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History: Freddie Meeks, KALW Public Radio, 2019. https://www.kalw.org/post/port-chicago-50-oral-history#stream/0
Martin Bordenave, interview by Robert Allen, 1980, transcript and recording, The Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California Berkeley, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_2355
Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, November 17, 1944.
Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, October 10, 1944.
Jack Crittenden, interview by Robert Allen, 1977, transcript and recording, The Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California Berkeley, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_2356.
Martin Bordenave, interview by Robert Allen, 1980, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_2355.
Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, October 10, 1944.
Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, November 17, 1944.
Edward Waldrop, interview by Robert Allen, 1977, transcript and recording, The Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California Berkeley, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_2362.
Edward Waldrop, Interview by Robert Allen.
Marshall, Thurgood and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, October 10, 1944.
Robert Routh, interview by Robert Allen, 1978, transcript and recording, The Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California Berkeley, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_2359.
Donald Progulske, interview by Javier Arbona, 2010, transcript and recording, The Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California Berkeley, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_1706.
“Facts About Permanency Of M. I. Job,” Mare Island Grapevine, Feb. 9, 1945.
“Summary of Mare Island’s Layoff Procedure Given,” Mare Island Grapevine, Sep. 28, 1945.
Mare Island Grapevine, Sep. 28, 1945.
Donald Progulske, interview by Javier Arbona, 2010, https://ohc-search.lib.berkeley.edu/catalog/MASTER_1706.
“Hail The Heros,” Mare Island Grapevine, Mar. 9, 1945.
“Split Key Saves Time,” Mare Island Grapevine, July. 28, 1944; “Door Straightener,” Mare Island Grapevine, Aug. 31, 1945.
“Reason to Smile,” Mare Island Grapevine, Jan. 22, 1943.
“Mare Island Breaks All Navy Beneficial Suggestion Record,” Mare Island Grapevine, May. 11, 1945.
“Warring Waltons,” Mare Island Grapevine, Nov. 10, 1944.
“A Fighting Family,” Mare Island Grapevine, Nov. 10, 1944.
“Know Your Mare Island Shops,” Mare Island Grapevine, Feb. 19, 1943; “Know Your Mare Island Shops,” Mare Island Grapevine, Mar. 12, 1943.
“First Rated Woman driller,” Mare Island Grapevine, Apr. 30, 1943.
“Keeping Old Glory Bright,” Mare Island Grapevine, Feb. 12, 1943; “Women Do “Man-Sized” Jobs,” Mare Island Grapevine, Apr. 16, 1943; “Punch Packin Mama,” Mare Island Grapevine, Oct. 29, 1943.
“Women Discuss Problems of Female Workers,” Mare Island Grapevine, Jan. 15, 1943.
“Curvaceous Chorines,” Mare Island grapevine, June. 8, 1945.
“Supply’s Bond Leaders,” Mare Island Grapevine, Feb. 9, 1945.
“Workers’ Health Guarded,” May. 21, 1943; “Health Hazards Fought,” June. 4, 1943.
“A Blast That Should Have Made Us Think,” Mare Island Grapevine, July. 21, 1944.
Mare Island Grapevine, July. 21, 1944.
Five weeks after the Port Chicago explosion on August 9, 1944, two hundred and fifty-eight soldiers refused to go back to work and fifty of them were charged with mutiny. Publications of the Mare Island Grapevine from August 9th to the end of World War II make no mention of the initial mutiny or the court case which followed.