Irvin Lowery | Interview 1 | October 4, 2011

ARBONA: I'm speaking with Mr. Irvin Lowery and it's October 4, 2011. The interviewer is Javier Arbona, and we're doing a phone conversation today for the Regional Oral History Office. This would be normally tape one but we're going to be only doing a digital recording today, so it's the first, I guess the first piece of this interview. What I was going to do first was, just to get us started, just ask you to go back to your childhood and tell me a little bit about where you grew up, anything you want to share about your upbringing, your parents and whatnot. So why don't I throw it over to you?

LOWERY: Okay. I'm from Columbus, Ohio. I was born and raised here. My father had 00:01:00a varied career. He was a musician. He was a barber. He was a criminologist, and he ended his career as a criminologist; he was chairman of Ohio's Pardon and Parole Commission. I played basketball in high school. I was an engineering student at Ohio State for two years before I went into the Navy. My Navy career was not exactly planned. As an engineering student at Ohio State, those in engineering were in the engineering corps ROTC, and after two years of 00:02:00engineering ROTC I had letters of recommendation from my commander and I expected to go into the Army Engineers Corps and OCS.

ARBONA: OCS?

LOWERY: I was a voluntary enlistment. I gave up my 2B classification. When I got to the Navy, after passing the exams, got to the Navy. Well, they were lined up there. There was Navy, there was Marines, Army, Air Force and when I got to the first guy, which was the Navy, stamped Navy. I said, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm making a voluntary enlistment into the Army Engineers Corps." He said, "No, you're not. You're Navy." I said, "The hell you say."

ARBONA: And where was this happening? This was still back in Ohio?

LOWERY: Yeah. This is me going into the Navy. The Navy guy said, "You're Navy." I said, "No, I'm not." And they called the MPs that were and they quieted me down and I went in the Navy.

ARBONA: Wow. So they had to call in the MPs and everything.

LOWERY: Because I raised hell. I gave up a 2B classification to go in.

ARBONA: Can you tell me a little bit more about what the 2B classification means?

LOWERY: Well, when you're a student with critical studies. I was an engineering student.

ARBONA: So it's a sort of a specialized training?

LOWERY: Yeah. Well, it was draft. You had the A, B, and 4Fs. Those that were physically unable to go into service and those that had different classifications. Say if you were married with a wife and five kids. I think you 00:04:00could be exempt from going in.

ARBONA: I see.

LOWERY: As your draft board classification. Well, anyway, I went in the Navy. Went to Great Lakes for my boot camp and when I came out of boot camp I was assigned to ship's company, which is staff for the base, and I was selected amongst sixty. There were sixty black guys that were the first to attend the Navy's physical education program. We were chosen the same week that--I think there were eight black officers chosen to go into Navy Officers Candidate School, one of which was Carl Rowan. We went to this class at Bainbridge, Maryland, which was Gene Tunney's Navy physical ed program. And the way it had 00:05:00worked before, if you were white, a college graduate, you went to officers candidate school in the Navy. If you were white, a physical ed major, you went to physical ed program. The Navy physical ed program, which then was Gene Tunney's program and instead of being an officer coming out, they were chief petty officers. Specialist eighth chief petty officers. And I guess the attitude was in the Navy, and I guess the Army, too, if you completed a college education you proved something if you could complete a scheduled program of training. Then leadership qualities weren't really a factor. But that was an efficient choice 00:06:00of people who had the capacity to learn. That was the original theory behind a college graduate going directly into officers candidate school without some of the other guys that came up through the ranks. Because of the need for people.

Well, anyway, when I finished physical ed school I came out as a second class petty officer. Instead of coming out as chiefs, we came out as second class petty officers and third class petty officers after our eight weeks at Bainbridge, Maryland, where the school was. And we came back. After completion, I was sent back to Great Lakes where I was to be a part of ship's company and we did recruit training. We did boot camp. That was part of our job. The rest of 00:07:00our job was to work in Navy facilities around the country, or around the world, in welfare and recreation. I was then sent from Great Lakes to--headed for the South Pacific, to a work crew in New Guinea. And the way the Navy operated, well, you had a lot of different classification, particular skills. But to support the ships you had ground crews that handled really the ordnance, supplies. They would unload and they would be there to supply with ammunition, food, whatever other supplies necessary for the fighting force, whether they're on ships or whether they were the Marines going to do their job. But there were stevedore laboring crews. And with each one of those crews, wherever stationed 00:08:00throughout the Pacific, there was a component of welfare and recreation, the recreation people. Our job would have been to supply the leisure activities to keep them mentally healthy. That was our basic job.

But anyway, I got to the West Coast heading for New Guinea and I was aboard ship. We went aboard ship that night, or evening. Didn't take off until around midnight. Woke up--and we were, what, five high, six high on this troop ship going to the South Pacific--and I woke up with swollen jaws. Ran to sick bay and I had the mumps. And they threw me overboard getting me off of that ship. 00:09:00(chuckles) In the meantime, I went back to the shipping station, which was Shoemaker, California, which was there in the area from Port--. And while I was there waiting for being reassigned to the South Pacific, there was an opening for Chicago in the recreation department and I asked for it and I got it and I got assigned to Port Chicago about a month or two before the explosion. I was in the recreation department. What we had there in the recreation department, we had a swimming pool, we had a poolroom, we had a gym. Two gyms. One they played basketball in. We had another gym where the weight lifters and the wrestlers were and the boxers. And we had a bowling alley. And then we had a ball diamond 00:10:00or two. And then in the building we also had a soda fountain that operated until 9:00 or ten o'clock at night. And that was our facility. And what we did, those crews that loaded the ships and worked the docks, when they were off duty--some guys were married and lived in town or ran on--basically, we were there for them at their leisure time.

ARBONA: Would that imply playing sports with them? What were some of the other activities that you would be available for?

LOWERY: Well, we managed the affairs. Just like, for an example, my duty would be--I'd spend a month in the swimming pool. So I'm the lifeguard. And we'd have some other people that would also be qualified as lifeguards out of the crew, 00:11:00out of base personnel. But I would be in charge of the swimming pool for a month. In another month, I'd be in charge of the bowling alley. In another month I'd be in charge of the pool room, the gym. And that was our job, our special--all of the specialist aides like myself, that was our duty, to organize play in the recreational system. We had bowling leagues and we'd have basketball games. We had a basketball team.

ARBONA: And all of these facilities, were these only for the African American personnel or would white officers come and use these? How would that work?

LOWERY: Well, they would come and use them but basically the base was mostly all 00:12:00black, except when the Marines were there. We had Marine contingency that guarded the gate and they did some guarding down at the docks. And then the officers. Let's see, this is all for enlisted men and most of the other white ones were--all the white ones were officers. Before the explosion, I really don't remember any of the white people other than Marines. Enlisted Marines. If I remember--no, I don't.

ARBONA: To go back a little bit. I'm trying to almost put myself in this situation. You're telling me you're coming from being an engineering college 00:13:00student. You had your hopes of being in the Army Corps and you suddenly find yourself--

LOWERY: In the Navy.

ARBONA: --in Port Chicago. How did you feel about this?

LOWERY: As far as the Navy was concerned, hell, the Navy was good duty. As far as duty.

ARBONA: Tell me about that. How was it good duty?

LOWERY: All right. For an example, for breakfast there was some mornings we'd have sunny-side eggs. What do you eat in the Army? K-rations. Okay. For dessert, we would have apple pie. Sometimes we'd have steak. But as far as duty was concerned, the duty was good compared to what you might get in the Army. I was 00:14:00not unhappy with the duty as far as I was concerned. I had a good job. I think that the guys in the Army would--let me say it another--I'm sure that in Army facilities, there was the stevedore and the laboring kind of work there. However, in the Navy we didn't do foxholes.

ARBONA: Floxos? [sic]

LOWERY: Foxholes.

ARBONA: Oh, foxholes. Yeah.

LOWERY: You talk about what would you rather do. Would you rather be on a ship or do Navy kind of things or would you rather do Army kind of things? You talk about duty. So I guess what I'm saying is once I got in it, that was it. That 00:15:00decision was made and I could do nothing about it after I left and was sworn into the Navy. That was it.

ARBONA: Yeah. Now, did you--

LOWERY: So my experience there was at the draft board, when the guy said, "You're Navy," I raised as much devil as I could and that was squelched and that was it.

ARBONA: And were those white MPs that came?

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: When an incident like that would occur, how would the issue of race play out?

LOWERY: Race wasn't a factor. Well, actually, what had happened, the Navy did not take black seamen in until 1942. This was, remember, July of 1943. Blacks as 00:16:00seamen in the Navy had not existed until one year before. They were then recruiting and trying to put Navy seamen in and they were looking for the brightest of whatever, those with the most potential of those recruits coming up into the Navy if there were those that came that didn't have any preference. You got to remember, the Army was not an all-volunteer army like it is today. This was a drafted army. This was drafted army. This was a drafted army to satisfy the needs this country had to survive.

ARBONA: Sort of shifting topics a little bit, but not too much. I was wondering how stuff like leisure would work out there on the base. You're telling me you 00:17:00worked in all these activities, leisure activities, recreational activities. But did you get off the base sometimes? And if you would get off the base, where would you go?

LOWERY: I would go to Berkeley.

ARBONA: Oh, yeah?

LOWERY: Yeah. Berkeley was, or--right up the road from us, ten miles up. But you had Pittsburgh and there was an Army base there. Then you'd come down and you'd go to Concord, Walnut Creek, and then into Berkeley. So the nearest city was Berkeley and then you had Oakland and then San Francisco. So you had three cities there.

ARBONA: Would you go to people's houses to just spend the time or would you go to--were there bars or theaters, what--?

LOWERY: Well, you'd have bars. I used to have a favorite bar there in Berkeley.

ARBONA: Oh, yeah?

LOWERY: Called the Larks Club and I never forgot. I used to sit at the end of the bar. There was a juke box there and my favorite song was "White Cliffs of Dover" by Louis Prima and Keely Smith.

ARBONA: Louis Prima.

LOWERY: You've heard of him, haven't you?

ARBONA: Yeah, I have.

LOWERY: Keely Smith was his lead singer and wife. They did a whole lot of songs. He was a jazz musician, big band guy. But I had a friend, a guy who was in class with us named Harlan Jackson who was an artist. He had an aunt that lived in Berkeley. Had two aunts that lived in Berkeley. We were friends with him and he was on the East Coast. He was from Kansas and when we came out here we were 00:19:00still friends with him and we used to go and stay with--me and another guy, guy named Herman Robertson, a good buddy of mine, a football player for Paul Brown out of Massillon. We were friends with Jack and he stayed with one aunt and Herman and I stayed with the other.

ARBONA: I see.

LOWERY: We went to town.

ARBONA: Was Berkeley a fairly peaceful town--

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: --in comparison to other places in the Bay Area? You read today about a lot of race tensions in places like Vallejo and San Francisco. What was Berkeley like in that regard?

LOWERY: It was a college town, just like any other college town.

ARBONA: So a lot of young people?

LOWERY: Um-hmm.

ARBONA: I see. Were there establishments in Berkeley that you couldn't go to or 00:20:00watering holes and whatnot?

LOWERY: I kind of think so. Back then you went to the places that were generally the black neighborhood places. I really don't remember going to any white clubs. That wasn't the way it was then.

ARBONA: Yeah. Now, going back to Port Chicago. I'm curious if you ever, especially given your position working in activities and recreation--was there some kind of warning, of danger? Was there any worry that something would go wrong at some point?

LOWERY: Well, when I first went there, they took me on a tour of the base. And 00:21:00when I went down there, the railroad cars that came in, that were shipped in to be unloaded and loaded on the ships were surrounded by dirt barriers. You saw those from the pictures.

ARBONA: Right.

LOWERY: So they're there for a reason. It can blow up. And then when you looked at them loading the ammunition, they were on pallets and they had cranes and winches that would lift them off the dock and put them into the hold of the ship. Things could blow up so there was a danger there. Never happened but once. But this is ammunition. We were supplying the ammunition for Army, Navy, and Marines to fight the Japs in the South Pacific. And this was a very, very real 00:22:00motivating factor if you knew what the Japs had done. Not only did they do a sneak on us at Pearl Harbor, which was a dastardly thing, but what did they do to China? You ever hear of the Rape of Peking?

ARBONA: Yeah, I've read some about that. Yeah.

LOWERY: Yeah. Terrible. We black people thinking about slavery. What would you think if the Japs had won? Hold on just a minute. Here comes--

ARBONA: Sure. This is Javier Arbona with Irvin Lowery, October 4, 2011. We just paused for one moment and we're back up again. Yeah, so you were telling me--

LOWERY: As far as our desire to help our country after what the Japanese had done--

ARBONA: I see.

LOWERY: --at Pearl Harbor but also current events from 1937 on has talked about what Japan had done to China. The Rape of Peking. The holocaust that they did to China. It was not a secret. So when you see people who had done that before to China and you knew what the Nazis were doing in Europe, what kind of attitude would you have about them invading you at Pearl Harbor. So if you were black, if you had any thoughts about slavery, that's what they did. That's what they did in China.

ARBONA: So you identified in that sense?

LOWERY: Absolutely. Regardless of what our conditions in race affairs were here in this country, this is our country. And those are the kind of people that you were fighting.

ARBONA: I'm curious. Would you ever have conversations with fellow officers where this type of sentiment would be discussed or shared?

LOWERY: Fellow officers.

ARBONA: Well, with fellow personnel, I mean. Your fellow personnel.

LOWERY: Yeah, we talked about that. I know in my school, we had good history class and we had good current events, civics classes. And what the Japanese had done in China was no secret. It was well known that that was what those people 00:25:00did. If you look up the Rape of Peking and the atrocities that Japanese did with the Chinese, I could see that was as bad as what the Germans did with the Jews. And they were allies, they were partners. And what the Japanese did to the Chinese, they did that before the Germans did with the Jews. I guess I say that they talked. They showed them how to do it. The Japanese showed the Germans how to do the Holocaust with the Jews because they did it first in China in 1937.

ARBONA: By serving in the war, was there a sentiment that things for African Americans would also improve?

LOWERY: Oh, yeah. Of course you would think that. You expected that. When you talk about the fundamentals of this country as far as what the Constitution says, you expect it to get better. Did get better. What happens when slaves were first free? What were the conditions then against the conditions fifty years later? Not much. Improvement has prevailed, even today. There's still room to go. When I finished high school, I'm at an integrated high school, an integrated 00:27:00city. The city was integrated as far as the school systems were concerned. That's not to say that there weren't neighborhood schools that some schools were all black but all of our high schools in Columbus, Ohio, were integrated, and they were integrated because of the living pattern of people who worked. We had north, south, east and west. We had four high schools. Five high schools. One central, one north, one south, one east, one west. And people lived near where they worked, and that's how these schools happened to have been set up and built. And as a result, there were factories on all four parts of the city and that's where people lived and that's how the high schools happened to have been integrated. So we had an integrated high school system. Didn't have any black 00:28:00teachers except in one black junior high school which was in the predominantly black neighborhood. I know when I finished in 1948, well, when I finished high school, we talked about what you could do. You could work in the foundry, you could work as janitors, you could work as laborers. But, for an example, you couldn't work with the electric company, you couldn't work with the gas company. You didn't work with Ohio Bell, with the telephone company. Blacks didn't work in banks. Nationwide Insurance, which was headquartered here in Columbus, didn't work there. Except you could be a janitor, you could be a maid, you could be an elevator operator. As far as other jobs in our town that blacks couldn't do, you 00:29:00didn't deliver beer, you didn't deliver pop, you didn't deliver potato chips. None of those route jobs could you do.

ARBONA: How did things compare in California compared to Ohio, compared to Columbus?

LOWERY: I just really didn't pay much attention. Then when you look at so many of the young men that were in the Army, in the service, you really didn't pay a whole lot of attention about who was left doing what. I do know that in the South, many of those jobs that we didn't do here, black people did them in the South. As far as schools are concerned, I graduated in 1948. I had a bachelor's 00:30:00degree in education and the reason I had that one, because when I went back to engineering, I had a very unhappy experience in engineering.

ARBONA: Oh, really?

LOWERY: I don't know whether you want to hear that or not but--

ARBONA: I think so. I think we'd like to hear that. But we're maybe jumping--

LOWERY: Okay. I finished my third year. I came back out of the Navy. I finished my third year in engineering and there was an order out. We had an airplane factory here called Curtiss--Wright, building Navy planes. An ad for junior engineers. I finished my third year at the end of the winter quarter and this ad for junior engineers or draftsmen--I said, "What would happen if I took this job 00:31:00and worked from January until fall and then finished my senior year in June? Will I be better able to get a job with, what, eight months of experience in engineering and then graduating in the June class when most of the recruiting and hiring is done?" My answer was yes, I'd be better off. So I did. I took the job at Curtiss--Wright and while I'm there they lost a contract for parts. The engineering department at Curtiss--Wright went from 120 to 20. Of those that were hired with me, and there were some white ones hired with me, and I think there were five black guys that had worked there during the war who were 00:32:00journeymen, drafting jobs that we did. We worked in groups. Some of the guys that started with me had not had the training that I had, did not produce as much as I did that I could see. However, when they had the layoff, they went from 120 to 20 in six weeks. The first to leave were all the blacks. I was no comparison as far as capacity produced than the other five black guys that had been there during the war.

And I guess I came to a conclusion. Do I have to go through the rest of my life with this kind of racism and industrial politics? And I said, "I'm not going to 00:33:00do it. I don't need to graduate. I don't need to pursue engineering." And my mother cried and said, "Well, you're far along." Well, anyway, I reevaluated and I looked at what I had. As an engineering student, we carried twenty, twenty-two hours. I had in my three years of completion of engineering school, I had enough credits to graduate. But they weren't in the right places. So I said, "What do I need to do to get out of here as quick as I could?" I looked at it. I said, "Okay, here's what I got. I got enough for a math major. I got enough for an industrial arts major. And all I need to get a BS in education, secondary trained education, is two psychology courses, student teaching and a philosophy course." That's two quarters. And I took the two quarters. I got my bachelor's 00:34:00degree with a major in math and a major in industrial arts and education. And I'm then qualified to get a teaching certificate to teach in a secondary school.

However, in Columbus, Ohio, there was only one secondary school that blacks can teach at and that's the junior high school. And for me to work there, I got to get in line and wait on somebody to die. And of all the high schools that we had, the five high schools, there were no black teachers in 1948 in a Columbus, Ohio, high school until the Michigan game. Ohio State--Michigan. You heard of that?

ARBONA: Uh-huh, yeah.

LOWERY: There's a guy named Jack Gibbs that was a defensive black for Woody Hayes in 1954. Intercepted a pass and got the ball and Ohio State went on to win. This was late in the game. They were behind until he intercepted his pass. And guess what happened? After the game, Woody Hayes went to the superintendent of schools and said, "Hire this boy. Jack Gibbs." And in 1955, Jack Gibbs got a job at Central High School as a history teacher. He was the first black to teach in a Columbus, Ohio high school. 1955.

ARBONA: That's several years later, though. You had finished in '48?

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: So that's seven years later.

LOWERY: Yeah. That's how long it took. Things were happening.

ARBONA: What were you doing in the interim?

LOWERY: I don't know how long it would have been if he hadn't caught that pass and didn't have Woody Hayes going to the superintendent, said, "Give this guy a job."

ARBONA: But you didn't work in the interim as a teacher, I assume. You were doing other things.

LOWERY: I did other things.

ARBONA: What kind of jobs did you have to do?

LOWERY: I've done a whole bunch of stuff. I worked for a newspaper for a while, sold some advertising for a black newspaper, and then I got hooked up with a man who had a number of businesses, and he got a wholesale beer license, and I went to work for him, and we were the third black wholesale beer distributor in the country.

ARBONA: In the whole country?

LOWERY: The whole country. And when we started in 1950, there were no blacks 00:37:00delivering pop of any kind, Pepsis or 7Up or Cokes. No blacks delivering any beer of any kind. And when we started, we integrated the retail wholesale delivery system. And we operated for, what, five years. We started out with some beers out of Chicago, Ebel Weiss Brewery. We had rolling rock out of Pennsylvania and we had {Champ?} Hill, which was a specialty out of {Dorr?} and we had Shanling Beer out of Cincinnati, along with some others. But that was 00:38:00five years there. Then what else did I do? Oh, I was in the automobile business for seven years.

ARBONA: Oh, wow.

LOWERY: I went to work for a new car dealer and I ended up being vice president of the store. We were almost the biggest one in town. We were Lincoln--Mercury, Edsel, English Ford dealer and then I was a dealer in my own right. I was a wholesaler after we got out of the business, the company did. And then I taught school for a couple of years by accident.

ARBONA: Starting in what year did you go back to teaching?

LOWERY: Sixty-two.

ARBONA: Oh, wow.

LOWERY: Sixty-three.

ARBONA: So some time had passed since that football game.

LOWERY: Well, what had happened with my car business was I was a wholesaler. I used to buy reconditioned, sell at the dealer's auctions. And I didn't work during the winter because of the risk. For an example, you got four, five cars ready for sale on a Wednesday auction and it snows. You don't have any buyers. So what would happen, I saw guys work twice as hard during the winter to break even or lose money, so why not get rid of all my inventory, put my money in the bank and don't work during the winter, during the four months in the winter in this climate. And that's what I did. But in the meantime, I decided that I 00:40:00wanted to substitute teach, and that's how I got back in. And then being a salesman. Salesmen are generally the easiest people to sell, and I let them talk me into a full-time job and I taught for two years.

ARBONA: Okay. I'd like to come back perhaps to the teaching, but before we get too far along, I think it would be great to go back to Port Chicago because we haven't talked about the explosion or any of that. So how about we--

LOWERY: All right, let's do it.

ARBONA: I wanted to just kind of rewind a little and ask you first of all, I guess, what led up to the explosion, at least from your point of view. I know that you weren't one of the ammunition loaders but--

LOWERY: What led up to it?

ARBONA: In terms of were there any previous--

LOWERY: There were no warnings. It just happened. It just happened.

ARBONA: And how did it happen? What happened that day?

LOWERY: Nobody knows. Everybody that was there, dead. Blew up. I was on the base that night and I was in the barracks, in a room in the barracks and it happened. We immediately knew that's what it was. Couldn't have been anything else.

ARBONA: That it was just one of the ships that had exploded, you mean?

LOWERY: Yeah. We knew that it had to be done at the dock. There was no question about that. Went outside, you could see there was some big hunks of steel from the hull of the ship that were in sight, near us. We were almost a mile away, though, the barracks were. And then that night the damage done to the barracks 00:42:00and those guys that were there in the barracks, some got hurt with falling walls and whatever. And we in the recreation department, we had a pickup truck that was at our disposal. Irv Lowery and another guy named Ted {LeSand?}, we drove, loaded up the guys in the barracks that were injured and drove them up to Pittsburgh to the Army base, to the hospital there, and we made four or five trips that night. Three or four. I don't remember how many, but we spent the rest of the night going up there with the injured to the hospital. And the next 00:43:00morning at daylight we saw what was left around us. You'd see shoes with a foot in them, see gloves with a hand in them. Sometimes a part of a torso that was scattered around the area between the barracks and down toward the dock that had been blown that far. And that was basically it. All of those people that were on liberty or in the barracks, they evacuated them, and the only people that stayed on the base were those which were part of ship's company, those whose jobs it was to work the docks. They took them off. We never saw them again.

ARBONA: So those would be the men that ended up in Vallejo back at Mare Island, that stage of the--

LOWERY: Yeah. Mare Island. All the work crews and all the rest of those guys were shipped off. They never did come back.

ARBONA: And you personally knew also some of those men.

LOWERY: Yeah, I knew some of them. They came into the rec hall. Of course, I hadn't been there long enough to really know a whole lot of people for very long or develop any long-term friendships other than some of the specialist aides that I'd gone to school with. But most of the rest, see, I'd only been there, I don't know, what, three or four--I don't think I'd been there hardly a month.

ARBONA: Oh, really?

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: So short. You had been there for about a month at that point?

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: Oh.

LOWERY: And then I stayed there until July of '45.

ARBONA: Oh, I see.

LOWERY: I never did leave. Our mission, sending ammunition, was so important to the war effort against Japan that they sent the Seabees in immediately to start to rebuild that dock and to make it available to be able to start shipping again. That's how critical our mission was to the war effort, because we supplied the ammunition for the fighting in the South Pacific. And the Seabees came in, and then when they went down and did what they had to do a the dock to 00:46:00tear it out with their cranes and whatever, all the other bulldozers and other stuff that they had, to clear the channels so that other ships could come in and rebuild the dock so that place could be operational again. They did their thing and while they were doing it we operated the rec hall and served the Seabees because that was all the Navy personnel that was there. Our cooks and bakers stayed and administration building people stayed, and the Seabees, they made room for themselves in the barracks, the ones that weren't completely destroyed. Accommodations for themselves and then they rebuild the barracks. Once the base was ready to proceed with its own personnel, loading and unloading the ships, 00:47:00they brought in new sailors, which they were white and black. So what they did was integrate the base. This was the first base in the Navy that was integrated. I don't know whether you knew that or not.

ARBONA: Well, I wasn't sure about that. That actually--

LOWERY: There was no other base. There was no other base in the Navy that was integrated. Yes.

ARBONA: I see. Now, forgive me asking sort of a gory question but I know that part of your work there was to help collect parts of bodies and remains. What 00:48:00happened with the remains? Where were those buried? Where did that go?

LOWERY: I don't know. I don't remember. I remember we picked them up and put them someplace and somebody took care of it.

ARBONA: I see. Do you remember a memorial service?

LOWERY: No. The only memorial service I remember was the memorial service when I visited after, what, sixty years.

ARBONA: Oh, when you went.

LOWERY: I went to revisit the place.

ARBONA: Oh. I would like to also get back to that. Now, I've heard from other folks in oral histories that cemeteries at the time were also segregated in California. San Bruno cemetery.

LOWERY: Well, we visited the cemetery in San Francisco. That was one of our 00:49:00trips. Everybody was asked to make some remarks. I noticed. I said, "Well, this went from the very beginning to the end. When you look at the cemetery and you look at the names on the headstones that were there, they were either black folks or Filipinos. And the Filipinos, they were like the blacks. They worked as steward's mates. They worked for the officers. You cook for the officers and made their bed for them and that was the jobs that blacks had before seamen were enlisted, were brought in in 1942. If you remember Dorie Miller, who was part of this Pearl Harbor fight. He was black but everybody had a battle station. Dorie 00:50:00Miller was a steward's mate.

ARBONA: I see. You said you went to one of the cemeteries. Was it to visit--

LOWERY: San Francisco.

ARBONA: To visit Port Chicago graves or what was the--

LOWERY: No. We went to see where the unknown sailor was buried. And the place where it was was a black section. A black section of this cemetery, the military cemetery in San Francisco.

ARBONA: Is this visit something more recent or this is back in the forties?

LOWERY: No, no. This is when we went four years ago.

ARBONA: Oh, I see. Yeah. And this is with your niece, the Reverend McDaniel and--

LOWERY: Yes, she was there at that ceremony.

ARBONA: Oh, I see.

LOWERY: But part of that program that they had, and this was paid for by 00:51:00what--what's his--Drummond [sic] people, defense contractor.

ARBONA: Oh, this is Northrop?

LOWERY: Northrop Drummond [sic], they paid for it.

ARBONA: Northrop Grumman. This was through--I apologize, I'm forgetting her name but I know there's a--

LOWERY: Manly.

ARBONA: Oh, Sandra Evers-Manly.

LOWERY: Evers-Manly.

ARBONA: Yeah. So that's been part of the organization of remembering Port Chicago closer to the present day.

LOWERY: Yeah. I don't know what ever happened to her. I've talked to a couple of guys that have tried to contact her, can't get to her.

ARBONA: She's pretty hard to get a hold of. She's pretty high up there in the company, I suppose. Yeah. Well, this brings up a whole lot of different questions. Another thing that I've heard in oral histories is there was also 00:52:00segregation in medical services. I don't know if you have any first-hand knowledge of that, but if any of the wounded would be able to get immediate medical service or wouldn't get medical attention from the Red Cross. Is that true, to your knowledge?

LOWERY: Oh, no. I don't know anything about that one. I know that the guys that were hurt in Port Chicago during that explosion, we took them up to Pittsburgh. And I guess the rest of them that may need treatment, the next closest place was the hospital at Shoemaker.

ARBONA: Camp Shoemaker.

LOWERY: Yes. Shoemaker was the northern California shipping point to the South Pacific for all Navy and Marine personnel.

ARBONA: So tell me about the so-called mutiny. When did you find out about--

LOWERY: Yeah. We didn't know anything about it. When they took them away, we never saw them again and we were left with our mission of rebuilding the base and there was hardly anything in the newspapers. And I don't know whether you know a guy named Tuggle, lives in Cincinnati. Have you talked to him? Didn't I tell you about him?

ARBONA: We've contacted him. We're hoping to get an oral history from him.

LOWERY: Yeah. But Tuggle said they put them on a ship and just made them unavailable for anybody to talk to.

ARBONA: This is after they struck, after they refused to load any ammunitions.

LOWERY: From day one, when they took them away from the base, wherever they put them, and after, there was a dispute. I remember one guy, let's see, where was that? I forgot his name. He was from Muncie, Indiana. Great big guy. And he was second class gunner's mate. Played in our volunteer band. And his mother told him not to go back to work on the docks.

ARBONA: Oh, really?

LOWERY: And he didn't. He told them what his mother said, and I think they sent the FBI out to his mother and told the mother--told the mother, "He's going to be in big trouble if he doesn't do it, and he won't go back to work unless you say okay," and she changed her mind and he went back to work and he got released.

ARBONA: Oh, wow.

LOWERY: That's about it. Without their mother's influence, some of them, many of them--well, see, I remember. We had fify of them that were charged. Fifty were charged with mutiny and of all the rest of the personnel that worked as stevedores, they then went to work. Went back to work with some conditions. The conditions were that they'd put some safety factors in and not operate as they did before and give us some training. And that's part of the issue. That's part of what you're going to hear from Tuggle, because Tuggle did work the docks.

ARBONA: Continuing on with our interview for today after a short pause. Well, 00:56:00you were just telling me about some of the sort of causes of the so-called mutiny or the strike and what some of the sailors were responding to. So I don't know if I cut you off on any other thoughts you had on that.

LOWERY: Yeah. All I was saying is from what I understand, of all the crews that lived, that were not a part of the explosion, that were part of the work crew that was supposed to work the docks, when they were asked to work the docks wherever they were taken, whether it was Mare Island--I guess it was Mare Island and they refused, that whole process--they ended up being fifty that said no and those were the ones that were charged with mutiny. The others relented and went to work but they're going back to work, I think, included some changes in methodology, where there was some training given, some safety procedures that 00:57:00may not have prevailed before, instituted, whatever. You'll have to talk to somebody else. But what Tuggle told me, in talking to him--we didn't know anything of it. Those of us who were left and stayed there, we saw none of those guys again ever. And the mutiny and all of that, we didn't know anything about it.

ARBONA: Wow. How did you first come to learn of it?

LOWERY: Huh?

ARBONA: How did you first come to learn of it?

LOWERY: I don't really remember. Being reminded. The best was when Morgan Freeman's movie the Mutiny came out.

ARBONA: Oh. That's in the nineties. That's pretty much '92 or '93 or so.

LOWERY: And we didn't know much about it until then.

ARBONA: Wow. I assume you saw that movie when it came out?

LOWERY: Um-hmm.

ARBONA: How did that movie strike you?

LOWERY: That's the way it was.

ARBONA: Oh, yeah.

LOWERY: Of course, the detail that they did in the movie about the warship--I was down there one time to the dock and I guess I was out of the loop on what happened and how it worked and all of that stuff. But the guys that lived it and worked it, when you talk to Tuggle, he'll tell you because he was there on the docks.

ARBONA: Well, we've been going for quite a while today, probably for about--over an hour. I just want to check in to see if you're okay. If you want to take a 00:59:00pause or we can--

LOWERY: I'm all right. Go ahead.

ARBONA: Okay, all right. Well, there are a lot of different issues I'd like to talk to you more about. Some of them are more of recent events and how Port Chicago is remembered and what should happen. Maybe we should talk about that next. Of course, there's also, I think, a lot of your experience after the war and becoming a schoolteacher. That also is--

LOWERY: My most rewarding civilian work was with the Urban League.

ARBONA: With the Urban League?

LOWERY: Yeah. When I left teaching school in 1965 I went to work for the Urban League. And at the Urban League, this is right after the civil rights law. Nineteen sixty-four. I went to the Urban League January 1965. Civil rights law 01:00:00just passed. And I don't know whether you know much about the civil rights law. You do?

ARBONA: Some, yeah. Yeah. I didn't live it, but from history books.

LOWERY: Okay. Well, the civil rights law had teeth and sanctions only to federal contractors. Not the whole business community. Just federal contractors. Now, let's talk about who are federal contractors. You had the electric company, the gas company, Nationwide Insurance, for example. Big Medicare contractors. The banks. Federal contractors. Or they fell into that classification. Those are the ones that originally took the first effort to hire blacks, and they hadn't done 01:01:00it before until the Civil Rights Act. We had a bank here in Columbus, Ohio, right in the middle of the black neighborhood, middle of the black business district, that didn't get a black person in that branch office until 1961 or '2. And that was following a confrontation. Other than in the banks. You could work as an elevator operator and a janitor. And I remember in the late--early sixties, yeah, the first black guy the telephone company hired in a job other than maid or janitor was a guy that ran their car wash operation. His first job 01:02:00was collecting money out of the phone booths.

But at the Urban League, what we did was a major recruiting to integrate the business community and Columbus, Ohio, and we did it. There were a number of issues that we had to deal with, one of which was some of the arbitrary cutting scores of some of the commercial aptitude tests. We found some of the companies were giving aptitude test and the cutting scores, the scores at which they would consider for hire, were those who had the potential to be the CEO.

ARBONA: How did you go about doing this work? This was research work that you had to perform?

LOWERY: No, this was staff. We had a Labor Department contract for an on-the-job 01:03:00training program, and in the interim, we did adult education and we did this kind of personnel. But the starting place was--the Urban League had been there forever, for years, and we got a contract from the Labor Department to do on-the-job training. Well, anyway, we did that and then our mission then was as a source of black recruiters for--

ARBONA: To find people jobs.

LOWERY: Yeah. To find people jobs. Urban League still does that.

ARBONA: Yeah. And how did you feel about it at the time? You said before that this is probably one of your happiest, most satisfying jobs, I think were the words.

LOWERY: We produced. We got the job done. We produced. I also ended up on the 01:04:00state advisor council for apprenticeship and that set the standard for all the apprenticeship programs. I was on the state vocational education board. Then when I left the Urban League, I went to work for Governor Jack Gilligan, the deputy administrator of state employment service, and that was a Labor Department contractor. My boss was a guy out of UAH. He did the UI side and I did the employment training side and part of our program in the seventies, which was from '71 to '75--one of the programs was a program called {WIN?}. That's 01:05:00putting welfare people to work. And we did the best job in the country putting welfare people to work in Ohio under our administration. And I worked for the county commissioners here and then followed that with--I ran the Columbus--Franklin County Private Industry Council, and then I ended up finishing up my career as assistant insurance commission for the state of Ohio.

ARBONA: In the government?

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: I have a question. Did you and your wife have kids?

LOWERY: We had a daughter. She lives in Paris.

ARBONA: Oh, really?

LOWERY: Yeah. She's a housewife over there.

ARBONA: Oh. And this is going back a little bit to Port Chicago. But your life 01:06:00is unfolding and you're working at the Urban League or whatnot and raising your daughter. Was the memory of Port Chicago ever brought up or did you ever talk about that?

LOWERY: We didn't talk about it much. Really didn't.

ARBONA: Just because it was forgotten or how come it wasn't discussed?

LOWERY: Just wasn't discussed. I guess I've got a thing about the condition of the country. I think we gave away the automobile industry.

ARBONA: The automobile industry?

LOWERY: The wealth of this country was in the pockets of the guys that worked. And what we did? We gave away all those jobs to start out--to Japan. Here are 01:07:00the people that tried to destroy you, and what do you do? You give them your automobile industry, which were the best paying jobs in the country. And you let them come in here and take your automobile industry. It makes sense.

ARBONA: You're saying it does make sense or it doesn't make sense?

LOWERY: Doesn't make sense. We've given away the automobile industry. That became the main source of wealth of the middle class in this country, was the automobile industry. And what do we export? If you and I had an idea right now, if you and I had an idea right now of which we knew that we could go to Japan and make it and sell it to those people over there, they wouldn't let us. They 01:08:00would not let us in the country to do business.

ARBONA: I'm trying to sort of under--

LOWERY: We talk about exports in this country. Let's talk about exports, the imbalance of exports. What are we exporting? We export agricultural products, the agricultural chemical products and the agricultural mining. Those are our three major exports. Now, let's talk about each one. The agricultural products. Soybeans, corn, whatever else that we grow and ship. How do we do it? Here's a farmer that's got 5,000 acres, or an agrifarm, and they've got a combine that goes in, tills the soil; another combine that comes in and plants the soil; 01:09:00you've got one that comes and makes another swipe at it and weeds it and then comes back again and harvests it. What kind of labor-intensive is that? You got one guy running a combine. That's our major source of labor in that product. Let's talk about chemicals. You look at the chemicals that we export. You ever look at the Food Channel?

ARBONA: I don't have TV but I sometimes see it.

LOWERY: Okay. Well, anyway, there's a program on there called Unwrapped and it talks about how food items are made. How the pop is made, how mayonnaise is made. That's "chemical." That's not labor-intensive. You're pushing buttons to 01:10:00produce it, and that's the way most of the chemical stuff is made. It's not labor-intensive. Same thing goes with mining. There's nobody mining with a pick and shovel anymore.

ARBONA: But what I'm hearing--

LOWERY: What I'm saying is that what we're exporting is not labor-intensive. And we've given all of our labor products away to China and Japan. I remember twenty years ago a couple of economists talked about, "Well, if the Argentines want to make shoes, let them make them. If the Japanese want to make electornics, let them. The Japanese want to make it, the Italians want to do whatever, let them. We'll sell our brains." And we don't have enough brains to sell.

ARBONA: But in a way, what I'm hearing you say, and correct me if I'm wrong, you worked for a couple of decades, for a long time, in a way creating jobs or in a 01:11:00way helping people find jobs. And you're looking back now and seeing that labor's been shipped off in a sense and it's been destroyed in the US, and maybe that's a source of bitterness or of some frustration?

LOWERY: Yeah, frustration and bitterness. I don't buy Japanese products. I have one just happen. I'm a pretty healthy guy and I got one medication I take for psoriasis. I come to find out, after a story on 60 Minutes, that the company that makes this one particular prescription that I take for a topical ointment is one of those companies that 60 Minutes says went offshore so they don't have to pay taxes. Scripps. They went to Ireland. And they're in Ireland. And you 01:12:00know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to buy anymore. They went to Ireland so they don't have to pay our corporate taxes. Now, that's my attitude.

ARBONA: How did the experience of the war and the experience of serving inform your worldview or your sense of industry and labor in the US and let's say fairness, if we can call it that?

LOWERY: Well, you talk about being a fair person, you're being an honest person. If you talk about all the discrimination that took place to exclude bad people from being hired, that was a case of doing it. But once it happened, once they got hired, they did the job. But they were wrong for taking that position that black people should not be hired because of their race. How do people learn? How 01:13:00does one become a skilled craftsman? For an example, twenty years ago, and I don't think it's a hell of a lot different now, of all the jobs that prevailed in this country, only twenty, twenty-five percent of them required a college education. Why do we send all of our kids to college? Why? What kind of vocational programs do we have within our school system? What kind of preparation is done there? But when you talk about jobs, if the jobs aren't there, you can't get hired. That's part of the reason we're in trouble right now.

ARBONA: This might be shifting topics a little bit but it might relate to what you're saying, as well. I'm going to ask you to reflect a little bit on going 01:14:00back to Port Chicago and going to these memorial services that you've gone to in recent years. What's been your sense of how Port Chicago's been treated as a memory and how the mutiny itself is also either reported or not?

LOWERY: Typical of the times. Like I told you before, what prevailed when I finished high school? What happened? How was the country when I finished college in 1948? What happened in Port Chicago was what happened in the country. When did Harry Truman say that there'll be no discrimination in the military? That was what, 1948?

ARBONA: Forty-eight.

LOWERY: Yeah. But it took a president to say that.

ARBONA: And do you connect that to labor or to the provision of jobs in the country?

LOWERY: Well, you go back to ancient times, you talk about you can do something and I can do something different. And fundamentals was barter. Now you got currency, you pay somebody to do this that you can't do. But you got to have somebody. In capitalism, you got to have somebody to make a profit, somebody to do the work. And if you give it away, you don't protect yourself--understand, I'm an isolationalist--but I think that there needs to be--just like right now, today. They're talking about some of these terrorists. I remember when I was in 01:16:00the car business. We had Lincoln--Mercury, Edsel, made in Detroit, and we brought in English Ford from England. The Fords that came out of Detroit were better than the Fords that came out of England. And there was a German Ford, too. It was better than that. Ones that first came off the rack in Japan were not as good as what came out of Detroit. However, we allowed the propaganda that prevailed in marketing to let people think that they were a better product. Tauruses came out in 1988. Yeah, '88. Yeah. I've had eight Tauruses and I've 01:17:00driven seven of them over a hundred thousand miles. And I bought one alternator, one starter, and one fuel pump in eight cars. That was the only major service that I needed. One air compressor for the air conditioner. Now, is that good service for a car out of Detroit?

ARBONA: Well, one service only, yeah.

LOWERY: Yeah. Eight cars for a hundred thousand miles and you had four parts that you had to replace. That's good. That's super.

ARBONA: One thing that you mentioned before was that what happened in '44 with 01:18:00the explosion and the work strike or the work stoppage was sort of typical of the times, a sign of the times, if you will. But do you still think there's more to be done with relationship to that trial and to--

LOWERY: No. What else? Most everybody was involved in the mutiny, they're dead. All of them, I think, are dead now.

ARBONA: The Port Chicago Fifty.

LOWERY: Yeah. I think most of them are dead.

ARBONA: Is that to mean that there's nothign else that can be done?

LOWERY: What can you do, other than become--what else can you do?

ARBONA: Well, folks like your niece, for example, the Friends of Port Chicago I think would still--even if it's maybe a symbolic victory to exonerate them.

LOWERY: Yeah. That's what she's been doing, trying to do. That's about it.

ARBONA: Yeah. Because nobody's going to receive any back pay or anything for that.

LOWERY: There's been a couple articles here in the paper from me. One, a guy out of LA, LA Times, did one in a travel section. He quoted me, and our local paper ran it. One of my neighbors here is a reporter for Columbus Dispatch, and he did a piece on me some years ago.

ARBONA: Oh, really? I didn't find that. I'd like to. Columbus Dispatch. Okay. I'll look that up.

LOWERY: The guy's name was Mike Harden.

ARBONA: Mike Harden, okay.

LOWERY: He died last year. Nice guy. Was my neighbor. Lived two doors from me.

ARBONA: This is after the LA Times ran the travel section?

LOWERY: No, this was before.

ARBONA: Oh, I see.

LOWERY: This was before. I can put my hands on it if you give me a call, call back.

ARBONA: Sure. Well, I'll see if I can find it here in the library or through the computer system. But yeah.

LOWERY: Mike Harden. I don't remember what year it was.

ARBONA: Okay.

LOWERY: It was within the last ten years. Might have been seven or eight years ago.

ARBONA: Do you still keep in touch with some of the other folks from Port Chicago? I know you mentioned Carl Tuggle.

LOWERY: Well, that's the only one that I--my sister knows him. He lives in 01:21:00Cincinnati. I don't know. She knows him someplace. Her church or something. I don't know.

ARBONA: I see.

LOWERY: So that's how I happen to know him. But she met him and he mentions to her Port Chicago and going to this anniversary and he told me about it. And then I got hooked up with being invited.

ARBONA: You mean you got hooked up to be invited? I'm assuming this is back in the nineties. When some of the first memorial ceremonies took place?

LOWERY: The first one I didn't--let's see.

ARBONA: Didn't attend.

LOWERY: First time I got hooked up with him. They wanted me to come. I don't know who these people are. We're talking a couple of weeks, they set a date. I 01:22:00didn't get a ticket until the day before the flight was to leave and I told them to go to hell.

ARBONA: Oh, really?

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: How come?

LOWERY: I don't know you. Who is Netty Manly[sic]? They had written me and given me a couple phone calls, said, "You're invited." And I said, "Well, how--" "We'll send you a ticket." And the plane's supposed to leave at three o'clock on one day and it's five o'clock the day before the ticket comes. I made my mind up the day before. I give them two days for me to have a ticket in hand.

ARBONA: So that year you didn't end up going? Or did you?

LOWERY: I didn't go, no. And the next time I went.

ARBONA: I see. But at what point did your niece start to get involved?

LOWERY: She was involved--

ARBONA: That first time that you were going to come visit--

LOWERY: First time--

ARBONA: --she probably would have known.

LOWERY: With the first time, I don't think she knew about me being there. I don't remember.

ARBONA: Right. I think that's what she's told me.

LOWERY: I think in fact, she was there because I spent some time with her. My niece is my wife's brother's daughter. They're from Florida.

ARBONA: I see. Yeah. And she's been very active with the Friends of Port Chicago.

LOWERY: She's a preacher and I think her husband is a retired banker.

ARBONA: I have another quick question. You mentioned early on in the interview what your father did or all the jobs that he did. Could you tell me a little bit about your mother?

LOWERY: She was a housewife. Period. Women didn't work back then. Bad. My mother was a housewife.

ARBONA: Your father was of multiple talents. You said he was a musician, barber, criminologist.

LOWERY: You do what you had to do to make a living. He did a number of things 01:25:00and he was politically active, too.

ARBONA: Politically? In what sense?

LOWERY: He was a Democrat back when black folks were still voting for Abraham Lincoln.

ARBONA: What made him a Democrat? Why did he--

LOWERY: Well, he believed in what the Democratic party believed in. We're talking about unionism. He was a musician. He belonged to the musician's union, for one, and he had his own orchestra. And back in the twenties, he used to promote dances.

ARBONA: In Columbus.

LOWERY: In Columbus and Cleveland, all around the state of Ohio.

ARBONA: Oh, really?

LOWERY: He completed his junior year in dental school and was making so much money promoting dances that he quit. That he quit dental school.

ARBONA: Oh, he quit dental school. I see.

LOWERY: He didn't finish.

ARBONA: Because he was doing so well.

LOWERY: Then, with his political activities during the Depression, he helped get Roosevelt elected and I think one job, he was the first black Internal Revenue agent in the Columbus area. And then he became a parole officer. And I remember when I was in college, when he was a parole officer he went back to school and he took some courses from a criminologist professor at Ohio State named Reckless.

ARBONA: Reckless?

LOWERY: Dr. Reckless. You might find him on a computer someplace. He was a guy 01:27:00of national note. Concept back then was incarceration and also rehabilitation.

ARBONA: What was your father's name, by the way?

LOWERY: Percy Lowery.

ARBONA: Percy Lowery.

LOWERY: Next Monday, I'm supposed to go to the state house and witness an award to a guy that Dad had--when he was on the parole board, he was the highest black in the governor's cabinet. Guy named Frank Lausche into hiring some black highway patrolmen. And he said, "See if you can find somebody," and I did find a 01:28:00guy and the guy became the first black highway patrolman in Ohio. And would you believe that next Monday at the state house this guy is supposed to be inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights whatever.

ARBONA: A civil rights museum.

LOWERY: First black highway patrolman. And he invited me to come down to see it because he's going to make some statements about my dad being the one that made the arrangements.

ARBONA: That must be pretty special. Really quick, you didn't mention your mom's name. What was her name?

LOWERY: Her name was Helen Lowery.

ARBONA: And how many were you in the family?

LOWERY: I have a sister, one sister.

ARBONA: Well, I imagine you might have things to get to do today but I wanted to just ask you if there's anything else that I haven't touched upon that maybe you want to add to or something that you forgot that you wanted to mention, as well.

LOWERY: One of the results of Port Chicago and the controversy and the disputes with those--made Port Chicago the first integrated base in the Navy and I think that's an issue of significance, especially since Truman didn't make his order 01:30:00until two years later.

ARBONA: Or longer.

LOWERY: Or longer.

ARBONA: Yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting, because at least when I have visited the memorial, I don't really recall it being presented that way. Not exactly being called that.

LOWERY: But that's the way it is. It was.

ARBONA: It is certainly talked about as part of the desegregation struggle but not--

LOWERY: It happened without fanfare, because when they reactivated that base, when they restaffed it, it was restaffed with white stevedores. White stevedores. That's what really the job was. Job loading ammunition was.

ARBONA: Now, when it was reopened, was that about three weeks or four weeks 01:31:00after the explosion?

LOWERY: Longer than that. It took longer than that.

ARBONA: Oh, longer.

LOWERY: Yeah.

ARBONA: So at that point the work strike had all gone down? All of that had taken place.

LOWERY: We don't know. I don't know because we didn't know anything about what was going on.

ARBONA: Well, if I remember correctly, at least from my note, from what I've read in Dr. Allen's book and other sources, the stoppage took place on August 8th or so, three weeks after the explosion.

LOWERY: Not at Port Chicago. That was at another place.

ARBONA: Yeah, at Mare Island. Well--

LOWERY: It was at Mare Island.

ARBONA: Yeah. But do you think that the Navy, when they integrated Port Chicago, they were in part thinking about what had happened over in Vallejo?

LOWERY: Well, what they wanted was--I guess this goes back to my point of what was so critical about what happened in Port Chicago. What happened in Port 01:32:00Chicago was this what we sent the ammunition to fight the Japs with. They needed the ammunition. That's how important the work was. We had to get the ammunition down there for the Marines. We had to get the ammunition down there for the Navy ships that were shooting the bombs from the ships. We had to get ammunition down there for the Army, or however else was using bullets and bombs and shells. That was our mission. That's how important it was.

ARBONA: But I guess my question then is--

LOWERY: All they were concerned about was to get the job done and they wanted to get it done without any interruptions, without any delays. When they restaffed it, they restaffed it with black and white sailors.

ARBONA: But I guess my question is did they do that out of any sense of principle or out of sense of changing their views on race?

LOWERY: I don't think so.

ARBONA: Or just it was a pragmatic decision?

LOWERY: I think it was a decision made out of necessity of getting the job done.

ARBONA: I see.

LOWERY: And because of that, it happened.

ARBONA: And in a way, they integrated the base and it didn't mean the end of the world or anything. All that time they had been segregating the men and perpetuating that kind of hierarchy but then they could see that it really didn't make a big difference. Is that what you're saying?

LOWERY: Yeah. Once they integrated, it went on just like anything else.

ARBONA: One other thing that comes to mind. One of the things I've been researching is that there were race riots or conflicts in Vallejo in the mid-forties or a little bit in the early forties. Did you ever hear any word of that?

LOWERY: No, never did. Never did.

ARBONA: Yeah, interesting. Well, I don't want to take up too much more of your time. I guess we could leave it there, unless you have anything else you want to add. But we can also pick it up at some other time if you find out that you have other recollections or other memories you want to share, especially after you read the first transcript. That could be--

LOWERY: Oh, let's do that. Let me look at the transcript.

ARBONA: Sure, sure.

LOWERY: Then we'll try it again. See what--

ARBONA: Yeah. We'll get this transcribed and get it over to you. And if it awakens any other thoughts, we can pick it right back up. So why don't I let you go and get to your wife and we'll be in touch with you, Mr. Lowery.

LOWERY: Very good. I've enjoyed it.

ARBONA: Okay. I've enjoyed it very much, as well. Thanks so much for your time today.

LOWERY: It's a case of you look at times and things can happen again, right now. There's still room for improvement in race relations, the way people believe and think of each other.

ARBONA: Do you notice that in Columbus in some way? You still see that in your day-to-day life?

LOWERY: Sometimes you don't pay as much attention to it as much anymore.

ARBONA: All right. Like I said, we'll chat about it again if you have more thoughts that come to mind. Thanks again for all your time today.

LOWERY: Very good.

ARBONA: It's been wonderful.

LOWERY: Nice talking to you.

ARBONA: Okay, nice talking to you, too.

LOWERY: All right, bye-bye.

ARBONA: Thank you. Bye-bye.