Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams California in War and Peace 1940-1950, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2002, 386 pp., 2002, 1947, 1944, 1943, 1940s
[p. 119] Port Chicago, north of San Francisco, was where the black stevedores loaded the U.S. Navy's ammunition.
[p. 119] On the night of Monday, 17 July 1944, shortly after 10 o'clock, Port Chicago exploded, expending the energy equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, killing 320 men and injuring another 390. Workers refused to return to work leading to court martial proceedings. NAACP attorney, Thurgood Marshall, "This is not fifty men on trial for mutiny. This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy towards Negros. Negroes are not afraid of anything anymore than anyone else. Negroes in the Navy don't mind loading ammunition. They just want to know why they are the only ones doing the loading!" It wasnn't until after the war that the military convictions were reversed.
[p. 122] ". . . Mexican-Americans liked the special uniform worn by airborne troops. It reminded them of a zoot suit. By 1944 the hated zoot suit and pachuca style of 1943 had made their way into mainstream feminine fashion. Heavily padded shoulders, sharp lapels, single-button jackets, knee-length pleated skirts, high pompadours, a blotch of lipstick above the upper lip: by 1944 the Andrew Sisters and millions of other young women had adapted a stylized version of the attire. . . . There is no record of the City Council or the LAPD having served a warrant of any kind on the Andrew Sisters.
Chapter 3 1943 Swing Shift
[p. 127] . . . By 1944 the entire population of unmarried men betwen the ages of twenty and thirty -four working in the defense industry dropped to 1.7 million. At the same time, there were more than 4.1 million single females in the same age range and employment category.