Robert L. Allen, Who Shed Light on a Navy Yard Blast and Trial, Dies at 82

Robert L. Allen, who definitively told the story of 50 Black sailors who were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny for refusing to continue to load munitions onto cargo ships after explosions had blown apart two ships at a California port during World War II, killing hundreds, died on July 10 at his home in Benecia, Calif. He was 82.

He died a week before the Navy exonerated the men.

His former wife Janet Carter said the cause was kidney failure.

“The secretary of the Navy called to offer condolences,” Ms. Carter said in an interview, referring to Carlos Del Toro. “And he said, ‘I’m going to do more than that — I’m going to exonerate these sailors.’”

Ms. Carter, who remained close to her former husband, a writer, activist and academic, added, “I cried in part because Robert wasn’t here to see it.”

On the night of July 17, 1944, hundreds of sailors were loading ordnance and ammunition onto the E.A. Bryan at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, northeast of San Francisco. Suddenly, the munitions in the holds detonated, destroying the ship, the pier and structures in a 1,000-foot radius. Another ship, the Quinault Victory, blew apart and sank nearby in Suisun Bay.

The blasts killed 320 sailors, civilians and Coast Guard personnel, most of them Black. Nearly 400 were injured, also mostly Black.