You may have heard about the strike by black munitions loaders at Port Chicago, outside
San Francisco, in 1944. Their refusal to go back to work after a massive explosion vaporized
two entire ships, killing over 300 workers, has been recorded elsewhere. But what is less
well known is that one of the ships was carrying two railroad cars filled with classified
cargo from the fledgling nuclear weapons facility
at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The explosion indeed bore all the earmarks of a nuclear explosion,
and the port itself wound up, only two years later, being chosen as the port of entry
for all US Navy ships overseas that had been exposed to nuclear weapons tests. This screenplay
is a fictionalization account of what is, sadly, a true story.
