Hey everyone Jody here over the next week or so we're bringing you a few of our favorite episodes from the archives

Some people might call them reruns but we like to call them favorite episodes from the archives

But in the run-up to Memorial Day, we thought we'd bring you some stories about war and

the cost of war.

We'll be back with new episodes soon, including some conversations about Kelly's brand new book, some more election-related coverage and of course a bunch of stories

that we are excited to talk about. In the meantime enjoy these episodes and

don't forget to sign up for the newsletter at this day pod.com for lots more.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, late summer, 1944, a group of about 50 naval sailors and officers are facing

mutiny charges for refusing to work at a California port

where they were being asked to load munitions. Now this moment in the last week of August,

first week of September, is happening in the context of something that had happened about a month earlier, a massive explosion at this Munitions Depot that had killed 320 men. Men in the Navy and some civilians,

220 of those men were black. And now the sailors, about a month later, were being

asked to basically do the same sort of work that led

to that disaster loading munitions under unsafe conditions and many of them refused

and many of them were then court-martialed.

So that is the moment that we're in right now, a work stoppage, threat of mutiny, a controversial

trial on the horizon.

So let's get into that and also the details of this explosion which are absolutely

wild and also I guess I should say there's also a third good Marshall element to

this story as well so there's a lot going on here really fascinating here to

...