Week 1 Internship Diary: Feb 3 – 7

This week, I started my internship at Bajari LLC. Week 1 was dedicated to orientation, and research planning. Orientation consisted of learning the history of Port Chicago (POCH), specifically the Port Chicago 50 (POCH 50). My supervisor, Mr. Spencer Sikes, gave me a presentation highlighting essential details such as Pearl Harbor being the catalyst for POCH, the POCH 50 mutiny case, and the aftermath of the POCH 50. I visited the websites of the Port Chicago Alliance, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, and the Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial for more research on the topic. I was given some videos by Mr. Sikes to watch, like “The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Real Story.” 

Despite the first days focusing on the history of POCH, I was given many tasks to complete. My first tasks were to interview Rev. Diana McDaniel, the president of the Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial, create three proposals on how we can search for descendants of the POCH 50, and write a story on why it took the U.S. Navy 80 years to exonerate the POCH 50. However, to end the first week, we began working on the letter to the U.S. Navy.