Ninety years ago, an event that would come to be known as the "Black Tom" explosion shook Jersey City and lower Manhattan residents out of their sleep, severely damaged much of lower Manhattan, and killed at least six people.
A new book, The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice (Little, Brown) by Chad Millman documents the attack.
During World War I, three German-American men snuck onto a lightly guarded munitions dump in an area of Jersey City then known as "Black Tom," and set off an incredible explosion that many longtime residents remembered decades later.
Millman, a senior editor at ESPN Magazine, appeared on Sept. 12 at the Main Branch of the Jersey City Free Public Library to discuss the book and answer questions.Converted island
At the beginning of the 20th century, Black Tom was an island converted into a mile-long pier built on landfill that connected the area with the rest of Jersey City.
The island is believed to be named after a dark-skinned fisherman who lived there for years.
The munitions depot located on the island was stocked with weapons and materials to be shipped overseas to the United States' European allies.
July 30, 1916 became one of the darkest days in Jersey City's history. According to various historical sources, a little after 2 a.m., an explosion equal to an earthquake, measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter scale, broke windows within a 25-mile radius, damaged the exterior Jersey City's City Hall, and showered pieces of metal at the upper part of the Statue of Liberty, the damage of which led to the statue's torch being closed off to visitors to this day.
Damage estimates came out to over $20 million, which amounts to about $350 million in today's money.
Several people were killed while many vagrants living on barges around Black Tom went missing, and, according to Millman, have never been accounted for. That's why an exact number of fatalities is not known.
Windows shattered for miles
Millman read from his book how, "The thunder and shock of the first explosion devastated almost all Jersey City. City Hall lost every window and glass door, and the ceilings of the Assembly chamber and the courtroom caved in...."
Former Baltimore Sun writer Jules Witcover, in his 1989 book on the Black Tom incident, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917, also described the magnitude of the explosion in Jersey City.
"The blast jolted the Hudson Tubes [the PATH train] under the river connecting Lower Manhattan with Hoboken and Jersey City ... In the Bay View and New York Bay cemeteries, monuments and tombstones toppled and some vaults were jolted askew."
But what caused all this destruction?
As Millman and others documented over the years, it was three men - Michael Kristoff, Kurt Jahnke, and Lothar Witzke - who gained access to the munitions depot and set off the fires that caused the explosion.
The three men were part of a larger network of saboteurs, supported by the German government, who were spread out across the United States to disrupt munitions shipments to English and French allies during World War I.
The investigation into Black Tom incident, led by a commission created by the U.S. and German governments to recoup damages, took over 20 years. The U.S. finally received nearly $100 million from the German government in 1979. Author speaks
At the library, Millman spoke of how the subject of the explosion motivated him in March 2002 to write his first book that wasn't sports-related.
"I was looking on one of those 'on this date in history' Web sites and I started at 1900 and went through every single day," said Millman. "I got to 1916 and July 30 and saw something to the effect of "German terrorists blew up New York Harbor and destroyed much of Lower Manhattan."
Millman spent over two years researching the Black Tom explosion, spending a great deal of time at the National Archives in College Park, Md., where documents of the government investigation into Black Tom are currently stored.
Millman said he discovered that the best investigative work done on the explosion came from the Jersey City Police Department and the New York City Police Department's Anti-Bomb Squad.
The audience at the library brought up various facts about the explosion, such as the impact it had on the German-speaking population in Jersey City, and how it influenced President Franklin Roosevelt's decision during WWII to intern Japanese-Americans.
At that time, Roosevelt said to his Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, "We don't want any more Black Toms." Millman added that McCloy had been a lawyer for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the owners of the Black Tom depot building destroyed in the explosion. Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com
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