The Navy called them ‘mutineers.’ But were they really scapegoats?

Without delving too deeply into the obvious factor of race in this equation...I think the Navy got this one wrong. What's more disturbing is how that I'm sure many of the officers involved probably felt they were being "magnanimous" at the time (remember that only two decades earlier, men of all races in European armies were being shot for "cowardice"). Bottom line, the chain of command should have figured out the cause of the explosions FIRST...taken direct and decisive personal actions to establish safeguards...then some "O" with some intestinal fortitude should've gone down to those docks, rolled up his sleeves, and led those men in taking on stores.

My take is that injustice is best overcome when at the lowest possible levels, those with the power, assume the same risks as those without it.

There is a lot to unpack here, but at the end of the day we were a nation at war and these men had the duty and purpose to load ammunition onto ships. Their refusal to do so after no less than an Admiral ordered them to do so is certainly a violation of UCMJ and warrants punishment.
Having said that, the sentences they received were excessive, given the circumstances. An injustice that was eventually sorted out to a degree.

What frosts me reading this story is the lack of accountability for a disaster that was surely the product of haste and poor training. In other words, preventable. No doubt, one or more of the officers giving the orders to go back to work after the explosion were in a position of accountability for the conditions themselves. We don't hear about it in the article, but it seems that they were largely spared scrutiny.
Sometimes wartime practicalities require a degree of pragmatism, but this disparity smells strongly of bias towards officers vs enlisted, as well as institutional racism.

PO1 Tony Holland Most Definitely Scapegoats!