Different kind of A-Bomb horror
Chilling story of the Indianapolis after it delivered nuke
The survivors envied the dead.
A little after midnight on July 30, 1945, the U.S. warship Indianapolis was crossing the Philippine Sea when a Japanese submarine captain caught her in his sights. Minutes later, two of his torpedoes blew it to pieces.
Within 12 minutes, the flagship of America’s mighty Pacific fleet was headed toward the bottom of the ocean, carrying roughly a quarter of her 1,195 sailors — leaving the rest to face excruciating horrors.
It was the worst sea disaster in U.S. naval history and “Indianapolis,” by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic, tells the grisly story without flinching.
Their tale has almost everything. There’s a secret mission, an honorable enemy and a scapegoated captain. There’s madmen, heroes and cannibals. There’s enough in this tale for several movies.
One famous film has already borrowed part of the story. The shark hunter Quint in “Jaws” explains a scar on his arm. It was a tattoo of the World War II ship, which he was on. The blood-curdling tale of him and the surviving crew fighting off schools of sharks is one of the more gripping scenes in the movie.
The facts are more horrible than fiction.
Still, she began in beauty. Christened in 1932, the elegant Indianapolis first served as Franklin Roosevelt’s ship of state, used for trips and grand galas. Glenn Miller played while diplomats danced on her teak deck.
But she was too fine of a fighting machine to be relegated to cocktail parties. The Indianapolis was made for war and she joined the World War II fray after Pearl Harbor — a catastrophe she escaped only because of a training exercise.
In 1945, after victorious engagements at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Indianapolis was dispatched on her most important mission, one that then-President Harry Truman hoped was her last. She was to sail to San Francisco, pick up two men and cargo, and take them to a Navy base in the Pacific.
The crew wasn’t told what was in the crate they wrestled onboard. Cases of Scotch, one hoped. Special toilet paper for Douglas MacArthur, another joked.
The sailors had just loaded the components for the first atomic bomb, a weapon still thought so unstable that scientists insisted it be shipped unassembled. After so many missions, it seemed, the Indianapolis would now play a part in the one that would finally end the war.
The crew set a speed record crossing the Pacific, dropping off their mysterious cargo and its escorts in the Mariana Islands. Still wondering what they delivered, they shipped
out for Guam to take on new crew members and planned to go to the Philippines for training exercises.
It was then that Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy struck.
His first torpedo nearly sheared off the Indianapolis’ bow. The second buried itself deep amidships. Parts of the Indianapolis flooded immediately; others exploded in flames. The generators failed, taking lights and communications with them.
Calmly, reluctantly, Capt. Charles McVay, a career officer and the son of a retired admiral, gave the order to abandon ship.
The scene was already chaotic.
Badly burned men, blood running down their faces, staggered blindly down the deck. Two terrified galley stewards simply jumped off the stern – and were immediately ground up in the stilltwirling screws.
When the mighty ship finally sank, it left roughly 900 crewmembers in the ocean. There weren’t enough lifeboats, or even lifejackets. Sailors who couldn’t swim – it was not a Navy requirement – clung desperately to debris.
Hashimoto watched from his sub as his men urged him to continue the fight, to surface, and fire on the survivors, to exterminate them all. Hashimoto shook his head.
“No,” he said, telling them to move on. “We have already done our job.”
It was an act of mercy, but Hashimoto had really consigned many into a living hell. Spilled fuel oil stung the survivors’ eyes; salt water tortured their blistered skin. A quick inventory showed that most of their medicine, water and food were sunk or spoiled. Huddled on various rafts, boats and floating nets, the sailors drifted. And then the sharks came. It’s impossible to know how many men those predators claimed, and how many died from other wounds, thirst, or exposure. Death was simply a constant. People hallucinated, or fell into homicidal rages. Desperate men gulped handfuls of seawater, and died raving.
There was heroism, and self-sacrifice. But there was also selfishness and savagery. Survivors reported witnessing rapes and cannibalism. One claimed he saw someone slit a man’s throat and drink his blood. Friends armed themselves and made secret pacts; promise to kill me, if you see me start to go mad, and I swear I’ll do the same for you.
They were four full days in the water before a plane spotted them. Of the ship’s 1,195 men, only 317 survived.
Apparently, no one was even looking for them, although the ship was overdue. And while the Indianapolis’ distress signal had been received at several stations, no one had acted on it. One commander suspected a Japanese trick. Another commander was drunk.
Someone had to be blamed. The Navy picked Capt. McVay.
A court martial was convened in November. McVay was charged with “hazarding” his ship by putting it in harm’s way for plotting a straight course, rather than zigzagging. The fact that no one had told him beforehand that subs had been spotted in the area was not taken into account.
In fact, the brass was so intent on proving their case they brought in a surprise witness – Hashimoto, the man who sunk McVay’s ship.
Japan had surrendered months before, thanks in part to the bomb McVay had been ferrying. Now the conquered enemy, a guest of the American government, wearing illfitting civilian clothes, took the stand. Isn’t it true, he was asked, that if Capt. McVay had been zigzagging, you couldn’t have hit him?
It was not true, Hashimoto protested. He simply would have recalibrated. Besides, his sub also had manned torpedoes, piloted by kamikaze sailors. He would have carried out the attack regardless. But Hashimoto’s testimony was mistranslated or ignored.
McVay was found guilty and knocked down 200 spots in the promotion lists. He retired in 1949.
For years, many felt an injustice had been done – including a Pensacola sixthgrader named Hunter Scott. In 1997, he took up the story of the Indianapolis for a research project, digging up documents and interviewing survivors. He presented his findings to his local congressman, Joe Scarborough, now the TV commentator. The boy’s quest for justice led to congressional hearings and a resolution exonerating McVay, signed by President Bill Clinton.
It had been such a long time coming, it was too late for McVay.
Although he left the Navy, the horrors of that disaster never left him. Days would bring hate letters from some families of the deceased. Nights meant dreams about sharks endlessly circling. On Nov. 6, 1968, McVay was found dead on the walkway to his home in Litchfield, Conn. He was dressed in plain, pressed khakis, and there was a bullet in his head.
In one hand, he held a .38. In the other, he held his keys, a tiny toy sailor hanging from the ring, ready and willing to serve.