Survivors Gather to Mark WWII Tragedy

Saturday will mark sixty years since the U.S.S. Indianapolis went under and the ordeal for the survivors began.

Survivors of one of the final Naval tragedies of World War II gathered this weekend to honor hundreds of crewmates from the USS Indianapolis who were killed when their ship was torpedoed, leaving hundreds of sailors adrift on the Pacific Ocean amid circling sharks.

Just days after delivering key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, the cruiser was struck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea on July 30, 1945.

More than four days later, barely a quarter of the crew of 1,197 came out of the water with enough strength to survive.

Go read for the words of those survivors still living, still deserving our honor.

Also, as to honor, this aspect of the story, tucked away at the end, cannot be stressed enough.

Reports of the Indianapolis’ sinking were buried behind the news of the Japanese surrender.

The commander of the Indianapolis, Capt. Charles McVay III, was court-martialed for not sailing a zigzag course to evade submarines. His men believe he was made a scapegoat. In 2000, 32 years after McVay committed suicide, Congress passed an act clearing his name.

Be at peace, sir.

Thanks to Hollywood, and justifiably for once, it is difficult to hear this story without thinking of a moment in a movie. Robert Shaw, speaking as the crusty Quint, captain of the fishing vessel Orca and in the role of a survivor of this historical ordeal, did the actual sailors much justice in the classic film Jaws with the following:

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.