Indianapolis

by Lynn Vincent

  * * *

  I. Fo’c’sle is pronounced “fōksl.”

  2

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  MARCH 1945

  Kure Naval District

  Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

  HAVING COMPLIED WITH AN infuriating order to break contact with American naval targets and make for Okino-Shima, Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto drove his submarine back to Kure Naval Base and stormed into the office of the Combined Fleet commander in chief.

  “We were within two hours of the target!” Hashimoto told a senior staff officer, referring to American ships anchored at Iwo Jima. “If another boat had been dispatched to Okino, we could have launched our kaiten!”

  Hashimoto referred to the manned suicide torpedoes aboard his submarine, I-58.

  The staff officer gazed back at him. “We didn’t realize you had gotten so close.”

  For the thirty-seven-year-old sub commander, it was not close enough. The hour was late and the sea growing smaller. Fourteen hundred miles south of Tokyo, the Mariana Islands were hatching American bomber bases while hundreds of Allied ships heaped the islands with war matériel. U.S. squadrons at Saipan and Tinian were slinging B-29 Superfortress bombers into the sky, bound for the Japanese home islands. Only two weeks earlier, nearly three hundred B-29s had torched sixteen square miles of Tokyo, killing almost one hundred thousand civilians. Cannibal flames spread the stench of burning flesh for miles.

  Meanwhile, the enemy admiral Spruance had mobilized unprecedented logistics operations, pushing fuel, ammunition, and supplies westward. His superior, Nimitz, had established a forward headquarters at Guam and based his fleet there. It was not quite at Japan’s threshold, but certainly in her courtyard. Even the insufferable American general Douglas MacArthur had returned to the Philippines.

  The outrageous order that sent Hashimoto speeding back to Kure and into the office of his commander in chief had pulled him from his own mission to Iwo Jima. Three weeks earlier, his two-sub attack group, Kamitake, was formed in the wake of utter failure by a three-boat group, Chibaya. In that group, the Japanese sub I-370 was sunk by an American destroyer, and another, I-368, by enemy carrier planes. Only one sub, I-44, returned to base—but barely. An American destroyer sighted her off Iwo Jima and laid on a relentless stern chase. Forced to remain submerged for nearly two days, she was unable to surface to recharge her batteries or vent to outside air. Her crew gasped like beached fish as rising carbon dioxide levels turned I-44 into a steel coffin. On the verge of suffocating his men, the captain abandoned the operation and limped back to Kure, where he was summarily relieved of command.

  Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American submarine fleet was sent to take the fight to the enemy, buying time for the surface fleet to recover from its losses. American submariners therefore gained experience quickly and proved an effective fighting force, neutralizing much of Japan’s merchant and combat fleet. In contrast, the Imperial Japanese Navy had relegated its subs to resupplying men on isolated islands throughout the Western Pacific. By the time the Empire called on its sub fleet to face the American Navy late in the war, its commanders had little combat experience, and those who were competent had little patience for their less capable brethren.

  Despite the Chibaya group’s failure at Iwo Jima, Hashimoto had held out hope for Kamitake. His own submarine, I-58, was one of the big new B-3 series, a landmark achievement in World War II sub technology. Boats of the previous B series boasted a range of fourteen thousand nautical miles. I-58’s range was half again as much, enough to press the fight against all Allied shipping, merchant or man-o’-war. Further, she was armed with the lethal Type 95 torpedo, a marvel of weaponry that used highly compressed oxygen as a fuel oxidizer. This increased the torpedo’s range to nearly triple that of standard U.S. torpedoes, while nearly eliminating any telltale air-bubble wake. Hashimoto’s torpedoes were the fastest in use by any navy in the world.

  His boat was also fitted with the latest shortwave aerial. En route to Iwo Jima, it worked perfectly, sucking down transmissions between enemy ships. For a week, his seasoned crew played cat and mouse with America’s barbarian Navy better than ever before.

  Still, Hashimoto could not deny the superiority of the enemy fleet, and his countrymen had begun to wonder about their adversaries. The Americans had industrial might, yes, but surely they could not match Japanese resolve. They were farm boys and schoolteachers and factory workers, without guile or cleverness—as easy to read as a child’s schoolbook. They would not fight to the death or sacrifice all as a Japanese would for bushido, the way of the warrior. Yet these same amateurs had nearly secured Iwo Jima. Before the war, when the Empire administered the little rock as a territory of Tokyo, only a thousand people had lived there. It was peaceful and bucolic, with one school, one Shinto shrine, and one policeman. Now the green volcanic diamond—less than eight hundred miles from Hashimoto’s home, from his wife and three sons—was another stepping-stone for the Americans to invade his homeland.

  The battle for Iwo was nearing its end. There would be no surrender there, Hashimoto knew. Imperial generals had known they could not prevent an enemy landing, and Japan’s remaining air strength lacked the range to reach the island. So troops there had contracted into a defensive posture, hunkering in a meticulously prepared system of caves and trenches. The objective was not to win but rather to buy time to prepare for the home island invasion. What had once seemed impossible by then seemed inevitable. Still, on March 6, en route to Iwo Jima, Hashimoto put one eye to I-58’s periscope. He was determined not to give up.

  Hashimoto’s broad, flat nose anchored closely grouped features, and his square head rode his shoulders like the turret on a tank. Grasping the periscope’s training handles, he turned the barrel slowly, his gaze arcing low over the watery chop. A broken overcast hung shroudlike over the dying light.

  There! To the south. The silhouette of a large enemy warship.

  He announced the sighting to his crew. It was an enticing target, but it was nearly night and the ship an hour distant. Hashimoto knew he could attack it only in the absence of moonlight, or risk being sighted and sunk. Were he to attack, any errant flash of lunar light might be I-58’s end. Hashimoto would not mind that, so long as he and his crew fought with honor.

  Hashimoto had been the torpedo officer on a sub at Pearl Harbor, Japan’s masterful first strike against America. It had been a heady time to be a Japanese sailor, and afterward, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) swept down the Pacific Rim, capturing a dozen major islands and territories from the British, the Dutch, and others. In the three years since, however, Hashimoto had managed to sink only a couple of minor vessels. Now the war’s end loomed and he wanted to bring home at least one major prize for the emperor. Not to do so would mean mentsu wo ushinau. He would lose face.

  Hashimoto eyed his instruments. The warship was a tempting target, but I-58 was approaching enemy waters, and he did not want to repeat I-44’s mistake. It would be best to use this unhectored interval to recharge his sub’s batteries while there was still time.

  He gave the order—that I-58 would recharge instead of attack—and sparked spirited objections from his crew.

  “We are turning away from the enemy!” some cried. “Where is the honor in that?”

  Hashimoto reminded them of I-58’s mission: She was equipped with kaiten—manned suicide torpedoes—best for attacking ships at anchor.

  The next day, March 7, batteries fully charged, he proceeded toward a position seventeen miles northwest of Iwo Jima. With enemy lines of communication to the south and east, Hashimoto expected defenses there to be thin. He sailed on the surface and good fortune smiled on him: As his boat plunged through a line of squalls, curtains of rain slashed visibility to nearly zero.

  Perfect, he thought. If the weather held, conditions would be ideal for operating the kaiten.

  At 11 p.m. on March 8, he stood on the bridge as the sub made way, deck awash, sea
foam exploding over the bow. He expected to reach the kaiten launch point at 2 a.m. His suicide pilots had finished their final rituals—belongings ordered, letters written home, final prayers offered at the Shinto shrine on board. The pilots were already in their cockpits when a series of enemy radar transmissions banged in. Signals shot in from three compass points—enemy destroyers, it was almost certain. The crew went quick-quiet and Hashimoto ticked through his limited options.

  He could not dive out of sight—I-58 was still three hours from the launch point, the kaiten manned and coupled to the deck. Armed only with the suicide torpedoes and a small, deck-mounted machine gun, she was an offensive weapon only, virtually defenseless.

  Quickly, he made his decision and addressed his men in a low voice: “If we are sighted, we will dive. For now, bring drinks to the kaiten pilots to keep them going.”

  Sailors carried out the order, speaking only in whispers, guarding even their footfalls to avoid enemy sonar detection. Throughout the boat, stillness set in. From the mess deck, the smell of pickled fish crept through the quiet compartments, and Hashimoto pressed on toward the launch point, conning boldly through the rain.

  An hour passed as he closed the distance to target. Two hours until launch.

  Then, in the radio room, the urgent signal arrived from Japan. It was the outrageous order that would send Hashimoto storming into the commander in chief’s office at Kure:

  KAMITAKE UNIT OPERATION CANCELLED—I-58 IS TO PROCEED FORTHWITH TO OKINO-SHIMA TO ACT AS WIRELESS LINK SHIP FOR COMBINED FLEET OPERATION TO BE CARRIED OUT MARCH 11.

  Maddening! Hashimoto thought. Finally, we are at the Americans’ doorstep unseen, and they are turning us away!

  He could not reply by signal as the transmission would lead to immediate discovery. But who was to say he could not first launch his kaiten, then plot a course for Okino-Shima? Perhaps he could still take a prize for great Japan. He was weighing this possibility when a second signal broke through. It was a personal message from the Chief of Staff Combined Fleet:

  OPERATION “HA” IS VERY IMPORTANT AND YOUR ORDERS SHOULD BE FOLLOWED WITHOUT FAIL.

  There had been nothing for Hashimoto to do but comply. He recalled the suicide pilots from the brink of immortality and followed orders, hating every minute of it. Now, leaving the C-in-C’s office at Kure, all he could do was await new orders to the Americans’ next target, Okinawa. If the enemy held true to form, the shelling there was soon to begin.

  Hashimoto knew that any damage he might have inflicted on the enemy at Iwo Jima would have been small. Also, there had been those lurking American destroyers. It was difficult to say what would have happened to his boat if he had launched his kaiten in their presence.

  But Hashimoto was certain of one thing: Above all, he had wanted to try.

  3

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  MARCH 19, 1945

  USS Indianapolis

  Pacific Ocean

  Near Kyushu, Japan

  IT WAS NOT YET four in the morning when Captain McVay ordered Condition I set in his antiaircraft batteries. The skipper always set Condition I, or “battle stations,” in the morning because that’s when the suicide planes seemed to be most active. Indy was operating sixty miles off the coast of Shikoku, the smallest island in the Empire’s homeland chain, due east of Kyushu.

  Glenn Morgan had relieved the watch and was again on the bridge, wearing his headphones. He was a bugler, yes, a musician in love with newer music like Jimmy Dorsey’s “Tangerine” and Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” (he could play both perfectly on his cornet, which he had carried with him to boot camp, prompting his fellow recruits to holler at him to “go play that damn thing in the head!”). But Morgan had also fallen in love with the rhythms of a fighting ship at sea. The quartermaster barking at his strikers, boys who would be quartermasters themselves someday. The crisp calls of the OOD—Officer of the Deck—passed to the helmsman. Morgan had even learned to steer the ship himself and sometimes couldn’t believe he was allowed to, him, a Bristow, Oklahoma, boy, driving the flagship of the fleet.I

  Morgan loved Indianapolis’s slim contours. Bow to fantail, she stretched 610 feet, with a beam of just 66 feet from the port rail to the starboard, and a draft of 17 to 24 feet, depending on her load. Indy was one of America’s eighteen “Treaty Cruisers,” the offspring of the heavy cruiser race between America, Japan, France, Italy, and Great Britain. Commissioned in 1932, she was subject to treaty displacement limitations that produced thinly armored vessels shipbuilders referred to as “tin clads.” But like Morgan, the men who sailed these lithe ships often fell in love with their speed and grace.

  During his 1936 “Good Neighbor” cruise to South America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt hosted guests aboard Indy one evening. Well-dressed ladies dined in the wardroom that night and danced on the quarterdeck, a polished pool of gleaming teak. But none of the ladies could rival Indy herself. Her graceful rigging fluttered with banners and pennants. Hundreds of Japanese lanterns lit her lines, shimmering against a night sky of velvet blue. Just after dark, a full moon rose, its glow accenting her white peacetime paint. Officers who were there that night remembered not the ladies, but the ship. She was magical.

  Morgan reported to Indy in 1944 and had been aboard for a couple of months when a kid named Earl Procai reported for duty. Procai, a nineteen-year-old from Minneapolis, was a bugler second class. With another new man, Donald Mack, that made four buglers aboard. That meant Morgan and his best friend, Bugler Second Class Calvin Ball Emery, could quit working “port-and-starboard”—twelve hours on, twelve hours off. It cut Morgan’s watchstanding in half.

  Well, mostly. Morgan thought Procai was a very nice fellow, but he couldn’t blow his horn worth a hoot. When Indy was in port and Procai had the watch, one of the other buglers would scoot topside to play “Evening Colors.” They didn’t want the other ships to hear Procai’s halting, mangled rendition.

  “Earl,” Morgan said to Procai one day, pointing to the man’s horn, “you’ve got to play this thing better.” He grabbed a bugle and took Procai down to steering aft. Thereafter, a couple of times a week, Morgan and Procai hunkered down in the heat, machinery cranking, practicing the bugle calls. The horse-race trills of “Reveille,” the regal notes of “Tattoo,” the mournful tones of “Taps.” Morgan played them all, and Procai echoed them back. The kid got to be pretty good and in the process, down there sweating it out in steering, the two got to be good friends.

  As morning on the bridge unfolded, Admiral Spruance took station in his bridge chair. At 5:30 a.m., the carriers launched the CAP, followed by the first sweeps against enemy airfields at Shikoku and northwestern Honshu on the Japanese mainland. Shortly after 6 a.m., sunrise chased the night away, revealing the ships of the mighty task force as if raising a theater curtain.

  At the conn, McVay ordered the OOD to maneuver on a general northeasterly line as the first enemy planes appeared in the sky. At 7:08 a.m., an enemy bomber nosed out of a cloud base at less than two thousand feet, and about a thousand feet dead ahead of the carrier Franklin. Indy’s bridge crew watched as the pilot accelerated in a masthead bombing run. Two bombs dropped from the fuselage and sailed in twenty-five degrees off horizontal, falling through the flak of Franklin’s guns. The first smashed into the flight deck in the center of thirty-one planes, burst into the hangar, and exploded. The second hit the flight deck, then penetrated the hangar, where it detonated over twenty-two parked planes.

  The men of Indy could see a thick pillar of black smoke erupt from the carrier, with multiple red explosions bursting at its base. Sparks and fire triggered a massive gasoline vapor explosion. Planes that had been turning up for launch were flung violently together, and their whirring props sliced each other into strips. Fire poured across the flight and hangar decks in thick sheets, fed with fuel from ruptured aircraft gas tanks.

  Against the backdrop of Franklin’s inferno, suicide planes screamed in, guns rattling. The heavy carrier Es
sex splashed one attacker. Eighteen minutes later, another plane dove on Essex, but missed and crashed close aboard to port. At 12:54 p.m., a Japanese Judy made another attack run on the crippled Franklin, but its bomb exploded short.

  Soon the enemy turned its attack on Indianapolis. At 1:19 p.m., a Zero appeared on the starboard quarter, 4,500 yards out, altitude 4,000 feet. Adrenaline raced through the ship, an exhilarating cocktail of raw combat power and esprit de corps, spiked with a tincture of fear. Indy’s gunners opened fire.

  The plane dodged into cloud cover, then shot out into blue sky again, now falling with a friendly fighter on its tail. A minute later, spotters picked up another enemy fighter circling the ship. Cries went up from the range-finder operators—“3,800 yards!” The trigger men locked onto the plane, tracing its killing path toward Indianapolis. Sixty seconds later, the fighter was diving toward Indy’s port quarter when one of the 5-inch gun crews blew off its tail, ending the pilot’s day. No time to rest, though, as another Judy zinged in for a third run on Essex. Again, Indy opened fire. The plane smashed into the sea on Essex’s port beam, but McVay and his gunners couldn’t tell whether they or one of the other American ships had shot it down. At 2:30 p.m., another Judy appeared directly over Indianapolis, at twelve thousand feet, flying port to starboard. The plane was later reported shot down, but the Indy bridge crew did not see it fall.

  It was the last attack in a very busy day that dealt Spruance a significant blow. The Japanese had long targeted his heavy carriers, but with little success. Now they had hit five in a single week, with Franklin’s fiery agony in full view of the admiral’s seat on Indy’s bridge.