Indianapolis

by Lynn Vincent

  With that, Ugaki ended his war diary and commended it to a friend for safekeeping with instructions that it never fall into enemy hands. Then he headed for Oita airfield by car and found there eleven Suisei dive-bombers, engines already turning. On the tarmac, twenty-two aircrew stood ramrod straight, heads wrapped in white bands, each of their foreheads ablaze with a flat red disc, the emblem of the rising sun.

  Looking them over, Ugaki softened. He gave an order to reduce to five the number of planes that would accompany him. But Lieutenant Tatsuo Nakatsuru would have none of it.

  “We can’t stand by and see only five planes dispatched,” Nakatsuru told the assembly. “My unit is going to accompany him with full strength!”

  Ugaki climbed up on a stand in front of the aircrew. Already, he had stripped his uniform of all insignia, including his rank. “Will all of you go with me?” he said.

  The flying men raised their right hands skyward and cried as one: “Yes, sir!”

  Minutes later, the crews boarded their bombers. As his plane taxied, Ugaki waved farewell to his staff, who stood on the tarmac, eyes brimming with tears. Ugaki was headed for Okinawa, where so many of his countrymen had lost their lives. He would ram the arrogant American ships and display the real spirit of the Japanese warrior.

  Once airborne, the attack group arrowed south and disappeared. At 7:24 p.m., Ugaki transmitted his final message from the sky: “The emperor, Banzai!”

  • • •

  Ugaki was not the only Japanese military officer to learn of the surrender via the press. That evening, Hashimoto was standing on the bridge of his submarine, scanning the horizon for targets on passage from Okinawa, when he was asked by his senior wireless rating officer to come down a minute. Noticing that the man looked ready to burst into tears, Hashimoto reluctantly followed him to the wardroom, where they had more privacy.

  “Look what’s come,” the officer said. It was a communiqué announcing the end of hostilities. Hashimoto took a minute to reflect on the situation and concluded that it must be some kind of newspaper stunt or military demarche. He informed those present that until an official order arrived, they would remain vigilant and continue to fight.

  Returning to the special craft base two days later, Hashimoto spotted a motorboat from shore coming out to his sub and knew the moment had arrived. With his crew assembled on the upper deck, Hashimoto glanced at the now empty kaiten chocks and, with tears in his eyes, began reading aloud the imperial press communiqué announcing the end of the war.

  • • •

  On the same day, reporter Malcolm Johnson was at Guam, about to board a ship for Japan, when he heard some outrageous news. While banner headlines about the end of the war were plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the States, papers ran another, smaller headline, some below the fold:

  CRUISER INDIANAPOLIS SUNK.

  Johnson was livid. The Navy had not waited for his story about Indianapolis, nor that of any other reporter. Instead, it had released its own version—conveniently, Johnson thought, on the same day that President Truman announced the end of the war.

  Johnson and the other reporters complained bitterly to the brass at Guam, who even raised a little protest themselves. The correspondents’ stories, reported from the scene, were en route to Washington per the Navy’s previous instructions, Guam officials pointed out to Washington. Couldn’t the release have been held up until they arrived?

  Johnson regarded the reply as cryptic. It amounted to: “Sorry, but we can’t possibly hold up the story.”

  Why not? he wondered. They’d been holding it up for nearly two weeks. It was August 2 when Lieutenant Gwinn first spotted the men in the water. Now it was August 15. Why would the Navy sit on the sinking story for all that time, but now release its own version of events rather than wait for those written by reporters on the scene?

  • • •

  On CincPac Hill in Guam, amidst the questioning about routing orders, overdue ships, and submarine risk, the court of inquiry also elicited narratives of the sinking itself, as well as the days and nights in the water. The twenty survivors who testified told of the horrors they had witnessed, as well as acts of heroism and cowardice, such as the hoarding of food and water. After seven days of testimony, Vice Admiral Lockwood brought the proceedings to a close. Days later, the court issued a document titled “Finding of Facts.”

  The first section, “Narrative,” related the departure of Indianapolis from Guam and the events of the sinking. Most of this was accurate: the failure of McCormick’s radiomen to properly decode the departure message, the explosions, McVay’s appearance on the bridge, Flynn’s assessment of the damage, and McVay’s attempts to send a distress message via Radio 1.

  “It is believed, however, that no distress message ever left the ship due to damage to radio equipment and loss of power.”

  The conditions endured by the men of Indianapolis were summarized in three bullet points:

  • The Commanding Officer was washed overboard while standing on the ship’s side about frame 110, and swam to an empty life raft.

  • The survivors kept themselves afloat in life rafts, floater nets, and life jackets and were assembled in four groups of varying sizes, which, when finally discovered, were dispersed along a line about twenty miles long.

  • Food and water and medical supplies were found in the rafts and in the water, but in many cases water was brackish and medical supplies wet with salt water.

  Following the narrative portion of the court’s conclusion was a section called “Facts.” The listing was an adequate recitation of events. But in some respects the court seemed to contradict both the “Facts” and itself in the next section of its findings, titled “Opinions.”

  For example, the “Facts” stated that “testimony regarding visibility and whether or not the moon was shining is conflicting. Likewise, testimony is conflicting as to whether or not the sky was overcast.” But the court’s “Opinions” stated that “visibility on the night in question was good with intermittent moonlight.”

  The court found that both Radio 1 and Radio 2 attempted to transmit distress signals, but could not due to equipment damage—but then concluded that McVay “incurred serious blame for failure to send out a distress message.”

  As though casting seeds across a fertile field, the court’s opinion spread blame for the delay in reporting Indianapolis:

  • To Rear Admiral McCormick’s communications staff, who garbled the ship’s departure message.

  • To communications staff that attempted to test the radio teletype on July 30, could not raise the ship, and simply gave up rather than trying to achieve communications by other means.

  • To the failure of any naval activity at Leyte Gulf to inquire as to Indy’s nonarrival.

  • To the ambiguity caused by Commodore Carter’s weakly worded instruction on tracking combatant ships.

  • To Jules Sancho, the port director at Tacloban, and his lieutenant, Stuart Gibson, who noticed Indianapolis missing and took no action.

  But then, the court concluded that the primary reason for the delay in reporting the ship missing was “the failure or inability of the ship to transmit a distress message.” This, in effect, blamed Indianapolis herself for the agony the delay would visit on the men in the water, despite the damage to the radio gear that the court itself acknowledged.

  But none of this was as strange as the court’s logic surrounding McVay’s decision to allow his OOD, McKissick, discretion about whether to steer a zigzag course. Number 35 in the “Opinions” section stated that while the court had yet to establish it conclusively, its opinion was that Indianapolis had been torpedoed. This was coupled with the court’s opinion that despite conflicting testimony, visibility was good with intermittent moonlight, and McVay’s failure to zigzag was a contributory cause of the loss of the ship. “This opinion, however, cannot be given full weight,” the court wrote, because the enemy had radar, “making an accurate attack relati
vely simple, whether a ship is zigzagging or not.”

  In the end, however, enemy radar, discretion to zigzag, and damaged radio equipment did not matter to Murray and the court. They recommended to Nimitz that McVay be brought to trial by general court-martial for “culpable inefficiency in the performance of his duty” and “negligently endangering the lives of others.”

  5

  * * *

  AUTUMN 1945

  Washington, D.C.

  AFTER GUAM, CHARLES MCVAY returned to his home on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., and reunited with Louise. It was not the homecoming he’d hoped for. After serving on the Joint Intelligence Committee, commanding a flagship, and earning a Silver Star, he had been well positioned for the climb to commodore. Instead, he was fairly sure his career was over.

  McVay had known it the moment Indianapolis disappeared beneath the waves. During the long, sweltering days in the water, he spun out consequences in his mind, not knowing the specifics, but imagining the broad outlines. Aboard Ringness, when he finally agreed with Captain Meyer to include “not zigzagging” in that initial naval message, he suspected he had sealed his own doom.

  Far worse than any career consequences, though, were the images of the men who’d died on his watch. He remembered them constantly, torpedo-blasted and flailing in the oily muck, the whites of their eyes glowing with a visceral strain of fear. He thought about the sacrifices of men like Captain Parke. He’d heard the story of Parke’s heroism, swimming between the men in Haynes’s group, encouraging them, keeping order, until he died fighting what he believed to be another threat. On September 8, McVay submitted to Navy Secretary James Forrestal a recommendation that Parke be awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism. But it was a travesty that this young man had died at all.

  When speaking with reporters at Peleliu on August 5, McVay had been angry—why hadn’t search and rescue been launched within a day of his ship’s failure to report to Leyte? “That’s my sixty-four-dollar question, and I intend to ask it,” he’d told Malcolm Johnson and the other journalists. Then, at the Guam court of inquiry, McVay had himself declared an interested party and promptly made pointed examinations of several witnesses. But by September 16, when he spoke with reporters again, this time in Washington, his defiant tone had vanished.

  He said he still wasn’t sure what had happened to Indianapolis, but that the “three disinterested men” of the court of inquiry and the “men in Washington, including Admiral Purnell, who have been sifting the facts, are in a better position to tell what happened than any of us who were on the ship.”

  McVay’s new contrition bordered on maudlin: “I was in command of the ship, and I am responsible for its fate. I hope they make their decisions soon and do what they want to with me.”

  In an interview Purnell gave the same day, the admiral seemed ready to oblige. He was the officer who, with Captain Deak Parsons, briefed McVay on the bomb mission the day before Indianapolis sailed from Mare Island. Now Purnell told reporters that it was a submarine that sank Indy in a “typical night radar attack.” The sub had been “lying dead” beneath the surface and “sent home its torpedoes” using radar.

  Purnell’s assessment appeared in the New York Times on September 18. The tone of his comments, a reporter wrote, “suggested that though the magnitude of the Indianapolis loss was greater than in most instances, its characteristics were similar to numerous other losses.” According to Purnell:

  The crew knew there was a submarine in the surrounding waters, and there was a hunter killer group after it. . . . The submarine moved to another area from which it was originally noticed, and that was that. The ship ran right over the top of the submarine.

  Where Naquin had lied at the Guam court of inquiry about the true nature of the submarine threat on Route Peddie, and Gillette dodged discussing it, Purnell was telling the New York Times plainly that the sub chased by Harris and Greene had escaped to sink Indianapolis. In another month, the naval inspector general would state that the precise cause of the sinking had still not been determined. But here was Purnell, an assistant Chief of Naval Operations under Fleet Admiral Ernest King, already shaping public perception, casting unsubtle blame. To wit: The crew knew of the danger, did nothing, and blundered right over the top of an enemy submarine.

  Timed in concert with the official death notifications that were about to stream out across the country, Purnell’s words had the ring of an omen.

  • • •

  Fleet Admiral Ernest King, meanwhile, was not happy. The Guam court of inquiry had failed, he believed. Too few witnesses called, too little evidence uncovered, too many questions unanswered.

  Why was Indianapolis proceeding unescorted? he wanted to know. Why was Route Peddie chosen? Were there alternative routes? Why were no escorts available, and if available, why were they not provided? And what responsible officer made the decision either way?

  In fact, King found the entire court of inquiry inadequate in both scope and discovery. That notwithstanding, he felt there was plenty of blame to go around. The ship was not up to snuff with regard to interior discipline, organization, and administration, King believed. At Leyte, Lieutenant Stuart Gibson should have taken intelligent action when he noticed Indianapolis overdue. Instead, he did nothing. Commodore Carter’s confidential letter prohibiting arrival messages for combatant ships was clearly faulty and a primary reason for the delay in reporting Indianapolis overdue. There were more contributors to the disaster, including Gibson’s superior, Lieutenant Commander Jules Sancho, who was ultimately responsible for Gibson’s actions on his watch, as well as Rear Admiral McCormick’s communications staff with their garbled decoding of Indy’s departure message.

  And yet, in his view, none of this excused Captain Charles McVay. This put King at direct odds with his Pacific Fleet commander, Chester Nimitz. After reviewing the results of the Guam court of inquiry, Nimitz said he viewed McVay’s failure to zigzag as an error in judgment, but not one that scaled the heights of culpable negligence.

  King did not agree. At this point, the fleet admiral was looking at the loss of two warships—Underhill and Indianapolis—both torpedoed in the closing days of the war due to the same failure to put ULTRA intel to tactical use, with a total loss of more than a thousand men. Even now, notices of the Indianapolis dead were appearing in newspaper after newspaper, the grim news echoing through hundreds of townships like the tolling of a bell.

  The Glendale Press Newspaper in Los Angeles, California, reported the death of Radioman Second Class Paul Dollins. In Ohio, the shocking death of twins Albert and William Koegler was shared in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The Seymour Tribune announced the death of Fire Controlman Third Class Thomas Leon Barksdale in Indiana. In Council Bluffs, Iowa, Fireman Second Class Roy Edward Rhoten . . . in Milford, Iowa, Marine Lieutenant Edward Stauffer . . . in Jasper, Tennessee, Fireman Aulton Newell Phillips . . .

  Dothan, Alabama. Pampa, Texas. Salisbury, Maryland. Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Rochester, New York. Troy, Ohio. It seemed there was no corner of the nation untouched by the loss.

  Someone had to answer for it. On September 25, King fired off an acerbic five-page memo to Forrestal. It contained two recommendations. First, that Forrestal launch an investigation into the routing of Indianapolis and the garbled receipt of her departure message by Rear Admiral McCormick’s task group. And second, that Captain Charles McVay be tried by general court-martial.

  • • •

  On September 29, from his temporary office in Washington, McVay wrote to Lieutenant Commander John Emery and his wife, who lived in Mill Valley, California.

  “The exact manner in which your son met his death is not known,” McVay wrote, “but it is believed that he went down with the ship. . . . The surviving officers join me in the expression of wholehearted sympathy to you in the great loss which you have sustained.”

  McVay was in the middle of writing 879 such letters, and each one weighed on his soul. He was grateful not
to bear the burden alone. His yeoman, Vic Buckett, had been assigned to the bureau and tasked with updating the records of Indy’s crew.

  A total of 67 officers and 812 enlisted men had been reported as missing in action. Even now, though, there were families still holding out hope. Word had trickled back to McVay of wives clinging to the idea that their husbands were strong swimmers—perhaps they’d been able to paddle to an island and were simply marooned? The time came for him to lay these hopes, and his men, to rest.

  On September 17, he had walked into the Washington, D.C., offices of Admiral Louis Denfeld, Chief of Naval Personnel, and submitted a signed statement. All personnel not previously reported as survivors, the statement said, should be considered deceased. On the basis of this missive, more than eight hundred registered letters would make their way from Washington into the pouches of mail carriers to be delivered, unwanted, to homes in forty-seven states.

  Now Buckett was helping McVay manage the onslaught of mail pouring in from families of the dead. Some letters were vicious, blaming McVay for their loss. One family was particularly bitter. Anna Flynn, the widow of McVay’s executive officer, Commander Joseph Flynn, sent letters to McVay that seemed penned in acid. Flynn had been on the verge of taking command when Indianapolis went down—would already be in command if he could’ve connected with his follow-on ship somewhere amid Indy’s final port calls. The commander had two daughters, Carleen, six, and Anne, fourteen. Anne adored her father, idolized him, his Irish humor, his playful “dessert first” policy. She was proud of his stature in the cloistered world of the Navy bases where she grew up. As he climbed the ranks, his privileges expanded. Anna and her girls had a driver and a nanny and household help, wholly provided for in officers housing. All that was receding quickly into the past. The Navy told Anna she had six months to vacate officers housing. She would receive a small, onetime death benefit. She had no training, no vocation. Within a year, Commander Flynn’s wife and daughters would slide from privileged to penniless. Anna blamed McVay.