by Peter Nelson
War became inevitable on October 23, 1941, when Japanese Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoe, a pacifist, resigned. He was replaced as prime minister by the minister for war, fifty-seven-year-old extremist Hideki Tojo, a man whose nickname as an army officer had been “The Razor.” Even as Japan continued diplomatic efforts to get the U.S. to release its oil, plans were drawn up to attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The surprise attack at Pearl came at 7:55 A.M. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Japanese aircraft sank or damaged 8 battleships, 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers, 2 auxiliary ships, 1 mine layer and 1 target ship. They destroyed 188 aircraft on the ground and damaged 159 more, and they killed 2,330 American servicemen while wounding 1,347.
American losses at Pearl Harbor gave Japan a tremendous early advantage. At the same time that its planes were attacking Pearl, other forces moved against Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island and Hong Kong. After only six months of fighting, Japan ruled over 1,000,000 square miles and 150,000,000 people in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Burma and Thailand. Yet even as the U.S. built new ships to replace vessels lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were finding out that they had won too much too fast. They lacked the qualified personnel needed to staff the factories, plantations and refineries they’d captured. They had trouble feeding the people in the countries they’d occupied because they couldn’t replace food previously imported from the colonial powers. They had problems keeping their supply lines open because of the great distances involved and because they’d done little to protect their shipping. Their merchant ships became relatively easy targets for U.S. submarines.
The tide of the war turned at the Battle of Midway. From Midway Island, a two-square-mile U.S. possession 1,300 miles northwest of Hawaii, the Japanese hoped to gain control over the vast regions of the mid-Pacific. The massive naval battle began on June 4, 1942. By the time it was over, the Japanese fleet had lost 4 carriers, 1 cruiser, 322 planes and 3,500 men, while the U.S. lost only 1 carrier, 150 planes and 307 men. The Japanese also lost their sense of invincibility, and with it the hope that America might be willing to negotiate a peace settlement rather than pursue the war to its end.
One of the ships fighting on the American side since the beginning of the war was the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser that served as the flagship for Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, an armada of about 200 ships. One of the older ships in the U.S. Navy at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Indianapolis was originally launched on November 7, 1931. She was 610 feet 4 inches long, or the length of two football fields, 66 feet 1 inch wide at the beam, displacing 9,600 tons and drawing 24 feet 10 inches when fully manned and provisioned, with eight White-Forster boilers driving four Parsons geared turbines producing 107,000 horsepower to turn four screws. Her hull was not protected with heavy armor, the way the hulls of battleships and carriers were, which left her vulnerable to attack from mines or torpedoes. Her light weight, however, made her one of the fastest ships in the navy, with a flank speed of 32 knots. She carried nine 8-inch guns capable of throwing 150-pound shells five miles, and four 5-inch guns, used to bombard Japanese island fortifications from two miles away in advance of U.S. landings. For defense, she sported twenty-four 40-mm intermediate range guns and thirty-two 20-mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns. She also carried three SC-2 Curtis Seahawk airplanes used to scout out enemy positions. The Indy’s planes were launched from catapults, and after completing their missions, the seaplanes would land in the water, where they would be hoisted back up to the deck by cranes, located in a gap amidships, and stored in hangars. The gap amidships gave the Indy a somewhat swaybacked silhouette.
In April 1940 she’d moved from the West Coast to Hawaii with the rest of the Pacific Fleet but was out at sea on maneuvers when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Admiral Spruance chose her as his flagship not because she was the biggest or most powerful ship in the fleet but for her speed and maneuverability, and for her comfortable quarters. As commander of the Fifth Fleet, Spruance needed to be able to move quickly and independently between his various task forces, often sailing without escort.
In February of 1942, the Indianapolis participated in raids on Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands, where elements of the Japanese Fourth Fleet had invaded hoping to gain access to the oil refineries of the Dutch East Indies. In the summer of 1943, she fought off the western Aleutian Islands, where the Japanese had captured portions of what would later become the state of Alaska. In November and December of that year, the Indianapolis was part of a 100-ship task force involved in Operation Galvanic, the code name for the invasion of the Gilbert Islands. Again and again, sailors on the Indianapolis witnessed the tenacity of Japanese resistance.
From the deck of the Indy, in January, February and March of 1944, Admiral Spruance commanded the U.S. invasion of the Marshall Islands, a 620-mile-long chain of 2,000 islands and islets that the Japanese needed to hold to protect their southern seas. The Indianapolis was at Palau, Yap, Ulithi and Woleai as, island by island, Allied forces moved closer and closer to the Japanese homelands. Every island captured by U.S. and Allied forces became a base, or an airfield, or a fuel depot, or a place to repair damaged ships and refuel and launch airplanes and house reinforcements.
It was at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 19–20, 1944, that the Japanese realized the war was essentially lost. The Indianapolis led Admiral Spruance’s Task Force 58, which included fifteen aircraft carriers, against a Japanese fleet that included nine aircraft carriers. The Japanese lost 400 airplanes in dogfights over the Mariana Islands before the fleets themselves engaged, causing some to dub the battle “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” Spruance sent high-level bombers, dive-bombers and torpedo planes against the Japanese armada, American naval and air power sinking the carriers Shokaku, Taiho and Hiyo, as well as two destroyers and a tanker. Spruance’s fleet suffered damage to two carriers, two battleships, one heavy cruiser and two destroyers before the Japanese withdrew. Once again, the Indy survived without a scratch. She sailed to Tinian, the first U.S. ship to enter the harbor where U.S. forces landed on July 24, 1944. In September, her crew found themselves in the western Carolines.
By the fall of 1944, in an effort to defend their country to the last full measure, the Japanese armed forces began using suicide bombers, including kamikazes. The word “kamikaze” translates as “divine wind,” originally a reference to a typhoon that saved Japan from an invading Mongol fleet in 1281. The term referred, in 1944, to airplanes loaded with explosives that Japanese pilots crashed into Allied ships, destroying themselves in the process. The Japanese also deployed suicide speedboats packed with depth charges, and kaitens, which were manned torpedoes that could be steered into enemy ships. A kaiten that missed its target would simply sink to the bottom once its fuel was spent, killing the pilot either way.
As Allied forces closed in on Japan, two significant islands remained to be captured. The first was Iwo Jima, in the Volcano Islands, about 100 miles southeast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s main islands. The second was Okinawa, only sixty miles away from Kyushu in the Ryukyu chain. For the first time, men aboard the Indianapolis began to allow themselves to think the war could be over in the not too distant future. The danger zone was, it seemed, growing smaller and smaller. Sailors on the Indianapolis even felt that their ship was a lucky ship. Sailors are notorious for their superstitions, and the men of the Indianapolis were no exception.
The fighting on Iwo Jima began on February 19, 1945, when 30,000 marines landed to face 21,500 Japanese troops dug into a network of underground fortifications. It was some of the most horrific fighting of the war. The Indianapolis sat offshore, assisting in the bombardment of enemy positions and, for the first time in the war, using its antiaircraft guns to fend off kamikaze attacks. Small pockets of Japanese resistance held out in Iwo Jima until March 26, but the Indy’s job was finished. Once again, the Indianap
olis emerged undamaged and intact, triumphant in her ninth major campaign.
Her luck would turn at Okinawa, the last stepping-stone before the invasion of the home islands. On the morning of March 18, Japanese planes attacked the Indianapolis and other ships in the fleet, and six planes were shot down, the Indianapolis destroying one by hitting it with 40-mm shells. Another cruiser in the fleet shot down a plane that splashed into the water just off the Indianapolis’s port side. The next afternoon two Japanese planes were shot down, one by the Indianapolis, its men cheering as the plane burst into flames. On March 25, the Indianapolis began bombarding Okinawa from twelve miles offshore. As the ship gradually drew closer in, sailors with binoculars could see what remained of homes and terraced gardens. They could also see Okinawan civilians jumping from cliffs, committing suicide in advance of the American invasion.
The dawn of Saturday, March 31, broke gray. Around seven o’clock, a lookout on the bridge of the Indianapolis saw a plane come out of the clouds, heading straight for the Indy. An alert sounded. A gunner at the bow began firing. Tracers intercepted the plane’s path, some scoring direct hits. The plane kept coming. Cozell Smith ran for the gunnery station called the “bathtub,” swung the big gun around and fired off a steady stream of bullets. The plane bore down and hit the ship. One wing struck the bathtub, knocking Smith off his feet. The plane’s motor pierced the main deck and exited through the side of the ship. Pieces of the plane scattered over the deck, which was quickly slick with oil and aviation fuel. Pieces of the pilot scattered across the deck as well. Two of the three observation planes were wrecked. Four men were thrown over the side.
The plane also carried an armor-piercing bomb with a delayed detonator. The bomb penetrated the reinforced-steel main deck and passed through the number three mess hall, shattering a table where a group had just finished eating. One man was killed in the mess hall, and a dozen were injured. The bomb pierced two more decks and lodged in a compartment where it struck the port propeller shaft. It exploded, blowing a hole in the side of the ship. Several compartments flooded as seawater rushed in. Immediately damage control officers gave orders to fasten the hatch doors leading to the damaged compartments. Some men managed to scramble out, wet and covered with fuel oil. Others didn’t get to the hatchways in time. On a ship in danger of sinking, when the order is given to close the hatches, the hatches are closed regardless of who gets caught behind them. Eight men were trapped in the flooded compartments. Including the sailor who died in the mess hall, nine men were dead and fifteen were wounded.
Kamikaze attacks continued even as the Indianapolis sailed to the nearby island of Kerama-Retto for further repairs, more terrifying than anything the crew of the Indianapolis had yet encountered, suicidal madmen falling out of the sky. The Japanese defense of Okinawa grew more desperate. Japanese soldiers were swimming out to Allied ships to throw grenades at them. On the night of April 3, a Japanese soldier climbed aboard the Indianapolis, slashed a marine with a knife and then disappeared.
The next day the news came that Admiral Spruance, his staff and some of the crew would be transferring to the USS New Mexico. The rest of the crew would sail the Indianapolis back to San Francisco for repairs at the Mare Island shipyard. On the passage to Mare, feelings aboard ship were mixed. The grief they all felt for the nine shipmates lost in the kamikaze attack gave way to relief. They were heading home, back to San Francisco for a little rest and recreation, a chance to eat real food and go to the movies or see loved ones. Yet some men talked of putting in for transfers to other ships because the Indy was jinxed, they said—her luck had run out. Their friends scolded them for being superstitious, but it was a hard feeling to shake.
Chapter Four
The Men
June 1945
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother. . . .
William Shakespeare, Henry V
While the ship was being repaired, some men went home on leave to see their families, their friends or their sweethearts. Others had to stay to help with the repair work. Damages inflicted by the kamikaze pilot at Okinawa were extensive. The Indy also needed a fresh coat of paint, a new camouflage design.
In the daily papers, in the newsreels shown before the feature films in movie theaters, and in dinner party conversations at the base, hope rose that the war would be over soon, coupled with a measured despair at what it was going to cost to end it. The planned invasion of Japan was called Operation Downfall, and it came in two parts. First would be Operation Olympic, aimed at the southernmost main island of Kyushu, scheduled for November 1, 1945. Operation Coronet, aimed at the northernmost main island of Honshu, was scheduled for March 1, 1946. Smaller islands nearby would have to be taken first, and air bases built on them. Operation Coronet would send 22 Allied combat divisions against an expected 1,000,000 Japanese troops. American intelligence estimates anticipated 1,000,000 U.S. casualties by the fall of 1946; some intelligence staffers considered that a conservative estimate. The war would end, the officers of the Indianapolis knew, but at what horrible cost? If the invasion itself weren’t dangerous enough, the scheduling of Operation Olympic for November meant the invasion would take place during typhoon season.
On July 4, even though repairs were still in progress, the Indianapolis held an open house, a chance for officers and crewmen to bring their families aboard for tours, to see where they lived and worked. The cooks served cake and ice cream. Crewmen gave away souvenirs, Indianapolis buttons that the kids could pin to their shirts, even official United States Navy bars of soap. For some of the wives, it was their first opportunity to meet Captain McVay, the forty-six-year-old son of Admiral Charles Butler McVay, Jr., the former commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. They knew his service record, that the captain of the Indianapolis had been appointed to the Naval Academy by President Wilson and graduated in 1919. He’d won a Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry in 1943 as the executive officer on the cruiser USS Cleveland. He’d served as the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee of Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., where he briefed Allied admirals and generals. They’d heard the stories, that he’d married a Hawaiian princess, that after the divorce he’d dated Hollywood starlets until he married his current wife, Louise. He was liked by his men and respected by his officers. He was fair-minded, having ordered that there would be no movies shown aboard ship for his officers unless the enlisted men had them too. It was a small thing, perhaps, but the men appreciated it.
The next day, the news arrived that the Indy had been ordered to sail on July 16. Leaves were canceled. The exact nature of the mission was passed down the chain of command on a “need-to-know” basis, which meant that the enlisted men were left in the dark, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that this time, not even the senior officers knew what the mission was. Captain McVay was summoned to San Francisco and told to report to the office of Rear Admiral William R. Purnell. Along with Major General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project, America’s top-secret nuclear weapons program, Purnell had decided the Indianapolis would be used to transport components of the first atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, where a silver B-29 dubbed the Enola Gay waited. A surface ship was chosen to transport the bomb because no one was quite certain yet what it would take to accidentally detonate it. There was a fear that if an airplane transporting the bomb crashed on takeoff, the city of San Francisco could be destroyed. Though it was only a transport mission, it was still one of the most important missions of the war. That the navy trusted Captain McVay with it indicated that they held him in high regard.
Joining Admiral Purnell at the briefing was Navy Captain William Sterling Parsons, whose job it would be to assemble the bomb on the Enola Gay en route to Hiroshima. McVay didn’t need to know what Parsons would be assembling. He was told only that he’d be carrying “special cargo.” He was to guard it with utmost care, and if for any reason h
is ship sank along the way, and somehow there was only one lifeboat available, the cargo was to be given the lifeboat. He was told he was to sail at flank speed, because every day he saved would cut the length of the war by that much.
Captain McVay told his officers what he knew. Most of the common seamen knew only that they were heading back into the war, possibly gearing up for the invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Seaman First Class Robert McGuiggan was a twenty-two-year-old Irish kid from the north side of Chicago. He’d worked a variety of construction jobs before the war. He’d gone home to Chicago on leave and got engaged to a girl named Gloria. Aboard the Indy, he served as a gunner’s mate on gun number eight and helped catapult scout planes off the ship. In his spare time he was fond of playing poker in the spud locker off the mess hall, where they kept and peeled the potatoes. The games were illegal, and you could draw fines or brig time for gambling, but even ensigns and warrant officers occasionally joined the games, dealing five-card draw and seven-card stud. McGuiggan was a good player, and he tried not to make a habit of beating the officers too badly.
Radio Technician Second Class Jack Miner was one of the new guys. He’d been a freshman at Yale but enlisted at eighteen to avoid being drafted. He’d gone to radio technician school and had joined the Indianapolis at Mare Island. There he hung out with other radio techs, though he was only nineteen and underage, unable to join them when they went to the bars of nearby Vallejo on shore leave. He spent his time at Mare familiarizing himself with the ship, taking inventory of its radio equipment, learning how to operate it and where all the wires went, busy every minute of the day. He was excited to ship out on a cruiser, a fast, swashbuckling, athletic sort of vessel, he thought.