Left for Dead

by Peter Nelson

  Hunter even had a translation of an interview Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto, at the time a retired Shinto priest in his nineties, had given a Japanese journalist stating that he’d spoken enough English back in 1945 to know that his testimony at McVay’s court-martial had been mistranslated—intentionally, it seemed to him. Because he’d been a prisoner of war in a foreign country, his protests over the mistranslation were brushed aside. Even he could see that the proceedings against McVay were contrived, Hashimoto said.

  Finally, to prevail in a showdown, you need to bring your biggest guns, and Hunter had three of them, in the form of letters from men testifying that the night of the sinking, three SOS messages from the Indianapolis had indeed been received. The first letter came from a retiree in Sun City, Arizona, a man named Russell Hetz who’d served aboard a landing craft (LCI-1004) that had been positioned at the mouth of San Pedro Bay in the Leyte Gulf as a harbor examination vessel, tasked to keep track of ships entering and leaving the harbor. Hetz’s letter stated that on the night of July 29–30, 1945, the LCI-1004 received two SOS calls from the Indianapolis, eight and a half minutes apart. Both messages were relayed through channels, but they were deemed by Hetz’s superiors to be hoaxes, probably attempts by the Japanese to lure Allied rescue vessels into a trap, given that the radio technicians who’d received the SOS messages had been unable to get the Indianapolis to verify that she was sinking, and she should have verified her distress signals because nobody believed a ship the size of a heavy cruiser could sink in eight and a half minutes. Hetz added that six weeks after the sinking, “an officer with a lot of clout” came aboard the LCI-1004 and ripped a large section from the logbook, disappearing with what might have been incriminating evidence of negligence.

  The second letter was from a man named Clair B. Young, a seaman who’d been on shore patrol at the naval shore facilities in Tacloban the night of the sinking. Young’s letter told how he’d been standing guard at the quarters of Commodore Jacob H. Jacobson, the commandant of the base, when a messenger approached with an urgent message for the commodore that the Indianapolis had sent an SOS. When Young relayed the message to the groggy Jacobson and then waited for a response, Jacobson said only, “No reply at this time. If any further messages are received, notify me at once,” even though of the 700 U.S. ships sunk during World War II, none had managed to send any further messages once they’d come to rest on the bottom of the sea. Young’s letter also stated that when he’d awakened the commodore, he detected the “strong odor of alcohol in the room.”

  Most telling of all was a letter Hunter received from a Donald Allen, a retired photographer living in New Hampshire. He’d worked the midnight to 8 A.M. watch at Tacloban as a driver for the Philippine Sea Frontier’s commander, Commodore Norman C. Gillette. On the night of the sinking, Gillette had been playing bridge at a base in Guiwan, ninety miles up the shore from Tacloban, leaving Allen free to stand watch that night in the officer of the day’s office. While he was there, a technician from the radio shack located in the back half of the Quonset hut burst in, ashen-faced, and said he’d received an SOS from the Indianapolis, clear as a bell, with coordinates, saying she’d been torpedoed and was sinking. They immediately summoned the officer on duty, Lieutenant Gibson, who double-checked to make sure the distress call was for real. Gibson then dispatched two seagoing tugs to the coordinates given, powerful stubby vessels with mighty engines capable of thirty knots.

  Allen finished his duty, went to bed and woke up curious to hear what had happened to the Indianapolis. When he asked, he was told that Gillette had become furious that a subordinate officer had dispatched ships without his permission and actually ordered the tugs to turn around and return to base, simply because he hadn’t been the one who sent them. In a follow-up letter to Hunter Scott, Allen alleged that a cover-up had taken place at the naval shore facilities at Tacloban. Considering that both Gillette and Gibson were questioned in the inquiry that followed the disaster, if what Allen was saying was true, then the navy had even more to answer for than anyone had previously known. If those tugs had been allowed to proceed, hundreds of sailors on the Indianapolis might have been saved.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Reckoning

  September 14, 1999

  Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted the alternatives.

  Abba Eban

  The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was called to order the morning of Tuesday, September 14, 1999. The day before, Hunter had been elected president of his freshman class at Pensacola High School. He was missing two football practices, and his coach told him if he missed practice, he wouldn’t start, but Hunter knew he was involved in something considerably more important than the game on Friday. Among the eleven survivors who’d come to Washington at their own expense to honor their captain were Giles McCoy, Harlan Twible, Mike Kuryla, Robert McGuiggan and Jack Miner. The survivors wore blue jackets with a picture of the ship on the back, above the ship a row of ten stars for the ten battles the Indianapolis had fought in, beneath the ship the hull number, CA-35, and the inscription “Still at Sea.” The survivors also wore blue baseball-style caps decorated with gold brocade, their individual medals pinned to their caps, with the picture of the ship on the front, and on the back, an arc of yellow lettering that read “Survivor.” Wives and family members attended the hearing as well. The room was packed with photographers and reporters, a video and a film crew positioned to record the event. The panelists waiting to testify sat in front, below the elevated seats where the senators would preside.

  Sitting across the aisle from the survivors, representing the navy, was Admiral Donald Pilling, vice chief of naval operations, the number two man in the navy, whose presence surprised the survivors. They hadn’t expected anyone of such high rank. Joining Pilling were Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, judge advocate general of the navy, and Dr. William S. Dudley, director of naval history. There was a support contingent of officers both in suits and in uniform, as well as a handful of cadets, about twenty all together.

  When Senator Bob Smith entered the hearing room, heads turned. He was a tall, vigorous man of considerable presence, and it seemed clear to Hunter by the way Smith walked that he was primed and ready for the contest. Hunter and Monroney had met with Smith in Smith’s office before the hearing to go over what to say. They also talked about what to expect from the navy—intransigence and obduracy, mostly. Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former secretary of the navy, was last to arrive. No one had told Hunter, but the fear was that Warner had only called the meeting to silence them once and for all. Nor was Hunter aware that lobbyist Mike Monroney believed Warner was convening the hearing only as a favor to his friend Senator Smith.

  “We are here to remember the sinking of the USS Indianapolis,” Warner said in his opening remarks, “but more significantly to remember the courage of those who were aboard the ship that fateful night, and particularly those who are here with us today. . . .”

  Warner then introduced Senator Smith, seated to his left. Smith’s remarks were more to the point. “This was one of the greatest tragedies in U.S. naval history, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis,” he said. “Today we have before us a number of the survivors of this tragedy. I think it might be appropriate when we introduce the witnesses, Mr. Chairman, to introduce those gentlemen who are here today. In the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the ship lost eight hundred eighty crew members. We’re here today to honor both the memory of the sailors who lost their lives, but also those brave souls who survived. The courage of the crew of the USS Indianapolis is incredible. It shines like a beacon even decades later. Today the committee will have the privilege of hearing this story from some of those who lived through it. There’s a great history here. . . .”

  For the next twenty minutes, Smith told the story of how the Indianapolis delivered the bomb, and how she was sunk just after midnight, July 30, 1945. It was a story most of the peo
ple in the room were familiar with, but Smith was speaking for the historical record now. He talked of Captain McVay’s exemplary career, and how he’d been awarded the Silver Star for courage under fire during the Solomon Islands campaign.

  “This was a good captain,” Smith said. “He was a good sailor. He did his job. Much better than some others who came back.” Smith described how both Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Spruance had recommended against a court-martial, only to be overruled by Admiral King. He described how Secretary of the Navy Forrestal had remitted the sentence afterward, which could, he said, be interpreted as an admission that the trial had been unjust.

  “New information has surfaced raising significant questions about the justice of his conviction,” Smith concluded, “and I just want to say at this point, Mr. Chairman, I am not a historical revisionist. I deplore it. Questioning whether it was morally right to have Captain McVay court-martialed in the first place is what we’re doing. That isn’t revisionism. That’s trying to set the record straight. This past spring, I had the good fortune of meeting with Hunter Scott and survivors of the USS Indianapolis. Meeting these gentlemen in person was a very emotional experience. These men are not historical revisionists. They lost comrades. They would have no problem in saying so if their captain caused the death of their comrades.” Smith acknowledged that the case of the USS Indianapolis and Captain McVay had been investigated before. “However,” he said, “because of the efforts of some of our witnesses today, the survivors’ group, and in particular Hunter Scott, of Pensacola, Florida, I think new information has been brought to light, and I would ask this committee and the Senate to listen very carefully to that testimony. It is new information that was not available at the time of the court-martial and indeed I believe it is new information that was not available in the investigations that subsequently followed.”

  When Senator Warner invited the survivors present to introduce themselves, they stood, one by one, and spoke. Some were nervous about being in such a grandly appointed Senate hearing room with television cameras recording their words, and found it difficult to speak. Some fought back tears, thinking back fifty-five years, remembering the dead, and they felt honored to testify at last on their behalf.

  “My name is Harlan Twible, and I served as an ensign aboard the USS Indianapolis.”

  “I’m Giles McCoy, from Florida, and I was a PFC from the Marine Corps aboard the Indianapolis. We had thirty-nine marines aboard, and we did the security duty aboard ship.”

  “I’m Bob McGuiggan. I was a gunner’s mate striker, Fourth Division, on the five-inch, and a catapult gunner’s mate. I came aboard the Indianapolis in forty-two, and spent nine invasion operations with the Indianapolis.”

  “Mike Kuryla, junior. I was a coxswain aboard the ship, Fourth Division, fourth section, the five-inch twenty-fives. I was director of fire control.”

  “My name is Jack Miner, from Northbrook, Illinois. I was a radio technician, second class.” He paused, and then said, “My time aboard ship was two weeks. That’s all of it.”

  Each survivor had a statement he’d prepared to read into the congressional record, but before they did, Hunter gave an introduction. If the legislative process was a labyrinthine video game like Myst or Dungeons and Dragons, Hunter knew he was at the final level, loaded with ammunition and at the top of his game. He’d been answering these questions for three years. There was nothing they could throw at him that he wasn’t ready for, no question he didn’t know the answer to—this was what they’d been building toward ever since he’d first started his history fair project, the point of all the work he’d done.

  “My journey to this committee as witness began over three years ago,” Hunter said, “when I saw the motion picture Jaws, in which an actor described in chilling detail how he and the other survivors floated for five days in shark-infested waters before they were spotted by accident and rescued. I asked my dad if the story was true, and he said it was, and suggested I research the story for a sixth-grade history fair project. I found little information about the Indianapolis in history books. I put an ad in our local navy newspaper, asking for information about survivors of the Indianapolis. A call led me to Mr. Maurice Glenn Bell, a survivor, who lives in Mobile, Alabama. In the fall of 1996, I met with Mr. Bell and I heard the Indianapolis story firsthand. The story was as chilling as the story in Jaws. Mr. Bell gave me a list of all remaining one hundred and fifty-four survivors of the Indianapolis. And over the course of the next year, I called and wrote every one of them. Over eighty responded to my request for information, and filled out a questionnaire I sent them. One of the questions was whether or not they felt Captain McVay’s court-martial was justified and his conviction was fair.

  “All of the responses I got back were unanimous, and most were strongly worded in outrage and anger over the court-martial and conviction of their captain. It seemed to me that after doing so much to help shorten the war, and after the nightmare of his ship being lost and his crew being killed and drowned around him, and his own struggle for survival for days in the open sea, that somehow the court-martial of Captain McVay was not right.

  “Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘The probability that we may fail in a struggle ought not to deter us from a cause we believe to be just.’ I know you are here today because you believe deeply in American democracy and in the fact that you can make a difference for the constituents you represent. I am no different than you in this belief, and that is why I have journeyed here, as a representative for my heroes, the men of the Indianapolis. I have learned that democracy is a treasure so valued, men and women are willing to give their lives in its pursuit. I know eight hundred eighty men of the USS Indianapolis made the supreme sacrifice. I pray that some of those who gave their lives are looking down on what I’m doing at this moment with a smile, knowing their sacrifice was not in vain.”

  Hunter then held up the set of dog tags that had belonged to Captain McVay, given to him by McVay’s son Kimo.

  “I carry this as a reminder of my mission and in memory of the man who ended his own life in 1968. I carry this to remind me that only in the United States can one person make a difference, no matter what the age. I carry this dog tag to remind me of the privilege and responsibility I have to carry forward the torch of honor, passed to me by the men of the USS Indianapolis. In 1806 Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘Political interest can never be separated in the long run from moral right.’ Fifty-four years after the court-martial of a man who should never have been brought to trial, we are now in the ‘long run,’ and you have the opportunity to do what is morally right. You can set the historical record straight concerning Captain McVay and the crew of the USS Indianapolis. When I started this mission there were a hundred and fifty-four survivors. Today there are a hundred and thirty-four still with us. Please honor these men with the passage of Senate Resolution twenty-six. Please restore the honor of their ship, while some of these men are still alive to see this dream become a reality. Please do not forget about the men of the USS Indianapolis for the second time in fifty-four years.”

  As Hunter recited his statement, it seemed clear to some observers that Senator Warner’s interest sharpened. He leaned forward in his seat, listening intently. Warner’s interest was whetted further when the survivors submitted their statements, telling their personal stories. Twible stood and talked about how dark it was the night the ship was torpedoed, and how ludicrous it was to think McVay could have passed the word to abandon ship with all communications out. McCoy stood and spoke of the efforts over the years by the survivors to clear their captain’s name. After the statements were read, Senator Smith began a cross-examination.

  “Now, Mr. Scott,” he began. “I know that in your research you found some documents that had not been found before. I want to ask you about one of them, the so-called ULTRA document, about breaking the code. Can you elaborate just briefly on what that was and also indicate to the committee why that’s significant?”

  Hunter was onl
y too happy to comply. He knew the facts cold, and didn’t need to so much as glance at his notes.

  “So it is correct then,” Smith said when Hunter was finished, “that this information, because of the classification level, was not brought into the court-martial. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hunter said.

  Smith asked, “Do we have it on record that Captain McVay specifically asked for an escort ship?”

  Hunter said he did, and explained how it was that the Indianapolis sailed with neither an escort nor antisubmarine warfare equipment. He helped explain why the ship wasn’t reported overdue. Finally, Smith asked about the documents Hunter had presented the committee regarding SOS messages received and ignored. “This also was not introduced at the court-martial, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hunter answered. “The official navy version states that no SOS messages were received, but through my research, I’ve found that to be false. They were received in three different places.”

  “Where did you find this in your research, Hunter?” Smith asked.

  “After I appeared on various shows, people would call me up. I received a call from Mr. Russell Hetz, saying he received an SOS message. He was aboard the LCI-1004 harbor examination vessel in Leyte Gulf when a message came in. And then they got another one, eight and a half minutes later. They said a ship of that size could not sink that fast, and it was regarded as a prank call from the Japanese to lure rescue vessels in the area. Also there was another one received, by Mr. Clair B. Young. Mr. Young says he received the SOS and reported it to his boss, who was drunk at the time. His boss said, ‘No reply at this time, if any further messages come, notify me at once.’ But no further messages came. The third place it was received was by Mr. Don Allen. Mr. Allen received it, and the guy in charge there had orders not to be disturbed, because he was playing cards. So they took some initiative and sent out two seagoing tugs to the area where the Indianapolis was. And when the admiral was done playing cards—I’m sorry, Commodore Gillette—when he was notified, he made the tugs turn around, because he did not send them out.”