In Harm's Way Read online

  FOR

  Anne, John,

  and Katharine Stanton

  And my mother and father,

  who told me about the war

  And the boys of the USS Indianapolis, who fought it

  IN MEMORIAM

  Leonard K. Dailey

  PFC Infantry

  World War II

  Died October 25, 1944

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE - Sailor on a Chain

  PART ONE - SAILING TO WAR

  CHAPTER ONE - All Aboard

  SUNDAY, JULY 15, 1945 - San Francisco, California

  MONDAY, JULY 16, 1945

  CHAPTER TWO - Good-bye, Golden Gate

  JULY 16—26, 1945 - Sailing to Tinian Island, South Pacific Ocean

  CHAPTER THREE - The First Domino

  THURSDAY, JULY 26—SUNDAY, JULY 29, 1945 - The West Pacific

  PART TWO - SUNK

  CHAPTER FOUR - The Burning Sea

  SUNDAY, JULY 29—MONDAY, JULY 30, 1945 - The Philippine Sea

  CHAPTER FIVE - Abandon Ship

  MONDAY, JULY 30, 1945

  CHAPTER SIX - Hope Afloat

  DAY ONE - MONDAY, JULY 30, 1945

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Shark Attack

  DAY TWO - TUESDAY, JULY 31, 1945

  CHAPTER EIGHT - Genocide

  DAY THREE - WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1945

  PART THREE - RESCUE

  CHAPTER NINE - Dead Drift

  DAYS FOUR AND FIVE - THURSDAY, AUGUST 2-FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 1945

  CHAPTER TEN - Final Hours

  DAY FIVE AND AFTER - AUGUST 3—4, 1945

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Aftermath

  AUGUST TO DECEMBER 1945

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Back in the World

  1945 TO PRESENT

  EPILOGUE

  THE FINAL CREW OF THE USS Indianapolis (CA35)

  RAVE REVIEWS FOR In Harm’s Way

  Afterword: 2001

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Author’s Note

  Index

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE

  Sailor on a Chain

  I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast;

  for I intend to go in harm’s way.

  —COMMODORE JOHN PAUL JONES,

  in a letter dated November 16, 1778

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1968

  Winvian Farm, Litchfield, Connecticut

  On a windswept fall day, on a gray morning after the colorful agony of autumn had passed but before the deep, blank snows of winter sealed off the world, Captain Charles Butler McVay III, the former commander of the World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis, woke and took stock of his day. He was alone in a drafty bedroom of a colonial house called Winvian Farm, outside Litchfield, Connecticut, adrift in rich horse country. His window looked out at a flagstone terrace built for grand cocktail parties and at a swimming pool; beyond that, he could glimpse the scattered homes of bankers and lawyers whose offices were in New York, 100 miles to the south. The surrounding woods, black and skeletal in the morning light, scratched at a gray sky.

  There was much to do. Earlier in the week, the captain had drained the pool for the winter, and this morning he would finish the ritual of closure by putting up snow fences and wrapping the property’s hedges with burlap. After lunch, he often played bridge; later in the afternoon, he might putter in his woodshop or go duck hunting on Bantam Lake. The captain was seventy years old, in fine health, with white hair and black eyebrows that framed piercing, but gentle, blue eyes. Always dapper, always self-assured, he dressed in crisply pressed khaki shirt and pants and leather slippers, clothes that had become a uniform for him, a vestige of his life in the wartime navy.

  “Vivian!”

  His wife’s room was across from his own spartan billet, which included just a twin bed and a night table with a Bible that he read every night before turning in at ten. In the room was a desk drawer filled with letters from the families of sailors he’d commanded, bound up in string and rubber bands. The letters troubled the captain; they had always troubled him. Each Christmas even more arrived, and December 25 was fast approaching.

  There was no answer from Vivian’s room, which wasn’t surprising. Vivian was his third wife. Vivacious, beautiful, and tempestuous, she was in the habit of sleeping late. A former fashion model, she sat at the center of the social whirl of Litchfield; by all appearances, she and Charlie—as all his friends called him—made a wonderful pair, a handsome couple. The social events often bored McVay, who could be shy and even recalcitrant, at times preferring the solitude of the duck blind to the patter of a cocktail party.

  He made his way down the creaking staircase to the kitchen, where, lately, he’d been spending more and more time talking with the housekeeper, Florence Regosia, a kind-hearted young woman who’d worked for him for eight years and who insisted on calling him Admiral. He’d actually been promoted to the rank of rear admiral, his official naval title upon his retirement, what’s called a “tombstone promotion.” Such promotions, though, are a bit like being named captain of the football team and then sitting out the game. McVay himself usually insisted on Captain; it seemed more honest to him.

  After exchanging pleasantries with Florence, he took his black Lab, Chance, for a walk in the woods behind the house. Afterward, he met Al Dudley, his gardener and handyman, and they began work on the shrubs in the front yard, binding them mummy-tight with twine and burlap for the long voyage into winter.

  From the yard of Winvian Farm, you can look out at the country road leading north into Litchfield, and south toward the main arteries leading to the sea. There’s a stone fence, a bank of apple trees, and beyond that some woods and fields galloping into the distance. Many of the houses in Litchfield were built by nineteenth-century sea captains, and many of them still sport widow’s walks. It’s a hilly landscape, and the village is sunk in a wooded valley, off a main thoroughfare, as if the wives of these captains had wanted to drag them as far inland as possible, away from the sea, out of danger’s way. It’s a place people usually come to in peace and prosperity at the end of life; it’s a place to come to and forget things. The captain had lived here for nearly seven years.

  A barn and machine shed and the cold whisper of the November wind surrounded McVay and his gardener. They worked well together, side by side, McVay chatting, pliers and twine in hand, as if nothing at all was bothering him.

  But something was.

  After a couple of hours, they broke for lunch, and Al Dudley returned to his own smaller house across the county road. Inside the Winvian farmhouse, Florence was setting out lunch—a sandwich—on the dining room table. Vivian was off somewhere in another room, eating alone. Before sitting down, the captain went upstairs to his bedroom, ostensibly to change into something suitable for an afternoon of playing bridge at the Sanctum, a gentleman’s club situated on the trim town green in Litchfield. He closed the door.

  Beyond the bedroom windows, the wind was stripping what leaves were left on the trees, and a freezing rain was worming its way under the eaves, looking for a way in.

  On the night table sat a holster, and in the holster was a navy-issue .38, a revolver, which the captain picked up.

  A knock came at the door.

  “Admiral, your lunch is ready.” It was Florence.

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  For all the captain’s customary good cheer, Florence had been worried about him. She knew he was having nightmares; he’d told her they were filled with circling sharks. When she’d reminded him, several weeks earlier, that the storm windows also needed installing, he had remarked, “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

  “Why not?”


  “Because,” the captain told her, “I won’t be here.”

  Now, Florence returned downstairs, and soon the captain appeared in the doorway, a blank look on his face. He was still dressed in his khaki.

  “Admiral,” Florence said, “you have to go play cards today.”

  “Oh, yes,” said McVay. “I know.”

  When Florence asked if he’d like some lunch, he replied, “I’ll eat it later.”

  Florence eyed him, and then she returned to the kitchen.

  The captain pushed open the front door and stepped through a small wooden entryway erected in anticipation of the coming winter snow. He lay down on the stone walk with his head resting on the marble step, his gaunt face tilted up at a gray sky.

  Beside him, as he lay alone in the front yard, stood Chance, who watched, head cocked to one side, as the captain brought the cold barrel of the gun to his head.

  In McVay’s left hand was a set of house keys, and on the key ring, a metal toy sailor, a worn memento from happier times. He’d carried it with him around the world, across several oceans, and into battle. He’d been given the toy sailor as a gift when he was a boy.

  Whatever good fortune the captain had enjoyed in his life, it had run out. He pulled the trigger.

  A pool of blood sluiced over the step and ran into the matted grass. Reclined as he was, with his head resting upon the step, his hands lying carefully in his lap, his legs stretching easily before him and pointing down the stone walk, Charles Butler McVay looked like a man adrift, cut free—a peaceful voyager now, on a steady sea.

  When word of McVay’s death began trickling to the outside world, his obituary, carried by major newspapers, described a historic naval career—“Adm. Charles McVay Dies at 70,” read the Washington Post. Both the Post and the New York Times noted, however, that his career had been touched by intense controversy and disaster.

  Few people in Litchfield understood why he had killed himself; little was known of his life before he moved to the tiny, insular community. By turns private and gregarious, modest yet proud, he was an enigma, a mysteriously stoic man.

  What few in his adopted town knew was that Captain McVay was a survivor of the worst naval disaster at sea in U.S. history. This is a dubious distinction, to be sure—one that dogged him throughout his life. He rarely discussed with anyone the nightmarish events of the early morning of July 30, 1945, when his ship, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, immediately killing nearly 300 men, and sending as many as 900 others into the black, churning embrace of the vast Philippine Sea, some 350 miles from nearest landfall.

  Four days later, when the navy finally learned of the sinking, only 321 of these sailors were still among the living; four of the survivors died shortly after their rescue in military hospitals in the South Pacific. In a story rich with ironies, it turned out that the Indianapolis was the first ship the Japanese captain had ever torpedoed and the last major warship sunk during World War II.

  In the aftermath of the disaster, two unprecedented events occurred: the navy changed the way it did business at sea, and Captain McVay was charged with negligence in his command and brought to trial. Of the nearly 400 American captains whose ships went down during World War II—indeed, of all the captains in the entire history of the navy—he is the only captain to have been court-martialed whose ship was sunk by an act of war.

  In the early 1990s, intelligence reports that might have proved McVay’s innocence in the matter were finally declassified. Upon review, however, the navy refused to reconsider its decision. In spite of congressional action passed in October 2000, McVay’s court martial conviction still stands today, and his criminal record lists him as a felon.

  Of the original 317 men who survived the ordeal, 124 are still living as of this writing, and every two years they meet in Indianapolis, the namesake city of their doomed ship, to revisit the sinking and the memory of Captain McVay. They are the gray-haired men in windbreakers and tennis shoes you see walking in malls in the morning; they are retired ministers, truck drivers, doctors, and wealthy businessmen; they are grandfathers, husbands, uncles, and brothers. And to a man they insist Captain McVay was not responsible for the calamitous event that utterly changed them. When the nightmare was over—when they were able to stand again and walk away into the rest of their lives—they rarely spoke of what had happened. It took years to unlock the memories of those days and nights.

  In many history books, the sinking of the Indianapolis isn’t mentioned; in some ways, it’s as if the ship set sail and has never come home. But to this day, the disaster haunts the Department of the Navy, and it haunts these men. At night, some of them still reach out from sleep to grip a bed they are sure is sinking beneath them.

  PART ONE

  SAILING TO WAR

  CHAPTER ONE

  All Aboard

  Dad, there’s a war to be won out there,

  and I’m going out to get this thing cleaned up.

  I’ll be back shortly.

  —ED BROWN, seaman first-class, USS Indianapolis

  SUNDAY, JULY 15, 1945

  San Francisco, California

  The ship was still tied up in the harbor at Mare Island, but already the captain felt it was drifting out of his control.

  Marching up the gangway of the vessel under his command, the USS Indianapolis, Captain Charles McVay was a man perplexed. Reaching the top, he turned toward the stern, saluted the flag, and strode on through the bronze light of the chill California morning, stepping past the electricians, painters, and engineers working on deck. No one watching the forty-six-year-old McVay, dressed smartly in his khaki and crisp campaign hat—its black vinyl bill decorated with gold braid that the enlisted men called “scrambled eggs”—would have guessed the depth of his concern. He hid it well.

  He had just come from an early morning meeting at U. S. naval headquarters in downtown San Francisco. The meeting, with Admiral William R. Purnell and Captain William S. Parsons, had been disappointingly quick and to the point: this morning he was to take his ship from the Mare Island navy yard, thirty miles north of San Francisco, to Hunters Point navy yard, located just outside the city in San Francisco Bay. Once at Hunters Point, McVay was told, the Indy would take on board what was described only as a “secret project” before departing for the Pacific.

  The meeting was over in less than an hour, and it failed to provide much information on his ship’s new assignment.

  McVay had a lot on his mind, much of it worrisome. Since May, the Indy had been docked at Mare Island, where it had been undergoing extensive repairs that were expected to take at least four months. Then suddenly everything had been accelerated. Three days ago, on July 12, McVay had received mysterious orders from naval command to immediately ready his crew for a secret mission.

  Hundreds of telegrams left the ship, calling the crew of 1,196 boys to sea; they had—at the most—just ninety-six hours to execute the command. Some of the veteran crewmen were dispersed across the country, on leave or at temporary training schools. The majority of the crew had stayed at the marine and naval barracks at Mare Island, killing time by drinking beer, chasing girls, and playing cards. Still others were being called to the ship—and to war—for the first time.

  They came streaming to Mare Island and to the ship, stepping over tangled nests of air and water hoses, tools, and debris spread on her deck. McVay had watched as the newest crew members came on board, the older veterans cheering them on: “Hey, boys! Look at him,” they cried out. “Ain’t he pretty? Why, he doesn’t even look like he’s shaving yet!”

  McVay understood how large the war loomed in the minds of these boys, “green hands” and veterans alike, who during these last few days had made love one last time, gotten drunk one last time, written last letters to mothers and fathers, and prepared to settle on board the Indy, into the rhythm of getting ready for sea. Rumors had started flying that the ship was headed back to the Philippines, then on to the massive invasion
of Japan and its home islands, code names Operation Coronet and Olympic. But this morning, not even Captain McVay had any idea of their final destination.

  He’d been told that the earliest the ship would leave San Francisco would be July 16, which was tomorrow. McVay had been given four days to do what seemed impossible. During the past twenty-four hours, he’d been crashing through night fog and heavy seas around the Farallon Islands, thirty miles west of the San Francisco coast, running the Indy through abbreviated but punishing sea trials. The crew had practiced radar alerts, radar jamming, and emergency turns. The Indy performed well, all things considered.

  But how well was good enough? The ship was still fresh from the disaster that had necessitated all the repair work: on March 31, the Indy had suffered a nearly fatal kamikaze attack off the island of Okinawa. The incident had left nine men dead, twenty-nine wounded. One of McVay’s boys, bugler second-class E. P. Procai, had been laid to rest at sea, accompanied by a twenty-one-gun salute. The remaining eight sailors were interred on one of the tiny islands west of Okinawa, a repair facility for damaged destroyers and a burial ground for the dead.

  After the attack at Okinawa, the Indy had limped the 6,000 miles back across the Pacific. Two of her propeller shafts, a fuel tank, and her water distillation plant had been badly damaged. Back on land, some of the crew had begun asking for transfers off the ship. “When we get hit again,” they were saying, “you’ll be able to drive a bus through the hole.” The Indy, they grumbled, had “turned poor.”