by Doug Stanton
“What do you mean, rain?” said a boy sitting next to him. “It’s not raining.” Then the two realized the plane was taking on water; it appeared to be sinking. (The water, in fact, was entering the plane at the seams split during Marks’s rough landing.) A number of the boys started bailing like crazy, fearful they were going to start their ordeal all over again.
Some of the hallucinating sailors had reacted violently to the idea of rescue. Soon the Catalina’s deck was stacked tight with boys kicking senselessly at phantoms. The odor of vomit and excrement filled the plane. Having run out of room inside the plane, Marks stacked more boys on the wings, where they were wrapped mummy-style in parachutes and bound with rope to prevent them from rolling off. By nightfall, he had rescued 56 survivors. Approximately 300 still waited, but darkness, total now, made further rescue efforts impossible. Marks could do no more until daylight; he resolved to wait until the rescue ships arrived.
His job was done. The Playmate 2 drifted through the dark, echoing with the howls of the boys stored inside.
Captain Graham Claytor and the Cecil J. Doyle steamed into the field of debris and bodies at 11:45 P.M. Claytor wasted little time getting involved. Lowering a motorized whaleboat, he began off-loading survivors from Marks’s Catalina into the Doyle’s sick bay. At 12:52 A.M., Friday, August 3, the high-speed transport Bassett (APD 73) arrived, and within four hours the destroyers Ralph Talbot and Madison and the destroyer escort Dufilho (DE 423) were also in the area. Although more than twelve hours had passed since Gwinn sighted the survivors, not one of the rescue vessels, except for Marks’s, had yet learned the name of the boys’ ship.
During the predawn hours, the Bassett would pick up 152 survivors, the single largest group to be plucked from the sea, before being ordered to return to Leyte. These boys were primarily from the Twible group of rafters, who were drifting about fifteen miles to the northeast of Haynes’s swimmers. Between these two floated Captain McVay and his group of nine. Alone, and leading the drift about seven miles to the northwest of Haynes, were McCoy and his four raftmates.
Many, to the amazement of the Bassett crewmen, didn’t want to be rescued. When the Bassett lowered its Higgins boats, the boys swimming in the searchlights became convinced that their rescuers were Japanese sailors. (Higgins boats, also called LCVPs, are high-sided, flat-bottomed craft often used by marines for beach landings.) Likewise, the rescue crews, who still didn’t know the identity of their catch, weren’t so sure a trick wasn’t being played on them. All they could see were oil-blackened faces and the whites of deeply sunken eyes staring back at them. Drawing his pistol, one rescuer yelled out, “Hey! What city do the Dodgers play in?”
“Brooklyn!” came the reply. The crew gunned its boat ahead to the rescue.
To get the boys aboard required some imaginative thinking. One rescuer convinced the survivors he was taking them to a dance and made them form a conga line leading to the Higgins boat. Others were told they were heading out for a night of liberty on the town. Twenty-year-old Bassett rescuer William Van Wilpe was uncommonly brave, jumping into the sea from his boat after three survivors had fallen out. They sank immediately, dead weight. Van Wilpe emerged on the surface carrying all three in his arms, a Herculean effort. Later, when he dislocated his shoulder, he popped it back into place himself and quickly resumed his duty.
Jack Miner tried feverishly to swim away from the approach of an LCVP, but was too weak. He was lifted over the rail of the craft, kicking and struggling. Lifted up by a burly, bearded sailor, Miner believed he was in the arms of the angel Gabriel. He stopped struggling when a slice of orange was shoved in his mouth. To Miner the fruit tasted like heaven, and when he finished it, he sucked greedily on the rind.
At 4 A.M., the searchlight of the Cecil J. Doyle found Dr. Haynes’s raft in its sharp beam.
Sitting next to the doctor was one of his boys who had lost his marbles. “Hey,” the kid yelled up to the Doyle. “Have you got any water on board?”
The eager answer came back, “We got a lot of water on board!”
The kid was silent. After a moment, he said, “’Cause if you ain’t got any water, go away and leave us alone!”
A cargo net was rolled down the metal hull of the Doyle, and Haynes was hauled from the sea with a rope tied around his waist. He was naked, burned, and half out of his mind. But he pushed away the men holding him up, announcing: “I can stand on my own!”
“Who are you?” Claytor asked him.
“This is all that’s left of the Indianapolis,” Dr. Haynes rasped. “We have been in the water four days.”
CHAPTER TEN
Final Hours
The worst part was giving up my life, accepting that I was
going to die—it wasn’t the sharks, and it wasn’t seeing your
buddies die. It was when you realize you’re going to die.
And we were young men, healthy men. All of a sudden,
there’s no chance, we can’t make it. They’ve forgotten us.
We can’t last out here forever—we’re gonna die.
-GILES MCCOY, private first-class, USMC, USS Indianapolis
DAY FIVE AND AFTER
AUGUST 3—4, 1945
Captain Claytor was astounded by the news that he was rescuing the men of the USS Indianapolis. As fate would have it, he now realized, he had actually been searching for one of his own relatives: Captain McVay was married to Claytor’s cousin, the former Louise Claytor.
The previous evening, before arriving on the scene, Claytor had received a bulletin from the Philippine Sea Frontier: 1ST VESSEL ON SCENE ADVISE IDENTITY OF SHIP SURVIVORS AND CAUSE OF SINKING. Now, in the early hours of Friday, August 3, nearly thirteen hours after the boys had originally been spotted, Claytor was finally able to spread the word. At 12:30 A.M., he radioed the commander of the western Carolines: HAVE ARRIVED AREA X AM PICKING UP SURVIVORS FROM THE USS INDIANAPOLIS (CA 35), TORPEODOED [sic] AND SUNK LAST SUNDAY NIGHT.
The news was a stunning blow, and it quickly rippled all the way back to Pearl Harbor and to Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, in Washington, D.C. Both King and Admiral Nimitz, in particular, were concerned about the impact of the tragedy on the impending plans to bomb Japan. They feared a controversy in the midst of what could be the war’s—and the navy’s—finest hour.
On the same day that the remainder of the Indy’s men were being rescued, President Truman was bound from London to the States aboard the cruiser Augusta. He was returning from the Potsdam conference, the meeting that united Great Britain, Russia, and the United States in the final fight against Japan. On board the ship, gathering a few reporters around him, Truman announced that America had a new kind of weapon that could end the war.
By this time, the last components of Little Boy had arrived on Tinian for final assembly, as well as an order designating Hiroshima as its target. But off Guam and Tinian, the weather was worsening. Heavy seas limited B-29 strikes on Japan and complicated scheduling an actual bombing date. The crew of the Enola Gay—the B-29 that was to drop the bomb—was forced to wait for clear skies.
Back in the waters of the South Pacific, the search continued at full speed. With the aid of powerful spotlights, as many as seven rescue planes circled over the site in coordinated patterns, directing the ships’ efforts below. Using Higgins boats, motor launches, and Stokes stretchers (wire baskets) lowered by the ships’ cranes, the boys were retrieved, one by painful one. The crew of the Bassett was awestruck by what it found. Some of the boys pulled aboard were so hideously disfigured that their rescuers, most of whom were about the same age as the survivors, broke down and wept as they hauled the living corpses aboard.
At 4:30 A.M. on August 3, the destroyer USS Madison became command central, taking over from the debilitated Playmate 2. At 6:30 A.M., their survivors all off-loaded, the crew of the Playmate 2 removed the salvage gear from their craft, took one last look around, and boarded a motor launch, which took them to a waiting rescu
e ship, the Cecil J. Doyle. They were leaving the plane behind. The Catalina was covered with scars and slits in her metal skin from the pounding of the waves she’d endured on landing. She was leaking oil out her belly, and her wings were dented and punctured; she would never fly again. To keep her from falling into the hands of the Japanese, she had to be destroyed. On board the Doyle, Marks watched as the ship’s anti-aircraft guns—the deck-mounted 40 mms—opened up and riddled the plane. Then he bade the Playmate 2 goodbye as she sank.
The rescue ships were a mess: a slippery film of seawater and fuel oil coated the decks, and dead bodies were laid in rows on the sterns. After being fed fruit and water, the survivors were treated for exhaustion, dehydration, shark bites, saltwater ulcers, shock, burns, and malnutrition. (A healthy nineteen-year-old boy usually carries about 20 percent body fat; many of the survivors had lost an estimated 14 percent of theirs. Over the course of the four days, one sailor had lost more than thirty-five pounds.) While the skin of some boys had turned extremely pliable in the salt water and tore easily, the skin of others was so toughened that doctors aboard the Bassett were forced to hunt relentlessly and painfully for a usable vein while administering IVs. The survivors, many moaning incoherently, were led to showers, where they were set on stools and doused with diesel fuel to remove the oil that clung stubbornly to their bodies. Many of the boys only began to realize they had been rescued when the freshwater rushed over them. They laughed with joy, then fell into fits of weeping.
The crew of the Doyle moved out of its bunks. They gave the survivors fresh underwear and T-shirts and waited on them hand and foot throughout the night, bringing coffee, soup, ice cream, and fruit. In the wardroom, Adrian Marks found himself alone with Dr. Haynes, who chattered fast and furiously in a hoarse whisper about the past days’ events. He seemed compelled to get his story out as quickly as possible. “Doctor,” Marks asked, trying to offer comfort, “why don’t you rest? Your voice is almost gone. You can tell it tomorrow.”
But Haynes, who couldn’t stop crying, continued talking, questions flooding out of him. “Why didn’t they know we were missing?” he kept asking. “Why weren’t they looking for us? Why! Why! Why!”
After being led to the shower, Haynes, finally silent, sat back on the stool and opened his mouth before the water hit. Desperately, he tried to lick the freshwater right out of the air. In spite of the excruciating pain of the scrubbing, he started to giggle hysterically, like a child.
By midafternoon on August 3, the aftershocks of the disaster were rippling through the naval command. The following order was relayed to all ships: UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS ALL SHIPS WITH 500 OR MORE TOTAL PERSONNEL ON BOARD SHALL BE PROVIDED WITH AN ESCORT BETWEEN ULITHI AND LEYTE REGARDLESS OF SPEED.
The Philippine Sea Frontier at Leyte, to which the Indy had been headed, also issued this directive: ALL COMBATANT SHIPS 5 HOURS OVERDUE SAHLL [sic] BE REPORTED TO ORIGINATOR.
Fine rules, but too late for the boys of the Indianapolis.
By the early morning of August 3, Captain McVay still had not been found.
It had been a sleepless night for the captain and his crew. John Spinelli was lying listlessly in the raft, dreaming of the candied Bing cherries his mother had sent from New Mexico, and which had gone down with the ship in his locker. He reached out, picked one from the jar, and savored its heady kick. “Dear Lord,” he prayed, “thank you for getting me this far.”
McVay wondered just how much longer they could hold on. At about midnight the night before, his spirits had lifted when he spotted the faint searchlight of the Doyle ten miles away and understood without a doubt that a search-and-rescue effort was under way. The earlier planes had not been a fluke—they were actually looking for him and his men. Others had made it off the Indy; he was overjoyed.
But who could say if his group would be found? With so much ocean, it would be hard, he knew. They were constantly drifting to the south and east. Since about 12:30 A.M., Monday, July 30, McVay and his flotilla had drifted a total of about 116 miles.
This morning there were planes executing what looked like a box pattern; that is, they were cruising in regular opposing lines overhead, scrutinizing every mile beneath them. McVay fired a flare—he was down to a precious remaining few. But none of the planes noticed. He and the boys looked on as the search continued in the distance. They were frantic.
Suddenly one of the boys croaked, “Fellows?” Nobody turned—all eyes were on the planes. “Fellows,” he repeated. “Do I see a ship, or am I hallucinating?”
McVay looked up in surprise. There was a ship bearing down on them, its bow throwing a crisp white wake. McVay stood and started waving wildly, shouting, “Here! Over here!”
It was close to 10:00 A.M. The ship was the high-speed transport Ringness, (APD 100), which had picked up a blip on its radar screen at over 4,000 yards—about 2.25 miles—and steadily tracked it. It was a stroke of unimaginable luck for McVay and the boys. The blip had been triggered by the ammunition can that the captain had used earlier to make a failed smudge pot. Into the can, he had piled shredded kapok torn from a life vest, and then ignited the fiber with a shot from his flare gun. Although not in the way he intended, the smudge pot had saved them.29
After more than four days afloat, with no more than slivers of Spam and some malted milk tablets to eat, Captain McVay of the USS Indianapolis managed to climb up the Jacob’s ladder over the side of the Ringness under his own power.
Once on deck, he and the exhausted crew were whisked to the ship’s sick bay, where a pharmacist’s mate checked their blood pressure and heart rates. All of the group had fared remarkably well. The boys were showered and given fresh dungarees; a clean uniform was found for McVay. John Spinelli was amazed that even the Ringness’s officers were helping scrub down the dirty survivors. He had never been more grateful. But he found the news of the scope of the disaster unsettling; as he tried to get some rest in a bunk, each crashing wave against the ship’s hull brought back vivid, unwelcome flashbacks to the torpedoing.
McVay was placed in a private cabin. When Captain Meyer entered, he found him lying on the bed; McVay did not get up. Meyer sat in a chair, and, after a moment, McVay volunteered that he wanted to talk about what had happened. Meyer had prepared a dispatch describing the Indy’s torpedoing to be radioed to CINCPAC at Pearl Harbor, and he read it aloud. It included the words not zigzagging, and, upon hearing them, McVay requested they be omitted. Meyer was understanding yet persuasive in his argument to let the words stand. Seeing that McVay was traumatized, Meyer reminded him that the truth of what had happened would come to light at a court inquiry, which the two captains knew was imminent.
McVay agreed. It was as if he’d forgotten himself—he did want the words in the message; it was the right thing to do.30 After Meyer left the cabin, McVay was alone with his thoughts. And fears: the prospect of life after the disaster. What a captain dreads most had happened. With his ship gone, he could sense that his career might soon disappear as well.
Shortly thereafter, the Madison, Ralph Talbot, and Dufilho formed a 3.5-mile-long scouting line and combed the area, continuing the search through the night. The Register (APD 92) and Ringness (also in a search line) steamed for Peleliu and the makeshift hospital there (the Doyle had departed for the island earlier). By the end of the day, Admiral Nimitz would order the hospital ship Tranquility, presently anchored off Ulithi, to Peleliu in preparation for transporting the survivors to the more substantial Base 18 Hospital on Guam.
By 2:30 P.M., the Ringness and Register had discovered thirty-eight more survivors drifting in the far northern tip of what had been the teardrop shape of the mass. When the search planes didn’t turn up any other survivors in the immediate area, the captain of the Madison decided to return to the southeast area for one more look. The search, which had been in progress for over twenty-four hours, was nearing a close.
McCoy was certain that he had died long ago, maybe yesterday, maybe the previous night. It was ha
rd to tell. His throat was on fire; he regretted every ounce of water he’d ever wasted. He and Brundige drifted in their raft, sunk up to their chins.
The entire previous day, they’d watched the planes circle, knowing that a rescue effort was under way. After the sun had gone down, they had spotted what they thought was a ship’s wobbly searchlight. All night long, they had stared at the light in silence. It rose straight from the sea, pencil-thin, and flattened against the ceiling of clouds. Payne, Outland, and Gray were still unconscious. But McCoy and Brundige didn’t let the light out of their sight; they could practically reach out and touch it. They hoped and prayed it meant rescue, but rescue never came.
Now, on the morning of August 3, Brundige, spotting planes on the horizon, again roused himself. “Look, they came back, just like you’d said,” he told McCoy. “But they’re not coming our way.”
“They will,” said McCoy. “They will. They gotta work their way around to us.”
As the day wore on, the planes got smaller and smaller in the sky. And then they disappeared. Gone. No one was coming. No one.
McCoy and Brundige assumed their burial position and then started to weep. They pressed close to the tied-together mass that was Payne, Outland, and Gray, and added their vests’ straps to the cluster. Now all five were floating inside the raft as one, foreheads touching. “We’re gonna go out of our gourds,” said McCoy. “We’re gonna die. But at least this way we won’t fall over and drown in our vests.” It was taking longer to die than McCoy expected.
And then, near dusk, he heard a noise. It was a plane. Not another one, he thought. Not another goddamned plane that won’t see us. But not only had it seen them, it was coming right at them; fifty feet off the water, a Catalina seaplane passed over so close that McCoy could even see the guy inside its clear bubble blister. He was yelling something and pointing down at them. The plane banked sharply and circled. Then, on its second pass, a dye bomb was tossed out the hatch. It sent a chartreuse plume spreading around their raft.
