by Doug Stanton
—Library Journal
“A crisp, well-executed reconstruction of naval warfare’s darkest chapter: the sinking and abandonment of the USS Indianapolis.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“In Harm’s Way is a riveting, often horrific, tale that will keep you flipping pages late into the night and reading passages aloud to anyone nearby.”
—Santa Cruz Sentinel
“Stanton does not spare the details of the sinking … . It is a reminder of the awful deaths of thousands of other sailors throughout the war … This is not an easy book to read, but it rewards the effort.”
—Baton Rouge Advocate
“In Harm’s Way is thoroughly researched and brings into focus a tragic moment in history which is horrifying beyond description. Although it is a heart-pounding book, [it] is more than just the story of a disaster at sea. It is nothing less than a monument to courage and the triumph of human spirit.”
—Arizona Daily Star
“[Stanton] does not let the Navy off the hook. Of course, it would be impossible to do so. Similarly impossible: putting down this book once you start reading it or forgetting this book once you are finished with it.”
—Advance
“In this terse, dramatic account of … an inexplicable and scandalous tragedy, referred to as America’s worst disaster at sea, former contributing editor at Esquire and no-nonsense journalist Doug Stanton focuses his high-powered scope on the ordeal of the shipwrecked sailors.”
—Bellingham Herald
“In Harm’s Way is a story about tremendous heroism as well, one of ordinary men who reacted in extraordinary ways to the test of survival.”
—Anderson Independent Mail
“Superbly crafted, [In Harm’s Way] … benefits from sympathetic research on the Indianapolis survivors, the horrors of their experiences, and their courage in surviving.”
—Booklist
“Accounts of the rescue of those pitiful survivors by the crews aboard the ships that sped to the scene would melt a heart of stone.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“As hair-raising as The Perfect Storm.”
—Newsweek Special Issue
“In this riveting oral history, Stanton focuses on the personal stories of three survivors.”
—The Denver Post
“Stanton indicts Navy leadership without indicting the brave men who suffered … Stanton’s book will be a valuable weapon for those survivors still fighting to clear their captain’s name.”
—Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“The horror here is in the details … heart-wrenching.”
—New York Daily News
“In Harm’s Way related the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis not as a history of war, but as a portrait of men battling the sea.”
—African Sun Times
“Stanton has added pathos to an otherwise tragic historical footnote.”
—The Roanoke Times
“If In Harm’s Way is the next step in the path blazed by Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, it’s also Stanton’s way of paying something back. And by uncovering the meaning behind the suffering of the men of the Indianapolis, he also defines a generation.”
—BOOK magazine
“Stanton not only offers a well-researched chronicle of what is widely regarded as the worst naval disaster in U.S. history, but also vividly renders the combatants’ hellish ordeal during the sinking, and the ensuing days at sea as well as attempts to cope with the traumatic aftermath. Stanton’s omniscient narrative shifts among the individual perspectives of several principal characters, a successful technique that contributes to the book’s absorbing, novelistic feel.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Doug Stanton has done this country a service by bringing the incredible yet almost-forgotten story of the USS Indianapolis to heart-pounding life. Do yourself a favor. Read In Harm’s Way.”
—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers
“The book’s major contribution … is its water-line account of the horrendous ordeal of the men who survived the explosion.”
—Hartford Courant
“Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and rescuers and on government files that have only recently been opened to view, Doug Stanton has rendered a public service by providing the first complete account of the tragedy of Indianapolis … This is a grim, poignant story that needed to be told fully and honestly. With painstaking research and an unerring eye for detail, Stanton has set down a riveting, eloquent tale of great power.”
—World War II magazine
“Stanton has written an enthralling, terrifying and moving tale of the sea. Filled with human poignancy as well as revealing historical facts, In Harm’s Way is a heartfelt tribute to [Captain] McVay and the courageous crew of the Indianapolis.”
—Houston Chronicle
“The saga is a tragedy from the loss of lives in the sinking to the anguish of those who survived, and Stanton weaves the stories of individual sailors and the ship’s top officers, especially Capt. Charles Butler McVay III.”
—The Bay City Times
“A powerfully intimate story of men victimized by the sea and forgotten by their navy. Stanton’s book successfully paints a remarkable picture of the unspeakable horror, heroism, and the strength of the human spirit.”
—American History
“The story is riveting … because Stanton tells it simply, through the men who lived it. The writing conveys the terror of the shark attacks with piercing detail.”
—Charlotte Observer
“Doug Stanton [is] a remarkably gifted storyteller. His gripping narrative of the experiences of the Indy is unrelenting. Anyone interested … [in] World War II history … should read this book. It is that good.”
—Theodore Savas, co-author of Nazi Millionaires
“[In Harm’s Way] … reads like an adventure novel … It is time [this] story is told and Stanton has done it magnificently, with meticulous research and great poignancy.”
—School Library Journal
“A strong, well-made account of one of the most fearful disasters of World War II—tragic not only in its huge loss of life and its fateful destruction of the career of the Indianapolis’ commander, but for its random and almost meaningless occurrence in the last days of the war.”
—Peter Matthiessen, author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
“In Harm’s Way is a pungent corrective to Navy injustice and much more. The book is an improbably fatal adventure story, unfortunately true, that leaves you gasping at the sacrifice some men made for the rest of us.”
—Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and Dalva
“A wonderfully wrought account of one of the great war-time disasters at sea. The meticulous research puts the reader onto the scene in the South Pacific in a way that is both harrowing and mesmerizing. It is hard to imagine that Stanton’s account could have been done any better.”
—George Plimpton, editor of The Paris Review
Afterword: 2001
As it turns out, justice in the case of Captain Charles Butler McVay arrived far more swiftly than the survivors of the USS Indianapolis had expected. On July 13,2001—56 years after the sinking of the ship, and 41 years after Giles McCoy first began the effort to clear McVay’s name—the Department of Navy, in a surprising turn of events, made public their decision to exonerate the court-martialed captain.
The Secretary of the Navy, Gordon R. England, instructed that the following declaration be appended to McVay’s military service record: “The American people should now recognize Captain McVay’s lack of culpability for the tragic loss of the USS Indianapolis and the lives of the men who died as a result of the sinking of that vessel. Captain McVay’s military record should now reflect that he is exonerated for the loss of the USS Indianapolis and so many of her crew.”
In this reversal of its long-held refusal to review McVay�
�s case, the Navy echoed wording chosen by the United States Congress in their October, 2000 resolution declaring McVay’s “lack of culpability for the tragic loss of the USS Indianapolis and the lives of the men who died … .”
In a subsequent letter to England, McCoy typically didn’t mince words: “Thank you, sir, for getting the Navy Department Admirals off their butts in exonerating our late captain.”
The announcement of the Navy’s decision attracted immediate national attention. In a July 14, 2001, New York Times story (citing an Associated Press report), an elated McCoy explained that Captain McVay had not been guilty “of anything except the fortune or misfortune of war.”
I was taking a quick vacation during the book’s publicity tour when I learned of the exoneration. The tour’s readings had been emotional—in every city or town I visited, there was usually someone in the audience who was either a survivor of the disaster, or related to one. These events had come to serve as a sort of meeting place of the generations: old, young, men and women.
The proprietor of the lakeside cabin where I was staying handed me the news: Call your publisher. Something has happened concerning Captain McVay.
There was no phone at the resort, so I drove to a gas station and from a pay phone got the details. I had been about to go swimming with my kids, so standing there in T-shirt and shorts, it was a surprising experience to be instead discussing the exoneration with CNN, swept up in the excitement. When I checked in with survivor Ed Brown in California, he told me he’d broken into tears upon hearing the news.
Other survivors echoed similar feelings of relief and joy. For while the Navy’s exoneration did not go so far as to erase McVay’s conviction from his record, McCoy feels—as do many of his shipmates—that in the court of public opinion his captain’s name finally has been cleared, the cloud under which the legacy of the USS Indianapolis had lingered these many years removed.
“I think it’s the best we can ever get,” Mc Coy told me afterward, from his home in Florida. “I imagine Captain McVay is looking down and smiling on all this.”
The crew was also awarded a Unit Citation for its role in the delivery of the components of the bomb Little Boy to Tinian island. These men—now in their 70’s and 80’s—have at last been recognized by the U.S. Navy for their service to their country.
What, after all these years, prompted the Navy to reverse its decision 56 years after the court-martial?
In short, it was the result of dogged optimism and persistence on the part of hundreds of individuals.
But key people should be singled out. England acted in part as a result of the invaluable urging of Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), who had been alerted to McVay’s case originally by Florida school student Hunter Scott’s own lobbying in Congress. The exoneration effort had also received critical support from Mike Monroney, a tireless volunteer advocate of the cause in Washington, D.C., and Captain McVay’s son, Kimo McVay, who passed away just before the announcement, on June 29, 2001. Captain Bill Toti, Special Assistant to the Vice-Chief of Naval Operations, Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN), Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL), and Sen. John Warner (R-VA) also provided important assistance along the way.
Sadly, news of the exoneration arrived too late for Dr. Lewis Haynes, who passed away at his winter home in Florida on March 13, 2001, at the age of 89.
Even at the end of his life, Dr. Haynes, still haunted by the ship’s sinking, had spent many a troubled night dog-paddling in his sleep, tossing and turning, adrift in the Philippine Sea.
I learned this at Lew’s funeral, at which I was honored to speak at the request of his wife, Margaret. In Harm’s Way had not yet been published, but the doctor’s friends and relatives were aware of his excitement about the book, and many expressed curiosity as to why I’d chosen to write it. I thought I knew the answer, but at Lew’s funeral I found myself fumbling for a way to convey what I’d felt most deeply about all the heroic and yet humble men of the USS Indianapolis. To my own surprise, I realized I didn’t truly understand it myself: Why did this particular story exert such a pull on me?
My hope had been to make readers care enough about the survivors’ ordeal that they would care even more today about the case of Captain McVay and his court-martial. I’d written the story as I’d heard it, which was as a kind of legend told around a kitchen table late at night. And readers had found inspiration in the survivors’ struggle: “Your book is changing ME,” one man had written, in the same way that “you describe meeting the men and telling their stories has changed you. I also have sought adventure, from [being in] the Navy, to rock and mountain climbing, even some business adventures. I have had great stresses and also great fortunes. The story of the Indianapolis needed to be told.” Others, already aware of the survivors’ ordeal, were surprised by what they hadn’t known: “As someone who’s read virtually every story written about the disaster,” wrote Mike Monroney, “I wasn’t prepared for your incredibly vivid narrative. It was frightening. And it was excellently done … the book will be an immense help in the effort to have Captain McVay vindicated.” Clearly, I was a long way from my first tentative introduction to the survivors and their story.
When I’d attended that first reunion in July, 1999, I felt a bit lost, wandering the Westin Hotel in Indianapolis and wondering what or where the “story” was. Research material was scant or out of print; except for local media, there wasn’t another reporter around for miles. Not hours after my arrival, I was considering leaving. And then I met the men.
When I returned to the next reunion in August, 2001 (five months after In Harm’s Way had been published), I found myself surrounded by a group of about 600 people, many of whom I now knew by name. The reunion was a happy yet bittersweet affair. In one corner of the hotel lobby, a group of elderly men were joking with one another; in another, other survivors were sharing a painful moment reminiscing about lost shipmates. And all around were bustling families—young kids, teenagers, new mothers—looking on, learning how people face the past, and the future.
Because I had written about the ship, some people assumed I might know how a particular relative had died. Maybe every third person who approached me was in tears. And as had been true throughout the tour, some of the most poignant responses came from teenagers and from women who felt that in reading the book they’d been offered a glimpse into their own father’s or grandfather’s lives.
During the Q&A part of the reunion’s reading, a survivor named Frank Centazzo stood up and approached the microphone. I had never interviewed Frank for the book, a fact about which he good-naturedly reminded me. And then he turned serious: for 56 years, he announced, he’d felt ashamed by the behavior of some of the men in the water. Why had some surrendered and died? Why had others acted less than admirably?
It wasn’t until he’d read In Harm’s Way, he said, that he’d understood why. He was referring to passages describing the devastating effects of salt-water ingestion and exposure on the men. As he stood there, his voice wavering, he thanked me for writing the book.
I remember being speechless. And thinking, Why hadn’t anyone ever told this proud man what had happened?
Shortly thereafter, the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I was finishing an interview with an NPR reporter and as he was leaving my office, he asked, “Anything you want to add?”
And suddenly, I understood what I hadn’t grasped before. Of all the dreams I had while writing In Harm’s Way, the most powerful was one of floating on a burning, inhospitable sea, willing myself to stay alive. During my interviews with survivors, nearly all of them had recalled that, at some point, they had made a vow to themselves: I am going to live.
This had always struck me as a startling, existential moment—it had haunted me, and still does. What the men were remembering were those people back on land who had at some point told them—in words or through deeds—“never to give up.”
I told the reporter that I wondered if I had ever said anything to my own son, to
my daughter, to my wife, to any of my friends—to anybody—that would act as a lifeline if they found themselves in a similar situation.
I said that I didn’t know, but that I hoped I had.
When people tell me they like the book I wrote, I tell them that the book wrote me.
January 17, 2002
Lake Ann, Michigan
Notes
PROLOGUE: SAILOR ON A CHAIN
Interviews: Gordon Linke, Jocelyn Linke, Scott Linke, Winthrop Smith Jr., Ed Stevens, Florence Regosia, Michael Monroney, Giles McCoy.
p. 6 A pool of blood: police photographs, November 6, 1968.
p. 8 Of the nearly 400 American captains: The Naval Historical Center, www.history.navy.mil; Proceedings, October 1999, “The Sinking of the Indy & Responsibility of Command,” Commander William J. Toti, U.S. Navy; Thomas B. Buell, Master of the Sea, p. 328.
In the early 1990s: Richard A. von Doenhoff, “ULTRA and the Sinking of USS Indianapolis.” Eleventh Naval History Symposium, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, October 1993.
