by Lynn Vincent
“I don’t want my grandchildren to ask someday, ‘What did you do in the great war, Grandfather?,’ ” Moore said. “I don’t want to say, ‘I fought the war with a typewriter in Nashville, Tennessee.’ ”
“If you go to sea,” Katherine said, “you probably won’t have any grandchildren.”
In the Challenger dining car, she gazed out the window at America’s middle plains. The nation had defeated Germany, and judging by the news, was on the verge of defeating Japan. For reasons apart from war weariness, Katherine was ecstatic. There was a real possibility that the other woman would never carry away her husband again.
• • •
After drydocking his ship, McVay approved a series of rotating shore leave periods for the crew. Then he unpacked his gear at the Quonset hut he and Louise were to share on base. The honeymooners enjoyed quiet, precious hours at home and in the city, and McVay also managed to work in a fishing trip to the Russian River in Northern California.
Father Thomas Conway loaned Lew Haynes a few dollars so that the doctor could afford to go home and see his wife and kids. Then the priest used his own leave to travel the country, visiting the families of the nine men killed in the kamikaze strike. Conway had never behaved as a cloistered cleric aboard the ship, nor sequestered himself with officers, although he was an officer himself. The sailors thought of him as a man’s man who was willing to pitch in and get his hands dirty if the situation required it. That worked in Conway’s favor when he occasionally had to chide young sailors over their choices in life, or more often, for not writing often enough to their moms and dads back home.
Earl Henry’s approved leave period was coming up and he was rushing to finish his model. He was pleased with the way the details were coming together. There was a miniature bell where Indy’s real bell hung on the navigation bridge. Even the spud locker where the mess cooks stored the potatoes was fitted with a tiny copper screen. So finely crafted was this miniature Indianapolis that Captain McVay had once offered Henry a huge sum of money for it. But Henry wouldn’t sell the model at any price. It was to be a gift for his newborn son or daughter.
Harpo Celaya headed home to Florence, Arizona, and to Delores, a dark-eyed beauty who had caught his attention before he left for the Navy. Back then, Celaya had been larger than life, and when he went off to fight the war, he kept up an air of being above it all, even at the bloodiest battle of all, Iwo Jima. Now, though, Celaya had seen how short life could be, and he wanted to share it with someone special.
Glenn Morgan was ecstatic to be reunited with his best girl, Mertie Jo. On the other hand, Morgan’s bugler buddy Donald Mack beat him out for promotion to third class petty officer. Commander Johns Hopkins Janney, Indy’s navigator, put Mack ahead of Morgan even though Mack had previously failed the test twice. Morgan was steamed. But he thought he might know why Janney didn’t like him: Morgan was married and Janney wasn’t.
One day at Mare Island, Morgan asked Janney for special liberty. He didn’t have duty and wanted to go home and see Mertie Jo.
“No,” Janney said. “You married men think you’ve got rights that other people don’t.”
The commander was partly right. Morgan and Mertie Jo lived on base in a Quonset hut, while unmarried men like Janney had to quarter on the ship. But none of that should have had bearing on whether Morgan could go ashore. To get around Janney, Morgan had one of his friends made him a fake ID card so that the quarterdeck watch wouldn’t enter his real name in the log when he left the ship. It was a bit of skullduggery for a chance to see his wife, and McVay would discipline him for sure if he got caught. He didn’t.
13
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MAY 1945
Kure Naval Yard
Kure, Japan
BY MAY 1945, MOCHITSURA Hashimoto’s sub was never safe, even in home waters. On May 5, five days after he tied up at his pier in Kure harbor, the skies over the seaside prefecture filled with flashing silver plate and the deep, ominous thrum of American planes. A phalanx of B-29 Superfortress bombers skimmed over the base and emptied their bellies, projectiles streaking toward earth like raptors. The Hiro Naval Arsenal was destroyed, but I-58 and the remaining IJN sub fleet escaped damage.
The Americans’ new low-altitude bombing tactic was now well established. Before March, the Superfortress raiders had operated mainly at altitude, unleashing high-explosive bombs. But that changed when Major General Curtis LeMay retooled U.S. bombing tactics and tested his new doctrine with a low-altitude firebombing of Tokyo. The central target was Shitamachi, a locus of “shadow factories” that supplied materials to manufacturers of military aircraft. Shitamachi was also a downtown suburb of 750,000 people who lived in a warren of tightly packed wood-frame buildings. The attack had been like throwing torches into rice paper. The resulting blaze devoured sixteen square miles of the city and at least 80,000 souls. Since then, the enemy had sent nearly two thousand B-29s in eight separate raids, nearly all of them low-altitude firebombings. Hashimoto was watching his country literally go up in flames.
Meanwhile, the IJN’s kaiten-equipped submarines were proving an abysmal failure. Of the four kaiten subs sent to Okinawa, only half returned, including Hashimoto’s. Undeterred, the IJN had ordered a refit for I-58. Yard technicians were now removing her aircraft catapult and hangar so that she could carry six suicide torpedoes.
At the beginning of the war, Japan’s Navy ruled the Pacific. Hashimoto remembered lying in wait off the Hawaiian coast on December 6, 1941. He was torpedo officer aboard I-24 then, and the boat lay off Oahu, concealed beneath the obscuring blanket of the sea. Through the periscope, Hashimoto had seen lights twinkling along the shore, rows of lamps on an airport, and the neon signs at Waikiki. He could hear a radio and the music sounded to him like jazz.
The next day, December 7, more than 350 fighter-bombers from six Japanese carriers stormed Pearl Harbor. With I-24 at a depth of ninety feet, Hashimoto did not see the air attack. But the ocean beneath Japan’s first attack on America became dangerously turbulent, forcing I-24 to break the surface, shedding concealment and exposing her to potential attack. As he and the crew scrambled to resubmerge the boat, Hashimoto kept an eye on his watch, longing for sunset and the cover of night.
Later, the I-24 crew celebrated victory, but the truth was that Japan’s submarines had failed shamefully at Pearl Harbor. Now, during I-58’s Kure refit, Hashimoto was condemned to watch as America steadily carved up the remaining IJN fleet. The cascading failures angered Hashimoto, who had been fighting Japan’s naval leadership for material improvements to the sub fleet since 1943. By then, the Americans had equipped all their boats with radar while Japanese crews in the forward areas longed for radar as farmers long for rain. Radar would allow Hashimoto to travel quickly on the surface and give the crew enough time to dive when they detected enemy aircraft approaching. He thought it a disgraceful state of affairs and was frustrated that more of Japan’s resources had not been poured into scientific research. He felt that the struggle for sea supremacy had devolved into a fight between the blind and those who could see.
With other Japanese submariners, Hashimoto developed the view that one radar set would be more valuable than a hundred new submarines. For months in 1943, against protocol, he banged on doors and lobbied for the technology to make IJN sub warfare safer and more effective. All he got in return was approval for an allotment of one additional pair of binoculars. Disgusted, he chalked up his failure to interdepartmental rivalry and a headquarters staff that was more concerned with its image than with the safety of the men serving at the front.
Now two years had passed. Finally, IJN leaders had relented and installed radar, but not before Hashimoto watched many of his fellow sub commanders, including several he’d gone to school with, sent down to salty graves. During the Kure refit, workers fitted I-58 with Type 3 sonar and relocated her Type 22 radar to a pedestal in front of the conning tower. But when I-58 put to sea again, Hashimoto suspected that the improvem
ents to his submarine had come too late.
14
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JUNE 1945
USS Indianapolis
Mare Island, California
EARL HENRY COULD HARDLY believe it: He’d missed the birth of his son by five days. After spending time with Jane in Mayfield, Kentucky, he’d boarded a westbound train on June 13 and returned to Mare Island. Five days later, Earl Junior was born—nearly two months early!
Henry had been excited about the prospect of becoming a father, but he never dreamed he would be so exuberant at the news. On June 30, he received his first letter from Jane since they became parents. He read it three times and could hardly wait for another one. The best news of all was that Jane had some photographs taken of the baby and was sending him prints in the mail. The preliminary report from Henry’s father-in-law was that little Earl looked like a Republican.
Henry had hoped to finish his Indianapolis model before going home, but that hadn’t happened so it was still aboard the ship. One evening in June, Kasey Moore asked him to bring it to the wardroom. The ship’s officers often hosted their wives for dinner there, and Moore wanted the new families to see the replica ship. Moore’s wife, Katherine, thought Henry’s model was the most beautifully crafted thing she’d ever seen.
She told Henry that Kasey’s parents lived in Knoxville. “Why don’t you let me take it home for you?”
Moore chimed in. “I could pack it up so it could make the trip without a scratch.”
Henry smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, but it’s a gift for my son. When I detach from Indy, I’m flying home and I want to take it myself.”
It seemed that day might come quickly. Officers around him speculated that the war would be over in less than six months. Henry thought it might last a bit longer, but not so long that he would miss very much of little Earl’s childhood. Since reporting to Indy, he had written to Jane about everything he did and saw—the phosphorescence of plankton churning in the ship’s night wake . . . showering in a warm island rain because it was the only way to get a freshwater shower . . . the way clear saltwater bubbled up in the island tidal pools then receded to reveal starfish and tiny crabs and little jewel-colored fish that fed at his feet. He wouldn’t trade what he’d seen during his naval service, but now he wanted more than anything to get back to Tennessee, to enjoy the simple routines of home and hearth. He told Jane that if the Navy offered him a permanent position, he’d turn it down so fast her head would spin.
• • •
As anxious as Henry was to get home, Ensign John Woolston was glad to be aboard. Since reporting, he’d prowled the passageways on a mission: memorize Indianapolis. Every frame, beam, deck plate, tank, and machinery space. Every repair locker, damage control station, door, hatch, and dog. The twenty-year-old ensign, with a slim face, angular jaw, and serious brown eyes, had made it his business to know the ship better than any man aboard. So he stalked the decks, stopping to gaze at “bulls eyes”—hyphenated alphanumerics stenciled on the bulkheads that marked deck number, frame number, relation to ship’s centerline, and the function of a given compartment—and log them in the near-photographic catalog that was his brain.
When Woolston reported to Indianapolis in May, it was actually his second time aboard, the first occurring while he was still in grade school. Woolston’s good friend had a much older sister. She was married to a naval officer who invited the two boys to tour the ship. Woolston took the ferry across Puget Sound, stepped aboard, and fell in love. After the tour, he bought his first model kit—a replica Indianapolis that became his first and most treasured model. Some years later, Woolston was rowing the Mosquito Pass near Henry Island when he saw the real Indy again, cleaving the Straits of Juan de Fuca on a high-speed run. Even at a distance she was impressive, and the waves of her passage rocked his little craft from five miles away.
Now, fresh from naval architectural and marine engineering school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Woolston had reported aboard for duty. Taken to Captain McVay for the customary quick introduction, he pegged the skipper as a gentleman of the old line, cordial but not affable, approachable but not familiar. From then on, Woolston’s immediate boss was Moore. Woolston considered it paramount to continue his education in knowing the ship, in particular how the basics of watertight integrity operated on this particular vessel.
Indianapolis was designed in 1930 with a single “through-deck” along which one could pass from bow to stern without having to climb up and down ladders and make a circuitous route using multiple decks. This design made it impractical to operate completely buttoned up, with maximum watertight integrity—a state known as “Material Condition Afirm”—since the ordinary duties of sailing necessitated free movement of personnel up and down the length of the ship. Further, Condition Afirm would shut off all ventilation to interior spaces. On a ship without air-conditioning operating in the steamy South Pacific, that could kill a crew as quickly as the enemy.
Because Indianapolis’s hull was not heavily armored like those of most of the warships in the fleet, her designers had made judicious compromises in an effort to pack as much firepower, speed, and cruising range as possible into the ten-thousand-ton treaty cruiser limit. While her trim skin made her one of the fastest large ships in the Navy, it also meant that the bubble of steam and gas produced by an exploding torpedo could more easily crack her in two.
Woolston felt that the more he knew about the ship, the more he could do to prevent just that. And so, from bowsprit to fantail, bilge to crow’s nest, he memorized it all.
• • •
Day and night in dry dock No. 2, workmen swarmed over scaffolding that climbed the ship’s sides like the exoskeleton of some industrial insect. During Indianapolis’s 1944 overhaul, Mare Island had bustled with more than ten thousand tradesmen. Now that number had quadrupled to more than forty thousand. From that legion, scores of shipfitters, pipefitters, electricians, sheet metal artisans, coppersmiths, boilermakers, blacksmiths, and builders buzzed around Indy like bees around their queen.
Her decks and interiors echoed with the simmer of welding torches, the pounding of hammers, the laborious screech of fresh-machined parts sliding into place. The noise and dirt of this constant construction wore the crew down. Dust covered every surface on the ship, including the men’s bunks and pillows. They griped to one another that they’d be glad when Indy was put back together again.
Woolston and Kasey Moore oversaw the entire process. The service schools were churning out droves of officers of varying quality, but Moore felt that in Woolston he had been dealt an ace. Though he was one of the ship’s most junior officers, Woolston’s educational background was proving invaluable. Moreover, in the summer between high school and MIT, Woolston had worked in the engineering department of a firm that was building mine ships for the Navy. Very quickly, Moore put him to work as a liaison between Indy’s repair department and the shipyard tradesmen.
Moore himself had a fierce work ethic, and it was only at the skipper’s insistence that he took a few days off to spend with Katherine and Mary. His dogged persistence may have been why, after less than three months in the yard, Indianapolis was ready when the Navy called her.
15
* * *
JULY 9, 1945
Manhattan Engineering District Offices
Washington, D.C.
MAJOR ROBERT FURMAN HAD eight hours to check out of his living quarters, put all his possessions in storage, jump on a plane, and embark on a mission that would usher humanity into a new age. On July 9, he sat in the Washington, D.C., offices of the Manhattan Engineering District, typing a memo that surprised even him:
I will leave tonight at 9:00 on the plane for Albuquerque. Derry is wiring Oppie to expect me and to have transportation at Albuquerque for me. I will go to Oppie and get further instructions from him.
Furman was to meet Manhattan Project chief scientist Robert Oppenheimer the following morning. The mission at
hand involved delivery of a “package.” Considering the contents, the code word was almost comically bland. Furman continued finger-pecking the typewriter keys:
The package will leave Y the 14th. I will probably take possession of the package as courier at Albuquerque airport. Nolan and I will fly with the package. . . . Captain Larkin will also join the party at Albuquerque and will be Liaison Officer with the Navy. At San Francisco he will introduce me to Captain McVay. The ship will be the Indianapolis . . .
General Groves had peeled Furman off a beach for this mission. Having missed the Heereswaffenamt physicist Kurt Diebner in Stadtilm, Furman and Samuel Goudsmit had flown to Göttingen. There, they examined files on German scientists and questioned another man on the target list. Then, on April 22, Groves received word that the final stockpile of missing uranium had been recovered.
The new president, Harry Truman, was in the loop now. On April 25, nearly two weeks after Roosevelt’s death, Groves, with war secretary Henry Stimson, briefed Truman on the Manhattan Project. It was Truman’s first full revelation of the weapon under development. One of Roosevelt’s former aides told him it was powerful enough to “destroy the whole world.”
With Groves and Stimson, Truman strategized. Which allies would they share the information with? How would an atomic weapon affect foreign policy decisions? In succeeding weeks, the question for Truman became one of numbers. How many lives would be lost in an invasion of the home islands of Japan, a nation that had pledged to fight to the death and that was urging its citizens to choose suicide over submission? The estimates were staggering, eclipsing by far the estimated death toll of dropping the atomic bomb. And yet scientists as distinguished as Leo Szilard were weighing in against using the new weapon. It was Szilard who in 1933 first developed the idea of the nuclear chain reaction and who, with Albert Einstein, encouraged the United States to build an atomic weapon. Now, though, on moral grounds, he opposed using it on Japanese cities and circulated a petition among Manhattan Project scientists to gather support for his position. Admiral Nimitz, who had been briefed on the bomb in February, also favored a mainland invasion. After some deliberation, Truman authorized continuation of the project and formed an interim committee to advise him on the bomb’s use.
