by Lynn Vincent
“Officers Standing Night Watch Told Sub in Vicinity,” wrote the Evening Press of Muncie, Indiana. “Indianapolis Night Watch Had Been Warned of Prowling Sub,” wrote the Green Bay, Wisconsin, Press-Gazette. “Officers of Lost Cruiser Were Told About Nip Sub,” wrote the Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
A couple of witnesses after Haynes, Ensign John Woolston took the stand. Woolston had spent much of his time in Guam after the sinking, writing the official war damage report for Indianapolis. When called to the court-martial, Woolston thought he would be testifying as a survivor, and was surprised to find himself transformed, mid-testimony, from eyewitness to expert witness.
Ryan elicited from Woolston a raft of technical details, such as Indy’s cruising condition, repair party status, and damage to the ship. Like McKissick, and the bugler, Donald Mack, who testified before him, Woolston told the court that he heard the order to abandon ship.
“There was plenty of time to abandon ship in an orderly fashion after the word was passed, with little danger to the men,” Woolston said. “However, because of the lack of power communications within the ship, it was difficult for the men far aft to hear the word.”
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ON DECEMBER 5, CAPTAIN Ryan continued his prosecution, calling a procession of witnesses to the stand.
Indianapolis supply officer John Reid, a lieutenant commander, gave a dramatic account of his last moments on the fantail. “There seemed to be . . . at least eight hundred men clinging to the life line. The ship was listing rapidly and the men were attempting to go over the side.” Reid tried to stop them. “Finally, it seemed impossible to do anything but go over the side, so the men did, and I . . . fell back against a turret, and finally, the ship just went down from under me.”
Reid, the senior officer on the fantail, said he did not tell the men there to abandon ship, because for the first several minutes, he did not think Indy would sink. Other officers and chiefs also testified that they thought at first that the ship might remain afloat. This buttressed McVay’s not-guilty plea to Charge II, failure to order abandon ship in time—which, of course, the prosecution had expected. Reid also testified to the visibility as seen from the fantail: broken clouds, which created a “hazy effect” when clouds were over the moon.
Ryan: When the clouds were not over the moon, what was the condition?
Reid: That was very rare, but at such times it was bright.
The question of visibility was key, since naval instructions required skippers to zigzag in times of good visibility or moonlight. Ryan attempted to elicit testimony in support of Charge I—that McVay had hazarded his vessel by failing to zigzag—while Cady tried to counter it.
Cady: Did you actually see the bright exposed surface of the moon?
Reid: At intervals, yes.
Cady: At intervals?
Reid: Rarely.
Ensign Ross Rogers, Jr., a junior division officer, said he didn’t notice either the moon or visibility when he came on watch just before midnight at “sky amidships,” a high platform near the center of the ship. He noticed only that it was dark.
Ryan: Did you [notice it] at any subsequent time?
Rogers: Later on, sir, I was ordered to watch the sea for enemy submarines, and I could see the reflection of the moon in the water.
Ryan: Was this before you finally left the ship?
Rogers: Yes, sir, it was.
Chief Gunner Cecil Harrison said it was “a dark night” with a moderate ground swell and a light wind.
Ryan: How far would you estimate that you could see, in thousands of yards, from your height?
Harrison: About three thousand yards.
Ryan: What could you see at that distance?
Harrison: It would be limited—it would have to be a large vessel, the size of a destroyer. Nothing that was low in the water, I do not believe, could have been seen.
Durward Horner, a warrant gunner, told Cady under cross-examination that even after the ship was hit, it was so dark topside that he couldn’t recognize his own gunnery officer, Commander Lipski. “I think I knew him more by shape than anything else.” Horner said he never saw the moon. Then Ensign Donald Blum took the stand.
Ryan: Did anything unusual occur during the night of 29–30 July, 1945? If so, what was it?
Blum: The ship sank.
At Blum’s blunt summary, a wave of soft laughter rolled through the gallery and the press. Blum then testified that he had been on watch at the sky amidships platform and “could see the fantail and the forward stack with no trouble. I could distinguish people walking around on the fantail.”
And so it went, with testimony on Charge I swinging like a pendulum between McVay and his accusers. Some men recalled periods of luminous moonlight and lucid visibility—one sailor even recalled seeing the horizon—while others remembered a coal-black night with no moon at all. On Charge II, testimony regarding the abandon-ship order came down heavily in McVay’s favor, as Admiral Colclough had predicted. By day’s end on Thursday, December 6, Ryan had called twenty-two witnesses, some of whom told tales of heroism and narrow escape.
But no individual testimony was as chilling as the collective calculus of death that had begun with John Woolston:
Q: Are you the senior surviving officer in damage control?
A: Yes, sir. I am the only surviving officer.
Radioman J. J. Moran:
Q: Are there any surviving officer personnel of the communications department?
A: No, sir. There are none.
Seaman First Class Raymond Jurkiewicz:
Q: How many enlisted personnel were in CIC at that time?
A: Three, with me.
Q: How many of that number, three enlisted and two officer personnel, survived?
A: I did.
Q: Will you repeat that, please?
A: Just me. Just myself.
Witness after witness underscored this grim fact: Of the 1,195 souls aboard Indianapolis, three of every four men died.
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COMMANDER MOCHITSURA HASHIMOTO STOOD atop a run of aircraft loading stairs and looked out at a foreign land: Washington, D.C. It was 8:45 a.m. on December 10. In the custody of an American naval officer, Allan Smith, a lieutenant junior grade, Hashimoto had boarded a naval transport plane in Oakland and flown all night—twelve hours with a single stop in Olathe, Kansas.
The victor had summoned the vanquished. The Navy had called Hashimoto to testify in the court-martial of Captain Charles McVay. Hashimoto had been promoted to the rank of commander four months earlier, but now he wore civilian clothes, a slouch hat and an ill-fitting dark suit. A photographer snapped Hashimoto, so dressed, at the top of the loading stairs, and that was the picture that would appear on the front pages of American newspapers.
While he was waiting for departure in Oakland, personnel from the Office of Naval Intelligence interrogated Hashimoto. He kept expecting to be clapped in irons to await trial as a war criminal. Perhaps the Americans would even execute him. His greatest fear, though, was never seeing his wife and sons again. But American officers repeatedly assured him that his trip to America was no trick. He would return to his family soon and safe, he was told. Still, he worried.
Hashimoto descended the loading stairs with Smith in trail, and a flock of reporters pressed in, armed with cameras and pens and questions. On the tarmac, Hashimoto heard Smith tell reporters that Hashimoto did not speak much English. Kyodo, a Japanese news service, had reported on December 8 that Hashimoto was going to Washington. The Associated Press picked up the brief item, and newspapers all over America began following the story. The next day, the United Press elaborated: The judge advocate had called the Japanese officer to verify that Indianapolis had been torpedoed. By December 10, readers from coast to coast had learned that Hashimoto was “short, stocky, and swarthy.” By December 11, reporters were calling him a “star witness.”
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Some Navy brass used the press to push back against Hashimoto’s court-martial appearance—albeit while keeping their names out of the papers, perhaps so as not to run afoul of King and Forrestal. “Several high-ranking naval officers” pointed out to reporters that Japan had been “the enemy” until only very recently, and that Japanese accounts of the war had frequently proven untrue. The subscript: Anything this Japanese witness might say in court could not be trusted. Meanwhile, stories of Japanese atrocities were still fresh. The Bataan Death March, images of Japanese soldiers using U.S. prisoners of war for bayonet practice, the wholesale murder of civilians. Of 27,000 American POWs, 40 percent died in captivity.
Meanwhile, there was no precedent in U.S. military justice for calling a member of a defeated enemy to testify against an American officer. Op-ed writers cried foul. Of particular interest was the opinion of nationally syndicated columnist Robert Ruark, who wanted to know why Hashimoto wasn’t simply deposed in Japan. Perhaps, he suggested, McVay’s court-martial “was beginning to sag in reader appeal.”
Now, Marine guards hustled Hashimoto from the airport to the Navy Yard. He felt like a prisoner, but Lieutenant Smith had told him that was not the case. Though most of his guards treated him with kindness, others ran him through with daggered stares. In these eyes, Hashimoto read hatred and disgust. He understood enough English to know they regarded him as something between vermin and a monster.
• • •
Three days later, Hashimoto donned a blue suit provided by the Navy, and a Marine guard detail escorted him to Building 57. He had been unable to bring with him any official documents from I-58. All were destroyed when the IJN surrendered the submarine to the Americans in September. Now, Hashimoto waited outside the courtroom. Inside, a war was under way.
For the defense, Captain Cady rose and addressed Admiral Baker. “If the court please, I wish to make formal objection to the idea of calling one of the officers of the defeated enemy who, as a nation, have been proven guilty of every despicable treachery, of the most infamous cruelties, and of the most barbarous practices in violation of all of the laws of civilized warfare, to testify against one of our own commanding officers on a matter affecting his professional ability and judgment.
“I am sure I express the feeling of every American citizen, especially those who so recently fought against the Japanese, in protesting this spectacle. This objection is not, and cannot, be based on any legalistic grounds, since our lawmakers have never imagined through the centuries of Anglo-Saxon law any such grotesque proceedings.”
“If the court please,” Ryan replied, “the judge advocate regrets exceedingly that emotional aspects to the introduction of this witness are being stressed in this court. It is not the intention of the judge advocate, and he would resent asking this witness—anybody’s asking this witness—to give any opinions as to the honor or the actions of the accused in this case.”
Ryan said he believed Hashimoto’s testimony was necessary to a decision in the case—he wanted the court to hear, in essence, the details of the Japanese commander’s attack. “In order to guarantee accurate answers . . . we intend to request the court to swear him with the oath according to our law, and the oath which will bind him in his own country, which will make him subject to prosecution if it develops that he does not give true evidence before this court.”
The prosecutor then headed off any objection to the propriety of Hashimoto’s testimony. “It is a matter of record, in both our Navy Department and our War Department, that there are many cases of members of our armed forces having been tried by courts-martial and in the proceedings of those courts-martial, enemy aliens testified before the court.”
The attorneys lashed back and forth. Ryan cited precedent indicating that he was only performing his due diligence as judge advocate. In a previous case, he noted, a judge advocate was found to have erred in not allowing the testimony of a pair of “notorious prostitutes.”
Cady countered by saying that since Hashimoto was not a Christian, he might be incapable of abiding by the standard oath to tell the truth. The defense introduced a Naval Courts and Boards text that said persons outside the Christian religion should take “additional ceremony or acts as will make the oath binding on the conscience of the person taking it.”
This was a concession by Cady, which he then immediately shot down as inadequate: “However, I submit to the court how, under the circumstances, can there be any pains of penalties of perjury upon such a witness, an enemy alien of a defeated nation who has no standing in this country at all. There are numerous questions as to the veracity of the Japanese as a race, and it is a question for the court to determine how he may be placed under oath or affirmation to tell the truth.”
Ryan spoke up quickly: He was sure naval authorities could ensure that Hashimoto suffered pain were he to perjure himself. Then Ryan noted that the alternative oath he was suggesting Hashimoto take applied also to “heretics or atheists, those who have no religion.”
“It appears the proper procedure would be to bring in the proposed witness,” Cady said, “and to examine him as to his understanding of the truth and falsehood, the meaning of perjury.”
All parties agreed. First a translator was brought in, Francis Royal Eastlake, an American who had been born in Japan and lived there for eighteen years. Eastlake gave his qualifications, which included familiarity with the oath administered in Japanese courts-martial and civil courts. The sides agreed that Hashimoto would be brought in and examined: Did he understand what it meant to tell the truth?
The door to the courtroom opened and the room hushed. The audience was now nearly quadruple what it had been in previous days of testimony. At least 150 spectators had crowded in to see Hashimoto up close.
When the controversial witness shambled in, Associated Press reporter Arthur Edson was shocked. This Japanese warrior, who claimed to have struck the worst blow against the Navy since Pearl Harbor, looked to Edson about as ferocious as a chocolate milkshake. Escorted by a glowering Marine guard, Hashimoto stood stiffly at attention and bowed to the court before taking a seat in the witness chair.
Eastlake: Hashimoto, what is your religious belief?
Hashimoto (via Eastlake): I am a Shintoist.
Eastlake: What do you know of the meaning of truth and falsehood?
Hashimoto: I am fully aware of the difference between truth and falsehood.
Eastlake: What happens in your religion if you tell a falsehood?
Hashimoto: Should I happen to utter any falsehood, I will have to pay for it. I mean I will be punished for it.
Hashimoto delivered his answers with customary Asian reserve, so softly that neither the spectators nor reporters crowding the courtroom could hear him speaking Japanese, but only Eastlake’s English translation.
Eastlake: Does your religion include a belief in a life hereafter?
Hashimoto: I believe that the soul exists after death.
Eastlake: Do you know what perjury means?
Hashimoto: [I have] full knowledge of it.
Eastlake: Is there punishment in Japanese law for perjury?
Hashimoto: I don’t know all the details, but I believe that there is punishment.
Eastlake: Are you listed on any of the lists of war criminals for any of the Allied powers?
Hashimoto: To my knowledge, my name is not on any list of war criminals.
After this testimony, the court ruled Hashimoto competent to take the oaths. The president of the court administered both, and Hashimoto signed his name in ink, both in English and in Japanese. Looking on, Edson, the AP reporter, thought Hashimoto’s pants too short and his chair too big. He had to sit on its edge and lean forward to put his feet flat on the floor. He looked to Edson not like a fierce warrior but like a man applying for a job as a night watchman.
Ryan: Have you received any threats or promises of any kind, which might tend to influence you to give any particular kind of testim
ony?
Hashimoto: I have received neither threats nor promises to put any—to try to influence me to bear witness one way or the other.
After establishing Hashimoto’s duties and position on the night of July 29–30, Ryan began to probe the details of his attack. Hashimoto delivered his answers in Japanese, which were translated for the court by Commander John Bromley. While Eastlake was a civilian familiar with Japanese law and ethics, Bromley could translate the technical details of naval warfare.
Hashimoto told the court that he surfaced, supposing that the visibility had improved and the moon would be out. “I discerned a dark object and crash-dived immediately,” he said. “I then swung my ship around to head in its direction.” The object was ten thousand meters away, bearing ninety degrees true, he continued. He headed toward the object and prepared to fire torpedoes and launch kaiten.
Ryan asked whether Hashimoto could draw from memory a rough sketch showing the relative positions of the target and I-58 from the time Hashimoto first sighted Indianapolis until he fired his torpedoes.
“Yes,” Hashimoto said. “Roughly.”
He stood and sketched out the general movements of his attack, and this was entered into the court record.
Cady rose and addressed the witness. “When did you depart for this patrol?”
Hashimoto replied that he made passage from Kure to Hirao to load his kaiten, then departed Hirao on July 20.
Cady gestured to a nautical chart. “Can you trace on this chart your approximate course from then until the place you last testified to?”
Hashimoto obliged. On the chart, he traced a line heading about 160 degrees from the Japanese home islands. It was the same heading captured by the ULTRA magicians in intercepts describing I-58’s assigned course. Cady could not have known this. Instead, he seemed to be zeroing in on another possibility not yet fully explored.
