Left for Dead

by Peter Nelson

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter One — The Sailor

  Chapter Two — The Boy

  Chapter Three — Background: The Enemy

  Chapter Four — The Men

  Chapter Five — The Mission

  Chapter Six — The Sinking

  Chapter Seven — The Ordeal

  Chapter Eight — The Rescue

  Chapter Nine — The Guilty

  Chapter Ten — The Court-Martial

  Chapter Eleven — The Price

  Chapter Twelve — The Boy’s Crusade

  Chapter Thirteen — The Reckoning

  Chapter Fourteen — The Exoneration

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  To the final crew of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35)

  –Pete Nelson

  Preface

  I was standing in front of my history fair project, surrounded by a cluster of men in their mid-seventies and -eighties. Their families, children and grandchildren were also gathered around. These men had one thing in common: They were all survivors of the USS Indianapolis. I had developed a special appreciation for these men and what they had done in World War II. I had learned to appreciate these veterans who had sacrificed so much to ensure that a generation that had not been alive when they served could enjoy liberty.

  It was July 1997, and we were in the Westin Hotel in Indianapolis. The second floor was crammed with men, women and children of all ages. There were display cases lined up along the walls, all pertaining to World War II or the Indianapolis. Everywhere I went, I was surrounded by ten or twenty men. They all had communicated with me in some fashion over the course of the past year, and each wanted to personally tell me his story of his four nights and five days in the ocean. To a man, when their story reached a point at which they talked about shipmates and friends dying, their eyes teared up, and I could sense the deep sadness and the emotional scars each of them carried.

  Maybe that is why so few of them had ever shared their personal stories and dark memories until I started asking questions. Many of these men had never told their family members what they shared with me. I am not sure why I was chosen to be the guardian of their stories, but I accepted the task with the same honor and commitment these men had shown in sharing their tales with me. Perhaps they thought I might represent their last chance to tell someone what had been haunting them for more than fifty years. Each man I talked to thanked me for what I was doing for them and their captain.

  Let me tell you a little bit about what got me involved with the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. My name is Hunter Scott. I am sixteen years old and in the eleventh grade at Pensacola High School. For the past two years I was elected class president and Young Republicans president, and I am an active athlete as well. I am the center on the football team and a pole-vaulter on the track team. I attend First Baptist Church of Pensacola and am the lead guitarist in the church’s youth band and a sax player in the worship band. Playing my guitars and hunting, fishing and surfing are some of my favorite activities.

  When I was eleven years old, in the summer of 1996, I was getting ready to enter middle school and the sixth grade. On an afternoon that was unusually hot even for Florida, my dad and I were watching his favorite movie, Jaws. In one part of the movie, Captain Quint and the other two guys have had a little too much to drink and are telling stories about how tough they are. One guy asks Captain Quint what that tattoo is on his arm. Quint tells the story of the Indianapolis. As I listened to the story of men being attacked by sharks, I was fascinated. I had heard what Quint said before, but this was the first time I had really listened.

  When the scene was over, I stood up and asked my dad if it was a true story. My dad said, “Yes, and please move from in front of the TV.” I asked him again to tell me more about it. He said he didn’t know much about the incident other than that it was a true story. Being a school principal, he gave an answer I should have expected: “If you want to know more, I will take you to the library and you can check out a book on the USS Indianapolis.”

  I was looking for a topic for a history fair project, and after hearing the story of the ship, I knew I had my subject. The theme for that year was “Triumph and Tragedy,” and this story had both. Little did I know that what started as a simple history project would consume the next five years of my life and provide an experience very few are ever afforded. Nor did I realize that this project would allow me to work with some of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C., and would embroil me in a legal battle with one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in America, the United States Navy.

  My dad was doing research for his dissertation that summer and decided to take me to the University of West Florida’s library to teach me how to do research. I must admit, a fishing trip with Dad would have been my first preference, but dads love teaching certain life lessons to their sons, and that day’s life lesson happened to be research. On our first trip he took me down to the World War II section of the library. He pulled out a large stack of books, placed them on the table, showed me how to use an index and set a legal pad on the table. He told me he was going upstairs and would be back in one hour. I was to write on the legal pad summaries of what I found and where, and when he returned we would discuss what I had discovered.

  When he got back he looked disappointed to see only four or five lines written on my legal pad. He gave me a solemn look and I heard a familiar question: “What have you been doing for the last hour?” I told him there was almost nothing in any of the books about the USS Indianapolis. I could tell he was a little skeptical about my answer. With an “I will show you how to do this” look, he sat down with the books himself.

  In the end he told me there was something wrong. He wanted to know why the greatest sea disaster in naval history was not thoroughly discussed in the history books. He took me upstairs and showed me how to do a microfiche search of 1945 newspapers. We found some information about the USS Indianapolis and the court-martial of Captain McVay, who was blamed for the sinking, but still very few facts. An Internet search also provided little useful information. Why was the greatest naval wartime loss of life not thoroughly discussed in detail in history books, in old newspapers or on the Internet?

  My history teacher had told me that interviews with individuals who had lived through historical events were a primary resource and very valuable. I decided to try to locate survivors of the Indianapolis. My mom suggested putting an ad in the Gosport, a local navy newspaper, requesting information about the Indianapolis and survivors. A response to the ad helped me locate survivor Maurice Glenn Bell, who lived in Mobile, Alabama. I called and set up an interview in his home.

  Mr. Bell was a wonderful man, and his story was even more chilling than the scene in Jaws. I felt a lot of compassion for Mr. Bell after all he had been through. He believed that Captain McVay had been done an injustice. After I interviewed Mr. Bell, my project became a mission. I decided to try to right a wrong that had been done more than fifty years before. Mr. Bell showed me his Purple Heart, told me about his job as a lookout on the ship, and explained how his faith in God had helped him survive the ordeal. He also gave me a USS Indianapolis hat. Most importantly, he gave me a list of the remaining survivors. Of the 317 men who survived the sinking, 154 were still alive. In 1996 these men ranged in age from sixty-nine to ninety-two.

  I started by writing to forty of the survivors whose names I recognized from the sources I had read, asking for additional information. The response was tremendous. Many of these men sent personal memorabilia, pictures, letters and original navy documents. Many survivors decide
d for the first time in their lives to write about what had happened to them during their five days and four nights surrounded by sharks and death.

  Many of these men had never told their own children what they told me. I am not sure why they trusted me with their stories of terror and of the deaths of friends. Some of the material the survivors sent was so graphic that my dad, unknown to me, decided not to let me read it. Later he said he was not sure that a boy of eleven could comprehend what men will do to survive or was capable of understanding what these men had gone through, or of understanding the horrors of war.

  I also interviewed Morgan Moseley, another survivor. Mr. Moseley too believed that Captain McVay should not have been court-martialed. Mr. Moseley was the ship’s cook. He had been sick and had not eaten for two days when he entered the water. He told me he had lost forty-five pounds while floating in the sea. He said in a life-or-death situation, a person’s mental and spiritual condition determines whether he will survive.

  These men and their testimony helped me become even more committed to helping restore the reputation of their captain and honor their own heroism.

  My dad says all young people need dream builders in their lives. He says that too many students are surrounded by dream destroyers. Dream destroyers are people who will tell you all the reasons you can’t do something instead of helping you build your dreams. I have learned never to let anyone destroy my dreams.

  In 1997, with the conviction that I could make a difference, I wrote to President Clinton and John Dalton, then Secretary of the Navy, and asked for the court-martial to be reopened or for the President to pardon Captain McVay. Both of their offices responded with very nice but stern “no” letters. I think one wonderful thing about being eleven years old is that a letter from the office of the President or the Secretary of the Navy saying something cannot be done doesn’t mean too much. At least, those letters did not mean much to me.

  If the President and the Secretary of the Navy would not help me, I decided, I would accomplish my goal by winning the State and National History Fair. That would ensure that my project would be displayed in Washington and would bring national attention to the cause of the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. I won the school and county competition in the spring of 1997. I was the only sixth grader ever to win the county competition, and my project was judged one of the best ever.

  To get ready for the state competition, I sent a questionnaire to the remaining 114 survivors. Again the response was tremendous. All these men believed their captain had been made a scapegoat. Many filled out the questionnaire and also called to tell me their stories. Some of these conversations are burned indelibly in my memory. I remember survivor Herbert J. Minor telling me about holding up one of his friends in the water: “I was trying to hold his head out of the water but he kept slipping. . . . I yelled at everyone near me to help for a moment, but no one even looked up. I could feel him bump my feet on the way down.” Survivor Sam Lopetz recalled, “There were two hundred thirty or more men in our group. Only sixteen survived the ordeal on the cargo nets.” Survivor Paul J. Murphy said, “Fear was beyond words. Especially when a shark swam between your legs.”

  I could not forget these stories. None of us should forget what these men did for us. A naval historian looked at my collection of information on the Indianapolis and told me that my project was becoming one of the greatest collections of information on this topic in the world.

  I was extremely excited at the state history fair competition, held on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee. My project drew large crowds. When I went for my interview, the three judges would not even let me tell them about my project. I was so upset that I started to cry. My dad came out of the bleachers because he could tell something was wrong. We went outside and I told him what had happened.

  After the judging we went back inside and saw a large easel with a page of the history fair rules enlarged and highlighted in front of my project. The page contained a footnote: “Notebooks are not to be displayed with the project.” I had been disqualified for displaying notebooks with the survivors’ interviews and personal memorabilia. But I had been instructed to display the notebooks by our county history fair coordinator because of the historical significance of the documents in the notebooks.

  I was heartbroken. Then my dad reminded me of one of his favorite sayings—“The true test of a man’s character is what it takes to make him quit”—and asked me what I would do next. Sometimes dads say the right thing at the right time. I needed a dream builder at that moment, and my dad was one. I felt I had let the men of the Indianapolis down. I dreaded the thought of calling the men who had put so much trust in me and telling them I had failed. I made the calls and the men were very supportive, but I could not shake the feeling that this could not end now.

  Congressman Joe Scarborough heard what had happened to me at the state history fair and asked whether my project could be displayed in his Pensacola office. Pensacola being a navy town, word of my project spread, and people lined up in Congressman Scarborough’s office to look at my project and read my interviews with the survivors. The local paper covered the story; it was carried over the Associated Press wire and attracted Tom Brokaw’s attention. Mr. Brokaw wanted to feature me on NBC Nightly News.

  In July 1997, I was invited to be the guest of honor at the Indianapolis survivors’ reunion in Indianapolis. I was allowed to ride in the first fire truck in the survivors’ parade. I gave speeches at each assembly and said the opening prayer at the prayer service, and I was the only nonsurvivor allowed to walk in with the survivors at the memorial service and lay a flower at the base of the memorial. I felt as if I were surrounded by grandfathers.

  At the reunion I met one of Captain McVay’s sons, Charles McVay IV. He was moved by what I was doing for his father and said he and the survivors had tried for years to vindicate his father, with no success. Like any son, he was proud of his dad and still angry at the way the navy had treated him.

  The national media covered the survivors’ reunion, and Tom Brokaw showcased my mission on the “American Spirit” segment of NBC Nightly News. One thing about trying to change something through legislation: Media attention helps a lot. I have learned that the media will listen to a serious twelve-year-old. One reporter asked me an interesting question: “If you do a school history project and end up changing history, how do you grade something like that?” I had never thought about my project in that way before. Over the next couple of years, I would learn just how hard it is to change history.

  Kimo McVay, the second of Captain McVay’s sons, saw me on Prime Time Country and NBC Nightly News and contacted me. Kimo could not believe what I had done and what I was trying to do for his father and the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. The McVay family and the survivors had tried for more than fifty years to correct this injustice and had gotten nowhere, and in a short period I had brought the matter to the attention of the nation and appeared to be on the way to rewriting history.

  Kimo wanted me to visit him in Hawaii, and I was also invited to take a ride on the nuclear submarine USS Indianapolis by the skipper, Commander Bill Toti. My family decided that a trip to Hawaii would be nice, and we went to meet Kimo and take Commander Toti up on his offer. Kimo gave me many papers and other items that had belonged to his dad. He also gave me his father’s dog tags from the naval academy, as well as a lighter that was given to his dad at the first survivors’ reunion in 1960. I also received a plaque given to Kimo when the Indianapolis memorial was dedicated in 1990, since his dad was no longer alive by then. These are the most precious items in my Indianapolis collection. They make me feel closer to Captain McVay. It is a strange feeling to feel close to someone you have never met. Kimo said his father was looking down on me and saying, “Well done, young man.”

  My research had convinced Congressman Scarborough that an injustice had been done to Captain McVay, and he drafted legislation to clear the captain’s name. In January 1998,
I met another dream builder, Mike Monroney, once a very powerful and prominent lobbyist in Washington. Mr. Monroney read about me and decided to come out of retirement to help with this legislation. He might have sailed on the Indianapolis’s last voyage, but an illness had kept him onshore. The thought that he might have been aboard had haunted him for more than fifty years. Mr. Monroney became the driving force behind the Washington legislative effort, pouring enormous energy and passion into the process.

  Our trip to Washington to introduce the bill was set for April 1998. The bill was written, and Congresswoman Julia Carson from Indianapolis agreed to co-introduce it. Congressman Scarborough, Congresswoman Carson and Mike Monroney got appointments for me to meet with many congresspeople and senators and with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

  The media attention surrounding my trip to Washington was enormous. I was on all the morning shows: Good Morning America, NBC’s Today and CBS This Morning. I also received coverage on the nightly news shows on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN and did radio interviews that were broadcast on NPR across the United States as well as in France, England, Ireland, Germany and Canada. The story was carried on the front page of The New York Times and USA Today. My mission was also written about in eighteen other countries, including Japan. The entire world was becoming informed about the USS Indianapolis.

  On the day the bill was to be introduced, I spoke at a press conference in Washington with Congressman Scarborough, Congresswoman Carson and fifteen survivors of the Indianapolis. I had never seen so many camera crews in my life. I counted at least twenty crews and more reporters than that, with their cassette recorders and notepads. As the bill and my mission to correct an injustice gained momentum, people from all over the world who had bits and pieces of the story found a way to contact me and provide me with more information. I even received at my school packages addressed to “Hunter Scott, Pensacola, Florida.”

  As this information came in, I began to build an even stronger case that the navy had used Captain McVay as a scapegoat to cover its mistakes. I developed a portfolio of proof that I distributed to members of the House and Senate. When you’re twelve, it’s important to have all the facts when you meet with members of Congress. Because of my age, I was granted access to some of the most influential politicians in Washington. I was told that no representative or senator likes to be seen on camera saying no to a young boy. At a party after the legislation had been introduced, the USS Indianapolis Survivors Organization made me an honorary member. This was an honor that I greatly appreciated. My heroes were honoring me, when it is they who are the true heroes.