Left for Dead

by Peter Nelson

  Though less severe punishment than a court-martial, such a letter of reprimand in McVay’s permanent file would still have effectively ended his career by preventing further promotion. They couldn’t prosecute McVay for violating the standing order for ships to zigzag because his routing orders, which superseded standing orders, said he could zigzag “at his discretion.” Showing bad judgment wasn’t as serious an offense as disobeying an order. Nimitz’s second letter, written September 6, 1945, was to the Judge Advocate General of the Navy and it read:

  The Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, does not agree with the court in its recommendation that Captain Charles B. McVay III, U.S. Navy, be brought to trial by general court-martial. . . . His failure to order a zigzag course was an error in judgment, but not of such nature as to constitute gross negligence. Therefore, a Letter of Reprimand will be addressed to Captain McVay in lieu of a general court-martial.

  Admiral King and Secretary Forrestal in Washington had other agendas. The secretary of the navy’s job was to administer the nonoperational side of naval concerns. He was responsible for such things as the control of shipyards, munitions factories, bases, training, storage facilities and so on. He was also the conduit between the chief of naval operations and the President, reporting as well to Congress when there were budget or policy issues. The tragedy of the Indianapolis presented Forrestal with a serious public relations problem, a major disaster involving, as the court of inquiry had indicated, errors and malpractices at virtually every level of the navy. The newspapers covering the story were insisting on an explanation, asking why so many men had perished, why it had taken so long for rescue to arrive. Forrestal’s office fielded bags of letters from bereaved parents wanting to know why their boys had had to die. The grieving next of kin wrote to their representatives in Congress as well, and the secretary of the navy answered to Congress. Moreover, Forrestal needed to have members of Congress on his side when he went to petition for funds or favors. There’d been talk in Congress that after the war, the navy would be unified with the army and the air force in a way that might, Forrestal feared, cost the navy its autonomy, if not its very existence. Now that the world had seen what an atom bomb could do, it looked to many, including congressional Armed Forces Committee members, as if wars in the future would be won by air power alone. There would no longer be any need for amphibious landings or coastal bombardments, and the navy would become an anachronism, a footnote to history.

  If the navy’s future was in doubt, its recent past was in question as well. Immediately following the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt appointed a commission to investigate what had gone wrong. The commission concluded that Hawaii’s naval and army commanders Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short were guilty of dereliction of duty and errors of judgment. Both men stepped down, and Congress promised a full, public bipartisan investigation as soon as the war was over. That investigation was scheduled to begin in November. The navy had done many brave and noble things during the war, and Forrestal didn’t want it to be remembered merely for the disasters of Pearl Harbor and the Indianapolis.

  Forrestal may have been under political pressure to convene a court-martial as well. One theory has it that he was pressured directly or indirectly by a man named Thomas D’Arcy Brophy, whose son Thomas Jr. had been an ensign on the Indianapolis, one of the new officers who’d joined the crew at Mare Island. Ensign Brophy had been in Harlan Twible’s group, one of the oil-covered officers who’d decided not to identify themselves. He’d survived to the very end and only perished when he’d tried to swim to Adrian Marks’s seaplane late Thursday afternoon.

  Thomas D’Arcy Brophy was a powerful enough man to have access to Washington officials all the way up to President Truman. During the war, he helped organize the USO, which sent performers like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Betty Grable around the world to entertain the troops. Brophy was also the chairman of the National War Fund, a charitable organization that provided money for the Red Cross. One day Brophy called on Captain McVay in his temporary office at the Navy Department in Washington, D.C., to confront the man he blamed for the loss of his boy. McVay, who’d been confronted by more bereaved accusers than he cared to count in the last month, told Brophy he had an important engagement, then went to a cocktail party to forget about his troubles for a while. Brophy’s car tailed McVay’s taxi all the way to the party. This was the so-called important engagement? A cocktail party was more important than talking to him about his boy? According to some accounts, Brophy vowed to destroy McVay, taking his demand for a court-martial to Secretary Forrestal and to the President himself.

  Arguing against the theory that Thomas Brophy somehow brought about the court-martial of Captain McVay is the well-documented fact that Admiral Ernest J. King was probably the last man on earth who would ever let a civilian tell him how to run his navy. King did, however, have reasons of his own to want the court-martial. He was fiercely loyal to the navy, and would not have taken kindly to Captain McVay’s August 5 press conference on Peleliu, where McVay blamed the navy for not warning him about submarine activity and for delaying rescue.

  King had been the most powerful naval commander in history, with over 8,000 ships, 24,000 aircraft, 3,000,000 officers and sailors and 500,000 marines under his control. Much of the credit for how spectacularly well the navy performed during the war goes to King. He was also tactless, imperious, arrogant and difficult, with a fiery, violent temper, lecherous, a man who mercilessly hounded subordinates who made mistakes or showed weakness and an egomaniac who never admitted he was wrong. He worked his staff fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, a strenuous schedule that led one man to have a heart attack and another to commit suicide. Rather than increase his staff or reduce their hours, King merely assigned a full-time doctor to keep everyone healthy. Where Nimitz balked at the idea of dragging McVay through a humiliating public trial and thought a private letter of reprimand was all that was needed, King would have had no such compunctions. King believed firmly in punishment and in accountability, to the extent that he didn’t mind occasionally punishing the innocent because it kept everybody else on their toes.

  The bottom line was that King had some of the same concerns Forrestal had about protecting the navy’s reputation and seeing that credit was given where it was due, and as chief of naval operations perhaps took it even more personally. After watching Congress investigate and rule on Pearl Harbor, King may have wanted to demonstrate that the navy could still take care of its own problems promptly and firmly, without anybody’s help. With a massive naval force demobilizing in peacetime, he needed to demonstrate to those who remained in the navy that they would still be held responsible for their actions. King wrote a letter of his own to Secretary Forrestal on September 25 in response to Nimitz’s September 6 letter, stating:

  I cannot agree with the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, that the failure of Captain McVay to order a zigzag course was an error in judgment . . . I recommend that the Secretary of the Navy direct the following action: Captain Charles B. McVay be brought to trial by general court-martial in accordance with recommendation 1.A of Court of Inquiry in this case.

  King then ordered the navy’s inspector general, Admiral Charles P. Snyder, to conduct a complete investigation into the case. Forrestal had some misgivings about the court-martial having the appearance of a show trial with the intention of making McVay into a scapegoat, and asked King to wait until Snyder’s investigation was complete. King agreed on November 10, but then immediately asked Snyder if it would be feasible to court-martial McVay before the investigation was complete. Snyder said it would be. On November 12, King gave the order to proceed. It’s hard to imagine a civilian court where a trial would begin before the investigation into the crime was completed, but under the code of military justice in use at the time, the navy had considerable latitude as to how it could police itself.

  The charges were: 1. “Through n
egligence suffering a vessel of the Navy to be hazarded . . . by failing to cause a zigzag course to be steered . . . during good visibility,” and 2. “Culpable inefficiency in the performance of duty . . . by failing to issue timely orders to abandon ship.” Limiting the scope of the charges to McVay’s actions before the sinking effectively prevented McVay’s defense from raising any questions about the delay in rescue or the failure by the various commands to keep track of the ship. That, in turn, enhanced the impression that McVay and only McVay was responsible for the loss of his crew.

  The trial began at 10 A.M. on Tuesday, December 4, 1945, in Building 57, a square three-story brick building painted battleship gray at the Washington Naval Yard, where McVay’s father had once been in command. The weather was cold, the sky overcast. Carpenters, electricians and other craftsmen had constructed seating for over 200 spectators and a special section for the press, even though court-martials were rarely open to the public. McVay wore his best dress blues, his shoes shined to a high mirrored finish. The seven-man court facing him consisted of four captains and two commodores and was headed by Rear Admiral Wilder DuPuy Baker, a former cruiser captain and an expert on escorts and antisubmarine warfare. The judge advocate or prosecutor was a lawyer and destroyer squadron commander named Captain Thomas J. Ryan, a forty-four-year-old friend and former classmate of McVay’s who’d won the Medal of Honor, two Navy Crosses and the Legion of Merit, decorations that lent considerable gravity to the arguments he made. McVay’s defense lawyer was a man named Captain John P. Cady, who’d been called in four days before the trial began, as had Ryan.

  Ryan’s first witness was Lieutenant Waldron, who went over the routing instructions and intelligence reports he’d given both Captain McVay and Lieutenant Janney before the Indianapolis sailed for Leyte. The second witness was a destroyer captain who said he would have been zigzagging, given the same intelligence reports, though of course he had the benefit of knowing that the Indianapolis had been sunk. The third prosecution witness was a naval astronomer who testified that the moon, on the night of the sinking, at the time of the sinking, would have been twenty-three degrees above the horizon, two days prior to last quarter, giving off an illumination equal to one quarter of a full moon, assuming the sky was clear. The fourth witness presented a report McVay had sent to Forrestal on the incident that stated there’d been “intermittent moonlight with unlimited visibility,” forcing McVay to clarify that he’d been talking in the report about the moonlight while he was in the water after the sinking, not the moonlight or visibility while he was on the bridge. The fifth witness was Charles McKissick, who’d been steering the ship when McVay gave him the order to cease zigzagging. McKissick said no one was too worried about submarines, that if visibility had been good, he would have resumed zigzagging, and that he hadn’t heard any order to abandon ship, though he wouldn’t have been able to because he’d been far from the bridge when the explosions occurred.

  Lieutenant Redmayne testified next, stating that nobody on the bridge thought it was necessary to awaken McVay once the moon began to appear intermittently between the clouds, some time after eleven o’clock, nor was anybody concerned about the submarine reports mentioned by Commander Janney. The ship’s doctor, Lieutenant Commander Lewis Haynes, testified that men had joked about submarine activity at dinner. Haynes began to comment on the deaths of men in the water, only to be told by the court that it didn’t want to hear about deaths in the water, and that it was in their purview only to examine evidence of negligence or inefficiency prior to the sinking.

  When Gil McCoy took the stand, Ryan asked if he’d noticed the weather or the visibility once he got topside.

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy replied. “When I was going over the side . . . I guess the clouds just cleared the moon, and it was bright.” Then on cross-examination, Cady asked him if he’d heard the word passed through the brig compartment, “All hands topside,” or words to that effect. McCoy said he hadn’t. He remembered the moment, the chief shouting down that they were dogging the hatch. He remembered dropping his lantern, scrambling for safety.

  “Were any other people in the compartment with you?” Cady asked.

  “Yes, sir. There were people sleeping down there.”

  “Did you notice whether they were still there when you left?”

  “Yes, sir. They were starting up the ladder, sir.” It was McCoy’s hardest memory, one he wanted to forget but knew he never could.

  The bugler, Donald Mack, testified that he’d stood on the bridge with his horn immediately after the torpedoes hit, but that nobody asked him to blow the bugle call for “Abandon ship.” Ryan didn’t ask Mack if he’d heard McVay tell Lieutenant Orr or Commander Flynn to pass the word to abandon ship. An Ensign Woolston, who’d only spent two weeks on the Indy, testified as to what caused the ship to sink once the torpedoes hit, and how many of the doors and hatches were left open to assist in ventilating the ship. Radioman First Class Joe Moran told the court about the chaos in Radio I, how they’d tried to transmit an SOS with equipment crashing all around them. The Indianapolis’s supply officer, a Lieutenant Reid, described how the men had all gathered on the fantail as the ship went down, and said that communications were out aboard ship. Coxswain Keyes told the court how Captain McVay had ordered him to spread the word to abandon ship, key testimony refuting the second charge. Five crew members gave accounts as to where they’d been and what they’d seen in the chaos after the first explosions—men scrambling topside, jumping into the water, officers, too. Radioman Sturtevant described what had happened in Radio I. Gunner Horner told his story. The last witness on the first day was Ensign Blum, who’d managed to get only a few hundred yards in his attempt to paddle a raft to Yap. Blum was asked, “Did anything unusual occur during the night of 29–30 July? If so, state what it was.”

  “The ship sank,” Blum answered.

  Captain Ryan resumed his prosecution the following Tuesday morning, calling the Indy’s former chief engineer, Commander Glen F. DeGrave. DeGrave vouched for the competency of the officers who’d been on the bridge at the time of the sinking, including Commander Lipski, Lieutenant Commander Moore and Lieutenant Orr, none of whom thought conditions had changed enough to require the resumption of zigzagging or the waking of the captain. Again, a prosecution witness’s testimony supported the defense. Quartermaster Allard, who’d been keeping the weather logs, testified to the conditions that night, how there were altostratus, cirrus and cirrostratus clouds beginning at about 4,000 or 5,000 feet, the sky about six-tenths covered but clearing to the east where the moon, twenty-three degrees above the horizon, would have silhouetted the Indianapolis perfectly for any submarine waiting up ahead. Allard said in a closing statement that under the conditions he’d witnessed, there’d been no reason to zigzag, and that of the five captains he’d served under during his three and a half years on the Indianapolis, Captain McVay had been the most safety-conscious. It was clear that judge advocate Captain Ryan was trying to establish not that the Indy had failed to zigzag—Captain McVay had admitted as much in his initial report—but that she should have, and in that regard, he wasn’t having much luck. Some seamen recalled seeing the moon, but most said it was very dark that night.

  From where he was seated in the witness pool, Gil McCoy wondered how much of the helpful testimony Ryan was getting had been coerced in some way or other. McCoy wondered because he’d been called into Ryan’s office shortly after being summoned to Washington and handed a statement, already typed up and waiting for him to sign. The statement had McCoy swearing that Captain McVay had failed to give the order to abandon ship. McCoy informed Ryan that he’d been nowhere near the captain when the ship went down.

  “Plus there were so many explosions I couldn’t have heard him if he’d been shouting into my ear.”

  “Nevertheless you will sign it,” Ryan said. “I’m a navy captain and you’re a marine private and you will do as you’re told.”

  “Well, then, you have a whol
e ’nother court-martial on your hands,” McCoy said defiantly, “because I’m not going to sign it. Do what you want with me.”

  “Get out,” Ryan replied. “I’ll see you later when you take the oath.”

  McCoy found out again on Thursday how underhanded the navy could be when he took his seat in the witness pool. He was surprised to see the person sitting next to him, a short Japanese man in his thirties who, McCoy was told, had been the captain of the Japanese submarine that had sunk them. Hashimoto was his name. As soon as McCoy learned who it was, he was outraged. What was he doing there? McCoy and the others wanted to know. No one had told them he’d be there. It was like bringing in a bank robber to testify against the guard who failed to stop the robbery. Was the navy really trying to figure out who was responsible for the deaths of almost 900 men on the Indianapolis? Well, here he was, sitting right in front of them in the witness booth, but instead, they were going after the captain.

  McCoy wasn’t the only one who was outraged. The press covering the trial universally condemned the decision to put the Japanese submarine captain on the stand, after he’d been sent for by Admiral King’s office. Countless letters to the editor agreed. Members of Congress vowed to expunge Hashimoto’s testimony from the records. America was by now aware of atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers and prison commandants during the war, the “Death March” on Bataan for the survivors of Corregidor, the horrors of Santo Tomas prison in the Philippines, the starvation and beheading of American soldiers in other Japanese prison camps.

  Hashimoto was asked a total of seventy-eight questions over a fifty-minute period. He was asked if he knew the difference between truth and falsehood. He was asked what his religion taught him would happen if he told a lie. Did he know what perjury was? Was he a war criminal? When the court was satisfied that Hashimoto could serve as a credible witness, the captain of the I-58 was asked about the circumstances leading to the attack, from the time he left Kure to the time he arrived at latitude 12 degrees north and longitude 135 degrees east. He drew a chart sketching the maneuvers he made as he positioned himself for the attack, and stated that the ship had been hard to see at first. By his diagram and by his description, it should have been clear to the court what a fluke it was that he’d been in that exact place at that exact time, a ship sailing straight toward him, backlit by a newly risen quarter moon directly behind her. Hashimoto said he couldn’t tell if the Indianapolis was zigzagging or not.