Unspeakable Horror

by Joseph B. Healy

  Giles G. McCoy talked about what happened next, recorded by the Veterans History Project, after his group was rescued:

  Then they put us on the hospital ship Tranquility. They had to cart all of us out in stretchers, nobody hardly could walk. They put us on this real nice hospital ship and took us all back to Guam. They put us in Base 18 Hospital on Guam. That was great; we all knew that we had a good shot at living now. Most of us were recuperating. I remember one day the Captain came down and I was up. I had a young Marine right next to me and my bunk and he had lost his leg. He kept forgetting; he would get out of bed to go to the toilet and land on his stub and bust it open and start bleeding. I would jump out and we would put towels around him and pack him with towels to stop the bleeding and get him back into the operating room. He did this twice and finally they said they weren’t going to operate on him any more; they weren’t going to sew him up. He was going to have to behave. We pulled his bunk up real close to mine. I said, “Damn you, when you have to go to potty, you holler and I will go with you.” So we did; we would all take turns taking him back and getting him all fixed up so that he could urinate and go to the potty without busting his leg open.

  So I was up doing this one morning when Captain McVay came in and he came up to me and said, “McCoy, I see you are up and around. Are you feeling alright?” I said, “Well, as good as I can, sir. What do you need?” He said, “You know what I need? I need a jeep and I need a driver. Would you be my orderly?” I said, “Sir, I would be happy to do that for you, anything to get me out of here.” He said, “Alright, I’ve got a driver and a jeep out there now, have them take you down there [to the motor pool] and check out a jeep for me; just put it in my name.” I said, “Alright, sir.” So that is what I did and I drove him back and forth to CINCPAC which was the mountain where Admiral Nimitz and all of them had their headquarters on Guam. CINCPAC means Commander In Chief, Pacific.

  McCoy said that Captain McVay later told him:

  “You know what, McCoy? I think they are going to try and hook me for the loss of the ship.” I couldn’t believe it. That’s all he ever told me, he never did confide in me. I said, “I don’t know how they can do that sir. Gosh, you are a survivor just like us.” I said, “That was an act of war. Hell, we know we got sunk by torpedoes and but it was an act of war.” Years after they did court-martial him and then years after (back in 1990 after some of the books got out about the Indianapolis) the government sent my wife and me over to Pearl Harbor and I got a chance to meet Hashimoto [the captain of the Japanese submarine that sank the Indianapolis]. They brought him over from Japan to Pearl Harbor. They also brought him to the States to testify against Captain McVay. I know that whenever they did that, to me … I had my testimony; I was a witness at the trial of Captain McVay, so I was in Washington DC. When it was my turn to go into the court-martial area to testify they sat me right next to Hashimoto. I couldn’t believe it! I just was so upset! I even said so, and Captain McVay, he liked that. I said, “How come you got … Who is this guy here? He is Japanese.” They said, “Well, he is the one who sunk you.” I said, “How can you do that? Is he testifying against my skipper?” I said, “For crying out loud, my skipper is a great man! Why did you bring him over for?” They told me that it was none of my business, it was part of the court-martial. I know that Captain McVay, he liked what I said. When I got through with my testimony I went back and I told the rest of the guys, I said, “You know, they got that Japanese bastard that sunk us. You are going to have to sit next to him when you testify.” That upset everybody, too. Anyway, we went through it but they court-martialed him. We all felt that it was such a terrible thing to do.

  Well, in 1960 I got the [survivor] reunion going and he [Captain McVay] came to our 1960 reunion (the first one) and I asked him for permission to try and get him exonerated. He refused me. He said, “No, I was the commanding officer and I will take my punishment.” I said, “Well sir, it is unjust.” He said, “That’s alright, that’s the way the Navy works.” So he wouldn’t give me permission. Then in 1964 (we had [reunions] every five years) we were getting ready for the ’65 reunion and I called him and said, “Skipper, will you give me permission to try to get you exonerated?” He said, “I can’t go to the reunion because my wife is dying, but I am going to give you permission but it isn’t going to do any good. Don’t work too hard on it because the Navy won’t back off.” I said, “But you will allow me to do it?” He said, “Yes, go ahead.” So I started and didn’t get anywhere until that young boy up in Pensacola, Florida, little Hunter Scott got started. God love him! He called me and I told him how far I had gone and gave him a bunch of names of guys that I thought would talk to him because some of the guys wouldn’t talk about it. Some of them even busted me for getting the reunions going. They thought that was wrong, bringing it [the memories] back.

  Hunter Scott was a twelve-year-old student in Pensacola, Florida, and as part of a school project for the National History Day program, he interviewed more than one hundred survivors of the Indianapolis. Scott testified to US Congress, which shone a national spotlight on McVay’s plight.

  Captain McVay had committed suicide in 1968 in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the steps of his house. The words “zigzag” might have been too burdensome—McVay was haunted, traumatized by the Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal’s words “hazarding his ship by falling to zigzag” every time he watched a housefly buzz in its zigzag flight around the stovetop in the kitchen. McCoy said: “Captain McVay was a great skipper, and we all had tremendous respect for him. We really knew he was top drawer, as far as any of us were concerned. He wanted a good ship, he wanted a well-disciplined ship. I had tremendous respect for him. We got him exonerated and I was just overjoyed with the fact that we got him exonerated. I just wish that he was alive to understand that we didn’t give up on him, that we stayed with him. That is what I tried to get the Navy and all to understand, that combat people just don’t forsake other combat people. We stay there and we fight for honor. That is what was violated with Captain McVay; his honor was violated. It was up to us to fight to get his honor back. That is what we did and I am proud that we did.” President Bill Clinton signed the resolution in 2000, clearing McVay’s record.

  McCoy described giving an address to schoolchildren about his World War II experiences:

  World War II veterans saved the world. If it wasn’t for the men in Europe beating Germany and for us in the Pacific beating the [Japanese] our world would not be free. Our world would be dominated and you wouldn’t have the freedoms that you all have right now. Remember this and when you go a little further think back to whenever our forefathers started this country, when they made the Declaration of Independence, think of what that great document meant and think of the men back then that gave their lives to see that it was held up and that people didn’t destroy those ideas. I always tell the kids, “I am proud that I had a chance to serve my country that needed me because it is a privilege to live in this country, so don’t ever forget that.” I don’t want any of us old people to forget it. It is a privilege to be here and to live in this country.

  Sitting in Umenomiyn Shrine in Kyoto in 2000, Mochitsura Hashimoto imagined the thoughts Captain McVay had when he was called to trial: American Navy had to blame someone, and it is what we military officers accept, our lives would go down with memory of ship, forever we would be part of sunken wreck at bottom of sea. Hashimoto felt no remorse for sending the torpedoes—he did what he was trained to do and what he pledged he would do for the Emperor. But still, he felt a sorrow for the plight of McVay, though he also felt that a man of his stature and fortitude should persevere, regardless of the outcome. Sadly, he had heard the news of McVay’s suicide, and he understood the despondency and McVay’s inability to forgive himself for the loss of many hundreds of lives, but he did not understand McVay’s ultimate decision. One more death and more suffering of family was not the choice. He believed McVay was never wrong in his handling of the
Indianapolis and the aftermath—he did not know a submarine lurked near, as war allowed—and that in the military you simply have no choice and all you can do is be honest in your efforts to protect the men in your command. Hashimoto had done that—though he was never tested like McVay.

  Hashimoto could feel the energy around him, the beauty of nature, and he sat placidly and filled with reverence in the shrine. War and the brutality to which we commit does not have to change our true character, he thought, reflecting on his own service. He believed, as he wrote in his book Sunk: “[T]he martial spirits of its sailors are still with us on the far-flung oceans … [W]e remember the multitude of resentful sleeping warriors; in our ears we hear him whisper of the ‘voice from the bottom of the sea.’ ”

  He knew, as he testified during McVay’s court-martial trial in 1945, that no navigational tricks would have saved the Indianapolis from the I-58’s torpedoes—from Hashimoto’s torpedoes. McVay might have zigged and zagged, but the result would have been the same, the final naval conquest for the Japanese nation and a horrific end for hundreds of US soldiers and sailors. Zigging and zagging would not have saved the Indianapolis and her crew, Hashimoto testified.

  Later, in 1990, Hashimoto was invited to a reunion of Indianapolis survivors in Pearl Harbor. He told Dr. Giles McCoy, through a translator, “I came here to pray with you for your shipmates whose death I caused.” Dr. McCoy responded: “I forgive you.”

  A report in the New York Times on July 14, 2001, stated: “On Nov. 24, 1999, a year before his death, Mr. Hashimoto wrote to Senator [John] W. Warner. ‘Our peoples have forgiven each other for that terrible war,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it is time your peoples forgave Captain McVay for the humiliation of his unjust conviction.’ ”

  Back in his present moment in the Kyoto shrine, Hashimoto called to mind the prayer he heard repeated during his days in Washington DC in the United States at Captain McVay’s trial—the prayer that sustained so many and was cited over and again by Dr. Lewis Hayes, the ship’s doctor and a survivor of the sinking who saved countless others; it was offered in the testimony at the trail of Captain McVay. This was the prayer that kept Hayes alive, he said, but also now kept him remembering the horror of those days in the water, the boys killed by sharks and those who went mad and could not sustain during the days and night in the water and on a raft, those who let go and were delivered away to their final rest—the Lord’s Prayer.

  Months later, in October 2000, Captain Charles Butler McVay III was posthumously exonerated. President Bill Clinton signed the Senate Resolution in October, which cleared McVay’s Naval record. The Senate Resolution read: “Whereas, In a highly controversial proceeding, Captain Charles McVay III, the captain of the USS Indianapolis and one of the survivors, was court-martialed and convicted of ‘hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag’, making him the only captain to be court-martialed for losing a ship in combat; Whereas, In October 2000, President Clinton signed legislation exonerating Captain McVay and the Navy conceded that Captain McVay was innocent of any wrongdoing; whereas, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis remains the worst U.S. Naval disaster in history and the worst loss of life from shark attack in naval history.”

  Mochitsura Hashimoto, the commander of I-58 who played no small part in Congress’s reconsideration of McVay’s court-martial, died in Kyoto on October 25, 2000, five days before the United States’ historic exoneration of McVay for the plight of the Indianapolis was made official; the Shinto priest was ninety-one.

  THE WRECK OF HMS BIRKENHEAD

  The following are historical accounts of the sinking of the HMS Birkenhead in 1852.

  From The Times (London), April 8, 1852

  LOSS of the TROOPSHIP BIRKENHEAD

  The following dispatches and enclosures were yesterday received by the Board of Admiralty from Commodore Wyvill, containing the painfully-interesting details connected with the loss of this ill-fated steamer. It appears that the total number of lives which have been lost on this sad occasion amounts to 438.

  Castor, Simon’s Bay, March 3. “1. Sir, It is with much pain I have to report, for the information of my Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, the disastrous wreck of Her Majesty’s steam troopship Birkenhead, on the morning of the 26th of February, at 2 o’clock, on the reef of rocks off Point Danger, about 50 miles from this anchorage, by which catastrophe I lament to state that the lives of 438 officers (naval and military), women, soldiers, and boys, have been lost, out of 680 who were on board the ship at the time. The circumstances, as far as I can collect, are as follows:

  “2. The Birkenhead reached Simon’s Bay, from Cork, on the 23rd, in 47 days. She was immediately prepared for sea, received coals to 350 tons, some provisions, and the officers’ horses, disembarked the women and children (except those taking a passage to Algoa Bay), and was reported ready on the 25th. That afternoon Mr. Salmond received the Government dispatches for his Excellency Sir Harry Smith, my orders to proceed to Algoa Bay and Buffalo Mouth to land the draughts of the different regiments, and stemmed on his passage at 6 o’clock in the evening, which was fine and calm, with smooth water.

  “3. At half-past 2 o’clock on the afternoon of the 27th of February Mr. Culhane, assistant-surgeon of the Birkenhead, arrived at Simon’s Town by land, to report to me the loss of his ship near Point Danger—that two boats, with, as he stated, the only survivors, were cruising about at a distance from the land.’’

  From the Albany Evening Journal (Albany, New York), April 20, 1852

  Another terrible disaster has happened at sea. At 2 o’clock in the morning of the 26th of February her majesty’s steamer, the Birkenhead, was wrecked between two and three miles from the shore of Southern Africa. The exact spot at which the calamity happened was Point Danger. Off this point she struck upon a reef of sunken rocks. The ship was steaming eight and a half knots at the time. The water was smooth, and the sky serene, but the speed at which the vessel was passing through the water proved her destruction. The rock penetrated through her bottom just aft of the foremast, and in twenty minutes time there were a few floating spars and a few miserable creatures clinging to them, and this was all that remained of the Birkenhead. Of 633 persons who had left Simon’s Bay in the gallant ship but a few hours before, only 184 remain to tell the tale. No less than 454 Englishmen have come to so lamentable an end.

  There is not mystery about the calamity. We are left, as in the case of the Amazon, to conjecture the origin of the disaster. Just what happened to the Orion off the Scottish coast, or to the Great Liverpool off Finisterre, has happened now. Captain Salmond, the officer in command, anxious to shorten the run to Algoa Bay as much as was possible, and more than prudent, hugged the shore too closely. Four hundred and fifty-four persons have lost their lives in consequence of his temerity. As soon as the vessel struck upon the rocks the rush of water was so great that the men on the lower troop-deck were drowned in their hammocks. Theirs was the happier fate; at least they were spared the terrible agony of the next twenty minutes. At least the manner of death was less painful than with others, who were first crushed beneath the falling spars and funnel and then swept away to be devoured by the sharks, who were prowling around the wreck. From the moment the ship struck, all appears to have been done that human courage or coolness could effect. The soldiers were mustered on the afterdeck. The instinct of discipline was stronger than the instinct of life. The men fell into place as coolly as on the parade ground. They were told-off into reliefs, and sent—some to the chain-pumps, some to the paddle-box boats. Captain Wright, of the ninety-first regiment, who survives to relate the dreadful scene he tells us:

  “Every man did as he was directed, and there was not a cry or a murmur among them until the vessel mad her final plunge. I could not name any individual officer who did more than another. All received their order, and had them carried out as if the men were embarking instead of going to the bottom; there was only this difference—that I never saw any embarkation conducted with so little noise or c
onfusion.”

  Poor fellows! Had they died in battle-field and in their country’s cause, their fate would have excited less poignant regret; but there is something inexpressibly touching in the quiet unflinching resolution of so many brace hearts struggling manfully to the last against an inevitable disaster. It is gratifying, also, to find that the women and children were all saved. They had been quietly collected under the poop awning, and were as quietly got over the ship’s side, and passed into the cutter. The boat stood off about 150 yards from the ill-starred Birkenhead, and all were saved. There is not the name of a single woman or child upon the list of persons who perished. The other boats, as is usual in such cases, were not forthcoming in the hour of need. One gig and two cutters were all that could be rendered available. In one account we find that when the men were ordered to get the paddle box boats out, the pin of the davits was rusted in, and could not be got out. Captain Wright, on the other hand, tells us that when the funnel went over the side it carried away the starboard paddle-box and the boat, and the other paddleboat capsized as it was being lowered. Of the 184 persons who were saved, 116 made their escape in the three boats which succeeded in getting clear of the wreck …