From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-On July 16, 1945, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis left San Francisco for Tinian Island in the South Pacific. The secret mission, the identity of which was unknown to even Captain Charles Butler McVay, was to deliver parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" that was to be dropped on Hiroshima. After the delivery, the ship headed to Guam where it was to rejoin the fleet for the proposed invasion of Japan. It never made it. On July 29, 1945, the cruiser was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Stanton begins this harrowing true story with Captain McVay's suicide in 1968, and continues in a style that reads like an adventure novel. More than 1200 men were aboard the Indianapolis when it left San Francisco; approximately 300 were killed by the torpedoes. The rest were tossed into the South Pacific and remained there for nearly five days facing dehydration, starvation, exposure, and recurring shark attacks. Due to a series of tragic errors, no rescue operation was mounted. The 321 men who ultimately survived (four of whom subsequently died) were found purely by accident. Captain McVay, scapegoated by the Navy, was court-martialed and convicted of negligence, despite the ongoing protests of his remaining crew. At the time, their story was lost in the euphoria of Japan's surrender and the Navy's desire to ignore their errors. It is time their story is told and Stanton has done it magnificently, with meticulous research and great poignancy.Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Has anyone not yet heard of the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis? Several books, many articles, a TV movie, and constant replays on the History Channel have been dedicated to this fiasco. Journalist Stanton has written a compelling, eminently readable account of the Indianapolis for the nonspecialist. Just before the end of the war, the heavy cruiser was sent from San Francisco to Tinian in great secrecy, carrying the atomic bomb. After delivering her cargo, the ship was ordered to the Philippines and torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on July 20, 1945. Because of a foul-up at naval headquarters, no one realized that the ship was overdue, and a search was not organized. Consequently, survivors of the torpedoing were in the water for several days, and 600 died from exposure and shark attacks. Finally, after five days, the navy sent out rescue vessels, and 318 were saved. The navy high command decided to save its reputation by scapegoating Capt. Charles Butler McVay. At his court-martial, the jury of admirals was instructed to find him guilty, a verdict surviving crew members tried to overturn for 50 years. Last year, the navy finally admitted that McVay was not in any way responsible for the loss of his ship, though sadly it was too late for McVay; he committed suicide 20 years after his court-martial. Richard Newcomb first revealed this story in his Abandon Ship! (1958), which has recently been reissued by Harpercollins with an update by Peter Maas. Newcomb's book is more scholarly, and he had access to many survivors then still living. His book's coverage of the new trial held in 2000 is also more thorough than Stanton's. Both books are worth purchasing and should be in every public and college library. Stanley Itkin, Hillside P.L., New Hyde Park, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
One of the more notorious snafus of World War II concerned the July 1945 sinking of the cruiser USS Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine, with the loss of almost 900 sailors. Richard Newcomb's Abandon Ship! (1958) successfully recounted the disaster, but Stanton's account isn't at all redundant. Superbly crafted, it benefits from sympathetic research on the Indianapolis survivors, the horror of their experiences, and their courage in surviving. After the 300 men who hadn't been blown up, burned, drowned, or devoured by sharks were rescued, it emerged that the disaster was exacerbated by the navy's having incompetently lost track of the Indianapolis, which delayed rescue. Yet only Indianapolis captain Charles McVay was punished, and his heroism after the sinking was officially ignored, albeit not by the men he encouraged to hang on during four days of drifting in the ocean and, for many, dying. That horrible ordeal Stanton renders vividly, thanks to the recollections of several living survivors and his evocative narrative style. Expect strong demand for this powerfully engaging book. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Stellar...A gut-wrenching story of everyday heroes."--New York Post
"Gripping...Compelling."--Chicago Tribune
"Powerful...One of the most poignant tragedies and injustices of World War II."--Mark Bowden
"Infuriating, mesmerizing, and heartbreaking...Impossible to put down."--Rick Atkinson
"The most frightening book I've ever read."--Stephen Ambrose
"A chilling account."--The Atlantic Journal-Constitution
"Do yourself a favor. Read In Harm's Way."--James Bradley
"Stanton has created a war story that is part Titanic, part Stephen King nightmare."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune
About the Author
A former contributing editor at Esquire and Outside, Doug Stanton is now a contributing editor at Men's Journal. He received an M.F.A. from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
IN HARM'S WAY
PART ONE
SAILING TO WAR
CHAPTER ONE
All Aboard
Dad, there's a war to be won out there, and I'm going out to get this thing cleaned up. I'll be back shortly.
--ED BROWN, seaman first-class, USS Indianapolis
SUNDAY, JULY 15, 1945
San Francisco, California
The ship was still tied up in the harbor at Mare Island, but already the captain felt it was drifting out of his control.
Marching up the gangway of the vessel under his command, the USS Indianapolis, Captain Charles McVay was a man perplexed. Reaching the top, he turned toward the stern, saluted the flag, and strode on through the bronze light of the chill California morning, stepping past the electricians, painters, and engineers working on deck. No one watching the forty-six-year-old McVay, dressed smartly in his khaki and crisp campaign hat--its black vinyl bill decorated with gold braid that the enlisted men called "scrambled eggs"--would have guessed the depth of his concern. He hid it well.
He had just come from an early morning meeting at U. S. naval headquarters in downtown San Francisco. The meeting, with Admiral William R. Purnell and Captain William S. Parsons, had been disappointingly quick and to the point: this morning he was to take his ship from the Mare Island navy yard, thirty miles north of San Francisco, to Hunters Point navy yard, located just outside the city in San Francisco Bay. Once at Hunters Point, McVay was told, the Indy would take on board what was described only as a "secret project" before departing for the Pacific.
The meeting was over in less than an hour, and it failed to provide much information on his ship's new assignment.
McVay had a lot on his mind, much of it worrisome. Since May, the Indy had been docked at Mare Island, where it had been undergoing extensive repairs that were expected to take at least four months. Then suddenly everything had been accelerated. Three days ago, on July 12, McVay hadreceived mysterious orders from naval command to immediately ready his crew for a secret mission.
Hundreds of telegrams left the ship, calling the crew of 1,196 boys to sea; they had--at the most--just ninety-six hours to execute the command. Some of the veteran crewmen were dispersed across the country, on leave or at temporary training schools. The majority of the crew had stayed at the marine and naval barracks at Mare Island, killing time by drinking beer, chasing girls, and playing cards. Still others were being called to the ship--and to war--for the first time.
They came streaming to Mare Island and to the ship, stepping over tangled nests of air and water hoses, tools, and debris spread on her deck. McVay had watched as the newest crew members came on board, the older veterans cheering them on: "Hey, boys! Look at him," they cried out. "Ain't he pretty? Why, he doesn't even look like he's shaving yet!"
McVay understood how large the war loomed in the minds of these boys, "green hands" and veterans alike, who during these last few days had made love one last time, gotten drunk one last time, written last letters to mothers and fathers, and prepared to settle on board the Indy, into the rhythm of getting ready for sea. Rumors had started flying that the ship was headed back to the Philippines, then on to the massive invasion of Japan and its home islands, code names Operation Coronet and Olympic. But this morning, not even Captain McVay had any idea of their final destination.
He'd been told that the earliest the ship would leave San Francisco would be July 16, which was tomorrow. McVay had been given four days to do what seemed impossible. During the past twenty-four hours, he'd been crashing through night fog and heavy seas around the Farallon Islands, thirty miles west of the San Francisco coast, running the Indy through abbreviated but punishing sea trials. Thecrew had practiced radar alerts, radar jamming, and emergency turns. The Indy performed well, all things considered.
But how well was good enough? The ship was still fresh from the disaster that had necessitated all the repair work: on March 31, the Indy had suffered a nearly fatal kamikaze attack off the island of Okinawa. The incident had left nine men dead, twenty-nine wounded. One of McVay's boys, bugler second-class E. P. Procai, had been laid to rest at sea, accompanied by a twenty-one-gun salute. The remaining eight sailors were interred on one of the tiny islands west of Okinawa, a repair facility for damaged destroyers and a burial ground for the dead.
After the attack at Okinawa, the Indy had limped the 6,000 miles back across the Pacific. Two of her propeller shafts, a fuel tank, and her water distillation plant had been badly damaged. Back on land, some of the crew had begun asking for transfers off the ship. "When we get hit again," they were saying, "you'll be able to drive a bus through the hole." The Indy, they grumbled, had "turned poor."
They now wondered if she was an unlucky ship.
Not long after the captain's return, at about 10 A.M., Dr. Lewis Haynes heard the hiss of the Indy's PA system, a sound like air rushing through a hose, which was followed by the shrill piping of the boatswain's pipe. "Now hear this, now hear this!" came the announcement. The doctor listened as McVay's soft voice echoed through the morning air: "Men," he told his crew, "we are headed tomorrow morning to the forward area." This meant they were going back into the war zone.
The boys halted in midstride and in midchore--brooms and water hoses cradled in their arms as they cocked ears to the speakers tacked to the bulkheads, or outer walls, of theship. They were to depart immediately, the captain announced, for Hunters Point, a supply depot and loading point of final stores for Pacific-bound ships. And then the captain delivered the news that a sailor dreads hearing: all shore liberties for the evening were canceled. McVay signed off, "That is all." The PA line went dead.
A groan went up among some of the boys. They had plans--and these included getting into San Francisco tonight. The city, still a Wild West town, was the last stop for Pacific-bound sailors, who congregated at all-girlie shows at the "Street of Paris" on Mason. In the three and a half years since Pearl Harbor, several million soldiers had passed through; in the last four months alone, the army and navy had shipped more than 320,000 troops from the port city.
McVay next gave the order to sail, and minutes later, the Indy backed from the pier at Mare Island and cruised past Alcatraz Island into the wide, placid water of San Francisco Bay. Soon, the sun having risen high and the morning's fog burned off, she was snug to the wharf at Hunters Point, standing motionless against her mammoth eight-inch mooring lines sprung from bow and stern.
Dr. Haynes had thought the abrupt change in the ship's plans was odd. The inquisitive, red-haired physician had been under the impression that preparations were being made to get the ship ready to join Task Force 95 for the invasion of Japan. At the moment, the task force was in the Philippines, and the invasion was scheduled for the end of the year, which was still about four and a half months away.
The war in Europe was over, and the Pacific theater was paused before this final assault on the Japanese homeland. Two months earlier, Germany had surrendered; the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, had left the U.S. First Army with 6,603 casualties, 1,465 of them fatal. But this paled in comparison to the estimated toll for the invasion of Japan: at least 500,000 American casualties. The boys of the Indy talked openly and often with one anotherabout whether they'd survive the battle. On the island of Tinian, which the Indy had bombarded and helped secure in 1944, there were reports that Japanese troops were still hiding in the jungle hills, resorting to cannibalism to survive, and that they could hold out another five years against an invading force. The end of the war seemed near to some, Haynes knew, yet to many it still felt like a dream.
This morning, he wondered how a ship like the USS Indianapolis was going to shorten the war. And he thought of home.
During the Indy's furlough, Haynes had been lucky enough to return to Connecticut for several weeks, where he played in the surf with his wife and two young sons and felt the pure joy of not being at war wash over him. At thirty-three, he was one of the oldest, most well-seasoned sailors aboard the ship. In 1941, on the destroyer Reuben James, he'd ridden out a North Atlantic hurricane that no one aboard thought they'd survive. He also held an informal record for continuous duty at sea. Before being assigned to the Indy, he'd logged thirty-nine months without a leave while aboard destroyers and the battleship USS New Mexico. He never complained to his superior officers about his unusually long stint--except once, which was the same day he was awarded leave. His thinking was: he had an important job to do. And that was saving boys' lives.
He almost hadn't made it home to Connecticut last month. Scraping by on his meager lieutenant commander's pay, Haynes had decided he couldn't afford the train fare. He hadn't seen his wife or sons in six months, but he was broke. Then one afternoon as he was sitting at the tiny desk in his berth reading a Zane Grey novel borrowed from the ship's library, Father Conway, a priest from Waterbury, Connecticut, scratched at the black curtain that served as Haynes's door.
Haynes and the ship's dignified priest were friends, and sometimes they went on liberty together. Conway askedHaynes when he was going home. "Well, Tom," Haynes replied, "I have this problem. I c...
