In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (24 page)

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Authors: Doug Stanton

BOOK: In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
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For McVay, it recommended court martial.
The matter was now in the hands of the secretary of the navy, James Forrestal, who would decide if legal action should proceed.
 
 
In early September, after nearly a month of convalescence on Guam, the survivors boarded the carrier escort
Hollandia
and set sail for the United States.
On September 26 they were met in San Diego by a meager homecoming parade sponsored by the local Salvation Army, which handed out miniature bottles of milk to the boys as they walked off the ship. Most of them had no interest in taking part in the festivities. Generally speaking, they did not share the postwar jubilation that swept up most of the 5 million soldiers returning home; the sinking and disaster had tainted their experience.
McCoy went home on a two-week leave to his mother, father, and three sisters in Missouri. He tried to put the war as far in his past as possible but remained on active duty, with another two years to serve. He did not relish this prospect.
Dr. Haynes had no intention of quitting. But he did return to Connecticut for a thirty-day leave with his wife. At home, he met his newborn son for the first time.
Captain McVay had flown to Washington, D.C., in early September. He tried hard to convey his sense of grief and loss in letters he wrote to the bereaved families, which he composed in a temporary office in the navy yard while the investigation into the
Indy’s
loss continued. He was consumed with guilt over the deaths of so many young men. His punishment, he felt, would be a long life.
On November 29, close to four months after his rescue, he learned that he was to be court-martialed. The trial would begin in five days, on Monday, December 3, 1945.
Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Spruance had disagreed with the inquiry’s initial recommendation and suggested a letter of reprimand. However, the chief of naval operations, Admiral King, a stern and “by-the-book” navy man, pressed for the trial, and Secretary Forrestal agreed.
Unbelievably, the navy had not yet finalized the charges. In fact, the navy’s judge advocate general (JAG) sent Forrestal a memo explaining that only one of the inquiry’s contemplated charges could be proved. Because McVay had already admitted during the inquiry that he wasn’t zigzagging before the torpedoing, a trial was not actually necessary to convict him on this charge. Nevertheless, they called it Charge I.
Consulting with Forrestal, the JAG omitted the inquiry’s charge that McVay failed to send a distress signal. In its place they agreed to charge him with “failure to abandon ship in a timely manner.” They called this Charge II. Making this charge stick, however, was problematic. Since the ship had gone down so quickly, it could be difficult to prove the difference between a “timely” and “untimely” abandonment.
In reality, they had little choice. Without a second, halfway viable charge, they had no trial; sentencing of McVay on Charge I could have taken place immediately.
“It is, therefore, respectfully submitted,” the JAG explained to Forrestal, “that Charge II (failure to abandon ship in a timely manner) should not be omitted, despite the fact the evidence may be held insufficient. Full justification for ordering the trial on Charge II springs from the fact this case is of vital interest not only to the families of those who lost their lives, but also to the public at large.”
McVay had less than a week to prepare his defense. King, eager to hurry the proceedings, had refused McVay his first choice of counsel when his preferred lawyer proved not immediately available. McVay ended up with an inexperienced lawyer.
Before the trial, McVay was asked by a news reporter what he thought the outcome might be. “I was in command of the ship,” he replied, “and I am responsible for its fate. I hope they make their decisions soon, and do what they want with me.”
 
 
As it turned out, then, the question as to why 900 U.S. sailors were left to float for as many as five days in a hostile ocean would not be considered by the court. That is, the conduct of the navy would not be on trial. This legal sleight of hand had been achieved by the navy’s careful selection of charges. By law, all questions to the court had to pertain only to the two it had drawn—“failure to order abandon ship in a timely manner” and “hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag.” There was no possibility of the establishment of navy culpability.
Still, by and large, the American public sensed that McVay was getting a raw deal.
Time
magazine suggested that the tragedy of the sinking represented a “colossal blunder” by the navy.
On December 3, 1945, Charles Butler McVay’s court martial convened in a converted classroom at the Washington navy yard. Such trials were usually semiprivate affairs executed swiftly out of public view. On the morning of McVay’s trial, the courtroom was filled with reporters, photographers, and citizens curious to get a glimpse of the first captain in U.S. history to be court-martialed for losing his ship as the result of an act of war.
36
The proceedings were well orchestrated and got swiftly under way. McVay sat stiffly in his chair in a spotless uniform, nervously fiddling with a pencil, sensing the walls closing in on his career.
Called to testify, Dr. Haynes found McVay a forlorn ver-sion
of his former self. On the stand, the JAG lawyer wouldn’t allow Haynes to talk about the boys’ time in the water but asked instead about visibility the night of the sinking. The good doctor told the prosecutor that, yes, visibility on the night of the sinking was poor; in fact, all the survivors called to the witness stand provided testimony to this effect. In rebuttal, the prosecution argued that conditions were clear enough for the
Indy
to be sunk; therefore, visibility at some point was at least partially clear. The trial was not going well for McVay—the prosecution was driving home Charge I.
What McVay didn’t know was that his counsel was missing the one piece of evidence that might have acquitted him. McVay and his lawyer were unaware of the ULTRA intelligence that had been withheld from McVay during his meeting with Captain Oliver Naquin. In fact, a report labeled “secret” and sent to Admiral King by the navy inspector general had blamed the navy for failure to make full use of this intelligence. It had also explained that it would be necessary for the prosecution to return to Guam in order to fully explore the situation. King, in his haste to get the trial under way, chose to disregard the report. From the navy’s point of view, the ULTRA intelligence wasn’t entered into testimony because it was so top secret that, in essence, it didn’t exist.
37
 
 
During the trial’s second week, it seemed that McVay’s fortunes might change.
The navy made the surreal prosecutorial decision to fly Mochitsura Hashimoto from Japan to Washington to testify against the captain. His presence in the courtroom raised an uproar among politicians and citizens, and in newspapers across the country.
Newsweek
carried an editorial from the
Army and Navy Bulletin
declaring that “responsibility for the debacle … must be fixed several echelons higher than a lone commanding officer.” On the floor of the House of Representatives, Massachusetts congresswoman Edith Rogers called Hashimoto’s presence an “outrage against justice” and demanded his testimony be stricken.
Nevertheless, the prosecution explained that Hashimoto’s testimony about “what he saw, what he did, and how he did it” on the night of the sinking was relevant to the charge that the captain endangered his ship by failing to zigzag. The assembled panel of seven navy admirals agreed, and Hashimoto was allowed to proceed. Dressed in an ill-fitting blue suit, the visibly uncomfortable commander made his way to the witness stand, where he quickly proceeded to embarrass the navy by explaining that zigzagging would have made “no change in [the] method in firing the torpedoes.” He would have sunk the
Indianapolis
no matter what course she was on.
A few days later, the prosecution was dealt an apparent second blow by the testimony of the highly decorated American submarine commander Glynn Donaho. Asked to describe the usefulness of zigzagging as a defensive maneuver, the respected commander explained that the move was of negligible value.
Nonetheless, after two weeks of testimony, on December 19, Charles Butler McVay was convicted of “hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag.” As the navy JAG had suspected, he was acquitted of the charge of “failing to sound abandon ship in a timely manner.” He was demoted 100 points in permanent rank and another 100 in temporary rank, which meant he would never become an admiral. In view of his
outstanding service, however, Admiral King and Admiral Nimitz recommended his sentence be remitted. (Technically, McVay could have been fined or dismissed from service.)
Four other officers were also punished. Lieutenant Stewart Gibson received a letter of reprimand, while his superior officer, Leyte port director Jules Sancho, received a milder letter of admonition. Captain Alfred Granum and his ranking officer, Commodore Norman Gillette, acting commander of the Philippines Sea Frontier, also received letters of reprimand.
38
McVay had received the announcement of his sentence standing ramrod straight without a hint of emotion. He was a navy man, and he would live and die by its rules; it was as natural to him as breathing. And yet, his naval career was over. He would never command another ship. He left the courtroom on Louise’s arm, looking stonily composed.
Back at home, through the Christmas season, he began receiving the hate mail—“Merry Christmas! Our family’s holiday would be a lot merrier if you hadn’t killed my son”—he would continue to receive for the rest of his life. Louise made it a point to patrol the day’s mail pile and remove the bitter correspondence. If she didn’t, McVay would bundle the letters with rubber bands and tuck them in his dresser drawer, as if forever wanting to remind himself of his guilt.
Three months after the court martial, he left Washington.
Back in the World
We returned to our loved ones [afterward], but we were never the
same again. Most were markedly changed. Young boys had
become mature older men, aged beyond their years.
All because of those days in the sea.
—HARLAN TWIBLE, ensign, USS
Indianapolis
In the aftermath of Captain McVay’s court martial, some of the survivors returned to military service, while others drifted back into civilian life and disappeared inside whiskey bottles. Many got lucky, put the disaster behind them, and joined the postwar American boom. John Spinelli, who’d floated under the captain’s watchful eye, moved back to New Mexico with his wife and new daughter, became a butcher, then worked for thirty-seven years reading utility meters.
Others became nightclub owners, bricklayers, or electricians. Jack Miner took over his father’s paper company. Mike Kuryla worked for a construction company in Chicago, and Ed Brown became a traveling salesman in California for the auto industry. Harlan Twible became CEO of a global manufacturing company. Jack Cassidy worked as a state policeman in Massachusetts. Bob Gause returned to Florida as a commercial fisherman. (His sideline exploits as a shark hunter are said by some to have served as inspiration for the Captain Quint character in
Jaws
.) Whatever had happened to them on the water was in the past. They moved into the stream of America, and they
worked
.
Dr. Haynes went on to a successful career in military medicine, even serving in Vietnam, before leaving the service in 1965. Today Haynes, eighty-nine, lives near the seventeenth fairway of a golf course outside Boston. He plays every week with his second wife, Margaret. However, he is still troubled by nightmares of the sinking and finds it difficult to attend church.
“Every church I go to recites the Lord’s Prayer,” he explains. “And every time I say the prayer, I still cry.”
 
 
Private McCoy became a chiropractor in Missouri, earned a doctor of osteopathy degree, and devoted his life to helping other people.
One day in 1958, he heard a knock at the front door of his home in Boonville, Missouri. On the porch he found one of his raftmates whose lives he and Bob Brundige had tried so hard to save. Since the sinking, Felton Outland had been thinking of the man who had helped keep him alive. On impulse, Felton had just driven the 900 miles from his family’s farm in Sunbury, North Carolina, to thank Private McCoy for his life.
The two men stared at each other. Then they embraced and began weeping on the porch. They ended up talking for two days, a flood of memories pouring forth between them.
After Felton left, McCoy found himself moved by Outland’s gratitude. Armed with the survivor’s list published in Richard Newcombe’s
Abandon Ship
!, he began writing letters across the country trying to locate his former shipmates. He decided he wanted to organize a reunion of the men of the USS
Indianapolis
.
Many of the survivors wrote McCoy back, angry that he was dredging up memories long buried. McCoy himself was troubled by nightmares. But encouraged by a psychiatrist he had approached for advice about organizing the reunion, McCoy managed to find 220 of the original 317 survivors. In July 1960, they met for the first time in fifteen years at a hotel in downtown Indianapolis. The reunion turned out to be a scorching experience.
The survivors unloaded years of repressed fear and anger, the shame of bad deeds, the smoldering guilt of having been
unable to keep someone alive. For many of the men, their survival at sea still felt like a miracle rather than a triumph of will over insurmountable odds and death. In the aftermath of the sinking, many of the men said, they felt like they had been resurrected.
They talked for hours, arranged in assigned seats that re-created the groups they had floated with fifteen years earlier across the Philippine Sea. They emerged from the reunion gray-faced and drained, but liberated. McCoy felt a bond with these men that he knew he would never experience with anyone else.
 
 
After the court martial, McVay had been reassigned to the naval air station outside New Orleans, far from the glamour of life on the high seas. He was given a navy desk job. Still, he worked hard at tilting his life back toward some shade of its former happiness. He and Louise lived in a comfortable house on Fourth Street, and the two were regular guests at parties that often ended with the captain standing at a piano singing, followed by the lighthearted retelling of stories about life in the navy. On weekends, they camped in a tidy shack on Bayou Liberty, south of New Orleans, and spent hours fishing for speckled trout. In 1949, after thirty years of military service, McVay retired and began selling insurance. For the first time in his adult life, he was a civilian.
McVay attended the first survivors’ reunion in 1960. On the plane ride to Indianapolis he was filled with worry and doubts; he’d spent the last fifteen years wondering if his former crew held him responsible for the disaster. He was shocked to tears when he stepped from the plane with Louise and found the survivors lining the airport’s runway, all of them saluting, tears streaming down their own faces.
McCoy hadn’t seen the captain since those moments
back in the navy yard courtroom when he had testified on his behalf. In court, when McCoy had finished speaking, McVay had simply raised a finger and winked:
Thanks
. Now, over drinks in McCoy’s hotel room, McCoy told him, “Captain, you got a raw deal. And I want to do something about it. I’d like to see if we can get your name cleared.”
The captain mulled this over and then his face darkened.
“No, that’s all right, McCoy,” he said. “I got what the regulations called for—I got what I deserved.”
When the reunion was over, the men gathered on the hotel roof and cheered and saluted the captain as his car pulled away for the airport. It was the last time they ever saw him.
 
 
Back at home, McVay began a slow spiral into despair. Louise was diagnosed with cancer and died suddenly in 1961. After years of self-restraint, he began to fall apart.
Within a year, he impulsively married Vivian Smith, an old flame from his youth, and moved to Winvian Farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. There were happy times: they went to Egypt; they attended the Metropolitan Opera in New York; they threw grand parties at the farm. But then in 1965, he received what must have been a final blow: his grandson, in whom he had taken a special interest, died from a sudden illness.
He took to spending his days quietly, often alone, puttering in a workshop building furniture, or playing bridge, or rowing a blue boat around a small pond he’d dug on the property. One morning his stepson, Winthrop Smith Jr. (from Vivian’s previous marriage), paused before the bathroom door in the Litchfield farmhouse and heard the captain weeping.
When he opened the door, he saw McVay, dressed in his
khaki, clutching a letter—more hate mail from the families of dead sailors. He told the young boy, “
I can’t take this
.”
Which leads us to this story’s beginning, to that cold morning in November 1968, when Captain Charles Butler McVay III stepped out onto his front steps with a gun and consigned himself to history.
After the cremation, a memorial service was held in Arlington National Cemetery, complete with a twenty-one-gun salute. His remains were flown to Louisiana, where he’d spent the happiest times of his life.
If you’d been standing on the beach at Bayou Liberty that winter in 1968, you might have seen a plane pass by overhead; you might have seen the door open and a small box tipped to the wind. The contents went scattering, like a twisting scarf of smoke.
A man’s bones and skin can be burned away into powder and ash, but what’s left is without form. Courage, duty, and honor have no permanent home.
What was left of Charles Butler McVay melted on the water and was gone.

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