History of Saipan & Micronesia (6)

Survivors of the uss Indianopolis

The morning sunrise revealed a mass of hundreds of sailors scattered over a relatively large area some of whom had been carried by the currents well beyond the main concentration of floating survivors. As the flaming sphere began its long, slow climb across the heavens its burning rays magnified by the reflection on the water began to burn into their oil blackened faces. Their skin was burned and blistered and after awhile baked by the unrelenting rays. Those without headgear, and there were many, became dizzy and light headed then racked with painful, mind numbing head aches. 

Thirst was the first torment to overcome the helpless bobbing seamen as their tongues swelled to fill their mouths. Even knowing that it meant certain death, some were wracked by delirium and could not resist the desperation and distressful feeling of a tortuous urge to drink sea water, an act that only magnified their agony leading to an uncontrollable desire to consume even greater quantities of the deadly liquid only to be relieved by death after a prolonged period of insanity. 

Several men had entered the water with bleeding wounds. It must have been the blood that attracted the huge black, sinister beasts. The first sharks that appeared circled the group, then they were joined by more and the horrible feeding frenzy began. Men screamed and flailed their arms as one after the other was pulled underwater in a swirl of blood and froth only to bob to the surface for an instant before being dragged down, never to be seen again. An arm floated to the surface and was snatched again by a huge gapping mouth filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. The men were thrashing the water and shouting in a desperate attempt to keep from being eaten alive while watching shipmates being carried off in a nightmare only the Devil himself could conceive. 

The carnage was shocking and beyond belief. Everyone in the water was in a state of panic and shock. Then it was over and despair overtook those that remained - some bleeding after having deep chunks of flesh torn from their bodies. This was occurring at a time when Japanese authorities were told by United States military officials that eight of its cities would be leveled if it did not surrender. The sun had long since passed overhead and was now setting in the west marking the coming of dusk, then the blackest of night. All hope of rescue from the dark sea was abandoned and many men where now relinquishing all hope of being found. Then the orange ball slide below the horizon, its disappearance marked by colors of orange, purple and the blood red of a beautifully obscene sunset over the Philippine Sea. It was the second night of darkness and dread. 

It was a long night as men fought off fatigue and tried to keep alert to fight off more man-eating shark attacks while searching the horizon for any sign of a dark object which might signal the sign of a rescue vessel. None were seen and the long night wore on. Tuesday, July 31st dawned and the ship still had not appeared at Leyte where its non-arrival had still not been questioned. Hundreds of miles east of Leyte men waited and wept in the water.

With a blazing sun beating down many were beginning to hallucinate and were being driven mad. The insanity led some to speak of imaginary islands and they would swim off never to be seen again. Heat, thirst, fear, depression and hopelessness drove those the sharks didn't carry away to self-destruction. Hundreds of the crew had now drifted away, some carried away by monsters, others died of wounds or thirst, many were going insane, some were dead of dehydration or from drinking salt water, several committed suicide by untying their life preservers and slipping under water. Those that still clung to life by the thinnest of treads were dazed, weak, sick, tired and afraid as they drifted hopelessly toward death. 

The only horror they had not yet experienced at sea was to be helpless in the water during a typhoon. God had spared them that. When the full force of a raging Pacific typhoon is upon you all distinction between the ocean and the atmosphere is lost in a world of water and wind. As the barometer falls, waves are transformed into mountains of water. A screeching, howling wind of up to 120 miles per hour is punctuated by moments of eerie calm only to rise again to its former crescendo of shrieking violence. The gusts of the storm will peak and then drop to a relative lull. 

After the initial thrust of high wind and rain which can last for hours, a period of calm follows when the wind slackens and frequently, during daylight, the sun shines -- this is the center of the storm when the "eye" is passing. The force of the wind and rain will quickly resume to full fury with the only difference being a change in the direction of the wind -- it blows in the opposite direction of the first phase of the typhoon. This will be the only horror of the sea that the survivors of the Indianapolis will be spared. The only horror. 

Throughout the night men babbled their maddening, imaginary thoughts, their minds now unable to distinguish reality from insanity. There were fewer in the water now but no one knew how many as all count had been lost. Their confused and numb brains were beginning to cease imagining green meadows, cool, fresh water, dry beds, food and memories of loved ones - as their minds began to shut down to block out the unspeakable horror that had overtaken them they drifted in and out of a state of semi-consciousness. 

They were too weak and exhausted to do anything but continue to maintain the basic animal instinct for survival. All sense of sensation and emotion was being drained away as unconscious heads bobbed back and forth with each movement of the rise and fall of the waves. This scene continued through the third night and still there was no sign of a savior as they waited for the relief of death. Again the sun broke over the eastern horizon bringing with it scorching heat and unbearable rays beating down on blackened, blistered faces. 

The nearest land was now hundreds of miles to the east where, on the island of Tinian, huge B-29 Superfortresses were roaring down runways prepared to drop 6,600 tons of bombs on five Japanese cities. In a few hours the entire city of Toyama would be destroyed. These aircraft would not see the men in the water as they were headed in the wrong direction. Even upon the return flight of the aircraft to Tinian and Saipan when sometime they would fly at low altitudes searching for downed pilots and crew members of crashed aircraft, the shipwrecked men would still not be seen. They were too far southwest of the airfields. 

Late in the afternoon of August 2nd Lieutenant Robert A. Marks flying a Catalina PBY 5A spotted some of the survivors bobbing in the water and at great risk to himself, his crew and the plane, landed the amphibious aircraft in the water near the men. There were strict regulations against landing this type of aircraft on the open sea as the hull of the "Dumbo", as it was known, was weakened by construction necessary for placing its landing wheels. Lt. Marks and his crew taxied to the area where some of the survivors were being attacked by sharks and began to fill the aircraft's fuselage with fifty-six men who were later transferred to naval vessels which began arriving on the scene between midnight and three A.M. 

One such vessel, the U. S.S. Ringness, APD 100, picked up Captain McVay and thirty five others and sent a secret dispatch while proceeding to Peleliu which stated that the Indianapolis had not been zigzagging. Rescue operations continued for six days, until August 8th, and covered a radius of one hundred miles of open ocean saving 316 of the crew. Eight hundred eighty three men were lost in a single sinking. 

The Destroyer U.S.S. Helm DD388 was one of several naval vessels participating in the search for survivors and on August 6th reported, "All bodies were in extremely bad condition and had been dead for an estimated 4 or 5 days. Some had life jackets and life belts, most had nothing. Most of the bodies were completely naked, and others had just drawers or dungaree trousers on -only three of the 28 bodies recovered had shirts on. Bodies were horribly bloated and decomposed- recognition of faces would have been impossible. About half the bodies were shark- bitten, some to such a degree that they more nearly resembled skeletons. 

From one to four sharks were in the immediate area of the ship at all times. At one time, two sharks were attacking a body not more than fifty yards from the ship, and continued to do so until driven off by rifle fire. For the most part it was impossible to get finger prints from the bodies as the skin had come off the hands or the hands lacerated by sharks. Skin was removed from the hands of bodies containing no identification, when possible, and the Medical Officer dehydrated the skin in an attempt to make legible prints. 

All personal effects removed from the bodies for purposes of identification, and the Medical Officer's Reports are forwarded herewith in lieu of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery and the Personal Effects Distribution Center, Farragut, Idaho, on the assumption that such effects will be assembled from all ships recovering them. After examination, all bodies were sunk, using two inch line and a weight of three 5"/38 cal. projectiles. There were still more bodies in the area when darkness brought a close to the gruesome operations for the day. In all, twenty-eight bodies were examined and sunk". 

After his rescue Captain McVay was interviewed for purposes of recording his experiences associated with the sinking of the Indianapolis. He stated, "On Sunday night, the 29th of July, we had been zigzagging up until dark. We did not zigzag thereafter. We had intermittent moonlight, as I am told, but it was dark from about 2330 until sometime earlier the next morning." "At approximately five minutes after midnight, I was thrown from my emergency cabin bunk on the bridge by a very violent explosion followed shortly thereafter by another explosion. 

I went to the bridge and noticed, in my emergency cabin in the chart house, that there was quite a bit of acrid white smoke. I couldn't see anything." "I got out on the bridge. The same condition existed out there. It was dark, it was this whitish smoke. I asked the Officer of the Deck if he had had any reports. He said, "No Sir, I have lost all communication, I have tried to stop the engines. I don't know whether that order has ever gotten through to the engine room." "So we had no communication whatsoever. Our engine room telegraph was electrical, that was out, sound powered phones were out, all communications were out forward. 

As I went back into the cabin to get my shoes and some clothes, I ran into the damage control officer, Lieutenant Commander Casey Moore, who had the mid watch on the bridge as supervisory watch. He had gone down at the first hit and came back on the bridge and told me that we were going down rapidly by the head, and wanted to know if I desired to pass the word to abandon ship. I told him, "No." "We had only about three degrees list. We had been through a hit before, we were able to control it quite easily and in my own mind I was not at all perturbed. Within another two or three minutes the executive officer came up, Commander Flynn, and said, 

"We are definitely going down and I suggest that we abandon ship." Well, knowing Flynn and having utter regard for his ability, I then said, Pass the word to abandon ship." Captain McVay continued, "The people who had the kapok life preservers on tied themselves together to try to keep themselves together during the night. They also had quite a long piece of manila line which they had taken off a ring life preserver which they used to secure their ties on their kapok life jackets, which they managed to keep together during the night, but it must be realized that most of those people within 48 to 60 hours went out of their head. Some of them lived through the period, but those who went out of their head earlier than, say 48 to 60 hours, didn't last. The people that were in that group feel quite sure that a number of people just gave up hope because they would be with the bunch at sundown and in the morning they would be gone, so they feel that people just slipped out of their life jackets and just decided that they didn't want to face it any longer." 

Two days before the search effort for survivors of the Indianapolis ended a B-29 stationed on Tinian was positioned over a hole in the ground about the size of a grave where the cargo delivered by the Indianapolis would be lifted into the bomb-bay area of an aircraft named the Enola Gay. On August 6th Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 509th bomber group received his orders and in the early morning hours roared down a runway built only a year before by the 107th Naval Construction Battalion bound for Hiroshima. The cargo the Indianapolis delivered to Tinian would soon create an event that would change the world. However, the men in the water still awaiting rescue knew nothing of the fate of Hiroshima and they waited only for their own fate to deliver them from the torture they were experiencing even if it meant death. Fate had also cheated Japan, as the course of history might have been changed had the I-58 sunk the Indianapolis and its secret cargo before it reached Tinian. 

The B-29-45-MD (# 44-86292) Superfortress lifted off Tinian at 2:45 A. M. August 6, 1945 for the six and one half hour flight to Hiroshima. At 31,600 feet with a ground speed of 328 m. p. h., a bomb was released weighing 9,700 pounds measuring 129 inches in length with a diameter of 31.5 inches containing 137.5 pounds of Uranium 235 split into two sections. After falling to an altitude of 800 feet nuclear fission began in one fifteen-hundredth of a micro-second. The firebomb that erupted was the equivalent of thirteen thousand tons of T.N.T. and thousands of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. It melted granite and vaporized people leaving only their shadows on the few remaining buildings left standing in the city after the blast. 

This single bomb left 118,661 dead, 30,524 severely injured, 48,606 slightly injured and 3,677 missing. It exploded with the temperature of the fireball at the outer edge reaching 1,800 degrees centigrade 15 milliseconds after the explosion with the velocity of the shock at 100 meters per second one thousand meters from the epicenter. When released over the city the temperature at the instant of the detonation reached several million degrees. A few millionths of a second later the surrounding air reached the point of white hot heat and in 1/10,000 of a second an immense fireball was formed with a uniform temperature of about 300,000 degrees. In less than one minute the atomic cloud had reached a height of more than one half mile. At the hypocenter iron melted. Within nine hundred feet of the hypocenter the surface of granite melted. Within one mile, railroad ties, fences and trees ignited spontaneously. The fireball as seen from a distance of five and one half miles from the point of burst had a luminosity ten times that of the sun. 

On August 9th a second bomb code named "Fat Man" which was a plutonium device and carried by the B-29 Bock's Car had as its primary target the city of Kokura but bad weather forced the pilot to the alternate target of Nagasaki. It was this second device detonated over Nagasaki that finally convinced the Japanese that the war was lost and surrender followed on August 15, 1945. The formal ceremonies aboard the Battleship U. S. S. Missouri occurred on September 2, 1945 in Tokyo Bay. The reason for selecting Hiroshima as the first target is presented below. 

With the exception of some necessary editing due to space limitations the following has been reproduced in condensed form from the Top Secret "Tactical Mission Report", Headquarters Twentieth Air Force APO 234. No attempt has been made to correct the typographic errors.

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