Each summer, as Lake Michigan finally begins to warm, I think of
the men of the World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis and the
worst disaster at sea in U.S. naval history. I go down to the lake and
I wonder: How would I have survived what they experienced?us today, in our neighborhoods, at our
grocery stores, and at family gather-
ings. Around 350 are dying each day,
meaning that sometime within this
generation, all will be deceased.
I suspect that we’ll feel, then, that
the 20th century has truly ended.
We’ll no longer be able to walk up
to the gentleman we spy on our way
to the dairy case, who is wearing a hat
bearing the insignia of a World War II
unit, and shake the hand of someone
who fought Hitler.
When I first met the survivors of
the Indianapolis in 1999 while writ-
ing a book about them, their story,
the last major action of World War II,
was rarely mentioned in high school
textbooks. This is despite the fact that
before its torpedoing, the ship had
delivered components of the atomic
bomb Little Boy to Tinian Island. The
bomb parts were packed in a plywood
case whose contents the sailors tried
vainly to guess, having no idea their
ship was delivering the atom to mod-
ern warfare.
As the men floated in the sea, they
were blinded by sun; hounded by
hallucinations, thirst, and hunger;
attacked by sharks; and beset, fi-
nally, by the realization that no one
was coming to rescue them. SomeI don’t know the answer, but it’s the
asking of the question that helps me
recalibrate what could be called my
moral compass.
On July 30, 1945, just over a month
before the end of the war, the ship was
torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in
the Philippine Sea. It sank in 12 min-
utes. Of the 1,195 men on board, only
316 were alive when help arrived fourdays later. Headlines of the disaster
deeply disturbed Americans: How
could this have happened so close to
the war’s end?
Today, only 12 of those men are
still living, and each July they meet
in Indianapolis for a reunion, as they
have periodically since 1960, to gather
around memories of shipmates who
were lost at sea and those survivors
who have recently passed away.
According to the Department of
Veterans Affairs, about 16 million
Americans served in World War II,
and of those, about 497,000 are withSOME SURRENDERED
TO THE MOMENT BUT
DID NOT GIVE UP—A
KEY DISTINCTION.72 july/august 2019
previousspread:^ courtesy^ photoarchives,^ navalhistory^ andheritagecommandReader’s Digest