Indianapolis, Lynn Vincent & Sara Vladic

Thoroughly researched, a moment-to-moment account of the ordeal, this is the definitive book on the story of the Indianapolis. Late in WW2, July 1945, the USS Indianapolis, after just having delivered the components of the atomic bomb from CA to the Pacific Islands, was sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea when she was struck by 2 Japanese torpedoes. Within minutes it sunk. Small groups of survivors agonized over playing judge, jury, and executioner for shipmates who they had to kill because they were descending into delirium. In the water, the dead outnumbered the living… men dying so quickly that it became impossible to move around without having to shoulder through dead corpses. The captain McVay wrote 879 personal letters to crewmen who had deed on his watch; of the 1,195 souls aboard Indianapolis, 3 out of very 4 men died; The captain of the Japanese submarine, Hashimoto even wrote a personal letter in a plea to help overturn McVay’ conviction during his trial – “Our peoples have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its consequences. Perhaps it is time your people forgave Captain McVay for the humiliation of his unjust conviction.”McVay was so distraught of the court-marshal, the guilt, that in Nov of 1968 he put a revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.