In Harm's Way
   Doug Stanton
  2001 Henry Holt, NY
   ISBN: 0805066322


The sinking of the USS Indianapolis & the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. In July of 1945, this war cruiser set out from San Francisco with a secret & dangerous cargo, headed for Tinian, a distant South Pacific island. With a record-breaking run to Hawaii & then on to Guam for fuel & fresh supplies, she delivered her load with no notable incidents.

With new orders the Indy weighed anchor & proceeded to cross a war zone to her next port of call in the Phillipine Islands. Certainly she was passing through enemy territory yet there had been no recent enemy sightings. A series of telegraphed communications concerning her intended route & estimated time of arrival in Leyte harbor, were sent out & received with only cursory attention.

It was no big deal & the Indy cruised on her way in Condition Able, her lookouts in position, scanning the seas under cloudy nights with only sporadic visibility. Apparently alone, in stifling equatorial nights on a vast & empty ocean, the Indy had quit her defensive zig-zag sailing patterns.

There were 1,196 souls aboard the USS Indianapolis, many sleeping on deck, a handful incarcerated in the brig, a few in the infirmary, most were off duty. It seemed peaceful & the boys (most of them were under 20 years of age) played cards; listened to the radio & wrote letters home. The cooks & dishwashers were at last off duty, unaware of how much noise their dishes were broadcasting into the quiet Pacific night. Captain Butler McVay went through his usual routine & headed for his watch bunk.

Unbeknownst to the US Navy nor the high-level secret agents that covered the Pacific war zone, young Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto, captain of the I-58 submarine, was prowling the same waters looking for trouble. He was frustrated by the lack of action he had so far seen, dreading that he was likely to end the war & return home with not one engagement with the enemy & no honor. Early one evening, his sonar man picked up a noise that sounded like dishes rattling. The sound was coming closer. Hashimoto ordered his submarine to surface & couldn't believe his luck when they caught a bearing on a possible enemy ship.

At 12:05 A.M. on July 30, 1945 all hell broke loose aboard the USS Indianapolis.

For this child of an island nation, who cut her teeth on plane & ship silhouettes & sang the Seaman's Hymn in school chapel; who never tasted a fresh orange or banana; who lived on reconstituted eggs & milk & learned to count with ration books. For this little sister who heard older brothers' incessantly talk of The War. For this daughter who listened to her father's memories of the War to End All Wars & who, with the entire family, heard the BBC Radio broadcasts of the battles on land, in the sea & in the air - In Harm's Way touched me as only true naval sagas can.

The fate of the crew of the USS Indianapolis half across the world, both aboard & overboard, was unknown to me. My attention was taken up with the return of peace in our neighborhood. Doug Stanton, the author of In Harm's Way, has rendered these heroes a vital if belated service & reminds me of how powerful is the call to duty & the many quiet aspects to valor.

This is an astonishing read - which starts with the end of an old tar's life & then tells the story of one venerable ship upon which President Franklin Roosevelt had sailed to South America; of her mostly young crew with a sprinkling of seasoned hands & her captain, a scion from a naval tradition & her most secret mission. Through the memories of three particular crew members & the researching of hundreds of documents, this author unearths the accidents & snafus that cast the Indy's fate as she island-hopped across the Pacific.

An added depth are the glimpses into the Japanese submarine which fired the torpedoes that sank, in 12 minutes, an unescorted war cruiser to slip away to ultimate defeat back home in Japan. This gives us a fuller panorama of this extra-ordinary, accidental naval engagement.

An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the oil-slicked water where they remained undetected for nearly five days. Battered by a huge sea, relentlessly bright days & bone-chilling nights, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off shark attacks, thirst, hunger, hypothermia & dementia.

By the time rescue arrived, all but 317 men had died. By the time the survivors were safe if not sound, the secret cargo the Indy had been delivered by the Enola Gay.

The captain's subsequent court-martial left many questions unanswered: How did the navy fail to realize USS Indianapolis was missing? Why was the cruiser traveling unescorted in enemy waters? Even as this author brings all of his writing craft to bear, the reader will still murmur at the most amazing question of all, how did those 317 souls survive?

Out of ether, Doug Stanton has brought back to life those terrible days & nights adrift, the happenstance sighting of bodies strewn across a great swath of sea, the rescue of bodies & survivors & the shrivening naval reviews that came with peace.

Interweaving the stories of three survivors - the captain, Charles Butler McVay; the ship's doctor, Lewis Haynes & a young marine, Private Giles McCoy - journalist Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life in a narrative that is both immediate & timeless. As the definitive account of a little-known chapter in World War II history, In Harm's Way is destined to become a classic tale of war, survival & courage.

I learnt so much about the war in the Pacific - how it was fought, survived, its final submission & the attitude of a nation eager to be done with it. A remarkably lively, respectful & detailed read that breathes life back into a dusty tragedy of naval snafus, bureaucratic complacency & eventual punitive actions.

It is, however, the valor & tenacity of every one of those souls who died & survived that earns the respect of this child of war!

A former contributing editor at Esquire & Outside, Doug Stanton is now a contributing editor at Men's Journal. He received an MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.
(05/06/01)

Rebecca