In Harms's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

On July 30, 1945, just days before the end of World War II, a Japanese submarine sank the USS Indianapolis, directly killing 300 of the ship's 1200-man crew. (3) Nine-hundred men entered the water alive. (4) Unbelievably, the U.S. Navy did not even realize that one of its ships was missing until four days later, and by the end of the belated rescue effort, only 317 men had survived. (5) The Navy blamed the ship's captain, Captain Charles McVay, III, for both the sinking and the delayed rescue, making him the only captain in the history of the U.S. Navy to be court-martialed for losing his ship to an act of war. (6) Twenty-three years later, still receiving hate mail from relatives of casualties and before his name would be cleared, he killed himself. (7)

Doug Stanton tells the story of this disastrous voyage and the Navy's subsequent treatment of McVay in In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. Stanton had been working as a contributing editor for Esquire and Outside magaziness (8) and became interested in the Indianapolis after learning that the survivors planned to reunite. (9) Having no military background, Stanton intended to write only a short article on the disaster; (10) instead, he became captivated by the survivors' accounts of bravery and survival: "For almost five days, they struggled against unbelievably harsh conditions, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, physical and mental exhaustion, and finally, hallucinatory dementia. And yet more than 300 of them managed to survive. The question I wanted to ask was, How?" (11) The survivors wanted to clear McVay's name and lift the stigma that resulted from his conviction; Stanton took up their cause. (12) Finally, Stanton wanted to pin the blame for the disaster on the Navy, where he felt it belonged: "[T]he [N]avy put them in harm's way, hundreds of men died violently, and then the government refused to acknowledge its culpability." (13)

The article became a book, and Stanton published In Harm's Way in 2001 to the universal praise of critics and history buffs. (14) Shortly after publication, the Navy exonerated McVay, announcing that he was not culpable for the sinking or the loss of life caused by the delayed rescue. (15) But this leads to the question: why review an already thoroughly reviewed and acclaimed book, four years after publication? Why now, considering that one of Stanton's primary goals for writing In Harm's Way has been reached?

Because America is again at war, and In Harm's Way offers contemporary lessons to military officers and judge advocates. Stanton's account captures the irregular, sometimes startling, and sometimes reaffirming ways that people respond when they reach the edge of life. Small-unit leaders who pick up In Harm's Way will learn how people behave while they are under enormous stress. (16) In Harm's Way also contains important lessons on risk management, showing what can happen when senior leaders personally manage the risks attached to potentially catastrophic missions, and how to assign responsibility and blame when risk becomes reality. Finally, In Harm's Way contains a simple lesson for judge advocates: a legally defensible position is not always a just position. While Stanton does not explicitly make all of these points (indeed, the reader will learn some of these lessons by spotting the shortfalls in some of Stanton's arguments), military officers and judge advocates will profit from them, while being rewarded with a riveting account of survival.

I. Why Some Men Survived

Stanton documents some uncomfortable facts: many sailors acted in apparently shameful and cowardly ways after just a short time in the water. On the second day, some sailors started to kill themselves:

   Those still lucid enough looked on in disbelief as their former
   shipmates calmly untied their life vests, took a single stroke
   forward, and sank without a word. Others suddenly turned from the
   group and started swimming, waiting for a shark to hit, and then
   looked up in terrified satisfaction when it did. Others simply fell
   face-forward and refused to rise. A boy would swim over to his
   buddy, lift his head by the hair from the water, and begin screaming
   for him to come to his senses. Often, he refused, and continued to
   quietly drown himself. (17)

Even more disturbing, on the third day, the sailors started to attack and kill each other. (18)

By applying modern medical knowledge, Stanton explains how the sailors deteriorated to a state of dementia so quickly. The men suffered from plasma shift, the inhalation of salt spray which caused their lungs to fill slowly with fluid, ultimately lowering the oxygen content in their bloodstreams. (19) They had hypothermia, losing an average of one degree of body temperature for every hour of exposure at nighttime. (20) Hypothermia depresses the central nervous system, allowing apathy and amnesia to set in. (21) Some sailors, with their judgment clouded and hallucinations underway, started drinking salt water, causing their cells to shrink, expand, and explode, disrupting their neuro-electical activity. (22) All of these factors, combined with shock associated with wounds suffered in the submarine attack and the constant shark attacks, acted on the sailors' central nervous systems, causing them to behave in such shocking ways.