42 pages • 1 hour read
Pete NelsonLeft for Dead
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Ordeal, July 30 to August 3, 1945”
The men from the wreck were spread out over three miles, as the ship continued to move forward as it sank. Many were critically injured, with severe burns, concussions, or broken bones. About half of the men had life jackets. McGuiggan had jumped from the keel of the boat into the water, swimming in “frantic breaststroke” to try to clear the oil away from his mouth (66). He helps a man who can’t swim, and tethers himself with his life jacket to a group of men. He watches a man scream and disappear as he is taken by sharks. Kuryla ends up in a group of sixteen men, who share four life rafts. McCoy is also in this group and leads men in prayers. He thinks desperately of his mother.
Miner swam underwater as the ship sank and emerges in a group of men. He reassures everyone that an SOS was sent. Moseley, in the same group, thinks with remorse of the young boy who fell down the hatch. He tells himself he will live. Twible, in the same group as Miner and Moseley, orders a head count. There are 325 in their group. Those covered in oil find that they are protected from sunburn, and others smear themselves with it. Twible orders all the men to disarm and sets up an (ultimately unsuccessful) shark watch.
Twible tries to maintain order with another officer named Lieutenant Redmayne. Vicious fights break out. Two rafts in their group hoard food. Another group from within this larger group decide to paddle to a nearby island hundreds of miles away. All of the men continue to weaken and die. Miner’s friend, Ray, dies in his arms.
Cozell Smith joins a group of 150 men hanging onto floater nets. He is surrounded by “chaos,” “as men screamed, panicked, cursed, fought with one another, drowned one another” (70). The sea turns red with blood as sharks take the vulnerable men. Smith is suddenly pulled under as a shark grabs his left hand. Smith manages to free his hand by plunging one of his right fingers into the shark’s eye. Elsewhere in Smith’s group, a group of men declare another to be “a jap” and drown him (88). Smith sees one man drinking blood from a corpse’s throat. He remains unsure whether it was a hallucination or not.
Captain McVay had been floating on only a potato crate when he finds two life rafts. He climbs onto one and picks up three men from the water. The four men find another five men on another raft, and later still another lone crewmember on a sole raft. They raft together; McVay rations their food and organizes watches. McVay never heard back from the radio room but nevertheless reassures the men that an SOS was sent.
Men become suggestible as time goes on, hallucinating islands or water fountains. Some swim towards these mirages and drown or are taken by sharks, which continue to be attracted by the blood, urine, and vomit in the water. Men are pulled under suddenly and resurface missing limbs, only to be pulled under again. Others drink salt water, which accelerates dehydration, and soon die. Others become mentally disturbed and angry, especially those floating with only lifejackets, as they are unable to sleep properly without their face dropping into the water. Being in a state of exhausted half-sleep, or hypnagogia, only accentuates their hallucinations.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Rescue, August 2 to 5, 1945”
Lieutenant Wilbur C. Gwinn, the pilot of a low-flying American plane on a routine patrol mission, saw the oil slick from the Indianapolis wreck. Flying closer to the water, he saw the men in the water, realized they were American, and radioed their position. His message was received by Lieutenant Commander George Atteberry on the island of Peleliu, who flew to the scene along with Lieutenant Robert Adrian Marks. All ships within 200 miles of the disaster were ordered to divert towards it. Marks risked disciplinary action and his own life by landing his amphibious plane—an action not recommended in ocean swells—among the survivors. He took this unprecedented action after seeing men being taken by sharks. He rescued 56 men.
The first ship to reach the scene was the Doyle. Captain Claytor ordered a light to be projected into the sky to aid other ships and planes in finding the survivors. Whale boats and landing crafts from the arriving ships were deployed to find survivors. Of the 150 men who had been in McGuigan’s group, only 15 remained by the time help arrived. McGuigan managed to swim to a life raft which was dropped nearby and then picked up by the USS Talbot. Kuryla was saved by a landing craft from the USS Register. Miner saw a boat and a searchlight coming towards him in the night and tried to swim away, thinking it was Japanese sailors. He was lifted out of the sea by sailors from the USS Bassett. Moseley was saved when a cargo net was lowered from the Doyle. Twible was pulled out of the water by a whale boat from the USS Bassett. Of the 325 men who ended up in Twible’s group, only 171 survived. Smith managed to swim to a life raft dropped by one of the planes. McCoy was finally saved at four o’clock on Friday afternoon by the USS Ringness. He and Bob Brundige were almost missed and were the last to be saved 113 hours after the sinking. McVay and his group had also been saved by the Ringness. McVay proceeded to the bridge, where he drafted a message to be sent to CINCPAC at Guam about the events which sank the Indianapolis. He insisted on including the fact that his ship was “not zigzagging” (99).
Tragically, a significant number of men died trying to swim to the planes and ships of their rescuers, drowning or being taken by sharks. Bodies recovered from the water were identified, where possible, and then sunk with weights. Of the 1,197 crew members aboard the Indianapolis when she sailed from Guam, only 317 men survived.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Guilty, August 2 to September 26, 1945”
Hunter Scott, in his research, found that Captain McVay was the only one held responsible for the immense loss of life. However, Hunter saw many other contributing factors: the hatches being open throughout the ship, the lack of training of new recruits, the recommendation to travel at a slower speed, the lack of sonar capability or escort, the lack of intelligence provided on the movement of Japanese submarines in the area, and the failure of those tracking the ship to register its non-arrival. Hunter saw the accident as the breakdown of the naval system, rather than the incompetence of a single man.
After all, the ship should have been tracked by numerous groups. The Philippines Sea Frontier, an administrative command overseeing the surrounding seas, as well as the Marianas command, and CINCPAC (fleet headquarters in Hawaii), assumed that “no news was good news,” and that the Indianapolis had reached Leyte. A dispatch to Leyte from Guam with the ship’s precise arrival information was missed, meaning that those receiving the Indianapolis at Leyte were unclear when exactly to expect the cruiser. The problem was further exacerbated by the Indianapolis’s designation as Admiral Spruance’s flagship, as “it wasn’t unusual …. for a flagship to change course without notifying anyone” (105).
Another breakdown in the system was the failure of the unit SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) to release their intelligence (code-named ULTRA) regarding the movement of the Tamon group (a group of Japanese submarines including the i-58) in the Marianas area. SIGINT had broken the Japanese communications code well before the Indianapolis set sail from Guam to Leyte, meaning that this group knew of the mission of the i-58, which had been dispatched to patrol the Marianas area west of Guam. Furthermore, the USS Underhill had been sunk by submarine attack on July 24th, three days before the Indianapolis arrived in Guam. ULTRA information was only distributed to flag officers. McVay was not of this rank, and therefore did not receive this crucial information, which may have influenced his choices about speed and routing. SIGINT also intercepted and decoded a transmission from Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto of the i-58, where he communicated to Tokyo that he had hit and sunk a battleship, but it was dismissed as boasting. No ULTRA information was raised at the court of inquiry, as it was classified.
A US army pilot flying from Manilla to Guam reported seeing what looked like gun fire below, which was actually flares fired by survivors in the water, but this was dismissed by the army as a battle between surface ships.
On August 13th, a Court of Inquiry was held to investigate the incident. McVay blamed those tracking the ship at PSF, Marianas Command, and CINCPAC for not raising the alarm when the ship did not arrive at Leyte. The court blamed McVay for not issuing a distress signal earlier; no one claimed to have received the SOS sent from the USS Indianapolis. Furthermore, McVay was court-martialed for endangering the lives of his men through negligence for failing to zigzag on a night of good visibility when there was a submarine threat in the area.
Meanwhile, Japan surrendered on August 15th after the atomic bombs ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, killing or injuring as many as 200,000 Japanese people. The news of the sinking of the Indianapolis was released soon after the announcement of the end of the war, essentially burying this story in post-war hysteria.
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Court-Martial, September 26, 1945, to February 23, 1946”
Of the 436 combatant ships lost in the war, McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed. Admiral Nimitz, fleet admiral of the US navy, recommended leniency; he wrote an official letter of reprimand in an attempt to avoid the court-martialing. The letter, to be included in McVay’s file, condemned McVay’s failure to order “zigzag courses,” as well as his failure to “exert every effort at your command to cause a distress signal” (119). However, the Secretary of the navy, James Forrestal, came under pressure to answer to Congress and to the bereaved families; furthermore, the reputation of the navy was threatened by McVay’s accusations. President Roosevelt ordered a commission to investigate the incident, and Congress promised a full, bi-partisan investigation. Problematically, McVay’s court-martial began before the independent investigation was completed.
McVay was charged with “suffering a vessel of the Navy to be hazarded … by failing to cause a zigzag course to be steered … during good visibility,” and with “failing to issue timely orders to abandon ship” (124). The scope of the charges was limited to before the sinking, prohibiting McVay’s defense from critiquing the Navy’s response after the sinking. At the court-martial, which was open to the public and to press, the prosecution (on behalf of the navy) presented a number of witnesses, including Waldron (who had given McVay routing information at Guam); a destroyer captain who asserted that he would have zigzagged on the given night; a naval astronomer who spoke of the brightness of the moon on the night of the incident; and officers from the Indianapolis. These officers confirmed that they were given the order to stop zigzagging but asserted that there was significant cloud cover and that the officers were not worried about a submarine threat or changes in the weather. Twible testified that it was very dark. Other sailors aboard testified that communications were out throughout the ship but that SOS signals were sent per McVay’s command from the radio rooms. Others asserted that the captain told them to spread the word to abandon ship.
McCoy clarified that the moon was bright only once the men were in the water, which echoed Captain McVay’s report. Any comments about deaths in the water were cut off, as they were deemed irrelevant to the scope of the case. McCoy, in private before the trial, was pressured to sign a document asserting that McVay never gave the order to abandon ship but refused.
The press and survivors were shocked when the prosecution called Hashimoto, captain of the i-58 submarine, to testify. Previously, Hashimoto had said that the Indianapolis zigzagging would have made no difference; at the trial, the translator at court said that had the Indianapolis been zigzagging, “some changes in maneuvering” might have been necessary for the i-58 (130).
Marinas command officer Oliver Naquin was called by the defense; a question on why the Indianapolis hadn’t been given an escort was objected to, and the objection was sustained. Naquin said that the submarine risk was low, but no information about ULTRA from SIGINT was referred to. A decorated commander was called who attested that zigzagging would have made little difference. Lastly, McVay himself testified that he asked for an escort, that the visibility was poor, and that the officers were sensible men with initiative who would have initiated zigzagging if the conditions called for it. Further, McVay said that he did give the order to abandon ship. The charge of failing to give orders to abandon ship was dropped, but McVay was convicted of hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag.
After the conclusion of the trial, the independent report found that McVay’s failure to zigzag was not important and did not account for the loss of life. A shortened version was released publicly; the navy edited it to suppress information about the classified intelligence on the Tamon group not being shared with McVay. The public, by and large, supported McVay and believed that he had been scapegoated by the navy.
Chapters 7-10 Analysis
Chapters 7 and 8: The Sinking and The Ordeal, further expound upon the horror of the tragedy for the survivors and for those who lost their lives. This is connected to Nelson’s broader theme on the horrors of war. The stories of men screaming in agony from burns, or men being torn limb from limb in front of their crewmates by sharks, are particularly harrowing; similarly, the screams from men trapped in dogged hatches, which haunted McCoy and Moseley, also emphasize the devastating loss of life. Nelson prioritizes retelling this tragedy in an unflinching manner out of a deep respect for the crew of the Indianapolis, and out of an attempt to “illuminate the sacrifices they made in the defense of freedom” (190).
Although writing primarily from an American perspective, Nelson also details the loss of life experienced at Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the atomic bombs ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ were dropped on these cities, causing mass devastation: 130,000 were killed or injured at Hiroshima, and a further 66,000 people at Nagasaki (113). Nelson acknowledges the USS Indianapolis’s important role in bringing the war to a close through the delivery of atomic bomb components, but he also explores the tragedy which these weapons unleashed. Nelson points out that the US lost “over 400,000 men,” but also draws attention to the “1,700,000 military and 380,000 civilian fatalities” suffered by Japan (114). Nelson’s outlining of these catastrophic losses on both sides illustrates his interest in presenting the war in an even-handed manner. His approach suggests that war is catastrophic for all parties involved: The tragedy of the USS Indianapolis is connected to the global tragedy of the Second World War. Nelson cites that globally, “one hundred ten million men and women had been pressed into military service” and that “twenty-five million military personnel and 30,000,000 civilians died” (114).
In Chapters 9 and 10, Nelson begins to build a multi-faceted case, in line with Hunter’s research, which places the blame for the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and its subsequent delayed rescue on a number of systemic problems, rather than solely with Captain McVay. In doing so, Nelson intentionally exposes how the navy failed to conduct a similar open-minded and systematic exploration of the facts. Through his presentation of information on failed tracking of the ship, withholding of intelligence, and poor advice given to Captain McVay, Nelson creates sympathy for the captain, who shouldered the blame and guilt for an incident which was caused by a variety of human and technical errors. Even McVay himself, as the proceedings began, perceived that it was going to be “easier” for the navy to “blame him for failing to anticipate the emergency, than it would be to conduct a more thorough investigation” (112).
In particular, the withholding of SIGINT’s ULTRA intelligence from McVay, as well as the suppression of this intelligence from the court of inquiry at the Philippines or at the court-martial back in America, is a frustrating discovery for Hunter and Nelson. This vital information might have saved hundreds of lives. The courts which condemned McVay never knew that he was intentionally prevented from accessing this intelligence.
Nelson exposes the flaws in the naval courts which condemned McVay. Even the press release about the Indianapolis sinking—published just after Japan’s surrender—seemed intentionally timed to bury the story, as much as possible, from public interest. Evidence suggesting that the night was clear when the torpedoes hit was contradicted by almost all sailors and officers on board. Twible commented that it was so dark that he couldn’t make men out on the quarterdeck below him. McVay’s testimony about there being a bright moon was his recollection from well after midnight, when the men were in the water, after the ship had been torpedoed and sunk; it was misused in court to suggest that the moon was consistently bright before the ship was hit, making McVay’s decision not to zigzag seem worse.
Even Hashimoto agreed that the ship had been “hard to see at first” (129). Nelson believes that in Hashimoto’s testimony it “should have been clear to the court what a fluke it was that he’d been in that exact place at that exact time, a ship sailing straight toward him, backlit by a newly risen quarter moon directly behind her” (129).
Nelson further suggests that the translator (knowing the navy’s agenda) may have added a “qualifying phrase” to Hashimoto’s comment about zigzagging; the translator commented on Hashimoto’s behalf that zigzagging of the Indianapolis may have elicited “some changes in maneuvering,” whereas previously Hashimoto had been unequivocal in saying that zigzagging “wouldn’t have made any difference” (130). This suggestion of the translator’s bias seems to be supported by Hashimoto’s later contact with Hunter, where he asserted his belief that McVay’s trial was “contrived” (161).
In sum, McVay was court-martialed for endangering the lives of his men through negligence for failing to zigzag on a night of good visibility when there was a submarine threat in the area, while the evidence of first-hand accounts suggests that visibility was poor and that McVay was not given accurate information about the level of the threat. Unbelievably, the independent investigation—which concluded that McVay’s decision to not zigzag was ultimately irrelevant to the tragedy—was released after the trial had already been completed. Further supporting Nelson’s (and Hunter’s) belief that the trial was a sham designed to target a convenient scapegoat is McCoy’s anecdote about being pressured to sign a document “already typed up and waiting for him to sign” that Captain McVay had “failed to give the order to abandon ship” (128). Numerous sources asserted that McVay instructed that the order to abandon ship be loudly proclaimed. McCoy believed at that point (and maintained throughout his life) that the navy was being “underhanded” in their attempt to frame Captain McVay for the sinking (128).
