In Harm's Way
1 journaler for this copy...
Trade paperback. Subtitle: : The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors.This is a duplicate. The other copy is in my TBR pile. I went to school with Captain McVay's granddaughter (although I didn't know anything about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis at the time), so it's definitely on my list to read one of these days.
Ok, so I ended up reading this copy before I gave it away. I think I may be keeping the other one.
Wow. Fascinating reading about the USS Indianapolis - torpedoed just before the end of World War II (it helped deliver some components of "Little Boy", the Hiroshima bomb). Her captain was court-martialed for having endangered his ship, but was exonerated sixty years later. I haven't read anything else on this subject (yet), but the evidence presented here does make it seem like Captain McVay was not to blame. Abandon Ship! is also on my bookshelf.
Any time a ship with 1,200 people goes down and only one quarter of them are rescued, it's a tragedy, but about two-thirds of the men who survived the sinking died before rescuers arrived - because nobody realized the ship was late/missing for several days! The captain was not blamed for this, but no one else was really held responsible either, and I got the feeling that one of the reasons for the court-martial was to keep people from noticing that a series of bureaucratic slip-ups delayed the rescue efforts for so long.
The Indianapolis took only a few minutes to sink, but the description of the days adrift waiting for rescue is heartbreaking.
The only two positive notes I can find here are: the tireless efforts of many people (including a number of survivors) finally resulted in the clearing of Captain McVay's name (sometimes it is possible to work for justice), and, like many tragedies, this event led to policy changes to try to keep something like this from happening again. I guess that's one reason why we need to keep telling these stories...
One other thing: (climb onto soap box) I'm sure that after the sinking there were many grieving and understandably angry people, and I know forgiveness can be very difficult. But after twenty years if you are still consumed with grief and hate and anger to the point of sending hate mail, how can you have any kind of life? Don't you end up poisoning everyone around you? Ugh. (Stumble off soap box.)
Wow. Fascinating reading about the USS Indianapolis - torpedoed just before the end of World War II (it helped deliver some components of "Little Boy", the Hiroshima bomb). Her captain was court-martialed for having endangered his ship, but was exonerated sixty years later. I haven't read anything else on this subject (yet), but the evidence presented here does make it seem like Captain McVay was not to blame. Abandon Ship! is also on my bookshelf.
Any time a ship with 1,200 people goes down and only one quarter of them are rescued, it's a tragedy, but about two-thirds of the men who survived the sinking died before rescuers arrived - because nobody realized the ship was late/missing for several days! The captain was not blamed for this, but no one else was really held responsible either, and I got the feeling that one of the reasons for the court-martial was to keep people from noticing that a series of bureaucratic slip-ups delayed the rescue efforts for so long.
The Indianapolis took only a few minutes to sink, but the description of the days adrift waiting for rescue is heartbreaking.
The only two positive notes I can find here are: the tireless efforts of many people (including a number of survivors) finally resulted in the clearing of Captain McVay's name (sometimes it is possible to work for justice), and, like many tragedies, this event led to policy changes to try to keep something like this from happening again. I guess that's one reason why we need to keep telling these stories...
One other thing: (climb onto soap box) I'm sure that after the sinking there were many grieving and understandably angry people, and I know forgiveness can be very difficult. But after twenty years if you are still consumed with grief and hate and anger to the point of sending hate mail, how can you have any kind of life? Don't you end up poisoning everyone around you? Ugh. (Stumble off soap box.)
Given to a co-worker.
