Moral Lessons From the Crucible of the Sea

The only time I had heard the expression "never had a bad day" was when an elderly patient was recounting his WWII injuries. They involved lying nearly dead in a bomb crater for over 24 hours, and then barely hearing a triage officer pronounce him unsavable. Obviously, he miraculously survived, due to an observant nurse. Despite his severe back problems for which he was seeing me, and many other challenges over his long post-war life, he smiled and asserted that, since then, he had never had a bad day. This essay gives me a better understanding of what he meant.

Let’s compare the heroism of those who gave their last full measure of devotion to their country with the appalling cowardice of Congressional Republicans who refuse to oppose Trump’s idiotic treasonous policies because they are afraid they would lose a primary election.

Those interested in WWII naval disasters may also wish to research the sinking of the Arisan Maru, one of the Japanese Hells-ships transporting allied POWs during the war. My wife's grandfather was one of the 1781 POWs on board when the ship was torpedoed in October 1944. Only nine POWs survived the sinking-- he wasn't one of the nine. I tip my hat to the Greatest Generation. Here's hoping America regains it's moral compass.

The U.S. Navy probably did NOTHING to search for the U.S.S. Indianapolis. The reason I think this is that the government didn't want any news of ship transporting special Atomic Bomb parts to be found out by the news media. Had this discovery been found, perhaps the Japanese would have tried hard to invade Tinian Island, and prevent the US from dropping this most secret weapon!

One of our family friends was a survivor of the Bataan Death March and the horrors of internment in Japanese prison camps after the fall of the Philippine Islands, a fact we children learned only later in life. He was a most loving father and optimistic individual as one could know. There weren't any bad days in his life either.

I doubt many of the young seamen on the Indianapolis joined the navy to be heroes. Most were probably draftees brought into a conflict that they didn’t really understand until much later after their service. But when tested, many showed mettle born of decency instilled in them by churches, schools and parents. My father was a Battle of the Bulge veteran. He often went hunting with a friend named Hans, who had been a German soldier during the war. I once asked him whether he thought ever about wandering around woods that looked like the Ardennes, with a weapon not much different, and a man that might have been shooting at him just 35 years or so earlier. He said, “We were just boys, doing what they told us to do. We have that in common. If you’d been there, you’d understand.” Yeah, I understand. “It’s always the old who lead us to the war; it’s always the young who fall...” the decency and heroism of this generation of ordinary people and citizen soldiers shows why we must never allow it to happen again. Hopefully, theirs is the last Greatest Generation.

Moral lessons: the survivors search for the truth to clear their commander's name. There's much to be learned from the dedication of the survivors of the sinking of the Indianapolis. Another story, still under the radar, turns on the dedication of a Canadian WW2 Spitfire pilot (DFC) who played a key role in the twenty year battle for proper medical care and pensions for soldiers who were disabled by the neurotoxic anti-malaria drug mefloquine. Many of them fought alongside U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. There are some moral lessons that still need to be told. My friend, the Spitfire pilot is 95 years old, and I'm getting on. If Doug Stanton would like to tell the story I'll help. The British Library has my research. Over to you.

Americans are extremely lucky the Japanese didn't figure out the submarine's offensive potential until very late in the war. You should be breathing a sigh of relief that Captain McVay's experience was an isolated incident. We should also mention that the Indianapolis was unique in another respect as well. The ship was steaming across the Pacific alone. The ship was exempt from the vast logistical juggernaut of War Plan Orange. How anyone could ever blame Captain McVay for the inherent vulnerability written into his orders is beyond me. There's a reason the British and US Navies developed sophisticated convoy systems. Actually, the war might have followed a dramatically different trajectory had the Japanese learned the same lessons as the British from WWI. In any event, I often wonder what will happen when the last veteran dies. Looking at my grandfather's military citations, there are already few enough people in the world who can explain what they mean. I remember one friend's beach house; There was an M1 carbine and a Japanese saber above the mantel. Apparently her grandfather was involved in the Bataan death march and survived. He never ate rice again. It's thought's like these that lead me to appreciate the Ken Burns documentaries even more. I almost wish Burns would revisit "The War" before WWII truly becomes historic. These stories are primary sources and they'll all be gone soon enough. I wonder what I would ask if I had just one more opportunity for a question.

Nice piece but sad rather than inspiring. Also scary although the article doesn’t dwell on the horrible shark attacks.

It's not just the veterans of WWII that we're losing; we're losing the memories of those veterans--the memory of the war itself. It seems that so little about this war and the reasons we fought are taught in schools today. Instead we see the Nazi flag and banners and arm bands on social media and the news. The history behind those symbols is ignored. My father has been gone for more than 20 years. But I honor the memory of him being in the 29th Division that landed on Omaha Beach and then marched through Europe. He rarely spoke about it but I cried during the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, realizing it was what he experienced. I read extensively about the bravery of the British citizens as they were blitzed and waited for an German invasion; America had to be bombed in order to enter the war to help our ally. And so NATO is important. The hell the survivors of the Indianapolis and the mistreatment of their Captain went through must be remembered so we, as a nation, understand that war, especially now, is a very last resort. Look at the faces of Syrian refugees to see the modern lesson of this. And The Man in the White House needs a history lesson...quickly.

"...shake the hand of someone who fought Hitler. That connection with the past is especially important when many Americans are flirting with the poisonous ideas our grandfathers and great-grandfathers battled in Europe and the Pacific." What a group of losers. Trump and his base like winners. The crew of the Indianapolis lost their ship. They all should have been court martialed, not just the captain. Good thing Trump wasn't in that plane flying over them...he would have left them in the sea. And Trump's base would have called him their "angel"...yes, a dark angel, but that's good enough for them. Our fathers fought fascism in WW2. Our fathers fought despots that invaded other countries and attempted to rid the land they controlled of "vermin"...immigrants and others who did not meet their standards for racial purity. Today, those wars are scorned by trumpublicans. Scorned because despots are lauded as strong and racial cleansing is lauded as beneficial and necessary. My father fought in the Battle of the Bulge. If only Trump were president back in 1940...he would have aligned with Hitler and Tojo. We would have joined the Axis powers. My father wouldn't have had to sail across the ocean to fight Trump's idol in Europe. He would have a much shorter journey across the border to invade Canada. Democracy would have died 78 years ago...instead of dying today. VOTE OUT ALL REPUBLICANS

Five minutes treading water in the dark. A moral lesson to which few of us will ever expose ourselves.

An excellent article about a tragic event. Sadly war is full of such events, most of them forgotten, ignored, or even dismissed, especially by those who never served. Ask a veteran of the Hürtgen Forest in Germany, or the latter days of the Battle of the Bulge. Or read the accounts of the Meuse-Argonne when, according to the recent PBS documentary, 500 Americans were dying each day. "War is hell!" declared General Sherman. Indeed he knew whereof he spoke.

The saddest thing about the whole affair is that 3 stations received distress calls from the Indianapolis, all 3 stations dismissed it -- drunk, couldn't be bothered, fake. The government knew this when McVay was tried and classified the reports to prevent them from being used in his defense at the trial. To a man the sailors refused to testify against McVay and all said he had done all in his power to save the ship. It was incompetence concealed by a witch hunt and remains a huge stain on the conduct of the Navy in WWII.

The loss of the Indianapolis redounds throughout the Fleet each and every day at sea. The ship was lost because of a torpedo but many crew were lost because no one knew they were missing. Each day now, every US Navy surface ship at sea files a "PIM report" at noon local time. "Big Navy" always knows where its ships should be sailing, having assigned them a mission and a track to follow. The PIM report, or Plan of Intended Movement report, announces the ship is ahead or behind its planned course by so many hours. Even broadcast in the clear, this offers little information to an adversary, but should a ship again go missing, their absence would be recognized within a day and the search area would be predictable within a much smaller area than an entire ocean. It would be the same as if the ill-fated MH370 had been required to send hourly position reports of its flight over the Pacific. We would now have its location pinpointed. Even sailing without a hostile enemy stalking us, I was grateful to the Indianapolis for giving us and our families the security of a PIM report.

As human beeing - many more Japanese befell the same faith, the same, for their country etc - Wars need to be avaoided and much more thought should be given about why these emotional texts always look the same reagrdless which war it was and who the then bad and good guys were. Juan

"Others surrendered to the moment but did not give up, an important distinction." Some of our returned POW's have touched on a similar idea: simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs. They managed to both spurn any wishful hope and also resist succumbing to despair. We are gifted every day from the sacrifices made by those before us. Eternal thanks unto them, and thanks to Mr. Stanton for writing.

As a young sailor and budding naval crewman, I went thru deep water survival training in San Diego in 1972. I was dumped a few miles off shore with fellow trainees to wait for a helicopter retrieval. At first, it was exciting and fun as I played with my survival gear and reviewed the survival concepts in my head I received in classroom training earlier. After about an hour I started to get nervous and was ready to be picked up. I was retrieved eventually, but floating alone in that big ocean impressed upon me what a profound challenge open ocean survival would be. The mental strength needed, much less physical, would be tremendous. The crew of the Indianapolis are real heroes.

The men and women of the WW2 generation had a moral center and toughness that we will likely never see again in such numbers. Not to say that they were perfect, but the false equivalence of some of what gets put forth in day to day personal behavior as well as from both political parties today, would have them looking for their pitchforks when they were in their prime. It won't change the world, but if we take a few minutes once in a while and contemplate some of the extreme circumstances our predecessors had to navigate (as the author did) , maybe some of the moral clarity they had is acquired.

How does one compare Captain McVay's moral universe and sense of responsibility for his crew with that of our current POTUS's moral universe and sense of responsibility - or absolute depraved disregard - for the people of the country he leads? We live in a new world, with a different culture and set of morals to that of these heroic Americans that sacrificed to make the country and world we have had for 70 years until recently. Will there be a new generation to save us from the current nightmare?

So sorely in need of rescue themselves, the sailors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis could not know that before their ship was torpedoed, they had furthered a development that saved my father's life. A 20-year-old U.S. Navy combat swimmer and underwater demolition diver trained to reconnoiter and blast enemy-held beaches clear of obstacles before U.S. amphibious assaults, he had just been deployed for a planned November 1945 invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands, when the Indianapolis went down. The ship was fresh from delivering the components of the first atomic weapon wielded in war to Tinian, in the Marianas Islands. After "Little Boy" leveled Hiroshima on August 6, and "Fat Boy" demolished much of Nagasaki on August 9, Emperor Hirohito was persuaded to broadcast to his people the news of "a most cruel bomb," and to declare that the war had evolved "not necessarily to Japan's advantage," prompting that nation's surrender and surely sparing my father's life. He was deeply shocked by the loss of the Indianapolis and later immensely relieved that he would not be thrown into the meat grinder of an assault on mainland Japan, and, after the cargo of the Indianapolis was disclosed, forever grateful to her crew. He once told my mother that, if he could have, he would have swum half the Pacific to the rescue of everyone of them.

When people say, we used to win all the time, what happened, they should have to read this story.

Hello Doug! Nice piece on these incredible men... their ordeal... and its aftermath. They've "never had a bad day" since their calamitous encounter with the enemy is so inspirational and remarkable. I recall a line in the film, "Platoon," when the American soldier named "King," is trying to shake to blues out of the lead character, "Pvt. Taylor," played by Charlie Sheen.... King says to Taylor "All you got to do is make it out of here and then every day be like gravy... for the rest of your life... GRAVY!" When I was a middle school social studies teacher at St. Francis Xavier in Petoskey, I used to tell my kids that they've already won the lottery being born where they are and to whom... We all owe such a huge debt of gratitude to who Tom Brokaw called "the greatest generation." We can never pay them back in full... But we can never forget what they did and how they lived their lives...

A good essay. But several captains were court-martialed (and acquitted) for the loss of their ships in the War of 1812, and Captain James Barron was court martially and convicted for the loss of the USS Essex to HMS Leopard in 1807.

What an inspiring essay! Those of us who are the children of the generation that served in World War II know firsthand the character and moral purpose of people like the sailors on the Indianapolis. Their lives were not always easy, but they lived them with dignity and purpose. I am enormously grateful, and indeed lucky, to have been born in this country and to have had parents who never lectured, rarely punished, and showed their children how to live by their own actions. Today we lament the loss of that strong moral core in many of our elected leaders, some of whom demonstrate an absolute, and perhaps even depraved, lack of character and a moral center. Yet I believe that there is hope. I am not particularly religious, so I lack the belief that morality is based only on religion, especially the Christian doctrine of white evangelicals, which actually seems perverted and anti-Christian to me. To me, principled character and a moral core are simply shown by how we live and how we treat other people of all races and beliefs. As citizens and voters, we must insist on and elect people who demonstrate that they too have the character and moral core of the WWII generation.

The most inspirational story I've read here that I can remember. My families were fortunate that all our uncles returned alive from WW II. My oldest uncle's first words to his mother when he came home were, "Mom, I didn't have to kill anyone." A poignant contrast to the leaders of today, who cowardly threaten "fire and fury like the world has never seen before". Such leaders learned and understood nothing from our history, and are deliberately trying to throw away all for which so many made the ultimate sacrifice.