And ice cream. The boys could eat about twenty-five gallons of ice cream in a week, which the galley’s cooks kept stored in walk-in freezers. Their favorite flavors were peppermint and tropical passion. Ice cream was so loved by sailors that mess-hall cooks ran an ice cream parlor aboard the
Indy,
called a “gedunk” stand. In the military, everything had a nickname. A beer parlor was called a “slop chute.” Candy bars were named “pogey bait.” A Dear John letter was also known as a “green banana,” and the advance of a sailor’s pay was called a “dead horse.” But the men of the USS
Indianapolis
had no easy slang to describe the way most of them felt about leaving San Francisco.
Under the feet of marine private Giles McCoy, the ship’s gray, steel quarterdeck, located in the middle of the ship, hummed. The low-wave frequency came up through his bones, shook him, told him: something’s in the wind today, boy.
At Mare Island, after Captain McVay’s announcement that they would sail this morning to Hunters Point, marine captain Edward Parke had gathered his detachment of thirty-nine marines and explained that at Hunters Point they were about to assume special guard duties of the utmost importance.
An imposing man in his early thirties, with sandy hair, a barrel chest, and blue eyes that some of his men said pierced like daggers (more than one thought he bore a striking resemblance to Burt Lancaster), Parke had said nothing more; that was all they would need to know.
A marine detachment aboard a navy ship sleeps in its own separate compartment—away from the ship’s crew—and operates the onboard brig, or jail; fires the guns during battle; and provides all-around security for the ship. As part of this group, Private McCoy was eager for the opportunity to be part of something big. He looked up to Captain Parke, a hero who had fought at Guadalcanal and earned the Purple Heart. Parke sometimes let him tag along on liberty; before setting out for a night on the town, he would unpin his insignia identifying him as an officer but then warn McCoy: “Don’t think this means I’ll cut you any slack back on the ship. Because I won’t.” McCoy felt he always knew where he stood with Parke.
Before being assigned to the
Indy,
in November 1944, McCoy had spent two months as part of a marine assault force on the island of Peleliu, a hellish, confusing place where he contracted malaria. The fighting had been vicious, and often it was hand to hand. The dead bodies piled up around McCoy and would hiss and explode in the hot sun as he hunkered in the mud and coral, praying the mortars would miss him. Even the battle itself had a strange but seemingly apt name: Operation Stalemate. At unexpected moments, the Japanese soldiers would mount banzai charges, bayonets fixed, running in crazed sprints straight
for McCoy and his First Marine Division buddies. The marines would shoot and shoot, but still some of the Japanese would make it all the way to the marines’ defense line. It was an experience McCoy didn’t like to talk about.
Now, after docking at Hunters Point, McCoy stood belowdecks in his tiny compartment before a stainless steel mirror—on warships, broken glass is a hazard—staring at the face that had become his own during his thirteen-month tour of duty. At eighteen, he had the sharp eyes of a boy but the quick grimace of an old man. He fastidiously dry-shaved, ran a comb through his black wavy hair, did a quick re-buff of his duty shoes, and bounded up the ladder, or stairs, topside for duty.
Usually, Hunters Point harbored some fifteen warships, all in various stages of repair and resupply. But this morning the shipyard was empty; only a few seagulls screeched into the pale blue sky. Accompanying them were the musical lap and ping of black water against the
Indy
’s gray, steel hull. Along the rail of the ship, the crew milled and stared at the wharf, as if trying to read signals from the silent tableau of warehouses, camouflaged trucks, and empty piers.
Approaching Captain Parke, McCoy requested an inspection of his appearance before assuming duty. Parke checked the razor creases in McCoy’s pants, the angle of his cover, or hat, atop his head.
“You may proceed, McCoy.”
“Yes, sir!”
A dock crew had wheeled a gangway up to the
Indy’s
quarterdeck, which served as its main entry and exit. McCoy stepped down and assumed his position of duty: chest out, hands at his sides, a loaded Colt .45 hanging from his canvas duty belt, one round in the chamber.
Until given further orders, he was to let no man onto the ship who was not authorized. He was scheduled to get off duty at noon; because of the mid-morning relocation to
Hunters Point, his watch was slightly abbreviated. He hoped the cargo came on before he was relieved, however.
The
Indy
was operating in a battle-ready state known as Condition Able, which meant that the boys were on watch for four hours and then off for four, an exhausting, relentless schedule that left little time for sleep and induced in the boys a dreamlike state of jittery wakefulness. And yet, McCoy felt lucky to be aboard the
Indy.
On a ship, marines liked to say, no one was ever shooting at you, at least at close range. The competitiveness between the two military branches was good-hearted but persistent. Sailors called marines “gyrenes,” and marines called sailors “swabbies.” New officers were mocked as “shave-tails.” (There was no end to the nicknames: Engineers were called “snipes”; the bridge crew was known as “skivvy wavers,” because they waved flags while executing semaphore, a silent means of communication between ships at sea; and members of gunnery crews were called “gunneys.”)
But as sailors liked to tell those who thought navy life was comfortable, “When the battle-shit hits the fan on a ship, you can’t dig a hole and hide. You have to stand and take it.”
Private McCoy had been pulling temporary guard duty at the main entrance gate on Mare Island when he received the call to return. It was a job he liked; he enjoyed the way the amputees, many of them his age and veterans of the invasion of Iwo Jima that had taken place almost five months earlier, hooted and hollered as they raced their wheelchairs down the steep hill leading from the hospital to the guard shack.
He was easy on them when they tried smuggling booze into the marine barracks. They hid the bottles in the hollow of their fake legs, and McCoy could hear them clunking around inside—step, shuffle, clunk-step—as they approached.
“For crissakes,” he told them, “why don’t you wrap those
things in towels? Your sergeant catches you, you’ll be court-martialed!” They smiled, and he let them pass.
McCoy marveled at how these boys had accepted the awful things that had happened to them in war; he wondered how he would react in a similar situation. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.
But McCoy had faith in his ship. The
Indy
was a vessel on which he was proud to serve—the honored flagship of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which was under the command of Admiral Raymond Spruance. The
Indy
was a heavy cruiser, a fast thoroughbred of the sea, whose job it was to run and gun enemy emplacements on land and blow enemy planes from the sky. She was a floating city, with her own water plant, laundry, tailor, butcher, bakery, dentist’s office, photo lab, and enough weaponry to lay siege to downtown San Francisco.
The first time Private McCoy rounded the corner at the Mare Island navy yard and saw the
Indy,
he was awestruck. God, he thought, now that’s a ship!
She towered 133 feet from her waterline to the tip of her radar antennae, called “bedsprings” because of their appearance, and she cast an alluring silhouette. McCoy couldn’t help thinking that if she were a woman—and sailors have traditionally thought of their ships as women—she’d be wearing a gray dress cut low in the back and looking coyly over a cocked shoulder. But there was a saying about ships like the
Indy:
“She wears paint, but she carries powder”—meaning gunpowder. Translation: she was not a lady to be trifled with.
Commissioned in 1932, she had been chosen by Roosevelt as his ship of state. He liked to stand at the stern on her wide fantail, above the massive, churning propellers, while smoking a cigar and watching the New York skyline drift by during a ceremonial review of America’s naval fleet. From her deck, he also toured South America, docking in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, on a prewar “good neighbor” tour. (During the trip, Roosevelt dined on fresh venison
and watched Laurel and Hardy’s
Our Relations
on a movie screen painted on one of the ship’s bulkheads especially for the occasion.) The
Indy
trained at war exercises off the coast of Chile and became the flagship of the navy’s scouting fleet. With her hull painted bone-white, her afterdecks spanned by sparkling awnings, an aura of luck and privilege had enveloped the ship.
McCoy loved to boast that at 610 feet long, she was the size of nearly two football fields, but she was smaller and nimbler than battleships, like the USS
South Dakota,
whose job it was to bomb enemy inshore installations with their gargantuan 16-inch guns. The
Indy
was bigger and better armed than destroyers, which hunted submarines with underwater sonar gear and provided at-sea security for ships like the
Indianapolis.
In battle formation, a cruiser flanked the more ponderous aircraft carriers and battleships and directed anti-aircraft fire at enemy planes, while the flotilla itself was prowled by vigilant destroyer escorts. Ever since the seventeenth century, navies had relied on ships that could strike quickly, raid enemy lines, draw fire, and then muster the speed to sail away before being sunk, leaving the heavy work of shore destruction to battleships. At her top speed of 32.75 knots, few ships, enemy or friendly, could keep up with the USS
Indianapolis.
Yet, as McCoy understood, what a cruiser gives up for its astonishing speed is armor: the
Indy
was protected midships with only three to four inches of steel (battleships carried an average of thirteen inches), while her decks were laid with two inches. In her day, she had been the queen of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s naval fleet. But on this morning in July, she was considered old, past her prime. Newer cruisers were not as beautiful, but they were bigger, faster, and better armored.
Around 2 P.M., the PA crackled to life, calling all hands to their stations.
Dr. Haynes, standing on the forecastle deck, located on the bow, could see planes circling overhead in tight patterns, keeping careful watch. The dock was lined with some ten marines carrying automatic weapons. Whatever was coming on board, Haynes figured it was hot property. The tall physician waited, pensively smoking his cigar.
Shortly, two army trucks thundered to a stop on the wharf, and a detachment of armed marines silently stepped down. Haynes watched as the canvas flaps on the rear of the trucks were parted. Two large items emerged: the first was an enormous wooden crate, measuring some five feet high, five feet wide, and fifteen feet long. Then came a metal canister, painted black, about knee-high and eighteen inches wide. Two marines struggled to lift it down from the truck.
A line from a crane aboard the
Indy
snaked down above the crate, which was secured with straps. Haynes’s eyes followed the crate as it was lifted skyward and set securely in the port hangar, a fifty-square-foot-wide area normally used for observation planes. There the crate was lashed down.
Following a marine guard, the bearers of the ominous-looking receptacle struggled up the gangway. The heavy canister hung between them on a metal pole.
1
They marched with it to the flag lieutenant’s cabin located in a part of the ship near the bow called officer’s country, a place
strictly off-limits to enlisted men. (The flag lieutenant, a member of Admiral Spruance’s staff, was absent from the ship.) Accompanying them were two army officers, Major Robert Furman and Captain James Nolan, who announced themselves as artillery officers. Haynes didn’t recognize them. He thought they were nervous-looking men—Nolan, in particular.
A few minutes later, Captain Nolan reported to Captain McVay on the bridge. He explained that with the aid of the ship’s welder, they had fastened the canister to the deck of the flag lieutenant’s cabin, and that it had been padlocked. Nolan would hold the key throughout the ship’s journey.
McVay thought for a moment and said, “I didn’t think we were going to use biological warfare in this war.” He was clearly fishing for further information.
Captain Nolan left the bridge without explanation.
Looking down from the bridge, about forty-five feet above the main deck, Captain McVay surveyed the ship’s state of disarray. A noontime farewell luncheon held on board with his officers and their wives had gone off hurriedly but without a hitch; now, with the cargo safely loaded, he could at last turn his attention to more pressing concerns, such as his ship’s seaworthiness.
What the captain didn’t know was that another cruiser, the USS
Pensacola,
which had been moored next to the
Indianapolis
at Mare Island’s Pier 22S, had originally been chosen to set sail in their stead. But a week earlier, after an overhaul and refitting, she had failed her sea trials when her engines had quit in especially rough seas. Immediately, a search had begun for a replacement ship. And the spotlight had fallen on the
Indy
.