Friday, Feb. 8, 2002 | 4:57 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
The scuttlebutt aboard the USS Indianapolis in the waning days of World War II was that its top secret cargo was 50,000 rolls of scented toilet paper for Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
No one knew the cargo would change history, and most of the crew would never learn.
After delivering a crate that contained the atomic bomb "Little Boy" that was later dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, the Indianapolis was hit by two Japanese torpedoes and sunk in what became one of the most disastrous incidents in U.S. naval history.
The ship sank in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in under 12 minutes. More than 300 of the 1,199-member crew died in the initial blast and hundreds more perished as they spent four days floating in life preservers under a blistering sun in the shark-infested Pacific Ocean.
In what would become a black mark in the service's history, the Navy had lost track of the vessel's whereabouts and did not dispatch rescuers. Only 317 men survived.
Critics and survivors say the Navy covered up the incident and court-martialed the skipper, Capt. Charles McVay, to sweep the tragedy under the rug.
"The Navy just made a boatload of mistakes," said 77-year-old Paul Murphy, one of only 114 remaining survivors from the Indianapolis -- a resident of Broomfield, Colo., who is visiting friends in Las Vegas this weekend.
"We had asked for an escort and were told it wasn't necessary. Not even McVay knew what we were carrying. And the Navy failed to tell us that the Underhill was sunk in the path we were taking two days earlier. I was lucky to have survived because as it turns out sharks don't like Irishmen."
In the years since, Murphy, chairman of the USS Indianapolis Survivors Organization, and others fought to clear the captain's name and tell the truth about the incident.
After dropping off its historic cargo on the island of Tinian on July 26, 1945, the ship was ordered to the Philippines. Along the way Imperial Japanese Navy Submarine I-58, under the command of Machitsura Hashimoto, honed in on the zig-zagging vessel, hitting it with torpedoes at the bow and dead center.
The ship sank before it could get off an effective SOS, leaving hundreds in the Pacific, among them Murphy and his friend, Thomas Leon Barksdale, both third class petty officers.
Murphy said he survived by relaxing and praying.
"To fill the time, I mostly passed out -- stayed unconscious," he said. "What kept me alive is first I didn't drink the salt water like a number of men did. Also, my mother was in the hospital at the time and I felt I needed to survive for her to survive, and she did. That thought just kept me going."
Murphy said the sun was so hot he prayed for darkness, but at night the water was so chilling he prayed for sunrise. Finally, an American plane, scouting the area for Japanese subs, spotted the oil slick, debris and men bobbing in the water and rescuers were called to the scene.
Murphy was one of 151 men picked up by the USS Bassett. Barksdale never made it aboard a rescue vessel.
"I'll never forget the day the chaplain called me into his office to tell me my brother was missing -- it was Aug. 15, VJ Day," said Andy Barksdale, 75, of Brownsburg, Ind., who was two years younger than Thomas and training in the states for the Army Air Corps.
"What they didn't tell me was that his body had been found 10 days earlier and that he was buried at sea. It really upset a lot of us how the Navy handled the incident and kept the public in the dark about what had happened. It always makes you think if rescuers were sent sooner Leon may have survived."
It was not until September 1945 relatives were notified of the deaths.
As the truth started to surface about how the crew of the Indianapolis was left in a lurch -- and as the Navy tried to cover up the facts -- McVay became a scapegoat.
Although an estimated 400 American vessels were sunk during World War II, only McVay was deemed solely responsible for the loss of his ship. He later committed suicide.
But much of McVay's crew never believed he was to blame. Murphy was one of many veterans who went to Washington, D.C., in the mid-1990s to fight to clear McVay's name.
Even an aging Hashimoto testified that there was nothing McVay or anyone could have done to save the ship. Hashimoto died in October 2000 in Japan. Last August, Hashimoto's granddaughter and her family -- all U.S. citizens -- were guests at the USS Indianapolis Survivors Organization convention.
Last October, Congress adopted the National Defense Authorization Act, which read in part, "Captain McVay's military record should now reflect that he is exonerated for the loss of the USS Indianapolis."
"It was the right thing to do," Barksdale said. "As a relative of one of his crew, I never believed McVay was to blame."
Murphy said he does not believe any American military personnel will ever go through anything like he endured again because of the changes in policy that were made because of the Indianapolis incident.
Barksdale said he too believes in this highly electronic age that such a tragedy of any military branch losing track of a large group won't happen again: "We learned not to ignore things -- not to assume that the ship had been given other orders as a reason for it not arriving in port on time."
Murphy, who after the war became a geologist and manufacturing representative, said as a survivor of such an incident "you ask yourself many times why me? I was no better than anyone who died, why did I live?
"I believe six little words answer that: All gave some, some gave all."
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