KMC Forums - On this day in 1945...

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"USS Indianapolis (CL/CA-35) was a Portland-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy, named for the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. Launched in 1931, the vessel served as the flagship for the commander of Scouting Force 1 for eight years, then as flagship for Admiral Raymond Spruance in 1943 and 1944 while he commanded the Fifth Fleet in battles across the Central Pacific during World War II.

At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 316 survived. The sinking of Indianapolis resulted in the greatest single loss of life at sea, from a single ship, in the history of the US Navy."

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If you're only concerned with happy endings...

Captain Hashimoto of the sub that sank the Indianapolis helped exonerate the captain of the US Navy ship on charges blaming him for its sinking.

He later became a Shinto priest and met with the survivors of the attack in 1990, stating:

"I came here to pray with you for your shipmates whose deaths I caused," to which survivor Giles McCoy simply responded: "I forgive you."

In 1999, he assisted the surviving crew of the Indianapolis in attempting to exonerate McVay of blame for the ship's sinking, writing a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee in which he stated, just as he had more than five decades earlier, that even if the Indianapolis had been zigzagging, there would have been no difference: "I would have been able to launch a successful torpedo attack against his ship whether it had been zigzagging or not." Regarding McVay's conviction, Hashimoto wrote:

Our peoples have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its consequences. Perhaps it is time your peoples forgave Captain McVay for the humiliation of his unjust conviction.

Hashimoto died at the age of 91 on 25 October 2000, five days before a resolution to posthumously exonerate Captain McVay was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.