USS Indianapolis Survivor Speaks to Warsaw Students
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Don Beaty is one of the last survivors of the USS Indianapolis.
This morning, the Fort Wayne native spoke to the Warsaw Community High School student body for a Veterans Day convocation.
Warsaw Community Schools Chief Academics Officer David Hoffert introduced Beaty by providing 15 minutes of background on the USS Indianapolis.
“The story of the USS Indianapolis is one of the greatest naval disasters in all of history, and one of the greatest military disasters in all of history,” Hoffert said.
In the 1930s, a lot was going on and not going on in America, Hoffert said, including the Depression. That all changed on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
“On Dec. 8, all the recruiting stations were packed with people who wanted to do something because they felt attacked,” Hoffert said.
Harry Truman became president in 1945. He started the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb. On July 16, 1945, the first test of the atomic bomb was conducted, which turned sand into glass. Truman moved forward.
The USS Indianapolis transported the two atom bombs that would later fall on Japan, but none of the servicemen on the ship knew what they were transporting.
After the ship made the delivery, they sailed on, only to be attacked by a Japanese submarine with two torpedoes. About 300 went down with the ship, with hundreds more dying in the water while waiting five days to be rescued. Only about 300 survived the whole ordeal.
Beaty, one of 317 survivors of the USS Indianapolis disaster, told the school that he grew up in Fort Wayne, graduating from Central High School in 1943, with commencement on June 14. By July 5, he was in the Navy. He was 18 when he joined.
“They needed us bad,” Beaty said. “As a fleet, the Navy was in bad shape.”
Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941. In 1942, he said, “we were getting our butt kicked.”
Beaty said he ended up on the USS Indianapolis in Pearl Harbor, serving eventually as a fire controller.
“USS Indianapolis was a beautiful ship,” Beaty said. “It was a flag ship of President Roosevelt.”
Asked by Hoffert how he managed to survive in the water after the USS Indianapolis went down, Beaty said, “Anyone in a situation like I was, it’s in your mind. You got to take care of yourself. You can’t help your buddies because you have to save your own strength.”
The USS Indianapolis was attacked July 30 just a few minutes past midnight. Beaty said he had just gone on watch when the attacked occurred. He went out and looked over the side. At first, he thought the boilers had blown up because they had some problems with them.
Realizing how bad it was, Beaty told a new recruit they had to get the hell out of there.
The first night of the attack, Beaty said he swam away from the sinking ship as far as he could. Sailors were worried about the suction the sinking ship would create. Beaty said he knew some survivors who made it who went down with the ship and later popped back up.
“When I read books about my ship, I get mad. The Navy plain goofed. ... We were never escorted. We were all alone. We had no equipment for (detecting) subs,” Beaty said.
On the first day, he said, they assumed they would be picked up because they thought the Navy knew where they were. “But they didn’t!” he said.
By day two, things were getting worse.
“Saltwater will kill you. It’ll dehydrate your insides. The more you drink, the more you want,” Beaty said.
The men started going crazy and seeing delusions.
“When you were in the water, talk about your mindset by day three and four,” Hoffert told Beaty.
“You see so many things that upset you that you kind of stay away from them,” Beaty said.
He said they weren’t the best of friends out there, but unlike he’s seen in some Hollywood portrayals, no one ever attacked or murdered each other.
“I was with a buddy of mine. It was nice to be with someone you knew,” Beaty said. “One night he said he was standing on a rock. I went over there and felt around. I told him there was no rock over there. Your mind just goes crazy.”
Some of the Navy sailors just kept swimming and disappeared. Flares were shot at planes flying overhead, but none ever saw the hundreds of bobbing servicemen in the water.
“Later, I found out they weren’t even looking for us,” Beaty said.
He said they knew they couldn’t survive too long because of dehydration and their bodies tiring and lack of food. Then there were the sharks, though Beaty said he doesn’t like to discuss them too much.
“The shark thing to me is exaggerated just a little bit,” Beaty said. “The sharks attacked us, yeah. Mostly what they went after was, when a sailor died, we took his lifejacket off and pushed him away from us. The bodies would go down but popped back up. The most shark attacks I said were dead bodies, in my group anyway.”
It was a miracle the survivors were ever saved at all, Hoffert said. Beaty said a Bomber pilot happened to be flying overhead when he glanced down. At first, he was going to bomb what he thought was an enemy sub. As he got closer, the pilot saw the heads. He landed his plane on the open water and saved who he could. He also radioed for ships to help the rest. Since ships could only go 15 knots, Beaty said it was another full day before they could be picked up.
“Survivors were stretched out for better of a mile,” Beaty said.
In 1960, the survivors began having reunions and acting like best of friends, though they weren’t at the time of the sinking of the ship. Beaty will be 87 in January, and with so few survivors left, the reunions have become annual events.
Asked for a last word of advice, Beaty said, “Get a good education. nothing in this world will get you anywhere like a good education.”
