I was so happy and I was, I just loved the Navy. I always used to love seeing the pictures of the fleet out in the ocean when they were in formation, all the ships. And it just ran chills through me. And that's what I wanted, to be in the Navy.

So anyway, I was on the Indianapolis. I got into a section there, in the division. I was the fourth division, fourth section. It was the 5-inch, 25 guns and there was a deck division. And I worked my way up from apprentice seaman to a third-class petty officer, which was a coxswain. And that was in the bosun's rank. And I trained from down the magazine, the gun mounts. Put the men to work, managed and did knot tying, splicing and all that.

We just maintained the ship and then I ended up in 5-inch director fire that was just above the bridge up forward. And back aft was another director where I stood my watch. It was sky aft. And skyforward is my battle station. That would direct the 5-inch guns to wherever we pointed or trained, and we would set the fuses on those shells and all they had to do on the gun mounts was load it, you know, and we did the firing from out there. We had range-finder, fuse-setter, just everything up there to gyroscope to keep the gun on an even keel and that was my battle station.

The Sinking
(The night of the sinking) was Sunday. And I went to church and the chaplain was Father (Thomas) Conway and he'd run the Catholic mass and then he would have the Protestant mass or service after that. I was a churchgoer before I went into the Navy so I did keep it up when I was in the service. And that night I went on watch the 8 to 12 midnight. So I was up in sky aft on watch, and I was just getting relieved just before midnight.

It was one of these nights that it was a peek-a-boo moon. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. And then the moon would come out from behind the clouds and then it would light up the area again. And then it would get behind another cloud and it would be dark. So I got off a watch, went down below decks and got a cup of coffee and it was too warm down below so I went topside and I took the cup of coffee with me and I met Paul Knoll. He was another coxswain in my division. So him and I went up on the hangar deck ... We were looking over (the side) and drinking coffee.

And we even commented on how dark it was. And then the moon would come out. Of course, we quit zigzagging when we were on watch, so we knew that and so we were still going on straight course. You could tell by the wake. All the phosphorus going up behind the ship. So we figured, well, we'll stay up on the hangar deck because it was so warm down below and we would sleep on the deck. We used to do that quite often. We'd just take our shoes off and we'd just lay down on the deck by the bulkhead, that's the wall. Put our shoes under our head as a pillow and go to sleep.

Being at that age you could sleep anywhere, I went to sleep and the next thing I know there was a tremendous explosion. It stung my whole body on that steel deck. Paul Knoll and I were flying up in the air. We landed on our feet. And we put our shoes on and then there was a second tremendous explosion and again we went sailing up in the air. And I looked forward to my battle station and it was all flames and I figured, well, the front part of the ship is hit pretty bad. So I stayed right on that No. 1 gun mount. Paul Knoll and I went and we started to man that.

So we loaded and trained the guns out at sea side, and of course there was no more fire coming in. We didn't know who it was -- if we were hit by, you know, aircraft or another ship or we hit a mine. (We didn't know if) a submarine hit us or we didn't know if the boilers blew cause we made such a terrific speed run from California to Pearl Harbor and then from Pearl Harbor to Tinian, when we delivered the atomic bomb.

"I'll See You Later"
We were on the gun mount and we waited for orders. And there wasn't any. We didn't even get the general quarters. But everybody seemed to be at their battle stations. We just were waiting and the ship was starting to list to starboard, the right side of the ship where we got hit. They blew the bow off and, and hit us amidships, where it carried the powder mags and stuff. And I was on the hangar deck with Paul and we were talking. "So it looks like we maybe have to go back into the yards for repairs." We really didn't know how bad we were damaged, 'cause we didn't go up forward. We stayed back aft of the hanger deck, the quarter deck where the second torpedo hit.

But there were many men that were burned and wounded. So I cut down some life jackets, and we gave them to the men -- to the wounded -- and we helped put them on. And Paul said, "Mike, we better grab a jacket for ourselves." So we put on a life jacket and then somebody come by and they said, prepare to abandon ship. And so then, then somebody said, go on the boat deck to release rafts. Well I was in charge of the boat deck, so I told Paul, I said, " I'll see you later."

And I went down to the next deck and over to the port side. And there was rafts that were tied to the stanchion. So usually you pull the pins that releases them. There were big 25-man rafts. But I couldn't pull the pins because the ship was listing and it was up against the iron post stanchion, and these pins were stuck in there so there is rope that holds it. So I took my knife out and I cut them all lose, figuring they'd all come up when the ship goes down.

So then it was really tilting and listing real bad to starboard, and so I told this [Ricardo] Ramirez -- him and I were the only ones left after we tried to shove these rafts off -- I said, "Let's go to the high side and try to get off." But I couldn't get to the high side. The ship was listing so bad I started sliding down toward the starboard. There was a line or a piece of rope that was there, secured to something. I hung onto that and, and I just hung on so the ship started the real listing. It was laying on its side and I was hanging onto this line and the deck was right alongside of me and then the ship started to roll over and then the deck was up above my head.

And I was just hanging on this line. And so I was very frightened, but still I was thinking of what I should do. I said, well, when I go down I'll inhale all the air I can keep in my lungs and kick down and out and swim to my left side, because the superstructure was on the right side. Didn't want to get hung up on that. So as she was going down and I was going down in the water, I took all the air I could hold. I inhaled and I held my breath.

In the Water
As she went on top of me, I put my hands and feet on the deck and shoved myself down and out to my left side. And I started swimming underwater. And she just sucked me back, the suction was kind of strong. And I kicked down and again and I started to swim underneath, and it just sucked me back. I couldn't hold my breath any more and I started to drink that, the water started hitting me.

Like they say, you know, you see your life go before you. I seen my mother, my dad, my six sisters and a brother. And the street I lived on, Homer Street in Chicago. And I said the Act of Contrition. I felt I was going to die. And I blacked out.

And the next thing I remember I was up to the surface. I don't know how long I was down or when it released me. I still today, I don't know how (I survived).

And I seen the ship going down. The stern was sticking up and there were men still hanging on and the ship was going down for the last time. And, and we were in the water at night trying to get everybody. I got by a raft and there was a young man helped me in and he said, "Wow." It was one of my seamen. It might have been one of the rafts I cut loose, I guess. And I barfed up the oil and water that I had swallowed and then we start hollering. The moon was out and it would get dark and light and we tried to get all the people we could find around us by this raft. And we figured somebody would be there in the morning to rescue us.

So the next morning we seen some more survivors. And we there was three more rafts that we got in the group. And we got all these people around us and put the wounded in the rafts and some hanging on the outside and then we stayed floating like that and figuring we were going to be picked up.

We had no water, nothing to eat. There was no first aid kit. All the survival gear was gone and so we just didn't have anything. So we figured every day somebody would pick us up, but every day went by and the nights were cold and the days were hot. And I had the people cut their shirttails off and soaked and put them on their heads during the day, 'cause the sun was very hot and so they wouldn't get sun stroke.

And the sharks came around and did their thing and, and the men died of, of exposure and burns and some after so many days they start getting delirious. "Let's go down below." They'd say there was fresh water there, and they'd drink it. And we tried to tell them not to do that, as much as we were so thirsty. I mean, our mouths were just so dry our lips were swollen and cracked and our tongue was all dry and you started choking 'cause you had no saliva going down. And we prayed and thought of home and whatever kept you alive.

I just didn't want to give up. I said, " I'll never give up." And those that will never get picked up, well they just didn't make it. But you just have to have faith and you have to have a positive attitude, I guess, to survive something like that.

Going Home
I got discharged in January of 1946 and I came home. I think I took the train home. And I got discharged right there from the hospital and reported to Chicago and was sent home, 'cause I lived right there in Chicago. Came home and tried to get back to civilian life again.

It was hard trying to get adjusted. I waited for, you know, some of my friends that went into the service with me. We spent a lot of [time] telling war stories and it was nice to see each other again. Some were wounded. Some came through without a scratch. And I don't think we lost any of our group, you know, the club I used to belong to when we left for the service.

I went and found a job and had a few problems of stuff coming back, all these different things that happened to me in the service. And I then I met Lorraine and we got engaged and we got married. We raised three children and now we've got five grandchildren. Lorraine of course was in the military also. She was in the WAVs when I met her and then after our first child she had to leave the reserves. And so after we raised the three kids, she went into the Air Force and became a master sergeant. She retired as a master sergeant after 20 years. She was in the Persian Gulf, the oldest soldier there. And she volunteered to go there. And so we've been together in all those years. It was 48 years in May. So we're hoping to make 50. So that's about our civilian life.

Capt. McVay
I just knew Capt. McVay from his actions. I didn't know him personally. I'd give him a message a few times that was given to me to give to the captain, and usually you wouldn't give it directly to the captain. You would always give it to his aide. Everybody knew about McVay and he was a really pretty good guy. The guys were fishing back aft. He'd walk up there and ask them, you know, "How is fishing?" And he did talk to some of them, not to me personally but he did to some of the fellows there and you know they'd break out the fishing gear and (he'd) be out there fishing. Capt. McVay was well-liked and he ran a good ship.

We were the flagship of the 5th Fleet. We carried Adm. (Raymond) Spruance and his staff, so we had to be on the ball. We were shipshape. We kept a neat ship and all the men had to be in their dungarees and sleeves rolled down, hats squared off. We just weren't like on some of the other ships; they could wear shorts and kind of run around not shaven and that. We shaved and were in good shape.

And we were on a few invasions with him. He handled the ship well and gave orders. And we all liked him very much. And of course we found out that he survived and this was great, we were happy about that and then our first reunion we asked Capt. McVay to come to our reunion. And he did, in 1960.

I was very upset that they did this to him. How could they blame him for a ship being lost? And then a Japanese commander testifying. They brought this commander Hashimoto to testify, and of course he helped the captain, because he said that he would have sunk us even if we zigzagged. It didn't make any difference, and he fired six torpedoes at us and two of them hit us. It's doing his job.

But I think it was a bad thing to bring the enemy to testify against a Navy officer, you know, a captain of a ship that was lost. (Out of) 300 and some ships that were sunk, he was the only captain that ever was court-martialed in losing a ship. And we were in combat, you know, so it was kind of hard to understand. But you know there were some people wanted to get him punished because there was such a tremendous loss of life. They tried to blame that on him. And you know then all the suffering and the sharks and all that, that took many lives.

So anyway, the captain went through this trial and he was found guilty of not zigzagging. And he lost 100 points for advancement in his rating. And so he couldn't be in charge of any other ship after that. His father was an admiral, and he had ambitions to become an admiral. And he would have been a good one, too. And so he just, he took these points and got in charge of some Naval base on the East Coast and he served out his time.

And he like I say, he came to our reunion in 1960. Him and his wife. And we all went to the airport in Indianapolis. And we met him and we all were side boys. We saluted him and hugged him and he was very, very happy that we all felt that way. And there was not one man or one survivor that thought that he was guilty of what he did by losing the ship. Nobody there.