42 pages • 1 hour read
Pete NelsonLeft for Dead
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Price, 1946-1997”
Many of the men who survived the sinking of the Indianapolis suffered from severe and persistent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Miner had persistent nightmares about his friend Ray dying in his arms. Twible had dreams that the Indianapolis was sailing through his bedroom. He refused to speak about the incident until 1989. Moseley was haunted by the memory of the young boy who fell back into the hatch and drowned; he wished that he had let the young boy climb through the hatch first. Smith, although he appeared as happy and jovial, had recurrent terrifying nightmares about being in shark-infested waters. McCoy, for the rest of his life, heard the screams of men sealed into the sinking ship when the hatches were dogged. Other crew members suffered from Post Traumatic Amnesia, causing them to be disconnected, aloof, and unhappy.
In 1960, McCoy organized a reunion of the survivors. He was able to track down 220 of the 317 survivors. A closed-door session was then held where men confessed, testified, atoned, and apologized. They shared memories and nightmares. All of the men felt that their Captain had been unfairly treated; the men saluted McVay as he arrived, and McVay, overwhelmed, cried at this reception.
McVay received hate mail from families of lost men for the rest of his life. In 1968, when he was 70 years old, McVay died by suicide, shooting himself in the head. The efforts of the survivors to clear his name redoubled after his death. McCoy, chairman of the Indianapolis Survivors’ Association, contacted the President and appealed to senators, and members of Congress. The case was reinvestigated in 1975, and again in 1992, but no results were achieved to exonerate the late Captain McVay.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Boy’s Crusade, May 1992-October 2000”
Hunter Scott, learning of Captain McVay’s guilty verdict and receiving the outpouring of questionnaires, personal accounts, photos, maps, articles, and other memorabilia, felt that he had been “passed a torch, commissioned to right a wrong” by the survivors (152). He hoped that his school project would help to clear the captain’s name. He was devastated to be disqualified at the state level of the competition, but the survivors urged him not to give up. When his project was displayed at Congressman Joe Scarborough’s office, NBC decided to feature Hunter’s campaign as a human-interest story. Interest in the case grew; newspapers in 18 countries covered Hunter’s project and associated campaign to clear McVay’s name. As public interest in the story grew, word of Hunter’s mission traveled far and wide. Globally, individuals began sending Hunter more information on the sinking, which allowed Hunter to further build his case.
With his team of supporters, including senators Joe Scarborough and Julia Carson, and the survivors, Hunter went to Congress hoping to have McVay’s verdict overturned. The bill needed to have sponsors, so Hunter spoke to many politicians and much of the press in Washington to raise awareness of his cause. Numerous senators began to pledge their support. Hunter brought forward a resolution; he wanted to ensure that McVay’s conviction and court martial were omitted from his records. He also sought to give all the survivors a Presidential Unit Citation. At the 105th Congress, the resolution was rejected on the grounds that Congress was prohibited from altering military records.
Hunter and his team worked on the wording of the resolution and introduced differently worded legislation at the 106th Congress. The resolutions were introduced to the House and the Senate in April and May of 1999. The resolution listed the reasons why McVay’s court-martial was unjust, including first-hand accounts from many survivors, and a letter to Hunter from Captain Hashimoto, attesting that his English was strong enough to understand that his testimony had been altered in McVay’s “contrived” trial (161).
Hunter also presented three letters testifying that the Indianapolis’s SOS had been received: The first was received on a harbor examination vessel in Leyte but was dismissed as a hoax. A second man asserted that he had been with the commander at a naval base in Tacloban (in the Philippines), who told the messenger to ignore the SOS unless they received further word. Lastly, an officer on duty—also in Tacloban—was given the SOS information, and immediately dispatched two seagoing tugs to the coordinates. In the morning, the Commodore furiously recalled the tugs, which he believed should not have been dispatched by a lower-ranking officer. In all three cases, information that the Indianapolis’s SOS had been received was suppressed and covered up; it had not been publicly revealed until the three men wrote to Hunter in the 1990s.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Reckoning, September 14 1999”
The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was held on September 14th, 1999. Hunter’s cause was argued by Senator Bob Smith. Eleven survivors had come to the committee, including McCoy, Twible, Kuryla, McGuiggan, and Miner. An esteemed collection of naval representatives defended the verdict from the court-martial in 1945. They were represented by Admiral Donald Pilling, vice chief of naval operations. The decision on the case would be made by Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former naval secretary.
Smith opened by reviewing the facts of the sinking. He emphasized McVay’s exemplary career. Smith emphasized that Hunter and the survivors were not revisionists but that they simply wanted to set the record straight in light of new information. Hunter spoke and emphasized the unanimous response from the survivors to his questionnaire item on McVay’s innocence. Hunter also spoke of the suppressed ULTRA information from SIGINT, McVay’s ignored request for an escort, and the lack of naval response to the missing ship. Lastly, Hunter revealed his new information on the three sources which received the Indianapolis's SOS, including the fact that rescue tugs were recalled by a high-ranking officer and that this information was then suppressed by the navy. Official navy records still indicated that no SOS was received from the sinking vessel.
The representatives of the navy emphasized the principles of accountability and authority, restating their belief that the court-martial was fair and that the court of inquiry was correct in placing “serious blame” on Captain McVay for failing to zigzag (173). They did admit that the Indianapolis had been denied access to important intelligence (via ULTRA from SIGINT) at the time of the incident but maintained that McVay was nevertheless guilty of an error in his professional judgment.
Smith attacked this case, suggesting that the law was being unequally applied, as no other captain was tried at a court-martial for failing to zigzag. Furthermore, Smith problematized the argument that the sinking of the ship was irrelevant to the prosecution’s case: If the ship had not sunk, McVay’s choice to zigzag or not zigzag would not have been questioned. It was clear, Smith suggested, that McVay was scapegoated for this loss of life, disguised beneath a shaky argument about the need to zigzag. Smith drew attention to the semantics of naval “mistakes” being labeled “weaknesses,” as opposed to McVay’s “mistakes” being branded as negligence and errors in professional judgment. Smith proposed that the principles of accountability were not being applied equally to all, and that therefore McVay’s court-martial was morally wrong. Senator Warner ultimately concurred with Smith, Hunter, and the survivors. The new evidence had changed his mind.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Exoneration, October 12 2000-July 11 2001”
On October 12th, 2000, a terrorist attack on a US ship in Yemen resulted in the deaths of seventeen American sailors. An investigation found that the captain acted correctly based on the information available to him and that he didn’t have the correct information and support necessary to avoid the tragedy. This case suggested that the navy was taking more responsibility for the systemic nature of tragedies, rather than taking the easier, but dishonest, route of simply blaming the captain.
On the same day in Washington, the senate passed Hunter’s Resolution 26. Resolution 48 had been passed earlier in the week in the House of Representatives. It was decided that it was the “sense of Congress” that American people should recognize Captain McVay’s lack of culpability for the sinking of the Indianapolis and the deaths of the men aboard. Furthermore, it was acknowledged that certain information was unavailable or suppressed during the court-martial.
Hunter met with President Bush and the record of McVay’s court-martial was expunged. A copy of this Senate resolution was inserted into McVay’s file, exonerating him. On April 21st, 2001, the Navy offered the survivors of the Indianapolis a Navy Unit Citation.
Chapters 11-14 Analysis
The details of the survivors’ struggles, including horrific Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, persistent nightmares, and McVay’s eventual death, emphasize the importance of Hunter’s campaign to see the bravery of these men properly acknowledged. Nelson validates Hunter’s campaign through detailing the struggles and memories of the veterans. Nelson again touches on the recurrent theme of the horrors of war, drawing attention to the way the men are affected for decades to come by the horrors they experienced. Furthermore, these details build further suspense as Hunter’s trip to Washington approaches, creating momentum for the outcome as to whether these wrongs of the past can be righted.
Hunter demonstrates perseverance and determination in his quest for justice—two major themes of the book—in his careful compiling of an ever-growing portfolio of evidence and in his meetings with the media, senators, and members of Congress. He is not deterred by the rejection of the resolutions in the 105th meeting of Congress but instead sets to work with his team to reword the resolutions for the 106th meeting. This perseverance is inspired by the perseverance of the USS Indianapolis survivors. It is highly symbolic that Hunter ultimately presents his findings at the Senate Armed Services Committee with 11 of the survivors present to witness this event, who testify alongside him.
Hunter’s address at the Senate Armed Services Committee comprises one of the climaxes of the story, especially when he presents the never-before-known information about the received SOS messages and subsequent cover-up by the navy. Senator Warner uses a naval metaphor to concede that he was convinced by Hunter’s evidence: Hunter and the survivors’ testimony had “righted his course” (179). Hunter’s quest for justice is satisfactorily achieved in the exoneration of Captain McVay and in the Navy offering the survivors of the Indianapolis a Navy Unit Citation.
Hunter’s legacy can be seen in the comparatively fair treatment of Commander Kirk S. Lippold, captain of the USS Cole, which was attacked in a terrorist attack in Aden, Yemen in 2001. While Admiral Robert J. Natter, in charge of investigating the bombing, could identify 30 additional precautions which Lippold could have undertaken to protect his ship from terrorist attacks, it was ultimately decided that Lippold had “acted correctly, given the information that was made available to him” (183). Natter concluded that “the commanding officer did not have the specific intelligence, focused training, appropriate equipment, or on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, planner assault on his ship;” “the system – all of us – did not equip this skipper for success” (183).
Nelson cites this example to illustrate the way that Hunter’s efforts with McVay’s case have helped to establish the “notion that accountability extends beyond the captain of a ship to include his immediate superiors” (183). Unlike in the case of Captain McVay, the entire system around Commander Lippold was examined. Therefore, Hunter has helped to establish a precedent that responsibility must extend beyond the captain of the ship, to include superiors and the systems which they implement.
