Comments/Citation:
Navy Boatswain’s Mate First Class Vincent Udell Anderson, 30, of Santa Cruz, California, was lost at sea near the Philippines during World War II on July 30, 1945, about two weeks before World War II ended.
He perished in the sinking of USS Indianapolis (CA-35). The cruiser had engaged in battles at New Guinea, the Aleutian Islands, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, the Philippines, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where it was heavily damaged by a Japanese kamikaze on March 31, 1945.
On July 26, 1945, Indianapolis completed a top-secret, high-speed trip to deliver to the U.S. Army Air Forces Base on Tinian Island components of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. It sailed from Guam on July 28, headed for Leyte in the Philippines with a crew of almost 1,200.
At 12:15 a.m. on July 30, Indianapolis was struck on its starboard side by two type-95 torpedoes, one in the bow and one amidships, from Japanese submarine I-58, captained by Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto. To add to the damage, the ship’s store of aviation fuel exploded. Indianapolis listed heavily and rolled over completely before sinking bow first after only 15 minutes, taking approximately 300 sailors down with her. The remaining 900 were set adrift with a few lifeboats and many without life jackets.
Many of those in the water had been injured and died soon after going in the water, and all suffered from a lack of food and water, dehydration, the hot sun during the day and hypothermia at night, continued exposure to salt water and oil, and shark attacks. Some killed themselves or other survivors because of various states of delirium and hallucinations.
The Navy was unaware of the ship's sinking until survivors were spotted almost four days later. Air and surface units capable of rescue operations were dispatched to the scene and rescued 317 survivors, meaning that 879 died at sea, either in the ship or in the water. It is impossible to know if Vincent died when the ship went down or in the water afterwards.
The Navy was reluctant to release news about the disaster because it wanted to notify families and because of fears that it would reflect negatively on the Navy. Press coverage was dominated by news of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 9. President Harry Truman announced the end of the war on August 14, 1945, the same day that the Navy released a 25-word statement about the fate of Indianapolis. Families were notified then that their loved one had been declared missing in action, but they did not receive official confirmation of his death until later.
On August 15, the Associated Press news service told the story of the last minutes of Indianapolis, based on interviews with Captain McVay and other survivors. Fifteen minutes after the torpedoes struck, the ship had rolled over a full 90 degrees, and McVay was washed off the sinking ship. “I saw two life rafts within twenty feet, with nobody aboard,” McVay recounted. “I got one, then secured the other.” He thought that he and others who made their way to his rafts were the only survivors. “We didn’t hear anyone call for help and thought we were the only survivors.” They saw plenty of planes overhead while they were in the water, but “wondered how in God’s name they could miss us. They didn’t know to look for survivors.”
In early October McVay wrote to the families of every sailor who had died on the ship. “Nothing I can say,” McVay said, “will lighten the burden which is yours at this time, but I do want you to know that your son had done his part in the team work which made the Indianapolis an efficient fighting part of the fleet.”
McVay was court martialed and convicted of negligence, the only Navy captain in history punished for the loss of a ship. Interest in the Indianapolis story was rekindled in 1956 when a survivor published an account of the tragedy in a national magazine, and the 1975 movie “Jaws” caused a greater resurgence of interest. In October 2000, the U.S. Congress exonerated McVay and awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to all crew members, living and dead. Wreckage of Indianapolis was discovered on the ocean bed, 18,000 feet below the surface, on August 19, 2017.
Vincent Anderson was born in 1914 in Tennessee and traveled across the U.S. before settling in California. He was the oldest child of William Howard Anderson (1886-1960), a farmer, and Annie Belle Simmons Anderson (1890-1979), a homemaker. He had four brothers – James, William, Roy and Charlie – and three sisters – Estelle, Annie Mae and Geraldine. The family lived on Franciscan Street in San Antonio, Texas, in 1920 and at 54 Elk Street in Santa Cruz, California, in 1930.
He enlisted in the Navy in San Francisco on October 4, 1938, and joined Indianapolis on December 31 of that year.
Vincent is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines and at the USS Indianapolis Memorial in Indianapolis, Indiana.
SOURCES
Findagrave.com
Ancestry.com
Fold3.com
USS Indianapolis Story
Official Records
Stories Behind the Stars:
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/), a national effort of volunteers to write stories of all 407,000+ of the U.S. World War II fallen on Together We Served and on Fold3.. Eventually, a smartphone app will be available to allow people to visit a war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen soldier's name and read their story. If you would like to help with the project, you can find details on the website.
If you have details, photos or corrections for this story, please email me at [email protected].
Tom Bowers - Contributing Author, Stories Behind the Stars
SBTS Project: USS Indianapolis
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