McCall shares story of father, USS Indianapolis tragedy

Friday, March 16, 2018
DePauw University communications Prof. Jeff McCall (left) chats with Greencastle resident Malcolm Romine following his presentation on the USS Indianapolis Thursday night during the annual meeting of the Heritage Preservation Society of Putnam County.
Banner Graphic/Eric Bernsee

Sharing the harrowing story of the USS Indianapolis and his father -- “a regular guy” on an extraordinary mission -- DePauw University Professor Jeff McCall was the featured speaker Thursday night at the annual meeting of the Heritage Preservation Society of Putnam County.

His father, Seaman 2nd Class Donald C. McCall, was one of the 317 survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, which went down just after midnight on July 30, 1945 following its completion of a secret mission to deliver parts of the first atomic bomb ever used in combat.

“It’s a story of tragedy, a story of heroism and a story of controversy as well,” McCall, a Greencastle resident, told an audience of more than 50 at the Putnam County Museum.

Seaman Donald McCall

The sinking of the Indianapolis is the greatest single-ship tragedy at sea in U.S. Navy history (the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor suffered a greater loss of life but it was not officially at sea), with only 317 of 1,196 crewmen surviving the Japanese submarine attack that sent the ship to the bottom of the Pacific in 12 minutes.

With the wreckage of the Indianapolis found last year in 18,000 feet of water some 550 miles from the nearest land, there has been much renewed interest in the ship and its tragic story recently, McCall said.

In fact, the National Geographic Channel called Seaman McCall, who passed away last summer at age 92, and asked if he would like to accompany a documentary crew during the search for the ship in the Philippine Sea.

DePauw University communications Prof. Jeff McCall (right) talks with audience members following his presentation on the USS Indianapolis Thursday night during the annual meeting of the Heritage Preservation Society of Putnam County.
Banner Graphic/Eric Bernsee

Calling his dad “kind of a character,” Prof. McCall said his father’s reaction to that request was blunt but not unexpected. “Hell, no, I’m not going back there,” he said. “The last time I was on a ship in the Pacific, they shot it out from under us.”

His dad, who was still just 20 years old despite 2-1/2 years aboard the ship when the Japanese submarine launched its attack, was an air-sea lookout, stationed on the bridge with binoculars, scanning the sky and the surface for ships and planes.

“It was a tough, intense job,” McCall said. “There was no room for mistakes.”

Seaman McCall was selected for that duty, his son said, getting plucked from kitchen patrol because of his 20/20 vision and Midwest background, which meant he had no accent that might be misconstrued in relaying vital information in stressful moments.

McCall’s father saw his first action at Tarawa in the Pacific in 1944, witnessing a horrific moment in which a Marine transport caught on a reef was blown up and all the men aboard lost, and there was nothing he could do to save them. That haunted him for the rest of his life, knowing that those men “were somebody’s son or somebody’s brother.”

Even in his latter years, 70 years after the attack, when his son would ask how he slept that night, the elder McCall would say, “Pretty good, but I was back at Tarawa again.”

After the Indianapolis went down, McCall’s dad was one of the “floaters,” dumped into the sea while an estimated 300 men went down with the ship as the vessel was making its way to The Philippines.

The remaining 900 sailors endured dehydration, exposure and shark attacks, trying to survive with almost no food or water. Some found life vests or rafts but the loss of the ship in a mere 12 minutes prevented much emergency gear from being put to use.

Delivering components that were put together to make up the “Little Boy” atomic bomb that the Enola Gay dropped on Hiroshima, the sailors were unaware of what they were transporting to the Army Air Force Base at Tinian.

“Nobody on the ship knew what they had,” McCall said, noting that they had been advised, “This is important to win the war.”

The sailors joked that they were transporting a new rocking chair for Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Listed as a Portland-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy, the USS Indianapolis left Tinian without a destroyer escort, and because of its top-secret mission, Navy command was unaware of the ship’s sinking until a pilot, Lt. Chuck Gwinn, spotted survivors four days later while on a routine submarine patrol over the area.

Gwinn had trouble with his radio antenna, which trailed behind his plane, and went to the rear of the aircraft to repair it when he spotted an oil slick on the ocean below and spied heads bobbing on the water as he got closer, McCall said.

“The sailors referred to him as ‘Our Angel,’” he added.

Lack of food and water brought about the demise of many of the men unceremoniously dumped into the sea, while “sharks took a number of guys, too,” McCall said. “That’s a sad fact but it’s true.”

One of those sailors lost at sea, McCall told the local audience, was a Greencastle man, John Hodshire.

In another Greencastle connection, the late Bob Albright, who would later become sheriff of Putnam County and mayor of Greencastle, was stationed on Guam and witnessed the Purple Heart ceremony for the USS Indianapolis survivors.

Seaman McCall emerged from the ordeal with shrapnel in his calf and backside, his son related. What probably saved his life was choosing to sleep on deck where he had concealed a blanket and pillow near a turret to take advantage of a on-deck breeze rather than enduring the suffocating heat below deck.

The night of a sinking, an officer spotted him, advised it was against regulations and started to banish him from the area until Seaman McCall convinced him he wouldn’t get any sleep down below with the heat and cramped quarters.

The officer allowed him to stay up top, with the caveat that he had to be gone by the time the officer’s replacement went on duty.

“That saved his life,” Prof. McCall said, noting that his father’s division mates never made it out of their bunks when the two torpedoes hit.

After the war, Donald McCall returned to his home east-central Illinois home, where he struggled with his war memories but became a notable brick layer, husband and father.

“My dad was a regular guy,” Prof. McCall said. “They don’t call it the ‘Great Generation’ for nothing. A lot of regular guys accomplished some really great things.”

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