Lael Jay Woodbury, Provo, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, April 9, 2005: Saving the Legacy tape no. 722

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LAEL JAY WOODBURY PRIL 9, 2005 I said earlier that most of the men on a cruiser on any ship w rk d b 1 w th decks. If my ship had been hit, I would not have seen any of its damage unl s th # 1 Fire Room and my switchboard had taken the hit directly. I couldn't know what was happening. Most swabbies, of whom I was one, simply go where the ship goes- to the bottom of the ocean! When the heavy cruiser Indianapolis was hit, it went down in fifteen minutes without getting off a distress call. Some 300 men went down with it. [Editor 's note: At 12:14 a.m. on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea and sank in twelve minutes. Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men, were left swimming in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats, a few rafts and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 of the 1,196 men were still alive. Captain McVay ofthe Indianapolis survived and was court-martialed for failing to zigzag and send a distress message. He was convicted despite overwhelming evidence that the Navy itself had placed the ship in harm's way and despite testimony from the Japanese submarine commander that zigzagging would have made no difference. Surviving crew members felt that McVay had been made the scapegoat for Navy foul-ups and fought years to have his name cleared. They finally accomplished this in July 2000 when an act of Congress signed by the President directed the Navy to amend Captain Me Vay 's record exonerating him. The Navy did this finally in July 2001, almost forty years after Me Vay 's death.] It was only eighty-four hours later that a Navy plane happened to discover the survivors and the oil slick. 36