Left for Dead

Nelson, P. (2002). Left for dead: A young man’s search for justice for the USS Indianapolis. New York: Delacorte Press. With a preface by Hunter Scott. ISBN 0-385-72959-6

Why read this book

The USS Indianapolis participated in 10 major campaigns in the Pacific theater during World War II, delivered one of the world’s first atomic bombs from San Francisco to the Pacific island airfield where it was loaded on an airplane for the trip to Japan, and then a few days later was sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of nearly 900 men, the largest loss of life in a single sinking in U.S. naval history. But very few of your parents or grandparents have ever heard this story. Why did it drop out of the history books until a middle school student made it the subject of his History Day research project in the late 1990s?

Summary

Left for Dead is a skillful compilation of three stories connected to the USS Indianapolis. First is the story of its sinking, just days after it delivered one of the two atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan to end World War II. Hit by two torpedoes fired by a Japanese submarine, the ship went down in 12 minutes just after midnight on July 30, 1945. Nearly 300 the 1,200-man crew died outright. The survivors were dumped into the Pacific Ocean about 250 miles north of Palau Islands, the closest land, with very few lifeboats or provisions. Within hours sharks began attacking the men as they floated in the water, and it wasn’t until their fifth day in the water that U.S. ships and airplanes arrived on the scene to rescue the survivors. By that time there were only 317 men still alive.

The second story Nelson tells is the court-martial of the captain of the Indianapolis, Captain Charles B. McVay III. Nelson notes that the Navy lost 436 other combat ships during World War II, but McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed. Nelson attributes that to public pressure arising from all the mistakes that led to the sinking of the ship and the delay in rescuing the crew afterward. With the war over and security no longer an issue, newspapers aired the tragedy thoroughly, and the public wanted someone held responsible for the loss of life. To the top Navy brass, that meant court-martialing McVay on two charges, his failure to travel in a zigzag course to diminish vulnerability to enemy attack and his failure to order the crew to abandon the ship quickly enough after the attack. Since McVay had issued an order to abandon the ship within two minutes after the attack, the Navy court exonerated him on the second charge but still convicted him of the first. Acknowledging his service during the war, the Navy remitted his conviction and he served in obscure jobs until his retirement in 1949.

The third story that Nelson tells is that of Hunter Scott, a student in Florida who researched the story of the USS Indianapolis for his History Day project and sparked a movement to have the U.S. government address the injustices connected to Captain McVay’s court-martial. In 1996, when Hunter was 11 years old, he watched the movie Jaws with his father. In the movie one of the characters tells about the sinking of the Indianapolis and his days afterward in the shark-invested waters. Fascinated, Hunter decided to make this story his History Day project. He immediately ran into problems when he found that the Indianapolis was hardly mentioned in the histories of World War II that he consulted. Hunter decided to find survivors of the sinking to conduct oral histories. The first survivor Hunter interviewed gave him a list of the 154 other survivors who were still alive, and Hunter tracked most of them down. Many of them gave him documents and mementoes, and Hunter created an impressive History Day project. His work attracted the attention of his congressman, the local press, and eventually the national press. Hunter continued to work on his project through high school, building it into a campaign to get the U.S. Congress to pass a resolution urging the Navy to re-open McVay’s court-martial. Hunter met with members of Congress and testifyied before a Senate committee. In October 2000 Congress passed the resolution he and the surviving crew members of the Indianapolis had sought, and in April 2001 the Navy awarded the crew of the Indianapolis a long-overdue Naval Unit Citation.

Critical analysis

The reasonable length (186 pages, not counting the end material), the journalistic style, and the inclusion of Hunter Scott’s connections to the story make Left for Dead an excellent choice for teens interested in the history of World War II.

About the author

According to the book jacket, Pete Nelson has written 18 books, including both fiction and nonfiction. Left for Dead won a 2003 Christopher Award in the Books for Young People category (Christopher awards presented, 2003).

Genre: Historical non-fiction

Curriculum ties

U.S. history — Although the story is much too detailed to work into most high school survey courses of 20th century U.S. history, the chapters about Hunter Scott’s History Day project and the campaign that grew from it would be useful as an introduction to History Day projects.

Book-talking ideas

Show the excerpt from Jaws where the Indianapolis story is recounted and tell students they can read the whole story in Left for Dead. (That caught Hunter Scott’s attention, so it might catch the attention of other teens.)

Reading level/interest age

The Horn Book review lists Left for Dead as a middle school and high school book (Sieruta, 2003), but I think the level of writing is likely to be a challenge for younger teens.

Challenge issues

I can’t imagine any challenge issues for Left for Dead. It has an array of respectable heroes, from the men who lost their lives in the sinking of the ship and the survivors to the teenage boy who investigated their story 50 years later.

Why I chose to read this book

I saw a reference to the History Day connection in this book and, being a history teacher, I knew I had to read it.

References

Christopher awards presented. (2003, March 10). Publishers Weekly, p. 18. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.sfpl.org/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=sfpl_main

Sieruta, P. D. (2002, July-August). Pete Nelson left for dead: A young man’s search for justice for the USS Indianapolis. The Horn Book Magazine 78(4), 487. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.sfpl.org/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=sfpl_main