text: The ship went down on the 30th of July, 1945. Most of the men weren’t fully awake, but I was already aboard a lifeboat. The captain should go down with his ship, but these were strange circumstances. I knew what was in the water, and I knew there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone. There weren’t enough life jackets either. “Captain?” an officer said, their identity was hidden in the dark, and their voice was overwhelmed by the screaming. The sky was as black as the inside of a squid's belly. “Down,” I said. We dropped to the sea, cutting a wave in half. It drenched us to the bone. Sharp intakes of breath from everyone aboard, but we held back cries of shock. The tang of salt water was on my lips, and was all I could smell. “Stroke,” called Dobson. My officer had passed out oars to six men sitting along the lifeboat’s perimeter. “We’ve got to clear the undertow.” The Indianapolis was three quarters underwater. How long since she was ripped apart? Ten minutes? The beast struck portside, bit right through the hull, then starboard. It gutted the Indianapolis, spilling her innards into the sea. An officer rowing beside me was shivering violently. I politely but firmly took command of his oar. It was slick with ocean spray, and the cold bit my hands. I grit my teeth and rowed. My oar hit something hard on the surface of the water, and I hollered; not quite a yelp, but a sound no man should hear from his captain. The company looked, then turned quickly away, as if cowardice was catching. *They don’t know*, I realized. *They have no idea what’s below us. They think it was two torpedoes, or they don’t know what to think.* I glanced into the black water. My oar had brushed against a scrap of the ship’s hull. Seeing the viciousness with which the metal had been ripped apart did not assuage my fears. *Some monster’s teeth did that*. Meanwhile, the men who hadn’t found lifeboats were hurling themselves from the Indianapolis. Most wore lifejackets but I saw plenty without. All screaming. One overfilled lifeboat had tarried on deck too long before dropping. It disappeared into a sucking whirlpool when it couldn’t escape the undertow and reemerged shortly, upside down. Some of the men who had been tossed overboard appeared on the sides, shouting, but some remained underwater. “What happened?” one officer asked in a half-whisper to another. “Japs, I reckon,” came the reply. This second man spit into the water. Official blame would be laid on a Japanese crew if word of the Indianapolis ever reached shore, and they might even take credit, but our enemy wasn’t responsible for the wreck. We had been capsized by something larger and hungrier than an axis submarine. I wouldn’t tell the lifeboat what I had seen unless I had to. My breath came in rasps from the effort of rowing. I began to cough. One of the officers took the oar from me. “Thank you, sir,” I said. The man was soaking wet, glimmering in the pale moonlight. He did not spare me a word or glance. I could understand his actions well enough. I would be court martialed for negligence if we ever got back to America. This worry was distant in my mind. Our mission was top-secret; therefore, it was unlikely anyone would come looking for the crew of the U.S.S. Indianapolis before we were dead. *We delivered the parts. The monster was too late.* The ship disappeared into the depths. I judged thirteen minutes had passed since the first strike. The beast had sunk the ship, and our meat served for the spoils of victory. I saw we were a safe distance from the undertow. “At ease men. Save your strength.” We were also far from the hordes of swimmers, and needn’t fear them clamouring aboard and capsizing the lifeboat. “What say you officer?” I asked Dobson. “I was looking over the deck when we were struck but I did not see what hit us. The Japs?” Dobson started to shake his head, then caught my eye. “Aye captain. Without a doubt, the goddamned Japs if you’ll pardon my language.” *There’s another who saw*. “Nothing else it could be?” I asked, measuring the officers. Most were still determinedly looking away from me and in flash of rage I found myself hoping they saw the creature in the waters they were so fixed upon, but the feeling passed. “Nothing else,” Dobson echoed quietly. He had to repeat himself to be heard over the screaming. Such noises should have stopped, the men who were going to make it off of the Indianapolis were swimming or aboard a lifeboat by now. A pair of men exchanged wary glances, but held their silence. A man’s memory is not so concrete a thing as we like to think, and affirmation from both myself and Dobson would convince these two--who had seen something perhaps, but could not say exactly what--that they had spied a submarine after all. “Holy mother of god!” shouted Peters, a Private, aged twenty. Peters pointed towards the wreckage. Ten-foot-high waves tossed the moonlight back and forth, making men and debris difficult to distinguish, but I spotted him. Fifty feet from our lifeboat, a huddle of men in lifejackets had broken, propelled by terror, away from one of their number. The fellow left behind was bobbing comically, buoyed by his orange life vest. It appeared he was in shallow water, not the Philippine sea, bouncing his toes off of the bottom. A wave caught the strange man and flipped him over, exposing his fate. Everything below his navel was gone, torn off by a beast in the water, and he continued bobbing upside down. Thankfully, we were a distance away, and could not get a close look at the circle of gore. “Shark! Sh--” an officer began to shout, but I lunged across the lifeboat to clamp a damp hand over his mouth. “Nothing we can do,” I muttered. “Easy there. Don’t want to panic the others.” We drifted all night. I wish I had the shame to say it was impossible to find sleep behind the screams of my crew, which went off with haunting regularity throughout the night, but I did. It was not fitful or long sleep, and I opened sore salted eyes to a pink sun. The water was thick with navy blood. It was as if the ship itself had been a living thing, and the sea monster had torn away flesh and bone instead of metal. Shredded life jackets floated among the wreck. There were dozens of men huddled together, bobbing in the water. Some were asleep, all were pale as milk. I turned away when I saw one man, life vest and all, jerked beneath the waves. He cried out in shock--he had been sleeping--before the water cut his cry out of the air. Another man drifted forward to fill his space. “Morning captain,” said Dobson. “Did you sleep?” I asked. He shook his head. Peters, seeing I was awake, said, “Permission to ask the captain a question?” “Granted” “Was our mission top-secret?” “Yes.” I admitted, against protocol. “When can we expect rescue? Did a distress call go out? “There was no time,” Dobson interjected. “Not a quarter hour between the first torpedo and the Indianapolis going under. Goddamned Japs.” Peters nodded, but he was still looking at me for an answer, so I gave one. Our vessel sloshed on the waves. “The U.S. navy will come though Peters. You’re going to get thirsty before they do. Hungry and wet and cold enough for a lifetime I expect, but you’re going to make it out of this fine.” “Captain’s right,” Dobson interrupted. “just fine.” “I saw it,” Peters whispered. He was beside me, only I could hear him. “The beast sank us because of the mission. It was the bomb captain.” The same thought had crossed my mind. “Best keep that to yourself,” I said, not unkindly. “Best not to disturb the men. His eyes were ghost’s eyes. Peters was beyond hearing me. “I thought it was a shark,” he stammered, “but when it got closer... tentacles, and a thousand eyes.” I nodded, hoping he would stop. Some of the officers were listening. “It was the bomb,” he whispered. The sun climbed from the horizon three more times before rescue came. Of my 1,195 crew, only 316 survived. The rest were pulled below, some by sharks, most by another. I was found guilty of negligence. I am writing from prison. I hope Peters was right: that the beast was sent to punish us for our part in the atom bomb, because the alternative--that the monster is lurking in the water--is unbearable.