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The Last Survivor
Harold John Bray, Jr., Seaman 2C- The last surviving member of the iconic Navy vessel the USS Indianapolis. The Indy was a capitol ship that just returned statewide for major repairs and refitting, following a Japanese Kamikaze attack at Okinawa. Nine members of the crew were killed, a somber time. Harold enlisted in the U.S. Navy the day he turned 17 in 1944. He learned how to drink Navy coffee when he lived in the barracks at the end of Mare Island, California while the ship was being repaired. Every day he would ride a train to the ship until it was ready to set off on a top-secret mission: delivering components of the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima. On July 30th, 1945, while crossing the Philippine Sea the Indy was struck twice by a Japanese Submarine. It took just 12 minutes for the ship to sink. Approximately (900) of the original (1,195) crew members were able to leap into the water before it went down. For almost four days they floated in the oily and shark invested waters. The survivors watched in fear as they saw their peers being eaten alive and vanishing beneath the sea. After the sharks feasted on the wounded, they left, leaving half of the men still clinging onto hope for life. Many more lives were lost because they drank the salt and oily water. 316 men were rescued not through a search effort, but by pure chance. The Indy tragedy is a tale of haunting endurance, forgotten sacrifice, and the crushing silence that surrounded a mission intended to help end a global war.
aboard the Indy
Harold Bray- seaman 2c
the last survivor
Copyright ©
Charles Messina
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