O'DONNELL-JAMES

SURVIVOR  OF  USS INDIANAPOLIS  SINKING

After the USS INDIANAPOLIS delivered its secret cargo, critical parts of the atomic bomb Little Boy which was dropped on Hiroshima, to Tinian Island, the ship was ordered to the Philippines.  Nearing its destination on the night of July 30, 1945, INDIANAPOLIS was unexpectedly struck by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58.  The ship sank in only 12-minutes and an estimated 300 of the 1,195 crewmembers went down with the ship.  The remaining 900 waited for assistance while floating for four days before being discovered.  Unfortunately, most of the crew in the ocean died from a combination of exposure, dehydration, hallucinations, and shark attacks.

Water Tender Third Class James Edward O’Donnell was drafted into the Navy on April 13, 1944, and soon thereafter was assigned to the INDIANAPOLIS where he became a Water Tender working in the boiler room.  On the night of the sinking, O’Donnell was sleeping on the main deck near the aft gun turret trying to catch a sea breeze because of the high temperatures below decks.  When the explosion occurred, O’Donnell was able to locate a life preserver and as the ship rolled and sank, he slid down the keel between the propeller shafts into the water.  With eyes and throat scorching from diesel oil, he swam blindly from the sinking ship, joining others who had likewise gone overboard.  O’Connell lost track of two shift-mates with whom he had entered the water and found himself surrounded by hundreds of crew members screaming as the salt water flooded their burns and wounds.  Some had taken to the sea in nothing but their underwear and now clung to debris or swam desperately for stray life rafts and life jackets.  O’Donnell remembered taking a few strokes from the fray and turning just in time to see the ship slip silently under the waves.

At daybreak, O’Donnell saw his first shark and soon there were sharks all around them, bumping, spinning and rocking the men like bobbers on a fishing line.  The survivors reasoned that they were less likely to be attacked by sharks if they stayed together so them arranged themselves in clusters, sometimes tied together.  O’Donnell did not sleep much and as days three and four went by, the sailors’ hope and patience wore thin, so did their ability to reason.  O’Donnell remembers men who swore that the broken ship had floated back up and was just beneath the water’s surface.  He remembered a particular ship-mate talking incessantly about the ice-cold water fountain in the ship and how he could look down and see it.  The man was remember as taking off his life jacket and dove down, but soon returned to the surface where the men in the group had to corral him.  Later that night he tried the same thing again, and the next morning there was only his empty life jacket tied to the group.

In his submission to the 2002 book “Only 317 Survived!”, O’Donnell wrote, “We faced our worst nemesis the first morning in the sea.  Sharks were in the area and had started to attack the defenseless men.”  Historian have written that the sinking was the greatest single loss of life at sea in the sinking of a U.S. Navy ship and goes down in history as the biggest attack by sharks on human beings ever recorded.  Fortunately, on the fifth day rescue ships arrived and O’Donnell was reportedly taken aboard USS BASSETT (APD-73), thus being one of the 317 survivors to be rescued.  O’Donnell said that aboard his rescue ship he recuperated in a cot and in an interview said, “I remember I had to go to the bathroom, and the sailors offered to help me from my cot.  I said I could do it by myself, but when I got up, I fell flat on my face.”  After weeks spent recovering in fleet hospitals on Pacific islands, O’Donnell finally returned to the States in late September 1945 and was discharged in January 1946. 

O’Donnell joined the Indianapolis Fire Department after the war.  He worked his way through the ranks, retiring as a lieutenant in 1981 after 36-years of service.  O’Donnell dedicated much of his adult life to keeping the memory of the USS INDIANAPOLIS alive and in 1995 the group saw the fruits of their labor materialize as the USS Indianapolis Memorial was unveiled along the Central Canal in Indianapolis.  WT3 James Edward O’Donnell was honored in 2009 by the City of Indianapolis with the placement of his likeness in bronze in the City Market Plaza.  During the occasion the city’s mayor wrote, “As a USS Indianapolis survivor and retired firefighter, Jimmy O’Donnell was an American hero and a great citizen of Indianapolis.”

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)