Survivor reflects on Indianapolis sinking years later

Editor's note: Richard Thelen will be speaking at Fulton High School Wednesday October 4, 2017 at 9 a.m.

No one on board the heavy cruiser knew it, but the war was almost over.

Dick Thelen, a gunner’s mate, thought he’d get a little sleep topside before his 4 a.m. watch. He folded a Navy blanket in half and crawled inside just before midnight on July 29, 1945 in the South Pacific. A small pile of his clothes served as a pillow.

In less than a half hour the ship was gone. Two Japanese torpedoes struck the ship, and it sank 12 minutes later.

Thelen, 18, found himself bobbing in 8- to 12-foot-high waves, in the dark, covered in diesel fuel. Overcome by the movement, the smell, the salt water and the heat, Thelen vomited. It was the beginning of five days without food or fresh water.

The sharks would come later.

Today, as one of the last 32 surviving crew members of the USS Indianapolis — and the only one from Michigan still living — Thelen speaks calmly and without hesitation about the country’s worst naval disaster after Pearl Harbor. The cruiser had a crew of 1,197. Just 317 made it home.

It took him years to be able to talk about his experience.

“People call me a hero. I’m not a hero. I was doing my job,” Thelen said last week. The 70th anniversary of the torpedo attack was Thursday, but 70 years ago today, Thelen and those of his shipmates still alive had been in the water four days without sign of a rescue.

Now 88 and a cancer survivor, he still stands tall, even while stooped slightly over a cane.

‘I liked to be around water’

Thelen, who lived in Lansing and now resides in Delta Township, joined the Navy in December 1944, deciding not to wait until he was drafted into the Army. As he recalled, “I liked to be around water, so I decided to join the Navy.”

His neighbor Norval “Jerry” Mitchell joined the same day.

In “Only 317 Survived!”, a book of survivors’ stories published in 2002, Thelen relates how one day he and other sailors had to count off by twos. Thelen and the other “twos” were assigned to the Indianapolis. It was May 1945 and he was a seaman second class.

On July 16, the Indianapolis left San Francisco with a secret cargo: components of the atomic bomb that would level Hiroshima, Japan. Thelen didn’t know about the bomb. He did know there were doors on the ship that were guarded by Marines around the clock.

Ten days later, the cargo was dropped off in Tinian Island, one of the Marianas Islands. From there, the Indianapolis steamed to Guam.

“We got supplies and we were going from Guam to Leyte to join the 7th Fleet for the invasion of Japan,” Thelen said.

The ship never made it.

‘The ship left me’

According to author Doug Stanton, in his book “In Harm’s Way,” Lt. Cmdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto of the Japanese submarine I-58 gave the order to fire on the Indianapolis at about 12:04 a.m. July 30. It was Monday morning and Thelen had drifted off to sleep in his blanket.

The I-58 fired six torpedoes, each carrying 1,210 pounds of explosives — enough to take out a city block, according to Stanton.

Less than a minute later, two of them hit the Indianapolis.

“When it hit I went in the air,” Thelen recalled Thursday. “I don’t know if I went 2 feet, I don’t know if I went up 22 feet. I have no idea.”

Thelen and several shipmates ran to the quarterdeck and found it engulfed in flames. They ran forward and saw that the bow was gone.

The men then went after life jackets.

“We could see we were in trouble,” Thelen said. “We sank in 12 minutes.”

“Everybody asks, ‘Where were you on the ship when you jumped off the ship?’” Thelen said. “I didn’t jump off the ship; the ship left me. So I just swam away.”

The Indianapolis sank bow first. The ship bobbed up and down several times before going under.

“During the last plunge it goes down real slow,” Thelen said.

‘He died in the water’

About 900 men ended up in the ocean.

It was dark and the swells were high. The men tried tying their life jackets together but the waves tore them apart.

At one point, the ship’s priest swam over to Thelen and a group of his shipmates.

“He came to our group and gave me the last sacrament,” Thelen said. “He died in the water.”

As dawn came Tuesday the ocean got calmer.

The sharks began to pick off sailors one by one.

Thelen said sharks sized him up a couple of times. He isn’t sure if he was asleep or semiconscious.

“I looked, and there was a shark poking my life jacket,” he said. “From my eyeballs to the shark’s eyeballs was about a foot and a half.

“I don’t know if I looked good to him or not, but he swam away.”

Thirsty and floating about in 100-degree heat, many gave in to drinking salt water.

“You can’t drink it or you’re dead,” Thelen said. “You gulp salt water on an empty stomach and your eyeballs pop out, foam comes to your mouth and within three hours you’re dead. Maybe two.

“And you also go crazy.”

Some of the men took out their knives out and threatened to stab their comrades, thinking they were Japanese. Others thought they saw islands in the distance and swam away, never to be seen again.

“There were no islands out there,” Thelen said

“That’s what kept me alive’

Thelen, on leave from boot camp in early 1945, had a parting conversation with his father. As his father shook his hand, he said, “Dick, I want you to come home.” Thelen assured his father that the war would end soon.

“So every time I was ready to give up, there was my dad’s face. And I told my dad when I got home, too.

“True story. That’s what kept me alive.”

By Wednesday evening, as the sun went down, the men still alive began to believe they might never be rescued.

“I was in a group of about 12 to 15 guys on Wednesday afternoon, it was getting dark,” Thelen said. “I don’t know who he was, but he said, ‘If they’re not looking for us Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ... they’re not looking for us.’

“So Thursday morning, by accident, here comes a patrol bomber.” The pilot had spotted an oil slick.

In “Only 317 Survived!” Thelen said the pilot, Chuck Gwinn, interpreted the slick as evidence of an enemy submarine and prepared to drop a bomb.

“What he saw were bodies bobbing in the water, spread over a wide area, 2 miles by 20 miles,” Thelen says in the book.

Ships arrived to pick up survivors just after daylight Friday, Aug. 3. Thelen was suffering from severe leg cramps and his skin was raw after five days in salt water.

His Lansing neighbor, Mitchell, was one of five sailors from Lansing on the Indianapolis, according to Thelen. Mitchell and Harold Mace also survived the ordeal. Mitchell died in 2009 at the age of 81, and Mace died in 1996. Two other Lansing sailors were killed.

‘You heal up’

Many years passed before Thelen spoke about the ordeal. He was married to his wife for seven years before he told her.

As he attended more Navy reunions, Thelen became more open, explaining, “You heal up over a period of time.”

The survivors hold reunions, always in the city of Indianapolis. The most recent was just a week ago, and 14 of the 32 survivors were there.

So was Hashimoto’s granddaughter. The submarine commander died in 2000 at 91.

Thelen met her July 26. “She was skeptical about even coming and didn’t know how she’d be treated, but she was treated royally.”

Regarding her grandfather, he said: “He did his job. He was a good captain and did his job. He was out to sink American ships and he did it.”

Thirty years after the sinking, a scene in the movie “Jaws” related the story of Indianapolis. Many of the survivors have seen the film.

Thelen hasn’t. Neither has he seen the 1997 film “Titanic.”

“I saw one ship sink,” he said. “I don’t want to see another one.”

Contact Curt Smith at (517) 377-1226 or csmith@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @CurtSmithLSJ.