I also think, now, of time (x2) spent there with a simply wonderful group of young ladies and their parents (who aren't too bad either). And, of course, Cookie.
But when I hear "Indianapolis" I can't but think, too, of the USS Indianapolis. The USS Indianapolis was the Navy Ship that delivered the Atomic Bomb to the US Navy Base at Tinian.
The dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945), of course, effectively ended World War II; this and the second bomb dropped August 9 on Nagasaki.
On its return the Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine -- July 30, 1945. My 19 year old Dad, Sam, of Dahlonega, Georgia & St. Joe, Michigan, was a medic in the US army stationed then in Italy.
The ship sunk in 12 minutes. Only 300 of a crew of 1,196 made it to life boats. 896 went in to the water. After four days of battling dehydration, horrible weather, and sharks only 300 crewmen came out alive. It is the single greatest loss in US Navy history, matched only by "Pearl Harbor" (
December 7, 1941) -- also a real place that's name has become more than a name. The event, the place, and the name changed countless lives.
During Kate's Dad's leader dog drives for us we passed the memorial USS Indianapolis sign on 465 several times.
For me the event is so haunting because it came to my attention when I was in fourth or fifth grade (U10? U11? In hockey I was a "Squirt" -- don't think that term works anymore) and my parents took me to see Stephen Spielberg's Jaws -- the first spring/summer blockbuster, the movie, one could argue, that made a phenomenon like Hunger Games possible. In that (then) disturbing film an old sailor and shark fisherman, a police chief, and a marine biologist set off to hunt down a man eating Great White Shark (for parents thinking "why is he summarizing Jaws? everyone knows Jaws!" they should check the calendar and think again). Just before the penultimate battle with the "big fish" the three are resting, eating and drinking below deck. Despite their different backgrounds they have developed a certain "esprit de corps". They start to compare battlescars in a fairly gentle mock up of macho oneupsmanship. The ship's captain and the marine biologist have various scars from life at sea (shark bites, scrapes, etc.). The police chief, certainly no wimp, is out of his element and considers for a second showing what is either a gall bladder surgery scar or a scar from an appendix removal but decides against it. In this oceanic macho test he can't compete.
The scene turns from semi-comic to tragic, however, when the marine biologist notices a scar on the forearm of the ship's captain and asks about "that one." Initially, the ship's captain refuses to talk about it, but then he tells the marine biologist -- who is too tipsy to recognize the change in the captain's tone -- that that was a tattoo removal. "What did it say," the biologist laughs, "Mother?" It is not until the captain says that was from the "INDIANAPOLIS" that the biologist snaps out of the comedic -- as does an audience. The police captain is of our generation or the one immediately preceding it and thus far enough from WII to ask, as did a 5th grader who thought himself a WII historian, "What's the Indianapolis?" The ship's captain tells his tale in a rather haunting fashion. And, for a kid who was fascinated by Dad and Uncles participation in the war I had intimations for the first time the scars a horrific event could leave.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9S41Kplsbs&feature=relmfu
Then, as now, I was powerfully susceptible to novels, poems, films, plays and art in general -- they help me, at least, come to terms with the sometimes incomprehensible.
My strong reaction to the scene certainly was connected to the tension the film generates -- the huge, now goofy looking plastic shark, the parodied musical score everytime he attacks, etc. But, again, that moment in the film touched the real for me. And that scene always has reminded me of how the "real" can coincide so strangely, in such a "surreal" fashion, with fun, with blockbuster movies, with play, with, now, soccer. So: Indianapolis.
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