critical world war ii role and ultimately tragic story of the "uss indianapolis" which sank in shark be infested waters after it was torpedoed by a japanese submarine on july 30 theth, 194. the ship had just completed a secret mission.was torpedoed by submarine on july 30th, 1945. the ship had just completed a secret mission. speaking with co-authors of indianapolis the true story of the worst say disaster in u.s. naval history and the fight to exonerate an innocent man. >> i often refer to the stories that are in the national archives, we're not just a store house, the billions of pages and miles of film in our care hold countess stories of our past. and in these record, you can discover human lives and how history changed them. today we'll hear the stories of the man who sailed the "uss

indianapolis". it sank just weeks before japan surrendered. historical records can also help unravel mysteries even decades after the events took place. last sum ear i hmer's edificatie wreck and just this month the navy was able to settle the question about the number of survivors because of research done in the records housed in our facility in college park and our national personnel records st. louis. some stories are easily told, others take 73 years to come to light. by preserving the records of our past, we ensure that the building blocks of our stories will be available now and far into the future. lynn vincent, a u.s. navy veteran, number one "new york times" best selling author and

co-author of 11 nonfiction bo s books. her investigative pieces have been cited before congress and the u.s. stwreem couupreme cour. and sara vladic is a leading expert on the "indianapolis" and back obsessed with the story at the gilded of 1 she has published new research on "uss indianapolis".

and the book is on the "new york times" best seller list. so before they come to the stage, we'll see a short film. so if you will roll the film now. ♪ >> i started into the navy when i was 16. >> i saw the flag raised. >> i personally have components of the atomic bomb. >> and we were hit by two torpedos. and sunsunk. >> the ship was goinging out from under me. >> i never knew how to swim and the navy never taught me. >> and all these sharks going around, come right across your legs. >> it was chaos. >> we couldn't understand why we weren't rescued. >> a lot of them lost the will to live. >> decided hell, this is where

we'll die. >> and then there on that fourth day, i hear a plane. and we began to splash water and yell, we began to pray, everything. and seemingly when he got to a point that had he gone any further he would have gone over, but you know what he did? he made a dive. >> how did i make it with nothing eat, no water to drink, no sleep for five nights? the lord was with me. >> if somebody wrote this as fiction, nobody would believe that it happened. >> people wouldn't realize the politics in the armed forces. >> it was about the captain being court martialed. >> many a head should have rolled before they ever got to the captain. >> it is a story that has not been told. those that don't want to remember, they don't want to recall, it is too much. but i'm a dummy. i think it ought to be told.

>> i would like to talk the talk with a question by you all. by a show of happened, who can tell me -- or who first learned of the story "indianapolis" by watching the movie "jaws"? quite a few. >> raise 'em high. >> and what about other sources, documentaries, the news? show of hands, who else -- all right. who hadn't heard about it until maybe the last week or two? >> a few. >> a few, yeah. so i heard about it when i was 13 years old and i was watching a documentary with my father. and it was about the pacific war and the story of the "indianapolis" was reduced to a single line which was it was the ship that carried the bomb and was sunk. and i thought, well, there has got to be more to it than that. so i went to the library. at that time, there was no

google and so if my dad told me to go look it up,s i think it was grolier that had it, and books. there was very little to be found about it. and so i kept looking, found some stuff, but thought someone has to tell this story. and i thought by the time i was old enough to do it, someone else would have done it. and i graduated college from pepperdine and no one had heard about it, and so that is when i decided to look for the survivors of the "indianapolis" and that is when ask jeeves was around. ing myself. and jeeves said that there was paul murphy and mary lou murphy and they were chairman and secretary of the survivors organization. so i called them up. and they invited me to a reunion. said i'd love to meet you and talk to you, so they invited me to the reunion. and that was the first time that i was able to meet some of the

"indianapolis" survivors. and it was a big year. it was the year that lot of things happened with the captain's records and we'll talk about that more this afternoon. but it was really a very ceremonial year. there were a lot of events. and that was the first time i talked to these men and got know them. and they invited me to come back and over the next couple years, i got to know them and their families. and over a denny's breakfast a couple years later, a pure just graduated college kid, and they said we want you to be our story teller. and so you don't -- you don't say no to that. when a world war ii veteran says they want you to be your story teller, you go to task. you do the work. and so at the time i wanted to make a movie. i wanted to write a screen play. and i needed to interview these men in order to do the story. i thought you can't tell it unless you talk to the people who lived it. so i started doing interviews in 2005. and wrote a screen play.

took to a major network and they said this is the best thing we've seen since band of brothers but it needs to be based on a book. i was like i don't know how to write a book. and so i asked fripds and family do you know anyone who knows how to write a book? screen plays are we have different very different by the way. and so through -- it ended up being my mother-in-law, i waswe different by the way. and so through -- it ended up being my mother-in-law, i was introduced to lynn vincent. i didn't want to mess it up, so i called her -- actually, i emailed her saying could you call me, i just you need five minutes. i'm sure she had a million people asking. she had heaven for real just had come out and so i was very intimidated and she gave me five minutes of her time and that was our first phone call. >> yes. and what she didn't know, what sara didn't know when she

called, is that i'm a navy veteran, number one. number two, that i was an investigative journalist before i transitioned to books. and number three, that i had literally been praying for an iconic world war ii story to write. now, there are world war ii stories that are as iconic as "indianapolis", but none that are more so. and so when she called me, i was like, oh, god is answering my prayer. but all she wants is advice. what am i going to do? i didn't want to jump on her and force myself on her. but after a few conversations, we agreed to team up and then we had our first meeting. >> and i like to tell the story of the first meeting because it kind of sets the tone for this. but as i mentioned earlier, she had written heaven is for me and we had only spoken to the phone and so i was looking for the woman in the sweater set carrying a bible.

and she showed up on a harley. so i kind of knew from that point that this would be a good working relationship. and it really was. from the beginning, it has been a blessing. it has been an incredible experience. i'm going to say for both of us. >> yeah, not only great writing partner, but great friends. so it has been a blast. on this tour we've been eating our way across the southeast. so having a really good time. and i was going to say that sometimes we get asked, you know, there have been other books written by "indianapolis", what is new, what are you doing that is different. and one of the things that i like to say is, you know, there have been worthy books written about "indianapolis". first one was in 1959 by an associated press editor. and he was the first journalist to realize that this was, first of all, a horrible tragedy

really a book end to pearl harbor in terms of one began the war and the other ended the war. and second he was the first to realize that captain mcvey, the skipper of swri"indianapolis", suffered a grave injustice. and that triggered the survivors' reunions, first time they got together in indianapolis the city was 1960. and then, what, 30 years or so later, another reporter, aen iron chin journalist of the old schooling wrote another book. you now, you have to remember that archives and records continue to be classified. and some things had been declassified by the time he wrote this book, but not everything including the ultra program which was the most highly classified in-at the time against progr intelligence program of the war. so there remained things that weren't revealed. at the time

intelligence program of the war. so there remained things that weren't revealed.at the time intelligence program of the war. so there remained things that weren't revealed. and in 2001, an author wrote in harm's way which was the first book to explore the horrific nightmare experience of the survivors in the water. how many of you have read that? that was a really great book. about 80% of it took place in the water. and what we tried to do was help people remember that "indianapolis" is much more than a sinking story. for decades, it has been recognized as sort of a disaster story, a sinking story, a shark story. how many of you every week -- every year on shark week, they room out the "indianapolis" as the worst shark attack in history. but "indianapolis" was so much more than a shark story or a sinking story. she was actually the flagship of the fifth fleet, the ship from choose deck the admiral plotste out the pacific war. so she was an important vessel.

so we tried to bring that out for readers. would you like to talk about some other things that we did that are different? >> one of the things that we really tried to do was to go back to the original source material. as lynn mentioned, there were quite a few other books and 70 years of interpretations and sharing of stories and a little bit of the fish got bigger, that kind of thing. and so we wanted to go back to primary stories to do this book. and so we went to the archives. we went to college park and spent a lot of time there. and we wanted to stay there forever until they kicked us out. >> yes. >> and if they would let us put a sleeping bag in there, i think we could have stayed. >> i would have. >> so we spent an incredible amount of time there. we went to the naval war college, we went to the library of congress. and then also were able to interview over 107 of the

survivors, the rescue crew and families of those who were lost at sea in order to really tell the firsthand accounts of what took place. not only during the sinking, but in service to the country. so you remember these are 16, 17, 18-year-old kids commanding, you know, these -- well, not commanding, but they were running the vessels, they were steering the ship, they were actively participating in these battles. and so those perspectives, firsthand accounts of what was taking place between okinawa and they were at the front of the picket lines. so they were viewing distance from these invasions and witnessing what was happening at that time. and so we wanted to go back to that. we also went back to the letters, correspondence between husbands and wives or girlfriends and sailors as they were writing and forth on the ship and their love stories

and what was happening on the home front. there was a gentleman by lieutenant commander earl henry who was the dentist. and he had gone home-of there was a kamikaze attack in march of 1945, the day before okinawa was invaded. and the kamikaze struck the "indianapolis", nine men were killed. and they went into dry docks to repair it. and that was the first domino that sent the ship into the mission of carrying components for the atomic bomble. and so when the ship was in dry dock in the san francisco area, this gentleman went home and visited his wife who was very pregnant at the time. and was able to spend a little time with her, but three day after he was recalled back to the ship when his leave ended, earl jr. was born. and so there is the letters between earl and his wife, earl sr. and his wife, and he was able to receive some pictures right before the final mission

where they had just delivered components of the bomb and were then going to prepare for the invasion of japan. so he received photographs of young earl who was born prematurely and ran around the ship carrying the photo showing everyone he could how excited he was about his brand new son. so those kind of things we like to incorporate in the story and the firsthand accounts as i mentioned. and we wanted you to get to know these men in the way we were privileged to in the years of interviews. so it is a look through the lens of these men at what was taking place in 1945 all the bay through exonerating the captain. >> and speaking of the bomb mission, again, holding up and lifting up libraries eks one of the things that sara mentioned before, when she first heard of "indianapolis", the bomb mission was reduced to just the line in a document taker a a documentary and we found that

to be true of the books as well. but no one ever really told the story because that was the most highly classified naval mission of the war. and so when we were at the library of congress, we found the papers of a man named robert furman and it so happened that major furman was the chief intelligence officer for the entire manhattan project and he had run around europe trying to track are being down t tracking down the state of german science because on the american side they were worried that the germans would beat the united states in being able to deploy an operational atomic bomb during the war. so in furman's records were all these handwritten accounts day by day, moment by moment of transporting the components of the atomic bomb on the "uss

indianapolis". so we see that mission in our book both from his perspective and how he got to know the naval officers on the "indianapolis" and also from the perspective of the men. because the money components were carried in two a lin dri cal canisters which were very heavy which one carried uranium. and so major furman and his partner captain james nolan kind of secretly and nonsha plasha nt sha lontly had those carried into their quarters. they were trying to divert the attention of the crew. the crew knew that something really secret was happening and they didn't know what it was. and major furman and captain nolan decided that they would make a big production and post a marine guard around this big

crate to divert the crew's attention. so -- tell them what the crew did. >> so again, these are teenagers. and their curiosity led them to betting. so they took bets what was happening -- or what was being transported in this giant crate and there was everything rita hayworth's undergarments and scented paper from general mcarthur. and there is another part of the book that we bring into the story is the japanese perspective. and we have the journals and the the notes of admiral ukaki who was in charge of the kamikaze program. and his letters and the letters of the young pilots who ultimate will i committed suicide in honor of their emperor.ultimatee

in honor of their emperor. and also itch here in the audience jim belcher jr., his father served aboard the "indianapolis" and he and his family have an incredible story in that spoiler alert his father survived, but when he came home, he married a japanese woman. and we had the privilege of enter about viewing their family. and she was at the time in school learning about the in-separation of gentlemin invasionin indiana vags of japan and what happened from the japanese side and what it meant and how happy they were that it ended the war. so flash forward a couple years and james belcher osr. mayors that lovely young woman and they have a family together. and so the healing that came

from that. and that is another part that we include that is really kind of a personal perspective of how the "indianapolis" and what took place in world war ii carried on through present day. >> the story continues after the rescue. the rescue is tremendously exciting especially for people like jim belcher. jim, will you stand up, please? jim's father survived the sinking of the "indianapolis". thanks, jim. for those of you who raised your hands that said you just have only recently heard of this story, i mentioned "indianapolis" was a flagship of the pacific fleet, sarak kamika. and "indianapolis" and captain mcvaf weey were tapped for the mission. no one aboard the ship knew what was in the crate, and they made a speed run to pearl harbor,

74.5 hours, that is a record that still stands today for that class of ship. and then they went to the northern marianas. and that is when lieutenant commander henry received the photograph of the child that he would never meet. and four days later, they set out from guam on a routine missi mission. at that time of the war, that route, route petty, was considered sort of the back water of the war, it was considered the rear. and so the navy did not send an escort ship with "indianapolis". in those days cruisers did not have sonar or any kind of underwater detection equipment so they were accompanied by escorts to protect against enemy submarines. but they did not send an escort

with captain mcvey even though the navy had intelligence that group of four attack submarines was headed into the southern fi philippine sea. they were determined to sink as many american ships as they could because they knew that the war was almost over and that one way or the other japan would be on the losing side. so a few minutes after midnight july 30th, 1945, which was really just a few hours ago -- a few hours ago this week was the 73rd anniversary of the sinking, the lieutenant commander encountered "indianapolis" in the center of the philippine sea 280 # miles from the nearest land. he fired a spread of six toir pea doughs. two hit "indianapolis", one blew the bow mostly off the ship and the second one hit "indianapolis" in mid ship. and about 300 of the crew of

1195 men went down where the ship including we believe lieutenant commander henry, the dentist. and about 900 men made it into the water alive. they stayed there for five nights and four days. which we can explain in a moment why that happened. but after those five nights and four day, only 316 men survived. they are rescued beginning on august 2, 1945. and afterwards, the navy had to decide who to pin this on. and what they decide is to court martial the captain, captain mcvey, even though they didn't give him the proper intelligence, even though they didn't give him an escort ship. and one of the things that we did afresh was to examine the primary source documents for the court marshall of captain mcvey. and without 73 years of interpretation. and because of the national

archives, we found what we believe is the smoking gun as to why captain mcvey's court martial was rushed ahead. because of the primary sources in the national archives, we found that the court martial and persecution really of mcvey was much worse than we thought. and then comes a 50 year effort to exonerate the captain and that effort was led by the survivors themselves and by a young boy who learned about "indianapolis" and did it for -- talked about it for a school history fair project and brought much attention to the story in the late 1990s 50 years after the fact. and then the third person who was critical to helping to exonerate captain mcvey was the captain of the name sake submarine "uss indianapolis" and

we're loucky enough to have captain bica captain bill totey with us today. >> so we mentioned in harm's way, that was written in 2001. well, when that was written, none of the exoneration had really happened. i mean, it was under way, but there was not a conclusion by the time that doug wrote his book. so we had the privilege of telling the story of what takes place between 1998 -- well, from 1960 when the effort began through 1998 where it really started to take ground. and then into present day where they did exonerate captain mcvey in 2001. but that was a huge evident in part by bill toteyle and senator warner, senator bob smith, a lot of back and forth. and it wasn't smooth sailing. i mean, forgive the pun.

but it was an effort by many to get to this point to where the captain's name could be cleared. >> ja ye . >> yeah, and it was decades of fighting. every time an exoneration effort would be mounted, the navy would push back and say this court martial was legally just are filed. so that went on decade after decade. first the survivors, then captain mcvey's sons when they got older, they wrote to president reagan, vice president bush, and each time they were told the court mar shtial is legally sound and number two, presidents don't have the ability to overturn a navy court martial. so those letters happened in the 80s [']. and th '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, he found a letter0s [']. '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman

found another smoking gun, he found a letters [']. '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, he found a letter[']. '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, he found a letter']. '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, he found a letter]. '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, he found a letter. '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, he found a letter '80s. and in the '90s, dan kerzman found another smoking gun, h wh that even the navy knew that he was convicted on a super technical charge. and in the 1990s here came young hinter scott, the 11-year-old boy who began to correspond with the survivors. and then a man that many of you are familiar with got involved in the exoneration effort, how many of you have ever heard of joe scarborough? he has the show "morning joe." at that time he was a congressman from florida and he happened to be in hunt aer's district and pe hhe put his his project on display and that gathered a lot of attention because it was made for tv. and i see some young men up there, how old are you guys? >> 10. >> 7. >> so hunter was only 11 when he started this. he began to write to the

survivors and as you said, congressman scarborough got wind of it. and next thing you knew, hunter scott was all over tv. this was in 1997, '96 through basically '99. he was everywhere. he was on the tom brokaw nightly new, he was on -- >> david letterman. >> of the ddavid letterman. there was a magazine called george and they named him one of the most 20 interesting men in politics. but it was made for tv because it was a young boy helps elderly survivors in their exoneration quest. and so -- but still when the exoneration quest reached congre congress, the navy still murdered blamusback and this gentleman captain bill

totey did some behind the scenes stuff to help it go through. and ironically the japanese commander. senator john warner would not put the resolution to exonerate captain mcvey on the senate floor. he wouldn't do it. senator bob smith was saying please take it to a vote and senator warner would always say the navy decided this, the navy decided this decades ago and they keep deciding it. it wasn't until lieutenant command eer hoshimoto wrote a letter saying can't we take it terrible burden off this captain, it wasn't his fault. can't we put this aside and free this man and this family from this terrible burden of all these years. and senator warner got this letter in the mail and he was so astonished that he called senator smith and said you have

to come see this. and senatorwarner took a resolution to the vote and the exoneration was finally passed. >> and that is just a small part of what is in the book. again, we really wanted to get into all of these perspectives. and tie the narrative together with firsthand experiences. so that you can see all of this as though you were living it too. you get to know the survivors, you get to know bill totey. and you get to know the belcher family. and you go on a journey with them as they experience this terrible thing that they went through in the water, but then how they fought back. and claimed justice for their captain 50 years later. so it is more than a history telling. it is more than facts and dates. it is an experience and we hope

that you get to know these men and this crew like we did. >> so i want to open it up to questions. are there any questions? and not only questions for us, but questions for captain totey. we already warned him we would do this. >> my name is aidan jones and i'm a lawyer here in washington. and i fit in a very strange category in that i didn't hear this story until the day after father's day this year even though i was a navy officer during vietnam and not only

that, i was a damage control assistant and survived a serious fire. we wouldn't have survive it if we had not had it on the way back from refresher training rather than on the way to it. so this book means a lot to me. but i was curious about lynn vince vincent, your navy background and experience and how much this played into the story. >> i served -- i was enlisted. i was an air traffic controller. which is a technical rating. i actually had to rely on captain totey a lot to take me to sea because at the time when i served in the navy women were not allowed on combatant ships and all air traffic controllers served on carriers. but i knew the language of the navy. and i knew the culture of the navy. and in terms of for example one of the biggest places my navy

experience helped was in the rumors that an s.o.s. had been sent out from "indianapolis" and ignored by the navy and covered up by multiple parties at multiple stations. and just being familiar with the culture of the navy, after looking into it and analyzing it, that coverup didn't really stand. it didn't make sense. there was no one -- not only did no one have anything to gain by that, but also the number of records that would have are had to have been falsified in order for that to happen was just insurmountable. it just didn't make sense that there was some kind of a conspiracy to cover up an s.o.s. and another place that that came into play, my navy experience came into play, also has to do with the national archives. and that is that there was a sub sighting about 700 miles ahead

of "indianapolis"' path that had been surmised to be i 58, the ship that sang indianapol thatk ultimately. and one cited seeing it. but none had been navy veterans. so it occurred to me hey, why don't we look at the logs. so we were able to find the ship logs. and not only that, but because nathaniel patch, an archivist at the college park branch of the national and you are could i haves who should wear a big s and a cape, he said why don't we look at their anti-submarine warfare reports. so he dug that up for us and we were astonished. and captain totey was

astonished. to find these detailed records of 15 separate attacks on this enemy submarine. so we found that not only the navy had failed to inform indianapolis o "indianapolis" of the attack submarines that i mentioned, but that they always knew of another submarine directly in her path and failed to inform her of that one as well. >> i kind of left a few things out. and this is more of a statement and a thanks. but i said i didn't hear about this until the day after father's day when my daughter who is a senior editor at sigh mond simon and shuster and she had heard about the book. she somehow got a hold of it and sent to me for father's day.hea. she somehow got a hold of it and sent to me for father's day.and about the book. she somehow got a hold of it and

sent to me for father's day. i'm so thankful that you made this public. and one thing that is new is your coverage of the court martial and how unfair it was. and of course, you know, one reason it didn't come out and see the light of day is because there was a coverup. it was really, you know, terrible that what happened to the captain and what he had to suffer as a result of all of this. so i thank you for telling this story. and i know that you will go to politics and prose at the warf tonight. and originally they weren't going to -- apparently they weren't going offer you a someplace to speak. at least when i first asked my daughter's friend about it and subsequently learned it. so i'm hoping that it is getting good coverage. >> thank you.

>> it certainly deserves it. it is an incredible story. and as a an attorney, to read about how difficult the attorney defending the captain was, how difficult his position was, and how little time he had to prepare and how little records he had to prepare a defense, makes the story tripling horrible. so thank you for getting it out there and i hope that it is very successful in reaching people not only so that they can understand how these things can happen. we can understand why the coverup occurred, it was the end of the war. they can't wadidn't want to tal this, particularly since it was the biggest sinking and loss of life the navy has had. not even close.

so thank you. and i guess that is all i want to say. and i hope -- i guess -- when i was little, i remember in the late '40s, early '50s, watching the victory at seas movies/documentaries. and of course you would never have seen anything about the "indianapolis" in any of that i don't think. i don't know whether there was any footage of the "indianapolis" at any point, but it certainly was not a story that they wanted to tell at the time. >> how hard was the contact with the dentist established? >> it started with the survive organization. a lot of the family members were very connected and was able to meet families of the lost at sea such as the dentist and his family. and they have now -- it is kind of more of an "indianapolis"

crew reunion. so it was a matter of many, many, many road trips with my husband going all over the country interviewing, reading letter, collecting this information. and beyond that, it was spending time in the archives. and going beyond just the story itself, but as lynn mentioned, we would say okay, what other ships were in the water at that time. they still had their war damage reports. they still had their ship logs and deck logs. and those ships were not sunk so the records still existed. so we would go into those and say okay, what did they sayoc s see, what was the temperature over here, that kind of thing. as well as the japanese. so we would be just before a deadline, like every time, and someone would call or we'd find a record. and it would be a game changer.

it would be friday afternoon at 4:00 and we would get a call from the son of the prosecuting attorney and he says i have this box of stuff, no one wants it. all my father's notes from the court martial. and the book is due like monday morning at 8:00. and he is in d.c. and we live in san diego. >> but guess who lives here? >> captain totey. so we said bill, can you go over to this guy's house and look at his box of stuff from 1945? >> and there were incredible game changing notes in this. and we get a call from bill, stop the presses! so we spent the weekend and he sebts sent us notes and pictures. and this just kept happening. and so our efforts have been blessed incredibly from the

beginning. and we breyed aprayed and asked things to be revealed to us that had not been revealed before, help us tell the whole true story of "indianapolis" and her legacy. and that is kind of how things happened. we did a lot of work, but it was -- >> a lot ft of of prove deny sh. >> and thank you very much for coming and speaking and also for telling the story. the thing that i really find amazing about the story is that it was untold for so long and it just makes you wonder the other great stories that are out there that are untold. and so with that, because we have the opportunity here, i wanted to ask captain totey a question about your experience and having worked in a bureaucracy. i'm a former air force officer. so i understand probably some of the pushback or the experience that you had to go through and

maybe some of the potential backlash from your involvement over something that you were so passionate about. can you talk about that and if you experienced any negative repercussions from your involvement in this whole situation? >> yeah, i will admit that there was a great deal of vigorous debate. mostly from the legal folks within the navy. because people hear things the way they want to hear it. and over the decades, i would say while the survivors were trying to fight for the exoneration of their captain, none of them lawyers and none of them really knew how to frame the arguments in ways that would not raise anti-bodies within the judge advocate general community in the navy. and so all they had to do is

raise one issue that the navy could prove to be untrue and the survivors' entire argument would fall apart or get set back for years. so when i got involved, what i tried to do is find the solution that didn't require the navy to admit that the court martial was defective. and i thought it was a win/win. the lawyers could be happy because they didn't have to declare that the proceedings were improper and survives could be happy because we could all admit that the outcome was not just. sos problem is lawyers didn't even want to agree to that. the navy lawyers. so we made no progress with that approach. so we had to work with congress i would say surreptitiously and by ps bypass a lot. >> yeah, and surreptitiously is

a good word. >> can i ask a follow-on real quick? on t so the reek luck tan reluctant of the navy to admit that the court martial was unjust, even with the evidence and documentation andct of the that the court martial was unjust, even with the evidence and documentation andet of the t that the court martial was unjust, even with the evidence and documentation and of the na that the court martial was unjust, even with the evidence and documentation and we start to learn more, why was that there, was it monetary or simply a pride thing that the system couldn't be wrong because if it is wrong, then what else does that mean? >> it was expressed to me that if the navy admitted any counul ability or failure, people might sue the navy over what happened might sue the navy over what happened. it seemed to be a red herring, a canard. and really, you know, i had no

moral problems fighting that point of view. and so what we ended up do is being taking a moral approach rather than legal approach to get things moving forward. >> thank you. >> and a quick question. senator warner's prior service as secretary of the navy, did that ever come up in any of the discussions in terms of his initial reluctant to move forward? >> that was one of the concerns that senator smith had.c to mov forward? >> that was one of the concerns that senator smith had.e to mov forward? >> that was one of the concerns that senator smith had. he served on the committee with warner and along with other names suchieberman 46-this is what happens when you are 55. those other guys and gals.

so there was a concern that would he rule on it now. and i think it was because of the relationship with smith and warner that warner eventually agreed to have the hearings at all. and i can't get in to senator warner's head and i don't know if bill can, but it is possible that senator warner could have said to himself, well, we could have these hearing all day listening and i could then not take it to the senate floor and i've sort of done my due diligence. and that is sort of exactly what happened until the liuiteieuten commander wrote that 4re9e elet. >> and there is another fay mass naval officer captain ed beach who wrote run silent run deep

who also wrote a book called scapegoat which is his attempt to try to exxonerate at pearl harbor which did not go forward. but to the captain for his efforts and success in moving forward. >> and i knew can continue be c p captain beach. and reached out to him when i started working this issue.cont captain beach. and reached out to him when i started working this issue. he actually wrote the forward to the book called "sunk." i think it was written in 1953. there was a chapter devoted to the "indianapolis" sinking. and whesh i stan i started gett involved in this, i wrote to him again and got a letter where he

strongly supported sx o eed exo of mcvey. >> and i'm curious to see "sung" held up there. >> quarteand my question is, fog up on"sunkg" held up there. >> and my question is, following up on"sunk" held up there. >> and my question is, following up on the records, did some of your research information, does any of that information end up in the archives? where does that information end up? does some of it end up as permanent records here? >> we have been talking with a few locations actually because we have in addition to 170 hours of transcribed sbinterviews, we have these records that we've collected. so there are a couple sources,

one being the naend hindiana hil society and a couple other resources to make sure that they are accessible to the public. >> okay. we've been given the hook. [ applause ]. >> thank you. have you watched lectures in history lately? every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3, go inside a different college sclas room cl. >> thanks for your patience and clogging logging in -- >> watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. >> reagan met him half warks wa

supported him. >> and madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press and it is indeed premie to print things, not a freedom for what we refer to institutionally as a press. >> it is also available as a podcast. and week nights this month we're featuring american history programs as a preview. tonight a look at our series on the presidency. first herbert hoover and fdr. and the portrayal of abraham lincoln at fords theater and jfk's response to the nuclear