USS Indianapolis ceremony to bring history to downtown Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A solemn annual ceremony is set to return to Indianapolis this week as the city pauses to remember the sinking of a ship that shared its name.

The USS Indianapolis CA 35 was a Portland-class heavy cruiser in the U.S. Navy that was struck by Japanese torpedoes while en route from Guam to the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in July 1945.

The ship, nicknamed “Indy,” sank in about 12 minutes. Of the 1,195 on board, only 316 survived.

Tuesday’s ceremony will honor both those who died in the 1945 disaster and those who survived, lived through the sinking, and the cruel days that followed adrift at sea.

Brigadier General Stewart Goodwin (Ret.), in a Daybreak conversation on WISH-TV, said those survivors were “cut from a cloth.”

“They’re just a cut from a certain cloth that they were able to survive that in shark-infested waters, nothing to eat or drink for 4 or 5 days,” Goodwin said. “The story is so special, and it’s something that tells about our country. It talks about the people in our country, and in today’s world, I think we’ve lost some of that.”

Honored guests of the July 30 event include families and friends, but organizers encourage everyone to attend.

The ceremony starts Tuesday at 10 a.m., at the USS Indianapolis CA 35 Memorial, on the east bank of the downtown canal, just south of the St. Clair Street bridge.

The memorial was dedicated in 1995, to mark 50 years since the ship went down after the Japanese attack. At the time of the dedication, there were more than 100 survivors of the disaster in attendance.

Now, only one remains.

“Harold Bray!” Goodwin smiled as he said the name, while also acknowledging the inevitability of time. “I’m not sure that it’s been officially announced yet, but the decision has been made that when the last survivor passes, they will continue to have the reunions.”

Four vessels in the U.S. Navy fleet have been named the USS Indianapolis.

• ID-3865 – a cargo ship that was briefly (1918-1919) commissioned to the Navy at the end of World War I
• CA-35 – the cruiser that first sailed in 1932 and sank after a Japanese attack in 1945.
• SSN-697 – an attack sub that sailed from 1980 to 1998.
• LCS-17 – the current USS Indianapolis is a small combat ship that was commissioned in 2019.