Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side.
Was comin' back from the island ofTinian Leyte.
Just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb.
Eleven hundred men went into the water.
Vessel went down in 1 2 minutes.
Didn't see the first shark for about halfan hour.
Tiger, 1 3-footer. Know how you know that when you're in the water ?
You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail.
What we didn't know was our bomb mission had been so secret...
no distress signal had been sent.
They didn't even list us as overdue for a week.
Vey first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'.
We formed ourselves into tight groups.
Kinda like old squares in a battle,
like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo.
The idea was, shark comes to the nearest man,
that man starts poundin', hollerin', screamin'.
Sometimes the shark go away,
sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark Iooks right into ya,
right into your eyes.
You know, a thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes.
Black eyes, like a doll's eyes.
When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'
until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over wide.
And then--
then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'.
The ocean turns red.
ln spite of the pounding and hollering, they all come in.
They rip you to pieces.
You know, by the end of that first dawn,
lost a hundred men.
l don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand.
l don't know how many men. They averaged six an hour.
On Thursday morning,
l bumped into a friend ofmine, Robinson, from Cleveland,
baseball player, boatswain's mate.
l thought he was asleep.
Reached over to wake him up.
Bobbed up and down in the water like a top.
Upended.
Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.
Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper,
a Lockheed Ventura SaW US.
He swung in low and saw us.
Young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper.
He saw us and come in low. Three hours later,
a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up.
That was the time l was most frightened,
waitin' for my turn.
l'll never put on a lifejacket again.
Eleven hundred men went into the water.
31 6 men come out. The sharks took the rest.
June 29, 1 945.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
