Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief.

We was coming back from the island of Tinian to Lete.

We just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb.

1100 men went into the water.

The vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn't see the first shark for about a half hour.

A tiger, 13 footer.

You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by looking from the

dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know was that our bomb mission was so secret. No distress

signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week.

The very first light, Chief, sharks come cruising by. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sort of like you see in the calendars.

You know, the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was

the shark come to the nearest man. That man he starts pounding and hollering.

Sometimes that shark would go away, but sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at you, right into your eyes.

The thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes.

When it comes at you, he doesn't even seem to be living until he bites you.

And those black eyes roll over white and then, ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screaming.

The ocean turns red and despite all your pounding and you're hollering those sharks come in and

rip you to pieces.

You know, by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men.

I don't know how many sharks that were, maybe a thousand.

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