Edgar Harrell USMC is one of two Marine survivors that was aboard the USS Indianapolis (CA-35). He is one of 35 survivors still alive. When asked, he travelers the country to tell his miraculous tale of survival and the Providence of God. Jennifer Rice/staff photographer
By Jennifer Rice
Managing Editor
Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014
Email Jennifer Rice at jen@foxvalleylabornews.com
To view Edgar Harrell’s speech, visit Fox Valley Labor News YouTube Channel
WHEATON — In 1945, minutes after the USS Indianapolis was struck by two Japanese torpedoes, blowing the front end of the ship clear off, a 20-year-old Edgar Harrell stood on the high side of the ship, hanging onto a steel rail and had a moment of clarity, which calmed his fear of the unknown.
Faced with the realization he might be face-to-face with his morality, he cried out to God, “I don’t wanna die!”
“May I say, there are times when you pray, and then there are times when you PRAY! and there’s a difference,” Harrell said.
He retold his miraculous story of survival Oct. 3 at the College Church in Wheaton to a packed house.
“I told God, ‘If you allow me to live, I’ll live for you.’ I don’t wanna die,” he recalled.
In that moment, he thought of his parents and eight younger brothers and sisters he left behind in Tennessee. Also, there a certain brunette he was sweet on who said she would wait for him.
“And she waited for me. We were married in ‘47 and this past July 25 was our 67th wedding anniversary,” he said to applause.
Karen King came from Iowa for the opportunity to meet with Edgar Harrell and to ask if he remembered her father – sailor Robert Harold King, who was killed on the USS Indianapolis. She was four-months-old when she lost her father. With 1,197 aboard, he said he did not remember her father. Jennifer Rice/staff photographer
Harrell believes the Providence of God and said he felt a peace envelope him and he knew then that God had answered his prayers and He would see Harrell through his ordeal.
But even Harrell could not imagine what awaited him. Of the 1,197 aboard, some 900 made it into the water, leaving some 300 trapped and unable to abandon ship. For the next 4 1/2 days, the men of the Indy, lost at sea, would experience dehydration, hypothermia, and mass hallucination after drinking salt water, all the while swimming in shark-infested waters. Only 317 would survive.
The Indy was on a mission to deliver the components of the two atomic bombs that wold be dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They didn’t know what was aboard the ship, but Harrell was in charge of keeping men guarding the large crate.
He refused to drink the salt water, gave encouragement to others and found a crate of rotten potatoes for himself and others to eat.
He did every thing a Christian man could and should do, and lives to tell his tale to others.