The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • X1

POSTMASTER: DELIVER BY JULY 28-29, 2004, VOLUME 14, NUMBER 5 PRSRTSTD U.S. Postage Paid Sentinel Direct TMC 32801 r. Sentinel Express For home delivery of the Orlando Sentinel, call: In Orlando 407-420-5353; outside Orlando 1 -800-359-5353 tat tot a JH VU-LUJ11 Sailor tells of personal demons Clarence Hershberger was there when the USS Indianapolis sank on July 30, 1945. mMei 'J SSfriSK BARBARA V. PEREZORLANDO SENTINEL Heavy burden.

Clarence Hershberger, a USS Indianapolis survivor, has kept the story of shark attacks and days left floating in the sea inside. His ship delivered components of the atom bomb that hit Hiroshima. Remember the scene from Jaws where Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss are comparing scars aboard the Orca? Shaw is asked about a scar on his arm, which used to be a tattoo of the USS Indianapolis. Dreyfuss, who had been laughing, grows quiet and Shaw begins to tell the tale. Here at Clarence Hersh-berger's kitchen table, inside his small trailer in DeLeon Springs, I have come to hear the story from a real Indianapolis survivor, one who lives in a county known as "the shark capital of the world." Which, when you think about it, must be a real joke to someone who was on the Indianapolis.

But first, there is something Hershberger wants me to know. It is this: He was not always able to recount what happened after the Indianapolis was sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. Hershberger left the U.S. Navy on Feb. 19, 1946, crawled into a bottle of Old Granddad the next day and stayed inside for nearly half a century.

He worked a variety of jobs in and around his Indiana hometown but nothing lasted very long. It was the booze. Hershberger met his current wife, Juaneta, in 1990 and she finally got him to stop MORE INSIDE Business 6 Campaign 2004 4 What's Happening 6 INDIANAPOLIS SINKING Mike LAFFERTY SENTINEL COLUMNIST drinking in 1995. Then he began talking to people and then to groups about what happened a few minutes after midnight on July 30, 1945. Now, dressed in a white polo shirt with a Purple Heart pinned to the pocket, and the doomed ship's name stitched above it, he starts to describe the hot, humid night 59 years ago Nineteen-year-old Seaman 1st Class Clarence Hershberger had decided to sleep on deck that night to escape the heat below.

A few days earlier the Indianapolis had delivered its cargo, key components for the atomic bomb that would fall on Hiroshima on Aug. 6. Its secret mission complete, the heavy cruiser was headed for the Philippines when Japanese torpedoes tore into the ship, sinking her in just 12 minutes. About 900 of the crew's 1 ,200 men including Hershberger found themselves floating in the Pacific. They thought help would come soon but a distress signal never went out, escaped the Navy's Heading toward Leyte from Guam, the USS Indianapolis was struck by 2 Japanese torpedoes just after midnight July 30, 1 945, and sunk.

Of the 1 ,1 96 aboard, 316 men survived, some after being adrift at sea for 5 days in shark-infested waters. TAIWAN attention or was ignored. The men gathered in knots and buddied up in pairs. At first it was for moral support. In the coming days, it was to protect each other from sailors so desperate or crazed that they accused shipmates of hoarding secret stores of water and food.

The first morning, Hershberger saw dorsal fins about a football field away. The sharks mostly kept their distance from his group. But on the second day Hershberger saw something in the clear water right below him. It was a shark, maybe 8 or 10 feet long. It seemed to just hover in place.

Continued on 3 South China Sea Manila PHILIPPINES Leyte Mariana Islands Tinian i Site of the USS Indianapolis sinking Guam Pacific Ocean Map area Philippine Sea Malaysia MILES 0 200 SHINIKO R. FLOYDORLANDO SENTINEL.