By Renee Worthing 

Staff Writer

There is a large black sign on Main Street in Sanford. The white letters on the board change often, congratulating a local couple on their anniversary, announcing the birthday of a resident or someone’s retirement. Raymond Payeur, owner of the sign, puts the messages up as a favor to his fellow residents, but every July 30, Payeur puts up his own message to commemorate the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in 1945 and the loss of 880 of his shipmates.

He stepped off the ship one week before it sank, but it wasn’t the first ship he was on that went down.

Born in Springvale in 1925, Payeur joined the Navy eight days after turning 18 years old and boarded the USS Sumter in Baltimore, Md., Sept. 1943. He said on Oct. 22, 1943, on the way to San Diego, the ship was attacked by German torpedoes, in an area known as “torpedo junction” between Cuba and Haiti.

 The ship escaped damage and sailed on to Lahaina Roads, Hawaii, to rendezvous with other ships of the Northern Attack Force for the Marshall Islands operation.

Payeur was a machinist in the engine room, but he also had the job of passing ammunition for the five-inch guns used to fire at Japanese “Zeros,” lightweight fighter planes flown by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service.

“It took four days to win the Battle for the Marianas,” Payeur said.

In May, the Navy assigned Payeur to another ship. He was transferred to a liberty ship, the SS Henry Bergh. At 4 a.m. June 2, 1944, the ship ran aground on the shoals of the Farallon Islands 27 miles outside of the Golden Gate Bridge and sank.

Payeur said when the ship hit the rocks, he thought it had been hit by a torpedo.

No lives were lost, he said, adding the only injuries were a broken leg and shoulder, but the men were forced into lifeboats.

“I was in a lifeboat all day,” Payeur said.

He said the scariest thing about being adrift at sea was the 2,000-pound walruses with their giant tusks that could have overturned the lifeboats, dumping the men into the oil-coated sea.

He and the 18 other men in the lifeboat were picked up at 5:30 p.m. that night, more than 12 hours after the initial damage to the ship.

“When we landed in San Francisco, the only men from the Henry Bergh I saw were the men in the lifeboat with me,” he said. 

He never saw any of the other survivors from the Henry Bergh. 

“I guess they were shipped to other ports,” he said. 

Payeur said he was issued new gear and given one year of “survivor leave” following the sinking.

“I was offered the opportunity to return to Maine,” he said, but chose to go to San Diego instead.

The next ship he stepped aboard was the ill-fated USS Indianapolis, commanded by Captain Charles Butler McVay III.

“I shook Capt. McVay’s hand,” Payeur said. “He greeted every sailor that came aboard.”

The Indianapolis received orders to sail to Tinian Island, carrying top-secret cargo, parts and the uranium projectile for “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, Payeur said.

Setting sail from San Francisco July 16, 1945, the Indianapolis arrived at Pearl Harbor three days later, where Payeur stepped off.

The ship continued on, unaccompanied by other ships and arrived in Tinian on July 26. After delivering the classified freight to Tinian, the Indianapolis sailed to Guam.

After two days in port, the ship departed Guam and sailed toward Leyte where the crew of more than 1,000 men was to receive training before forging on to Okinawa.

However, 14 minutes after midnight on July 30, 1945, two torpedoes fired by a Japanese I-58 submarine hit the Indianapolis. The ship sustained massive damage on its starboard side.  She listed to the right and sank in 12 minutes.

Of the 1,196 men on board, about 900 made it into the water, including Captain McVay, before the ship slipped below the surface of the ocean.

Three days later, 316 men were plucked from the sea, ut 880 men perished. The sinking of the Indianapolis is considered the single worst naval disaster.

Some of the crew made it into the few lifeboats available, while others wore life jackets. The men were adrift for three days before being plucked from the sea. 

Although Payeur was not on the ship the day it sank, he lost many friends. In February 1948, Payeur had enough of life at sea. His ship docked in New York City and Payeur hitchhiked back to Sanford. 

“I said to myself, ‘When I get there, I am going to find me a woman,’” Payeur said. The night after he returned, he attended a dance at the Bauneg Beg Grange, where he met Shirley, the woman he would marry nine months later. 

Payeur began collecting magazine and newspaper clippings about the USS Indianapolis as well as the USS Sumter and the SS Henry Bergh.

“I’d see something in a newspaper or magazine and say, ‘I saw that’ or ‘I was on that’ or ‘I was there,” he said. 

While he collected stories and photos from newspapers and magazines, he wanted to talk to his fellow shipmates. It was 15 years before survivors got together for a reunion. Payeur attended the U.S.S. Indianapolis reunion in Indianapolis, Ind. and spoke to many of the survivors who recounted their stories of survival.

Payeur said men jumped overboard, some from as high as 70 feet, to the dark water below.

“The men were landing on each other,” he said.

Payeur said while sharks were blamed for the loss of many of the men who jumped in the water, Payeur said survivors told him a different story. 

“It wasn’t like ‘Jaws,’” Payeur said, referencing the 1975 Steven Spielberg thriller based on Peter Benchley’s novel by the same name. In the movie, Robert Shaw’s character, Quint, described how he witnessed sharks devouring hundreds of men who waited for rescue after the sinking of the Indianapolis.  

“The shark stories are not true,” Payeur said. “Sometimes the sharks bumped into their legs, but not many men were eaten by them as was said.”

Nights adrift were frigid and during the day, the hot sun beat down on them. The men in the life rafts had no food or water for three and four days.

  “They were drinking the ocean water and were delusional,” Payeur said.

  He said the men hallucinated, believing their shipmates were holding out on fresh water. The delirium led to mistrust and violence. Some men told Payeur that many shipmates were stabbed to death.

  “Fifty men were stabbed in one night,” Payeur said, shaking his head. 

The Navy blamed McVay for the loss of the ship and crew and was court martialed for “failing to zigzag,” a maneuver the Navy said would have saved the ship. McVay also blamed himself for the loss of the ship and was reported to have said, “I should have gone down with the ship.” 

McVey committed suicide in 1968. 

Payeur said the highlight of one of the reunions was shaking hands with the son of Capt. McVay 60 years after he shook hands with the captain.

Payeur continues to go to the reunions, but the number of survivors has dwindled. 

“In 2005, there were only 99 survivors left,” he said. 

Payeur said he and Robert Bunai of West Roxbury, Mass. are the only survivors left from New England.

He often wears the dark blue cap with the words “USS Indianapolis” stitched in yellow. An image of the ship is stitched in white.  

“I am a man with four hats,” he jokes. “I can wear the Henry Burgh, the Sumter, the Indianapolis and the hat from the merchant marines.”