McVay’s court-martial and enduring blame

The cited account describes McVay as the only US naval officer court-martialed for losing his ship to a submarine in World War II. That claim was not independently checked against every US Navy case. His sentence was remitted, and Admiral Chester Nimitz restored him to active duty. I-58 commander Mochitsura Hashimoto testified that zigzagging would have made no difference under the attack conditions. Grieving families continued to blame McVay, and his own sense of responsibility appears to have added to the burden before his death by suicide in 1968. He had returned to service and retired as a rear admiral, leaving a sharp division between formal mitigation and the personal blame that remained.