Pretty insensitive remark. The families, ex-shipmates, and many others still alive from the WWII era, remember the guys and officers from the Indianapolis.
You speak from youth, and from the leavings of the culture.
Almost everyone on the planet soon knew the story via that scene.
But historians and military buffs had and would have known the story without seeing ‘Jaws’.
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Including my late Dad—who flew a PBY Black Cat on open-ocean rescues—families and shipmates seldom spoke of the war. My Dad only mentioned a reunion, where some he had rescued tearfully hugged him. It's certainly possible he might not have known the ships' names!
Any survivors "sensitive to my remarks" would be in their 90s today.
As a student of WWII—and although I knew of the USS Indianapolis tragedy—I was reminded of the story from "Jaws", as it was recounted at a boating forum—in 2012.
I actually never saw the movie...! .
I see your point but it was/is a not forgotten story.
My grandfather was born in England and was a Canadian soldier in WW1. He only opened up to me in private, when I asked him to. I was very young then.
He never volunteered such talk and often resisted it. He told me much, and although he passed in 1978, he is much missed. Perhaps his greatest gift to me was sharing with young me things that woke him up in the night, on my insistence. I saw that war through his brave eyes.