A La Porte County Life in the Spotlight: Delbert and Donald Major

Delbert-Donald-MajorFunny thing about brothers: Some are such opposites they can barely stand each other’s company. Others, like Delbert and Donald Major of La Porte, have a special affection for each other that transcends the bonds of friendship. And in their case, has managed to last a lifetime.

Del and Don, as they prefer to be known, were 21 and 18 years of age, respectively, when they enlisted in the Navy back in June of 1942, during the Second World War. Today, at ages 93 and 90 (if you’re trying to do the math, that would be 72 years later!), they live scarcely 100 yards apart, in separate units on the second floor of Brentwood at La Porte, an assisted living facility on the southwest side of the city.

Older brother Del had initially enlisted in the Marine Corps that summer, but fate intervened when, a week before he was to be sworn in, Don, who had just graduated from high school, asked him for a ride to South Bend so he could enlist in the Navy.

“While we were there,” Del recalls, “the Navy recruiter said to me: ‘So, you gonna let your little brother do all the fighting?’ I told him, ‘Hey, I’m in the Marines,’ but when he found out I hadn’t been sworn in yet, he said I could still change my mind and join the Navy.”

Majors-LTM-1A Marine Corps recruiter tried to talk Del out of it, but he was ultimately won over by something the Navy recruiter said to him. Del remembers it to this day: “He told me, “The Army gets the work, the Navy gets the pay and the Marines get the credit. Which do you want?’ So I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll go for the pay then.’”

And that settled it. There was never a guarantee that the brothers would serve in proximity to one another, and in fact they didn’t.

“We were together on the train ride to Chicago,” Del says with a hearty laugh, “and that’s the last we saw of each other for quite a while. We didn’t even go to boot camp together.”

Both men were trained as Motor Machinists. Don ended up in the South Pacific on an LST, the Navy’s designation for ships that were used to support amphibious operations by delivering vehicles, including tanks, as well as troops and other cargo, directly onto shore, thanks to doors in their bows that dropped down to become ramps on land. LST stood for “Landing Ship, Tank,” though its crews liked to joke that it stood for “Long Slow Target.”

“Sometimes it was scary, and sometimes it was fun,” says Don of his tour of duty. “We were going from island to island, to different bases. Up and down and back and forth. It wasn’t bad duty. If it weren’t for the war, the South Pacific was a nice place to be.”

The scary part, of course, was being attacked by enemy airplanes or shore batteries periodically, and there was always the possibility of being targeted by a sub. On land, snipers were a concern as well.

“One night while we were beached, I was going from the stern to the bow when a cook came up on deck and got shot by a sniper,” says Don. “He was lucky. It didn’t kill him.”

Majors-LTM-2By comparison, his older brother’s service turned out to be even more hazardous, as well as farther ranging. Del signed up for submarine duty and was assigned to the USS Hake, whose first two war patrols involved anti-submarine duty in the Atlantic Ocean.

“I was put on lookout,” Del says. “All we did was radar watches and lookout watches. We watched for submarines and anything else we could see, and when we saw something, we investigated what it was.”

Radar watches were conducted below deck, in the radar room. Lookout duty was conducted on deck whenever the submarine traveled on the surface of the ocean, as it did most nights while the ship’s batteries were being recharged. When the weather is good, being outside on deck can actually be a pleasant experience. Unfortunately, the weather in the North Atlantic can also get pretty nasty at times.

“You can have 50-foot waves that go right over the top of the ship,” Del notes. “Whoever is on lookout in those conditions, you had to hang on to the stanchion or you’d be swept away.”

Interestingly, the Hake didn’t encounter a single U-Boat in European waters. It happened when the ship was on its way back to the United States.

“We were a day or two from home,” says Del. “I was up on lookout, and I spotted a periscope. The next thing I saw was four wakes from torpedoes, all heading our way. So we dove right away and avoided them. We tried to follow the sub, but it outran us.”

During the summer of 1943, the Hake was reassigned to the Pacific Ocean, where the ship and its crew saw plenty of action over the following two years.

“Our primary targets were troop transports and oil tankers,” explains Del. “Tankers were especially important targets in the Pacific.”

On its first war patrol there, the Hake sighted and destroyed a transport on its way to Japan. Del remembers it well, as it was his turn on lookout duty at the time.

“Our torpedo left a wake, like a boat does. I’m watching it, and it’s going hot, straight and normal toward that ship. Sure enough, it hit it and blew it all to hell.”

Two weeks later, on the same patrol, the Hake attacked and damaged a tanker, but suffered considerable damage from depth charges before making its escape. A few days later the sub came upon three enemy ships accompanied by two escorts. Launching a spread of six torpedoes, it was able to sink two of the three, identified as the Tacoma Maru and Nanka Maru.

“We surprised them,” says Del. “They knew we must be close by, but they couldn’t figure out where we were.”

What surprised Del, and the rest of the Hake’s crew, was the enemy’s response to the attack.

“They started depth-charging right away, so the guys that survived our torpedo attack got killed anyway. By their own people.”

Depth charges are a fact of life in the submarine business, and the Hake experienced more than its share during the years Del served on the vessel.

“We took a total of 875 depth charges during our patrols,” Del reveals. “When you’re down there, you just wait for the detonator to go off. If it went off above you, it was okay because it just forces you down and that’s about it. But if it goes off below you, you’re gone. Probably split you right open.”

On its second patrol in the Pacific, the Hake encountered an unescorted tanker, the Yamamizu Maru, which it promptly sent to the bottom of the sea. Several days later, the sub attacked a convoy, damaging several ships before being set upon by destroyers.

“These destroyers start chasing us, and the next thing you know they’re shooting at us, and you could hear the projections, they were that close. We didn’t have enough water to really dive where we were at — because if you couldn’t get down over 100 feet you were finished — but our skipper finally got us to deep water and we were able to get away. We ran all night long, until it was close to daylight. We had just enough engine to keep ahead of them.”

On subsequent patrols, the Hake and its crew sank a destroyer (the Kazegumo), a cargo ship and a troop transport. They also conducted a special mission to the Philippines to retrieve 29 aviators who had survived being shot down during their missions.

After the war, Del returned to his former job building railroad cars for the Pullman Company in Michigan City. Later, he went to work at Metal Door & Trim, also of Michigan City, where his father was a foreman. His last 10 years of employment were at La Porte Hospital, where he was on the Maintenance staff.

After Del retired, he and his late wife, Frances, purchased a motorhome and spent several years touring the United States.

“We traveled to to every state, including Alaska,” he boasts, “and we visited all but three national parks.”

Frances passed away in 2012, and not long afterward Del suffered two strokes. Living alone was no longer an option, and that prompted the decision to take up residence at Brentwood.

As he had done in the Navy, younger brother Don took a different course than his brother did after the war was over. He attended college — Purdue University, then Indiana University — and got a degree in industrial engineering. Eventually, he became a teacher at Ivy Tech Community College.

When Don retired, he and his wife Doris moved to Central Florida. They basked in the sunshine there for more than 20 years before returning to La Porte and joining Del at his new home.

“You get to the point where you just can’t do much yourself any more,” explains Don.

So now that they’re neighbors, Don and Del can see each other just about every day. If they want to.

“You know how it is with brothers,” Don says with a chuckle. Then comes the reassurance that, “There are times when we have disagreements, but most of the time we get along good.”

Typical of their generation, Del and Don appreciate the recognition that former soldiers like themselves get on Veterans Day, but they don’t see themselves as heroes. As far as they’re concerned, they were just a couple of guys who did their jobs.

“That’s what we signed on for,” says Del. “We just did what had to be done.”