My name is Floyd Cox. I'm a volunteer at the
National Museum of the Pacific War.
Today is September the 19th, year 2009, and I'm
presently interviewing Dr. Arthur DeLario.
The interview is taking place in Fredericksburg
High School in Fredericksburg, Texas.
This interview is in support of the Center of
Pacific War Studies Archives for the National
Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Historical
Commission, for the preservation of historical
information related to this site. Now, Doctor,
I'd like to tell you thank you for taking the time
to be interviewed. And to start off the
interview, I'd like to ask you a little bit
about your
background, where you were born, when you were
born, a little bit about your schooling. We'll
take it from there. All right, I'm Dr. Arthur T.
DeLarios. I was born on
October the 24th, 1919 in Oklahoma City. I
later moved to Dallas. My
parents moved to Dallas where I endured a good
bit of problems, a good bit of
during the Depression when my father was, he
was with the Ford Motor Company and
he, they shut down and he was out of work for a
while. So we did a lot
of work to support the family. I started
grammar school in O.M. Roberts Grammar School, Dallas,
Texas, and went to school there for seven years
before going to high school in Woodrow Wilson
High School, Dallas, Texas.
Served all four years in Woodrow and obtained
my diploma, and even though I had applied
to the Naval Academy for admission, I never
heard from them.
So I went to work doing different things and
finally wound up joining the United States
Navy on September 7, 1940.
Because I had previously been interested
slightly in medicine, after training school I applied
the hospital core training school in San Diego,
attended the hospital core
training school in San Diego and when finishing
that I went to work in the
Naval Hospital in San Diego helping to take
care of patients and learning
training there.
After completing training in the hospital, I
was transferred to the Naval Hospital in
I went to work in the hospital in Waukegan,
Illinois, and while there in training for
For a while, I was assigned to duty with the
Marine Corps, U.S. Marine Corps, which at
that time, in early 1941, was still a part of
the U.S. Navy.
So they assigned hospital corpsmen to go and
serve with the Marine Corps.
I went to the Marine Corps in the 1st Marine
Air Wing, assigned to VMF-111, the 1st Marine
Air Wing.
in training there, that was in the Marine Corps
Training School for the 1st Marine Air
wing was in North Carolina, and we would go on
training missions down to New Bern, North Carolina.
I worked with the aviation personnel and
occasionally went on a flight with the airmen
and did work
as an assistant to the pilot.
During that time, when the war started on
December 7, 1941, our unit was shortly transferred
directly to the West Coast, to Los Angeles, California.
We went by train there, other than the pilots
flew their planes, but all the crewmen went
by train to Los Angeles, and from there we were
ordered aboard.
The 1st Marine Air Wing was ordered aboard the
President Garfield liner because they
were using that as a transport.
And we went to the Pacific, landing in Pango
Pango, Samoa, where they had a Marine Corps station.
And so the first Marine Air Wing was stationed
in Samoa until shortly before they began operations
in Guadalcanal, and then they were transferred
there to what's called Henderson Field, Guadalcanal.
I was, because of, I guess, assume the surplus
of hospital corpsmen or my inefficiency of
duty, one or the other, I was transferred back
to the States to be put in the Naval
Hospitals to serve there.
My first attachment was to the U.S. Naval
Hospital in St. Albans, Long Island, that had a fairly
large number of trauma cases from the war.
That was in 1942 and late 1942 and 1943.
I applied because I was still a patriot and
wanted to serve the country.
I decided to apply to the Submarine Training
School at New London, Connecticut.
Why, Doctor, did you want to go into submarines?
Why not aircraft carriers?
Well, a couple of reasons.
I had heard about it and knew that it wasn't on
the battlefield, that service wasn't on
the battlefield.
It was in the Navy.
The other thing was that when you went in the
submarine service, you got a little extra
money and so you served there.
So I applied to the submarine school in New
London, Connecticut, and I was accepted because
of my previous military service.
I went to school in New London, Connecticut and
went through the submarine school, which
takes about six months to go, and training for
the submarine school is pretty intensive.
It taught a lot of things that you have to put
up with.
When I finished submarine school, that was
during that time I met my wife who was working.
She's an artist working in Long Island.
We were married on January 8, 1944, and shortly
after that I was attached to the Hammerhead,
which was built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and I,
along with the rest of the crewmen, were
attached to the hammerhead.
Did you pick up your sub in Wisconsin? Yes.
They launched the hammerhead.
In fact, they've got a picture of it being launched.
They launched them sidewise, commissioned, and
the crew was attached to it, and the officers
were attached, and we did some training in Lake Michigan.
some dives and worked on the surface.
Then in early 1944, the Hammerhead was ordered
to join the Pacific Fleet.
So how do you think we got to the Pacific?
We traveled right through the middle of Chicago
on the Chicago River, and in those days they
They had bridges across the river, and they had
to raise the bridges for us to go on the surface.
We got to the Mississippi River, and because of
the problem with sailing down the Mississippi
with a boat, they put it aboard a craft and
towed it down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
It was on a barge?
Yeah, it was a barge.
Then the crew went down to New Orleans to board
the ship again.
We boarded the ship there, and it was early
1944, and did some training in the Gulf.
And apparently they attached us to the 4th
Marine Submarine Division, went through the
Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor, and assumed our
position in the submarine fleet.
After that, the commander was Captain Martin,
Commander Martin, and he had seventy-two crewmen
and six or seven officers aboard.
We went to Midway for more training, and from
there were put into the submarine division
that was operating in the Pacific at that time.
I think it was the fourth-I'll have to look in
my book-but it was the Fourth Naval Division.
At that time, I was a pharmacist's mate, first class.
You had to be first class to get in the
submarine, be in the submarine service.
We were attached to the Naval Division that was
operating out of Australia, and then they
attached along with a wolf pack, which would go
north through the Lombok Straits to the
South China Sea and meet the wolf pack there
and go on the war patrols.
Now, what was your job? I know you're a
pharmacist mate, but you had a job.
I was the only medical personnel on the submarine.
Could they keep you busy all day doing medical stuff?
Well, I did a lot of things on the submarine.
Because I wasn't constantly attending to sick people,
These people were all healthy and cooperative
and easy to get along with.
I did other jobs on the submarine in order to
stay busy.
I did lookout duty in the Conning Tower.
I did operate, sometimes operated the radar.
I was the ship's photographer, and so I did
several duties, all of those duties during
a war patrol.
War patrols were pretty lengthy.
They were probably about anywhere from 60-70
days, depending on what it was.
Then by that time, you had used most of your
fuel, and whether or not you had attacked
convoys, you used all your torpedoes or all of
the ammunition that you used at that time.
on how many contacts you got and what you were
ordered to do with how much attack you did.
Sometimes in the nighttime, you were operated
submerged most of the - I mean in the daytime
and the operator submerged, standing watch and
waiting for contacts, then at Nighttime
you ran on the surface and went to, if there
was a contact that you were supposed to attack
with the other members.
There were three boats in the wolf pack and you
didn't make contact with them regularly,
But when you were going to a certain area to
try and attack, you'd contact with your
other members of your wolf pack and do whatever
you had.
Then when you had a target that was supposed to
be attacked, that's what you did.
You tried to assume a position and wait for the
contact to come by, and then you get in
the proper range and fire your torpedoes, and
then if they have-they usually had two
or three escorts, either DEs or destroyers, and
they made contact with you, you would
take a beating.
Well, can you tell me any specific contact on
one of your patrols, any specific battle
that you can recall in detail?
I could do that.
I got the ship's log that describes everything
that we did.
During the war patrol on the contact, depending
on the information that you got regarding
and what the commander of the particular
submarine unit ordered, you'd go in and lay in wait
and make a contact.
Usually this was off in different areas, but it
was maybe off the coast of Indochina or
lying pretty close to the coast, because that's
where the convoys went, up and down the coast.
They were taking supplies to Tokyo, and we'd
lie in wait for them and make contact and
then try to get in the right position, daytime
or nighttime.
they came by, if at nighttime we could use more
speed and go around and tell where they
were going and wait for them and get a proper
diameter to fire the torpedoes.
Usually 90 degrees is the best chance you take
of hitting, but you have to-the commander
of the boat has to set the depth of the
torpedoes when he-whatever he thinks is-whether
the ships are loaded, you make it a deeper
depth, or if they're not loaded, you run
closer to the surface, and then you
determine-you make a contact and fire your
torpedoes, wait
and see.
always tell if there's been a hit on the sonar.
You get the explosion, and sometimes you can
see the ship sinking.
If you hit a tanker loaded with fuel,
particularly at nighttime, you can see a great
big flame.
And a couple of times, because I was a
photographer, I had a camera that attached
to the ship's rangefinder, or attached to the
periscope, if we were submerged, and get
Get a few of it and take a picture of it.
That's the evidence that you used to determine
whether you'd sunk the ship or not.
Now let me ask you this, Doctor.
If say it was at night and you knew you sunk
one, would the captain let the crew members
that normally didn't get to see the action,
would he let them get up on deck?
No, no.
You had to, because generally you'd have an
escort that was getting ready, you had
to get, try to, if you'd done, hit, like, I
could read the war report and go over the
number of hits that we had, but if you had two
or three contacts and made hits on them,
Then you'd wait and maybe do another one, get
another position and fire some more torpedoes.
But you were trying to be cautious.
Sometimes the escorts wouldn't determine where
we were and they wouldn't come after you.
But other times we'd maybe have to get on the
surface and go to deeper waters and submerge.
But in the daytime, you'd have to submerge to a
deeper depth to try to avoid being damaged
by the depth charges.
Well, then, from what you're saying, I'd
understand that you've underwent some depth
charge attacks.
Oh, yes, almost.
Can you describe it, how it felt, or can you remember?
Well, generally you've got a sonar contact,
like at nighttime, you've got a sonar contact
on the escort and you know they're coming your way.
And if you're in sea depth, it's pretty good.
You try to get down as deep as you can and go
to what we call silent running.
running, you turn off most of the equipment,
and then you can use your sonar equipment
to tell how close the contact is coming, and
then they contact you.
During a depth charge attack, if they make
contact, you're at silent running.
You can hear the depth charge when it's dropped over.
You can hear a click, click, click, and then
the big explosion.
That's the depth charge.
And they give it to you, as many as they can.
And if you're in deep enough water, you can go
deeper and stay at silent running.
Your motors, your electric motors, are barely
going, so they don't make much noise.
So you do, that's what silent running is, you
make as little sound as you can.
I just imagine you wouldn't know how it felt
unless you underwent one.
In severe depth charge attacks, where they
contact you good and drop a lot of depth charges,
You can feel the charge and the hull of the
boat can vibrate.
You can see that we'd have little water leaks
through the hull sometimes.
If they got a big one, you could get a leak and
the crew would take care of that.
Well, when you were in some of these attacks,
where you attacked Japanese shipping, did
you ever have an occasion your submarine would
fire a torpedo that didn't explode as they
Well, sure.
Sometimes you missed.
That's the reason you changed the depth of the
torpedo, how they run.
And of course, during the war, we had some
faulty torpedoes, and if you didn't make
a hit, then it wouldn't just go.
But you could always pretty well determine, if
you're on the surface, the crew a lot
of times would see the explosion, at Nighttime
they could see that and determine that we
had a hit, and you could even determine if the
ship that you hit had sunk, you didn't
see that.
That's all in the ship's log.
Everything is noted.
Every instant that occurs during the war patrol
is noted during the ship's log.
I'm sure it is.
Well, how many war patrols did you go on?
Well, the Hammerhead made seven war patrols,
and as I said, they'd be about every two and
and a half months. I made all seven war patrols
on them. I put it in commission. The war was
ended. They ceased firing in late 1945. We were
ordered to go back to Pearl Harbor. No
more firing. They decided the war was over and
we went to Pearl. I stayed on the boat
all during his cruise.
I put it in commission and put it out of
commission, went back to Mare Island and put it
out of commission.
And we had a big ceremony when it was decommissioned.
Sure you did.
Well, now, during any of these patrols, did you
ever pick up downed flyers or any?
We stood lifeguard duty off of Iwo Jima when
they were attacking Iwo Jima.
We stood lifeguard duty and picked up a couple
of downed airmen.
I have to look and see exactly, but I think in
one of the latter patrols of the war, we
picked up a pilot who had been down and had
been adrift for a while.
So we did, and I cared for those people that
were picked up, made sure they were all right,
but they died.
A couple of them stayed on until the end of the
patrol, but we did perform lifeguard duty.
That was one of the types of patrol that you
would go on if they-
So, I was going to ask you, oh, how many
tonnage, what was the tonnage of the Hammerhead sunk?
We snuck over 100,000 tons of Japanese shipping
on our, in that career.
And this included ships of all kinds of, did you?
Everything, yeah.
Well, we didn't take, for little, little bitties.
We didn't fire on them.
Well, once you decommissioned your submarine,
did you stay in the Navy?
I had a six-year term in the Navy.
During that time, with a lot of my contacts on
the submarine, the doctors on the submarine
tender, I discussed going to medical school
with them, and they said, oh, you don't have
to go to pre-med, you just go right into
medical school.
So I decided to do that, but when I got out of
the Navy, you couldn't get into medical
school unless you attended pre-med and got a degree.
So I went to Baylor for two years.
I was married and had a son and I was married
and we went to Waco and lived in the Blackland
Air Force Base and I attended school classes at
Baylor and worked at night and was accepted
in Southwestern Medical School in 1948, so
that's when I started medical school and
went for, graduated medical school in 1952.
Went to Baylor for my internship and then
applied and was, I wanted to be a surgeon
but I couldn't, I was, I had to work.
I had two kids, and I had to go to work and
earn money, so I did, and I joined a family
practice called - it was Drs. Ferguson and
James were family practitioners, and I joined
their practice.
In Waco?
In Dallas.
Oh, in Dallas.
Well, it sounds like you had a full life all
the way from a corpsman to in and up a doctor. Yes.
Starting as a kid, I had a full life.
Starting as a kid, picked cotton, catted, so
I've known the ups and the downs and the
beauty of being in a large family and having
caring parents and brothers and sisters, seven
sisters and two brothers.
Well, let me ask this gentleman with us, Mike,
is there any questions that you'd like to
ask the doctor about his service?
Dr. Delarius, I'm just a bit of an observer
because I wanted to learn how the interview
technique went.
Well, you can listen in on that.
Well, here's the question I had, because I
listened to you in the presentation.
Come over here. I got a hearing aid. That's
something else I didn't tell you about.
I lost some of my hearing in the submarine service.
You spoke about an occasion on board the ship,
because you were the only medical person,
and there was a sailor who appeared to have appendicitis.
And that was a very interesting story that you told.
I just thought that would be something that
people might want to know somewhere down the road.
I've got a note, I discussed that with Captain
Martin, I think it was on the third war patrol
in the ship's log, the exact dates.
I examined the gunner's mate, Tobeck, and
determined that he had an acute appendix because
of the physical signs and the temperature
elevation and the history that went with it.
I discussed it with the captain, because he was
the one that wanted me to make sure and
check on this.
And he said, well, why don't you operate?
And of course, on the submarine, in the crew's
mess, we had two tables, and he said, well,
you can just put him in there and operate on him.
Kelly Reid He had never done an operation before.
I had been an assistant in the operating room
on many occasions and knew what was supposed
to be done, but I didn't have an assistant.
He said, well, Mr. Blount can assist you, and I
said, well, I'll have to give him anesthesia.
I could do ether anesthesia.
I said, well, Captain, I can anesthetize him,
but I don't think I can perform this appendectomy
because, number one, I don't have the equipment.
And he said, well, Mr. Blount can assist you.
And I said, well, if I operate on this man,
Captain, I don't think he's going to have
a chance to survive.
If I treat him conservatively, like I know how
to do, keep everything out of his mouth,
give him IV fluids, which I had, treat his pain
with morphine, and sedate him with that.
The only antibiotic I had was sulfonamide.
So I can treat him that way, and maybe he'll survive.
The guy was in bed for 16 days, in his bunk for
16 days, nothing to eat, IV glucose, maybe
a few little liquids, and morphine, and saline
enema to clear out anything in his bowel.
He did survive. Wow.
Do you know if he ultimately had his appendix removed?
When we got to Fremantle, Australia, I
transferred him to the tender, and they took
him in the
operating room and operated him, and his
appendix had ruptured and formed an abscess,
and they
operated him and cured him, and I've later
heard from him after he was F-18.
Kelly Reid
My gosh, what a story.
I know what appendicitis is like, because I had it.
I know what appendicitis is like because I had it.
Is there anything else you'd like to add before
we close this out?
I'd like to add that in my lifetime I've been
privileged with having the wonderful experiences
that I've discussed here.
I've had some very trying experiences in my
lifetime, in my younger life and in my
later life.
My oldest son, Michael, was born when I got out
of the Navy in 1946.
He later attended Southwestern Medical School
and joined me in my practice twenty years
after I'd started practice over twenty years
with me.
Had the misfortune of developing cancer of the
pancreas and wasn't able to recover
from it, died.
That's one of the miserable experiences I've
had, losing him.
I've had the pleasure of having the rest of my
family being close and being around all
the time.
That's a blessing, isn't it?
It is a blessing, and I've got nice grandchildren.
Those are the beautiful things that have
happened, and you don't want to spend a lot of time
on the unpleasant things.