♂Lloyd John Delahorne

Lloyd John Delahorne (29 November 1922 – 4 July 2007) was a Louisiana-born career soldier who was taken prisoner when Corregidor fell in May 1942 and spent more than three years as a prisoner of the Japanese, most of it in labor camps around Osaka, before serving on in the Army until he retired as a sergeant first class. He was the twin brother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014).

Early life

Lloyd was born on 29 November 1922, the son of Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929) and Ida Serrette (1903–1990); the family record places his birth at Breaux Bridge, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. He and his twin Floyd were two of five children, with their elder brothers Roosevelt Joseph Delhorne and Shefton Anthony Delahorne and a sister. Their father died in the autumn of 1929, and in April 1930 the census found the twins living apart from their mother at St. Mary’s Home in Lafayette, a Catholic children’s home staffed by Irish-born sisters, where Lloyd was recorded as “Loyd J. Delehan,” aged seven. The same page lists their sister Mary and, almost certainly, their brother Shefton, so four of the five children were in the Home; family accounts differ on why, one holding that their widowed mother could not afford to keep them for a time, another that she had a new partner, Reauld Billeaud, whose wife the census recorded her as that April. By 1935 he was back with his mother at Crowley, Acadia Parish, and he was still living in her household there, single, at the 1940 census. When he registered for the draft at Crowley on 8 February 1941 he gave his address as 318 West Eighth Street and his employer as F. C. Stutes of Crowley.

Corregidor and captivity

Lloyd joined the Army in February 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor. A Crowley newspaper later recalled that a recruiting officer at Lafayette had persuaded him he could serve best overseas, and that his mother, who had to sign the papers because he was eighteen, did so “with some apprehension” and saw him off to Barksdale Field^W at Shreveport. He sailed from Angel Island, the Army’s embarkation depot at San Francisco, and on 21 March 1941 arrived at Corregidor, the fortified island at the mouth of Manila Bay, as a private in the Coast Artillery Corps^W. His prisoner-of-war record places him in the 60th Coast Artillery^W, the antiaircraft regiment on Corregidor.

The Japanese invaded the Philippines in December 1941. Corregidor surrendered^W on 6 May 1942, and Lloyd’s prisoner-of-war record dates his capture to the following day. In May 1942 the War Department notified his family that he was missing. In March 1943 the Crowley paper printed the address at which friends could write to him, “Interned in the Philippines,” in care of the Japanese Red Cross^W at Tokyo. That August his mother received a postcard, the first word from him in more than fourteen months, reporting that his health was as usual and that he was “working for pay”; by then he had been shipped to Japan. A veterans’ association’s records list among his camps one abbreviated “Cab.” (most likely Cabanatuan, the main prison camp in the Philippines), and in Japan Kobe, Tanagawa and Tsuruga, all in the Osaka area; his official prisoner-of-war record names Osaka Main Camp at Chikko.

On 26 January 1945, at Tanagawa camp, a Japanese guard beat him with a club and kicked him for arriving fifteen minutes late for work, knocking him unconscious; he was carried from the camp and spent nine days in hospital. After the war the guard, Shohei Ikeda, known to the prisoners as “Elmer” and “Silly-face,” was charged before an American military commission with the abuse of thirty-six prisoners, and the charge sheet names “Corporal Lloyd J. Delahorne” as one of them. The case was reported in the Crowley paper in January 1947. Lloyd was liberated at the end of the war; the last report in his prisoner-of-war file is dated 21 November 1945.

Later service and life

Lloyd received an honorable discharge on 14 February 1946, and wrote the fact himself on his draft registration that month, giving his employer as “Veteran – Army. Hon. Disc. 2-14-46.” A Watertown, New York, newspaper account reprinted in the Crowley Post-Signal of 18 February 1946 names Corporal Lloyd Delahorne as best man at his brother Roosevelt’s wedding at St. Anthony’s Church in Watertown. His enlistment record gives 5 November 1946 as the date he re-enlisted at Camp Polk^W, Louisiana, again in the Coast Artillery Corps. He made the Army his career: in 1957 he was living at El Paso, Texas, with his occupation given as the United States Army, and a service index records a further enlistment from May 1962 to May 1965. His headstone and the national cemetery records give his wars as the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam, and his final rank as sergeant first class; the stone also records a Purple Heart. His obituary says that he retired from the Army in 1968 after twenty-seven years of active duty, and that he received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for his service in the Second World War.

In retirement Lloyd belonged to the Magnolia Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War in Mississippi, to VFW Post 3267 at Harahan, Louisiana, and to the American Legion. When the National Prisoner of War Museum^W opened at Andersonville, Georgia, in April 1998, the Christian Science Monitor’s report on it quoted him: “I was tortured. It was par for the course. Anytime [the US] would drop a bomb, they decided to take it out on us.” He was a lifelong fisherman and owned a boat for most of his life; from 1985 to 1997 he and his wife lived at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where, his obituary says, he headed out to fish each day as soon as it was light.

Lloyd was married twice, to Edith Blue Monroe (1927–2013) and to Sherley Jane Huff (1934–2020), who survived him as his widow. His headstone calls him “beloved husband and father,” and his obituary names a son, a daughter and a stepson among his survivors, with his twin Floyd and his brother Roosevelt. He was living at Lago Vista, Texas, when he died of cancer on 4 July 2007 at Leander, Texas, aged 84. He was buried in Biloxi National Cemetery^W, Biloxi, Mississippi, under a stone marked “EX-POW,” and in place of flowers his family asked for gifts to the prisoner-of-war museum at Andersonville.

Notes

The date of his first enlistment is recorded three ways: two Crowley newspapers give 2 and 3 February 1941, and a military service index gives 22 February 1941. His 1941 draft card gives his birth year as 1923, but its own stated age of eighteen agrees with 1922, as do his later records. A 1943 newspaper placed him as a prisoner “in Tokyo,” but Tokyo was only the Red Cross forwarding address on his mail, not his camp. The family record places his birth at Breaux Bridge and his twin’s at nearby Butte La Rose, in the same parish; the records consulted do not reconcile the two. His Purple Heart rests on his headstone, the cemetery index and his obituary, and his Bronze Star and his retirement in 1968 on the obituary alone; his service in Korea and Vietnam rests on the headstone and the cemetery index, and his service file has not been examined. The obituary (Riemann Funeral Home, Biloxi, 2007) dates his capture to 5 May 1942, the day before Corregidor’s surrender, and puts him in the single camp of Tanagawa; its heading also shows “May 5, 1942” where his birth date belongs. Neither date is used here. The 1998 quotation is from Christina Nifong, “Tribute to POWs in Bricks and Mortar,” The Christian Science Monitor, 10 April 1998. The tree records no children for either of his marriages, and which wife was their mother has not been established.

The 60th Coast Artillery is read from the unit field of his National Archives prisoner-of-war record, which gives regiment 60 with his Coast Artillery Corps branch; his death notice in the Ex-POW Bulletin of May 2008 also names the 60th. Which battery he served in is not known.