CPL Frederick Eugene Delong

Frederick Eugene DeLong was born May 12, 1912, at Cridersville in northwest Ohio. His father, Frank DeLong, was a laborer and his mother, Emma Freyman DeLong, a homemaker.

The son graduated from Lima High School in 1930. His father was 69 when he died in 1934. Frederick had married but was granted a divorce in 1936.

He did clerical work for Buckeye Pipe Line Co. before he enlisted in the Marines on July 17, 1939. He was a corporal on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

In September 1941 he asked the Navy to reassign him the next February to a clerical school at the Navy yard in Philadelphia. He had taken a correspondence course in accountancy before he enlisted.

It appears that he had a son, who was born in June 1939 at the Salvation Army Home & Hospital in Long Beach. Though his age on the son’s birth certificate is slightly off, his name and occupation are correct. It isn’t clear whether Frederick and the boy’s mother ever married.

Frederick’s body was among the few recovered from the battleship, on which 1,177 sailors and marines died. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.

American Legion Post 647 in Cridersville, now closed, was named in his honor.

Sources: the Lima (Ohio) News; cemetery marker; Census; California birth certificate; Marine enlistment records and photo. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.