Pearl Harbor led veteran to radar work in South Pacific

Don Lilienthal was 21 and working in a Seattle aircraft factory the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and catapulted America into World War II.

He was among the throngs of young men who rushed to enlist in every branch of the military to avenge the catastrophic loss in the surprise raid on Dec. 7, 1941, that killed more than 2,400 and wounded 1,282.

But he had another motive for heading into the unknowns of war.

“I figured I would just as well join because I didn’t think I was going to live that long,” the 96-year-old veteran said.

Lilienthal had gone through two major surgeries as a teen, one for a ruptured appendix and another to remove the mastoid part of his temporal bone behind one ear. He also had an infection on his back that wouldn’t clear up.

The medical issues were enough for the Army Air Forces to reject him. Undeterred, he joined the Marine Corps instead.

“They took me the way I was, even with the boils on my back,” said Lilienthal, who moved to the Montana Veterans Home in Columbia Falls earlier this year.

It didn’t take the Marines long to realize what an asset Lilienthal would be during the war. He was a whiz at mathematics and physics, skills that made him a valuable radar specialist with the Marine Air Group 61. That airborne unit was tasked with surveillance of the North Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

Lilienthal’s stepson, Bryan Pond, proudly pointed out how his stepfather aced his military entrance test.

“He did so good on the test they wouldn’t let him go into the infantry,” Pond said.

The military sent Lilienthal to Utah State University to learn about Ohm’s law, one of the most important of the early quantitative descriptions of the physics of electricity. After that he headed to a college in Texas to quickly further his math expertise before taking to the skies as an airborne radar technician.

Lilienthal acknowledged that he was able to understand electronics “better than anyone else,” so his superiors relied on him during strafing runs to search and destroy Japanese submarines that surfaced for air.

“They shot at us,” he recalled about the dangerous mission.

Their aircraft took a hit to a wing during one strafing run but was able to land successfully.

When the war ended and Lilienthal emerged unscathed, he wanted to further his education and headed to the California Institute of Technology on the GI Bill, where he earned a degree in engineering.

He worked on RCA radar sites along the Montana and North Dakota Hi-Line, which prompted him to take a liking to the area. Lilienthal bought a farm near Great Falls in 1954 and briefly tried farming. When he didn’t make much money milking cows he tapped into his technological savvy once again and went to work for Otis Elevator Co., and later for Hughes Aircraft Co., a major aerospace and defense contractor founded by Howard Hughes.

After retiring from Hughes in the early 1980s Lilienthal headed to Great Falls and has called Montana home ever since.

Some of Lilienthal’s memories of World War II have faded since suffering a stroke eight months ago. A yearbook of Marine Air Group 61 helps jog his memory, and he points to the list of fellow soldiers, some of them friends from long ago, who lost their lives in the war. He shows a photograph of the air group’s radar staff — he is front and center — and one is struck by how young these soldiers looked and how the aftermath of Pearl Harbor already had shaped their lives.

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.