DON COWAN

By Levi Van Dyke

Don Cowan was born in Naches, Washington.  After a short stay at the University of Washington, war was declared and he signed up with the Navy.  Don liked the Navy because he knew he would always have a bed to sleep in, a roof over his head, and his feet under a table.

He left home after Christmas to go through Basic Training.  He eventually ended up in Bremerton, Washington.  This was nice for Don because it gave him a chance to go visit his family before heading out to the Atlantic.  Don also had five brothers who served in the military during World War II.  This made it a hard time for his parents and family, but all their sons returned home safely following the war.

After his good-byes he left Bremerton to join up with other aircraft carriers in the Atlantic Ocean fleet.  This fleet's main purpose was to search and destroy enemy U-boats and submarines which regularly stalked troop convoys and approached the east coast of the United States.  It was while hunting subs that Don became part of a now famous sinking of a Japanese submarine. 

One day when the U. S. had decoded some German messages, they found out that a Japanese sub was headed for Germany loaded with valuable materials.  Among them were random supplies, including crude rubber, and over twenty million dollars in gold.  Not only was it loaded with valuables, it had the distinction of being the longest submarine ever built, either before then or since.  That Japanese submarine was as long as a football field, one hundred yards, and carried over two hundred men.

When Don's fleet received this information, they set out to intercept the sub and found it exactly where their information indicated it would be.  They forced the huge sub to surface with a blanket of depth charges.  The Japanese came out waving white flags, but when the planes from the carriers in the U.S. fleet flew over the sub to drop life rafts, the Japanese sailors shot at them.  After that the captain gave the order to destroy the sub.  Torpedo bombers were launched and the sub was sunk.

Today there are expeditions in the process of recovering the gold that is still within that submarine laying on the bottom of the ocean at a depth of seventeen thousand feet.  The sub went from a target to a treasure hunter's dream.  National Geographic magazine documented a recent expedition that found the wreckage but was unable to extract the gold from it on their first attempt.

This was by far Don's most memorable experience of the war.  He was stationed at an air base in Florida when the war was over.  He then returned home to reunite with his family after four years in the Navy.