Paul Smith – Pearl Harbor Survivor at Pearl on December 7, 1991 with his Daughter Sandra Simmons – Member of SDPHS – Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors

On this day, December 7 exactly 70 years ago Pearl Harbor was attacked. My Father, Paul Smith, was a Marine stationed at Pearl Harbor and served there on that fateful day. He spent his entire career serving in the military. He is now 90 years old and still a fierce patriot.

In 1991, on the 50th anniversary of the bombing, I was at Pearl Harbor with my Father for the memorial services. The 8 remaining marines from his battalion, including his commanding officer, were with us. As we took a boat across the water very early to arrive at the Arizona Memorial, I was struck by the stories the survivors told me, and I had them write in my copy of the book ”Day Of Infamy” so I could remember their stories.

Upon returning to Dallas, I wrote a story
about my Father and that trip and presented
it to him for Father’s Day the following year.


Here is the story. I hope you will read it, and I know he would be honored if you would leave a comment for him.

MY FATHER, MY HERO

Just behind me, crouching in the dark, I feel the awesome presence of the ancient volcanoes; their craggy faces bearded with mist, their feet firmly rooted in the dark chasms of the deep. Watching here together from the shore, we face the vast silence of the Pacific Ocean and wait for the dawn.

Standing beside me in the dark my father, Paul W. Smith, speaks to me of this day, over 50 years ago, when he stood here as a young Marine Corporal of 19 years and saw the rising sun appear. It had appeared not as a gentle light to warm the faces of the ancients behind us, but on the wings of enemy planes bringing the horrors of death and destruction that December day in 1941.

“I was permanently stationed here at Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor,” my father begins. “Our unit, Battery G, 3rd Defense Battalion, had just returned from a 6 month operation on Midway Island where we helped complete the airfield defense installation. A secret warning had been sent from Washington DC. to all points in the Pacific Theater. It said Japan was expected to attack the Philippines, or maybe Borneo. We suspected Midway Island was the most likely target.”

“That Friday evening, December 6, all the battleships were in port here in Pearl Harbor,” my father continued. “I was on regular duty that evening and went back to my barracks soon after my relief took over. The officers and enlisted men who weren’t on duty always spent the weekend evenings at various clubs and parties around the island. In the wee hours of the morning when most of the island was asleep, the guys who were on duty usually listened to the local radio station KGMB play Hawaiian records.”

In the quiet dark, I hear the strained disbelief in my father’s voice as he says, “We didn’t know it then, of course, but we know now that on the Japanese aircraft carrier Agaki, about 320 miles north of here, Admiral Nagumo’s communications officer was listening to the same radio station. Nagumo was about to launch the attack on us and he knew that everything depended on complete surprise. He thought that if we Americans suspected anything, the radio station would show it. But there was nothing on except the usual Hawaiian songs.”

He stops for a moment and listens, as if to that past night, and begins to speak again. “At 7:00 AM the morning of December 7, I left my barracks just 6 blocks from the harbor, and walked to the Marine Barracks Mess Hall to join my battalion for breakfast.” I could hear the strain in his quiet words as he told me, “I had just made my way through the chow line and had started eating half a grapefruit when I heard what sounded like the dull thud of an explosion, and a few seconds later, I felt the mess hall shake. I ran outside onto the parade ground and looked up as a squadron of planes came flying so close down over my head I could see the “red meatballs” of the rising sun on their wings. They were headed toward the harbor and I knew the battleships were their targets. I still had half a grapefruit in one hand and a spoon in the other. I was so outraged at the sight of them bombing our beautiful ships, I threw the grapefruit and the spoon at the planes and ran to get my rifle.”

He shook his head slowly as he continued, “Our Battalion was only issued three rounds of ammunition at any given time. When that was gone, we ran to find whatever other guns and ammunition we could find. We just kept on firing at both the first and second waves of the incoming attack. It broke my heart to see the USS OKLAHOMA capsized and the ARIZONA on fire. It seemed like wave after wave of planes came at us forever. I could hardly believe the whole raid took less than two hours.”

“What did you do when you knew it was over?” I asked.

“After the attack,” he said, “1st Lieutenant H. G. Kirgis, our Commanding Officer, put us to work guarding the fuel tank field where the ships’ fuel was stored and assisting in medical evacuations from the bombed ships. I felt nothing but rage at the attack itself and at our vulnerability to another attack in the wake of the total destruction around me.”

History tells us that Japan’s striking force of over 350 planes succeeded in crippling the United States Pacific Fleet, destroying nearly 200 aircraft and killing 2,403 U.S. Military personnel and civilians. Of those killed, 1,102 are the men entombed on the USS ARIZONA.

“Seven months later, my Battalion was merged with the 1st Battalion and we shipped out to Tulagi Island where we played a key roll in the invasion of Guadalcanal,” he said. “The first thing you saw when you walked onto the island was a sign some unit had put up that said “The Road To Tokyo Starts Here,” and inch by inch, we fought our way up through that chain of islands toward Japan.”

“We could set our watches by the regularity of the Japanese attacks,” he continued. “Once, I was swimming with a couple of my buddies just offshore to beat the awful heat and they came at us out of nowhere. All I could do was watch as their machine gun fire strafed the water just inches from my head.” He chuckled as he said, “All three of us made it through that one.”

My father fought throughout the war, operating a huge searchlight at night to illuminate enemy planes as targets for our antiaircraft gunners. The gunners thought he led a charmed life because the searchlight he was sitting behind was the first thing the Japanese planes would fire at. They wanted to put out that blinding light that followed them everywhere and revealed their position. He survived years of continuous Japanese aircraft strafing that fell inches from his position, and a bomb blast that threw him forty feet. He fought for his Commanding Officer, for his Battalion, for those at Pearl Harbor and for his country.

Today, December 7, 1991, I stand beside my father, my hero, in the darkness on this same Pearl Harbor shore waiting for the bugle to play morning colors. As the daughter of this Pearl Harbor Survivor, it is the first time I have heard his personal story, burned deep in his memory for over half a century. His telling honors me, whose duty it is to carry on the memory of his service here on that fateful day.

Out of the peaceful Pacific emerge the first rays of the sun washing over the craggy, weathered faces of those other Pearl Harbor Survivors standing in silence with us. The ever watchful eyes of these many heroes gleam with sorrow and with pride as the brightening sky over the USS ARIZONA Memorial reveals that, today, no enemy threat approaches these sacred shores.

We are here to remember Pearl Harbor, my Father and I.

We are here to say good-bye to those whose time ran out, my Hero and I.

We are here to say thank you before it is too late, my Father, my Hero and I.

USS Arizona Memorial – Pearl Harbor