Collier survivor recalled shock of Pearl Harbor attack

Naples

Editors note: This story was originally published on Dec. 6, 2016. Here's a look back at the story of Marine Cpl. Paul Smith who who died in 2017.

Half a grapefruit in one hand and a spoon in the other, Marine Cpl. Paul Smith stared at the sky in disbelief one December morning in 1941 as wave after wave of Japanese fighter planes roared toward the U.S. battleships anchored at Pearl Harbor.

His 19-year-old body filled with rage, Smith threw the fruit and silverware at the attacking planes — some flying so low he could make out the pilots’ faces — and ran to the Marine barracks to retrieve his rifle.

Just moments earlier, Smith and the rest of his battalion had been eating breakfast in the mess hall when the building suddenly started to shake. The soldiers quickly spilled outside, only to find themselves in the midst of a surprise air raid.

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Pearl Harbor survivor Paul Smith comforts his wife, Viola, in their East Naples home in 2016, as he recalls serving during the Pearl Harbor attack. Smith died in 2017.

For Smith, who died in 2017, most of his memories of that Sunday morning were shut out behind the gray veil of dementia and old age. But in 2016, on the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he recalled the astonishment he and his fellow servicemen felt then.

And the fear.

“We never dreamed such a thing would happen,” Smith said in 2016 in his East Naples home. “You just couldn’t believe what was happening, you know. It just scared the hell out of you.”

Before the attack, Smith and his fellow Marines stationed at the Hawaiian naval base each were issued only three bullets for their guns, said Sandra Simmons, Smith’s daughter. That’s how little anybody on the island anticipated an attack.

Pearl Harbor survivor Paul Smith stands in his East Naples home in 2016. Smith, who died in 2017, was serving as Marine corporal during the Pearl Harbor attack.

“Not even a full, you know, round of ammunition,” she said. “So had they been really expecting something, they would’ve been much better armed. Not that it would’ve done any good against those planes.”

In just a couple of hours, the Japanese warplanes sank or damaged 18 American battleships and destroyed 164 aircraft. More than 2,400 service members were killed.

When her father, decades later on the 50th anniversary of the attack, first talked to Simmons about the events of Dec. 7, 1941, they almost seemed too horrifying to be true.

Pearl Harbor survivor Paul Smith holds a book signed by other survivors of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Smith, who died in 2017 and lived in East Naples, was serving as Marine corporal during the attack.

Once Smith and the rest of his battalion got their rifles, the men ran back to the shore and fired at the planes until their battalion commander ordered them to guard the fuel tank field where the ships’ fuel was stored.

“And so they spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you know, just guarding those tanks,” Simmons said.

Even after the attack, Smith’s fury continued to bubble.

“Just the idea that someone would attack our country for real made him dreadfully angry,” Simmons said. “He is first and foremost a patriot.”

From Pearl Harbor, Smith shipped out to Tulagi, a small island near Guadalcanal in the southwestern Pacific. As U.S. forces moved about the island chain, Smith manned one of the large searchlights the soldiers used to spot enemy planes when they attacked at night.

“And one of the scariest things about that, he told me, was that because it was so dark along those islands, the thing that they were trying to bomb was that searchlight, because they knew that men were there,” Simmons said. “That was their only clue as to where the men were. So he was sitting behind the biggest target you could possibly imagine.”

Once, a bomb hit about 40 feet from Smith’s searchlight and flung the Marine 40 or 50 feet through the air.

“It literally blew him out of the chair, out of that thing,” Simmons said. “And after that his ears were ringing, and they’ve never stopped.”

Although the Japanese almost always attacked at night, daytime in the Pacific was dangerous, too.

To escape the constant heat and humidity, soldiers would take dips in the water, Simmons said.

“And the planes were still coming during the day,” she said. “He saw bullets hitting the water around him but miraculously never got hit.”

During the war years, she helped on the homefront as a yeoman second class for the Navy.

“I sat at the same typewriter, the same store, same chair and same desk the whole time,” Viola Smith, his wife, said with a chuckle. “We expedited overseas shipments.”

After a short hiatus from military life, Paul Smith was drawn to the service again in 1946 and spent another 22 years in the military.

For Simmons, that meant frequent moving, strict discipline at home and, perhaps above all, developing a deep appreciation for the tight bond military men and women share.

Simmons said she is hopeful that coming generations will continue to remember — as President Franklin D. Roosevelt dubbed it at the time — the “date which will live in infamy.”

“It’s very important to me from a standpoint of: Let’s never forget what happened," Simmons said.

“But not only that. Let’s know and understand why and how it happened, so we don’t lose the lessons, because history repeats itself over and over again. And it will repeat itself someday, no doubt.”

REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR

Who: Naples Museum of Military History and Valerie's House

What: Special exhibits, guests and refreshments

Where: Naples Airport commercial terminal, 500 Terminal Drive

When: Saturday, Dec. 7, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 8, 12 noon to 3 p.m.