Clyde Smith was just seventeen-years-old when he and his friend, Raymond, went to Portsmouth, VA to sign up to fight in WWII. When they took their physicals they couldn’t see well enough without glasses and were turned down by the Army. The Marines has just passed a new directive that if you could see 20/20 with glasses they would take you. They had passed their other physicals, so this new directive allowed them to enlist in the USMC. Clyde had to send papers home to his parents for permission to enlist as he was underage. He told his parents they may as well just sign because he was going to go no matter what. So they did.
They were supposed to be in Norfolk to be inducted on a certain day and Raymond had a Dodge (his dad’s) so they drove from Leaksville, NC to Danville, VA to do some shopping. On the way the car slide and turned over on a damp road. The car was resting on its top in a ditch and Raymond’s girlfriend was pinned under the car. They tried to raise the car enough for her to get out but couldn’t do it. Clyde ran down the highway to a house for help. While he was getting help Raymond got under the car enough for her to get out and some people took them to the hospital in Danville. The girlfriend had cracked ribs. Because it was an accident, the ambulance took them back to Leaksville. This was the same night Clyde and Raymond were supposed to leave for training in Norfolk. Raymond went to see his father at the railroad where he worked. He asked for the car keys and Raymond had to tell him he had wrecked the car. With no car, Clyde and Raymond left on a bus for Norfolk to be inducted.
Later they were sworn in at Norfolk Navy Yard and given a steak dinner. The next day they rode a train to Yamoss, SC to Parris Island. They were in something like a cattle car. As they drove into the main gate and towards the barracks building, there were trainees all around them yelling telling them they were going to be sorry. Clyde's group asked if they were going to be sorry, to which the group replied, "Yes!"…and eventually they were. What does a boy know of war? They would find out.
Clyde and his friend were greeted by a bulldog-looking Sergeant who had something insulting to say to each of them. Clyde had his trousers rolled up. The Sergeant asked him, “Where you come from?” “NC.” “Is it raining up there.” “No.” “Then turn those damn cuffs down!” They then lined up at the barber shop and in less than a minute, with a razor to their head, the barber spun the chair around and their hair disappeared.
They started out with basic training. DI Carpenter took about three months to turn them into Marines. They lined up in Quonset huts near a rifle range. Marched. Drilled with a rifle and other weapons. Marched. Trained on the firing range. Marched. They also had to run in the sand at the beach and the sand flies, scarcely larger than specks of pepper, were drawn by their sweat in the summer sun, The marines slapped and swiped, their formations momentarily breaking as they fought against the aerial attackers trying to eat them alive. (Clyde carried those experiences at Camp Lejeune with him his whole life - he absolutely hated sandflies and ran at the first sight of them later in life when he lived at the beach in Wilmington.) On the firing range they had to shoot at bullseye targets from difficult positions, like laying down, sitting on one foot, from a prone position, kneeling. The first day when they fired a rifle, they had four shots at 200-500 yards. The bullseye was no bigger than a TV screen. Every day they had to disassemble their rifle. Clyde did really well on the shooting range because his daddy had taught him to shoot at targets on a tree branch near their home in Leaksville.
On the first day of firing they fired a full course (68 rounds) at the bullseye. If they got a red flag waved across the target - called “Maggie’s drawers” - that meant they had missed the the target all together. That was a practice day. The next day they shot for real for the record and Clyde’s score was 316 (340 was perfect). He got a bullseye almost every single time! Once, out of 16 shots, he had all bulls eyes. The Marines kept him as a shooting instructor on the range; Clyde coached about 6-8 months. Every time they put up a notice for other assignments, he kept putting his name on the list. He thought he was missing something. It was really easy with no guard duty, no work assignments, and off every afternoon. The barracks that housed the instructors was quite large. Every Saturday at noon he was off until Monday 7:00 AM. He had a lot of freedom and went all over the place on his off time. But the Marines finally took him up on his request for another assignment. He’d live to regret that.
Clyde was sent back to Norfolk to the Navy Yard and the hard stuff began. Here he had sea school for training to be aboard a ship. His platoon was only going to the Pacific Theater. Every Marine is a “rifleman”, but to be stationed on a ship, each had to know about the ships. 50 Marines stationed on each ship. Marines felt the Navy sailors were lax and undisciplined. The Marines served as the Captain’s orderly, did burial duty, and were stationed mid-ship to one of seven gun positions. There wasn’t much fraternity between the Sailors and the Marines. There wasn’t any friction, they just didn’t hang around with each other. Clyde said, “I always felt that our 50 Marines (40 sailors and 10 Marines) did more formal work. Marines were the ones assigned to gang planks, guarding the ship, etc.” The 2nd division wore a braid from a French WWI design. Dress blues were never issued during war time. You had to borrow one if you wanted to wear it to something.
The USS Bataan was the name of the aircraft carrier and the Captain, Captain V. H. Schaeffer, wouldn’t allow any problems. He ran a tight ship. The Bataan, a 600’ foot ship, was built and commissioned in Philadelphia. They had a shakedown cruise from Philly to Trinidad. They ran exercises flying planes on and off the ship. They carried 24 F6-F "Hellcat" fighter planes and nine torpedo bombers, known as BMTs. When ready, they left Philly through the Panama Canal. The ship was supposed to have gone to San Francisco, but the ship which was supposed to carry the troops had been banged up on the locks, so the Bataan picked up Marines from San Diego and carried them to Honolulu. They were there for only a short time to get supplies and pick up some planes and then they were off to the Marshall Islands on April 4, 1944, to join the formidable Task Force 58. They cruised southwest with battleships, and other ships from the fleet. An aircraft carrier is dependent on battleships and cruisers. They are placed inside the rest of the fleet for protection. En route, crossing the-l8Oth Meridian at the Equator, they stopped for the traditional, colorful ceremonies in which the old salts initiated the men who had never before crossed the International Date Line, including Clyde, into the "Domain of the Golden Dragon,” then on to assist in the air operations in the invasion of against Hollandia, New Guinea – Weatac. Upon reaching the Marshall Islands, Bataan and its task force were initially ordered to strike at Iwo Jima in mid-June 1944. However, this plan was abruptly changed when intelligence reports indicated a significant Japanese fleet movement towards the Marianas, which were a strategic group of islands that included Saipan, Guam, and Tinian.
While there they supported Army ground troops during amphibious assaults on Saipan and Guam by conducting bombings to harass enemy positions. Arriving at the Marshall Islands on May 4, 1944, the task force was ordered to strike Iwo Jima on June 15 in the afternoon, but after receiving reports of a large Japanese force closing the Marianas they canceled it and headed south to join back up with Task Force 58.
The 1st Battle of Eastern Philippines was Clyde’s first time to man guns on the Bataan. During the first day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Bataan's aircraft claimed ten Japanese planes out of the approximately three-hundred enemy aircraft lost in the battle dubbed the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." Clyde was on a 40-millimeter gun crew as a loader, passing shells to the gunner. He didn’t care for the sights on the gun which was a gyroscope. An image was imposed and each ring was a certain distance. Every 4th shell was a tracer to help know where you were hitting in relationship to the target.
At 1st Battle of Eastern Philippines the Japanese launched planes from a distance that too far for them to get back from. So the Bataan launched planes to meet the Japanese and some to wait for them at the islands where they hoped to land. Clyde hardly ever got off the ship. On Saipan it was mountainous and there were lots of caves. They couldn’t wander too far because the Japs were hiding in the caves.
They were in a big storm at sea and the pounding waves threw things out of adjustment. It changed the elevation for the planes as well as other damage. The ship had to return to Pearl Harbor for repairs. The USS North Carolina escorted them to Pearl. The repairs could not be done at Pearl Harbor so they had to go to San Francisco - Hunter’s Point, in San Francisco Bay, arriving July 30, 1944. While on R&R in the Bay, Clyde’s cousin, Gene’s ship was there too. He got permission to go visit Gene and they had dinner and went to a boxing match. Another R&R cruiser game in and it had Raymond on it so Clyde got to reunite with his friend from Leaksville who he had signed up with.
Once back in Pearl, Clyde was transferred to 2nd Division and shipped out of Pearl on a troop ship. It wasn’t very comfortable as the bunks were so close together you could only get in by sliding in. And it was very HOT!
The 2nd Division was stationed in Saipan, commanded by Major General LeRoy P. Hunt. They went out on patrols of 39 men just looking for Japanese. While on these patrols, Clyde carried a Browning Automatic Rifle. They ran into Japanese at different times who seemed anxious to stay unknown. It was thought that they probably were getting their supplies from what the Marines were throwing away. Just off the roads there were cane fields that were 6 feet high but they never ran into any troops face to face. The Lieutenant kept them patrolling and Clyde never shot his gun the whole time they were there. Any of the Marines who rambled into caves were killed. Otherwise, they didn’t run into any trouble.
On the southern end of Saipan was a landing strip for B29’s. They also had one in Tinian and Guam. The Navy maintained a training area on Tinian, the island 80 miles north of Guam, used to launch the two atom bombs that ended World War II. Tinian became an important operational base for the rest of the Pacific war. It had four airfields for the B-29 bombers.
In February 1945 there was a battle at Iwo Jima. Clyde was spared again when plans were changed last minute and they weren’t needed so they unloaded. They had broken camp, packed the tents, and ready to load up when they were secured and put the tents back up. On March 19, 1945, Clyde recalled the Bataan had a narrow escape when a Japanese plane dropped two bombs on the U.S.S. Franklin, which was 3,100 yards from the Bataan at the time. "After the bombs hit, the Franklin was out of control and was heading directly toward us. We maneuvered our ship and the Franklin just missed hitting us." The next day, the Bataan suffered its first losses when one sailor was killed and eleven were wounded during an attack on the ship by Japanese bombers and fighter planes.
On April 1945 Roosevelt died, which shocked the nation. Clyde’s Division was on their way to Okinawa for the invasion on April 1 when they got the news. From the information that was being given to the Marines “it sounded like Hell with all enemies then – dangerous conditions.” Self-protection was more in Clyde’s mind. Any “gung-ho-ism” had gone out the window by this time. May 15, 1945, when the Bataan was hit by shell fire and nine men were killed and 26 others wounded. It was most casualties of any single days in the Bataan’s history. On July 10, 1945, the Bataan was part of the Task Force's 1,000-plane attack on Tokyo.
In the Fall of 1945 the 2nd Division then went to Okinawa for the invasion of Japan from landing crafts. They were to be support for the 10th Army who made the invasion. They had island “hopscotched’ taking islands as they went and they were now close enough to invade Japan in what was to be called “Operation Downfall”. They went from the southwest side of Okinawa and the Marines were on the southeast side. There were ships around them. They were attacking from the bluff side. The main attack was by Army on the southwest side. Clyde's 2nd Marine Division were to play a critical role in what would be one of the most harrowing and potentially deadly operations of the planned invasion of Japan—scaling the cliffs to secure a foothold near Tokyo. The stage was set for late 1945 and into 1946. The 2nd Marine Division, seasoned from brutal combat in the Pacific, was regrouped and resupplied, their ranks filled with determined yet weary Marines who had already tasted the horrors of war from Guadalcanal to Tarawa. They were to be integral to Operation Coronet, the second phase of Downfall, following the initial invasion of Kyushu under Operation Olympic.
The plan for the 2nd Marine Division was harrowing in its complexity and ambition. The division was to land in Higgins boats on the heavily fortified beaches near the Kanto Plain, facing a gauntlet of natural and man-made defenses. The Japanese would be well prepared, with interlocking fields of fire, deep tunnels, and thousands of kamikaze pilots ready to defend their homeland to the death. Beyond the beaches lay the cliffs—daunting, steep, and heavily guarded. The Marines were to use a combination of ladders, ropes, and sheer physical prowess to scale these cliffs under intense enemy fire as Japanese defenders would be throwing grenades and firing from secure positions above, turning the cliff face into a deadly vertical battlefield.
Thankfully, this brutal assault never took place. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, coupled with the Soviet entry into the war against Japan, prompted the Japanese surrender before the Allied forces commenced Operation Downfall. The 2nd Marine Division never had to face the cliffs of Tokyo, and Clyde's life, along with countless other Marine's lives, was spared. We heard about it, Clyde said, on August 9, 1945, at 10:30pm because one of the guys had a shortwave radio that made the announcement about the atomic bomb. By this time they had gone to Saipan after there was no landing in Okinawa for the invasion of Japan. This was a near miss for Clyde and the other troops that would have been involved. Truman had been advised by Gen. Marshall that casualties could be around 41,000 in the first 30 days. 750,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in advance in anticipation of the massive casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number.
“When we heard about the bomb, it was already understood there would be in an invasion of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyūshū. The task force launched planes on August 15 because we didn’t have any word about Japan surrendering, but the attack was called off and the pilots were singing “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” over their plane’s radios.” When relaying this story many years later, Clyde said it scared him in retrospect about how close they came to this invasion in which he stood a good chance of being killed. Remarkably, they had no sense of danger from the A-bomb residue when they became the first occupation troops to land in Nagasaki after the bomb after Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945, taking up occupation duties that lasted for nine months. Clyde was there for over four months.
The wise decision to send the ships from the Okinawa area back to their original location paid off in a different way than planned. Instead of using the ships and troops for Operation Downfall to invade Japan’s mainland, many were used in the occupational duties of Japan after it had been ravaged by the atomic bombs. The main body of occupation troops, Clyde’s included, entered Nagasaki about forty-five days after the bombing. The 2nd Marine Division consisted of 20,000 Marines. In each city, a group of American scientists from the Manhattan Engineer District arrived three days before these troops and performed a radiological survey.
There was some concern when they went into the harbor in landing craft in Nagasaki Mitsubishi Shipyard. Part of Nagasaki in the south remained intact. The bomb went off in the northern part of the city close to ground. This actually saved the southern part of the city. Without thought of danger, they went right into the area where the bomb had gone off. Clyde was there until the first of December 1945 and described seeing the devastation on one side of a street, and buildings still standing on the other. People walked around as if in a daze. They lived in a shipyard workers building until they were sent home. Clyde reported that a typical day in Nagasaki was spent patrolling, disarming Japanese forces, and helping with relief and recovery efforts in areas that had been devastated. He didn't talk too much about this experience. When asked about radiation exposure, Clyde said no one knew anything about radiation back then because it was all so new. They didn't know they should be concerned. The fallout radiation that lingers after a nuclear explosion decreases relatively quickly, so by the time the 2nd Marine Division entered Nagasaki, several weeks had passed since the bombing, leading to a reduction in radiation levels.
Clyde and the rest of the troops went by train from Nagasaki to Sasebo which took several hours. From there they left aboard a ship on December 5, 1945, landing in San Diego on December 20, 1945. They had sailed the Japanese Current. They arrived back at Camp Pendleton at 10:00pm. The camp was almost apologetic about not having china for them to eat on. They left Camp Pendleton after the first of the year and were taken to Los Angeles to a train station. Clyde had all his possessions in a seabag. At the train station all the seabags were loaded stacked on top of each other. He never saw his again. He got home with a rifle, a Japanese sword given to him by a Japanese soldier, and a ruptured duck (a pin signifying discharge). He was brought by train to Camp Lejeune in NC and discharged there. He took a bus back home to Leaksville to no great fanfare. He had been gone a little over three years; Clyde said, “It was long enough."
Because of the war, Clyde was able to use the GI Bill to pay for school and attended the University of North Carolina in pre-law. Without it, he most likely would have ended up working at Fieldcrest Mills in his hometown where his father had worked his entire life. Now he had options. Clyde Smith, a man of faith, eventually abandoned law when he felt called by God to enter ministry. He married his wife of 53 years, Martha, and headed off to Texas for seminary. This former Marine, who served his country, became Rev. Clyde Smith, who served his God. When Clyde Smith passed away in September 2006, in Wilmington, NC, he was honored with a full-dress Marine honor guard funeral, complete with Marine pallbearers, a three-volley salute from a rifle party, and a bugler standing alone on a hill playing taps. It was an extremely moving ceremony honoring a wonderful man, my father. Oohra!
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Before leaving Japan, Clyde Smith and Kazuki Nakajima, no longer enemies,
exchanged weapons and Kazuki gave Clyde his photo. At the end of the war
the surrender of swords by Japanese officers and soldiers was common,
symbolizing their surrender and the acceptance of defeat.
It could be seen as an acknowledgment of respect towards the victor.
Clyde saw it as a gesture of peace and friendship between two war-weary young men.
Coming home with very little but the sword and a rifle,
Clyde kept Nakajima's sword in the back of his closet his whole life.
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