Warsaw Resident Remembers Guadalcanal After 65 Years
Posted
Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
Warsaw resident Clyde Smith Jr. has four flags that fly outside his home on Hartzler Street, reminding him of the lives lost in the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Tuesday marks the 65th anniversary of the battle of Guadalcanal that was fought Aug. 7, 1942.
The battle continued through Feb. 7, 1943, in the Pacific theatre of World War II when peace was declared.
"The day is about remembering the men who lost their lives in the battle and never came home," Smith said.
Smith, 83, a survivor of Guadalcanal, volunteered to be in the Navy in 1941.
Like many men who enter the war, Smith was only 18 when he volunteered to join the Navy.
Smith, a member of Knights of Columbus, Warsaw, will turn 84 years old Aug. 24.
He still keeps his honorable discharge certificates, medical records and plan-of-the-day papers from the battle of Guadalcanal in safe keeping in folders in his home.
The United States flag, state of Indiana flag, prisoners of war/missing in action flag and the state of Wyoming flag hang outside his home.
"Every day and night I look at the flags, I am reminded of the men and women who never came home from the battle," Smith said.
Smith's first experience with war was when he was a student at Wabash High School.
He remembers speaking with a Navy recruiter at the Wabash Post Office about joining the Navy.
"I received my father Clyde's permission and went off to a boot camp," Smith said.
He took a physical, and attended a 12-week boot camp in Great Lakes, Ill., where he learned First Aid, water safety and survival skills.
He boarded the USS McCully in Norfolk, Va., in October 1941.
He traveled through Ireland, and went back to Norfolk to load up Marines. The journey continued through the Panama Canal to New Zealand and Australia.
Smith said he and the other men arrived in Guadalcanal, and the Japanese shot at their ship.
The fighting took place on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands, and was the first major offensive launched by allied forces against the Empire of Japan.
Smith served as a hull technician on the ship, where he was responsible for the ship's maintenance.
He said there was an American Task Force that was a lookout for their ship. The task force traveled by airplane and convoys further out in the water and air to protect the U.S. ship.
On Aug. 7 1942, allied forces, predominantly composed of troops from the United States, initiated landings on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Florida in the southern Solomons.
The objective was for the U.S. to deny Japanese forces bases that threatened supply routes between the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
The allies also intended to use Guadalcanal and Tulagi as bases to support a campaign to eventually isolate the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain.
The campaign, fought on the ground, at sea, and in the air pitted Allied forces against Imperial Japanese forces and was a decisive, strategically significant campaign of World War II.
The initial Allied landings overwhelmed the outnumbered Japanese defenders who had occupied the islands in May 1942.
In December 1942, the Japanese abandoned further efforts to retake Guadalcanal and successfully evacuated their remaining forces from the islands by Feb. 7, 1943, leaving the island in allied hands.
Smith was in New Guinea when peace was declared in 1943.
He moved to San Francisco, Calif., where he served as an equipment technician for 20 years. While in California, he served as a Navy recruiter and would recruit men in Vincennes, Ind., for three years.
"I never told a recruiter a lie about war, because if I met them at sea they might have thrown me overboard," Smith said jokingly.
He moved to Warsaw in 2000 with his wife, Virginia. Although he is closer to Wabash where he grew up, he never forgets the Battle of Guadalcanal.
