Local man, 100, recalls attack on Pearl Harbor
TEXARKANA, Texas — To this day Texarkana, Texas, resident Marcus Smith still remembers being onboard a U.S. Navy ship that inadvertently came in contact with the Japanese just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
As a 20-year-old U.S. Navy electrician’s mate second class stationed in the generator control room aboard the the cargo ship U.S.S. Antares, Smith happened to be on a vessel that w0und up being tailed by a two-man Japanese Navy submarine around 6:30 a.m, Dec. 7, 1941, just outside Pearl Harbor.
At the time, the submarine was apparently attempting to enter Pearl Harbor by following the Antares through anti-submarine nets at the harbor’s entrance as the ship was cruising north back to the Hawaiian Islands after making a supply run to Canton Island, several hundred miles to the south.
As the Antares sailed toward the mouth of Pearl Harbor, its top deck crew of lookout spotters noticed a periscope-like object trailing some 1,500 yards behind the ship. This prompted the Antares to notify the nearby destroyer U.S.S. Ward, which at the time, was patrolling waters just outside the harbor.
“We signaled the Ward about our sighting and it came over looking for what we reported,” Smith, who recently turned 100 years old, said.
The Ward soon went to work scouting and finally located this sub’s periscope tracing a wake in the ocean. Once discovered, the destroyer not only fired its main guns at the sub’s conning tower, which had just surfaced, it also dropped depth charges once the sub re-submerged — eventually sinking it just before 7 a.m, that morning.
However, for Smith and the rest of the Antares’ crew, the day was just starting to get interesting because scarcely more then a hour later Japanese Navy fighters planes, along with torpedo planes and dive bombers, were winging their way over Pearl Harbor.
As the Antares entered the mouth of Pearl Harbor’s narrow channel, Smith and other crew members made their way topside to the upper deck.
“We were sailing right inside the mouth of the harbor,” Smith said. “It was as clear and sunny day that day, and when we looked up we thought at first that it was just some new Sunday morning flight drill going on — but then we started hearing explosions that were actually shaking our ship. From that point on, it was hard to believe what was happening.”
Smith went back down below deck as the his ship’s intercom started sounding general quarters, signaling crew members to start manning battle stations. From that point forward, the ship moved through the harbor, dodging bombs at it tried to make its way to the docks on the harbor’s east end.
Once the Antares docked, Smith returned to topside for a short time, to see burning oil slicks in the water running out of the stricken and sinking ships near battleship row.
Sometime after the Japanese aircraft completed their raid shortly before 10 a.m., Smith said the Navy instructed all undamaged seaworthy ships to exit the harbor in the event that the Japanese might launch further air raids in order to sink additional U.S. warships in the harbors narrow channel. This circumstance could leave the entire harbor blocked off and rendered useless for months, if not longer.
“Eventually, we were able to move back into the harbor, where we got refitted with more anti-aircraft guns,” Smith said. “We were sent south to New Zealand, where we got even more guns placed all over our ship.”
Smith would shortly go on to volunteer for three months of Naval aviation electrician training. This would allow him to work on the Navy’ twin-engine reconnaissance sea planes like the PBY Catalina as well as fighter planes like the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair.
With his new military occupation specialty in aviation electronics, Smith would eventually draw landbased military assignments in places like Espiritos Santos in the New Hebrides islands, the Solomon Islands and in New Guinea as well as in the Marshall Islands and eventually on Guam, Tinian and Saipan in the Marianas Islands. He would be stationed there when the war ended in August, 1945.
“One night (August
15, 1945) when I was on Guam, we heard a bunch of ammunition going off and and we thought we were under attack, but as it turned out, the war was over and people were just celebrating,” he said. “It was great to know that you now had a chance to live longer and you could get a chance to go back home. I got to go back home once I took a boat back to Seattle, Washington.”
Once back home, Smith decided to stay in the Navy, retiring in 1958.
Born in East Texas in the spring of 1921, Smith and his family moved to Texarkana, Texas, in about the 1935-36 time frame.
“I basically joined the Navy in 1938 because I needed a job and wanted to work,” Smith said.
Looking back on the circumstance that country faced immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Smith said it was good that the enemy only had an air attack in mind.
“Had the Japanese also had an army landing plan in mind, they probably could have gone ahead and invaded the Hawaiian Islands — and probably would have won,” he said.