Soft-spoken vet let Pearl Harbor pix talk
Among Herb Smith’s personal effects was a cache of tiny black-and-white snapshots off a single roll of film from a long-lost camera.
Pfc. Smith shot the pictures while he was in the Army, stationed in Hawaii starting in 1939.
The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, he was eating breakfast when the planes arrived, dozens of Japanese bombers that wrecked Pearl Harbor and shoved the United States into World War II.
Smith scrambled to action. He rescued and recovered bodies of service members from the water. But at some point that day, he took his camera through the streets around the military base to document the destruction:
Felled palm trees, broken walls.
Crashed Japanese planes lying in the streets.
Uniformed men peering into the cockpits.
“We wish we could have asked him more about it,” his son, David Smith said.
Today is the first Pearl Harbor Day since Smith died last December of complications from a fall from a hospital bed on Veterans Day 2009.
And the original day — the date which still lives in infamy to those who lived through it — remained one the Monee man didn’t often speak about. So the roll of photos he left behind tell his story for his son in Palos Park, and his daughter, Susan McCarroll, who lives in Crystal Lake.
“I just wish we would have done something years ago on Pearl Harbor,” McCarroll said.
Smith seldom spoke about the military or the war, and never without prompting. He got home and went back to the rest of his life, his children said. He got married and raised four children in Bridgeview. He never joined the VFW or American Legion.
“He told us he did not pick up his Bronze Star for Pearl Harbor because he didn’t want it. He didn’t think he did anything out of the ordinary. And we have not been able to find any of his medals, so I’m not sure what he did with them,” his son said.
Late in life, Herb Smith opened up to his daughter-in-law, who took an interest in the war and asked him questions. Whether or not Smith talked about Pearl Harbor, that day remained with him the rest of his long life. His car had long carried the specially ordered plate for survivors of one of the worst attacks on American soil.
He agreed in the hospital to take a trip to Hawaii with his son and daughter-in-law. And after his death, his children found a completed application for a Pearl Harbor commemorative medal.
for sharing your dad's story. Please give him my thanks for serving our country.
