KEN "BUD" SMICK
By Jessy Stamper
I got assigned to interview Ken Smick. He had volunteered for the war in June 1942 at age twenty. At first he volunteered for the U. S. Army Air Corps but did not pass the physical because he couldn't breath through his nose well enough. He went to Seattle for surgery but when he returned to the enrollment office he was again rejected. Determined to serve his country, he went across the hall and volunteered for the Navy and was accepted.
Ken Smick was trained in San Diego for six weeks. After that he went to Armed Guard School on Treasure Island, near San Francisco. When he finished his training he was stationed as a Petty Officer on a merchant ship named SS Henry Villard during World War II. Mr. Smick helped run the guns on board the ship, which was equipped with 20 millimeter guns, a 5 inch 51 and a 3 inch 20.
Mr. Smick traveled around the world delivering ammunition and raw materials to our men overseas. After his journey around the world, he was reassigned to Treasure Island where he worked on a Carrier Aircraft Service Unit (CASU.) Ken Smick went from island to island fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific. During those battles Mr. Smick's unit was bombed two hundred and ninety-nine times.
KEN "BUD" SMICK
By Danielle Stamper
Ken "Bud" Smick is a veteran that lives in Endicott, Washington. He actually grew up in Endicott and graduated from High School there. He went to Washington State College for one year before he volunteered for World War II. Bud has lived in Whitman County all of his life, except for when he was in the Navy.
Bud was in Seattle when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. There were major blackouts all along the Pacific coast and no one could drive their cars around. When the U.S. declared war on Japan, Bud volunteered, but he didn't know what to expect. He wasn't really scared, but he didn't know a lot about what the war was going to be all about. He volunteered when he was twenty years old in June of 1942. He wanted to be a Fighter Pilot but couldn't get into that field because he had broken his nose so many times he couldn't breathe very well through his nose.
He joined the Navy and along with some other recruits gathered in Victory Square for a send off which included Lana Turner, a well-known movie star, who gave Bud a hug and kiss. He then went to San Diego where he was relieved of all his personal effects and given a crew cut and sent to boot camp for six weeks. He then went to Gunner's Mate Armed Guard School located at Treasure Island near San Francisco, California and then was immediately assigned to a Liberty ship, the SS Henry Villard. He left Long Beach in the fall of 1942 carrying different sized bombs. On deck were jeeps, ambulances, and weapons carriers leaving narrow catwalks with lines to hang onto. The ship had about twenty-one Navy people on it plus around forty Merchant Marines. They shipped all kinds of guns, ammunition, and other materials needed for the war to places all around the world, wherever supplies were needed. They sailed first to New Zealand, then west to the Gulf of Aden. They traveled forty days through the monsoon season over very rough seas. The Red Sea was heavily mined but they proceeded slowly and finally docked at Port Said, Egypt and unloaded their cargo.
When they arrived at Cairo, Egypt Bud had two weeks to do whatever he wanted. He went to look at the pyramids and got to ride camels. He also had the privilege of staying at the Grand Hotel.
When they left Egypt they returned through the Red Sea and on to Capetown, South Africa. The North African campaign was in full swing, but the Germans were no match for British General Montgomery. At Capetown Bud's ship refueled and he had shore leave in one of the most beautiful ports he had been in.
The Henry Villard then sailed west across the South Atlantic to Brazil where it joined up with a convoy of twenty-four ships, then steamed up to Georgetown, British Guiana off the northern coast of South America. As they neared their destination, they drew fire from enemy ships. Bud, along with all the sailors on board, manned battle stations waiting and watching for a torpedo that might strike their ship. One-third of the convoy was sunk that night by German submarines. In Georgetown, Bud's ship took on a load of bauxite and sailed on to Hoboken, New Jersey where the ship underwent repair.
He then had the choice of going to Murmask, Russia and getting thirty days off, or taking just two weeks off and getting re-assigned somewhere else. Bud didn't want to go to Murmask, so he decided to just take two week off and go back to California to the Alameda Naval Air Station at Oakland. There he got assigned to a Carrier Aircraft Service Unit, CASU#14. After weeks of training, he shipped to the South Pacific.
He landed at Guadalcanal, then advanced to New Georgia by landing craft. CASU 14 came ashore just behind the American land forces, often working through sniper fire and air raids. Bud's unit refueled, rearmed, and repaired Navy and Marine planes assigned to attack Japanese-held islands. They also saw many wounded personnel.
On the South Sea islands, which the Japanese had held but had been liberated by the United States, Bud's unit had tents and blankets, and they slept on cots which made it easy for the lizards and mosquitoes to get at them. They mostly ate a ton of canned Spam, canned tongue, dehydrated potatoes, powdered eggs and milk, and occasionally had lamb from Australia, but they also went on wild pig hunts and dropped grenades in the water to kill fish.
Because the Japanese were trying to take back the islands they recently lost, there were about two hundred and fifty to three hundred air raids that happened while they were down in the South Sea islands. Bud went through well over two hundred bombings. Every time there was an attack, they hid in foxholes. United States personnel dug some of those, but most of them were dug by the Japanese. The Japanese kept getting moved off of islands and the U.S. took over what they left behind.
After the nineteen months Smick served, he returned to the States. While on leave he and Sylvia from Diamond, Washington got married. He was then stationed at Pasco, Washington where his job was to check bombs in storage. He was in Seattle when D-Day happened and also when the Atom Bombs were dropped on Japan. After the war he and Sylvia lived in Colfax, then worked the family farm starting in 1948, retiring in 1984. They raised four children, all college graduates.
Ken Smick doesn't know if he can ever forgive the Japanese. He said, "They were the ones who started it, so I was glad for the Atomic Bombs at the time." He is proud to have served his country, and the fact that he helped win the war means a lot to him. He hasn't gone back to the places where he was stationed, but he went to see the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. He wishes he would have kept in touch with the friends he met during the war, but when they got back to the United States, they all went their separate ways.