A War Hero turned Communist Worker?: Lewis Smith's military service

Aleck Lewis Smith was one of the professors that the governor of South Carolina publicly accused of being a "communist worker." When I first started researching the governor's accusations, all I knew was that Smith was employed by Benedict College, and that he was accused of the following: 

The governor's claims about Smith

Taken at face value, Smith's dishonorable discharge from the Navy is one of the most notable accusations. The others were considerably thinner: Forrest O. Wiggins was accused of having a subscription to the National Guardian newspaper, Rideout of being a member of the Progressive Party during the 1948 election. Today I got a copy of Smith's notice of separation from the Navy, so I can now seriously evaluate the governor's accusations.

The most important fact? The governor was wrong! Smith was discharged on March 1, 1955 because of lack of progress. There was nothing suspicious about this. In 1955, Smith was a middle-aged English professor who had been in the Naval reserves for a decade. He had little to offer the Navy, and he certainly had better things to do. There was nothing unusual about his discharge for "lack of progress."

Notice that Smith was discharged from the Navy

The governor also left a lot out. Whatever Smith's politics were, he had served in the U.S. Navy with distinction. He enlisted on November 11, 1940. Smith left no record of his reasons for joining, but he had just graduated from college, and the Navy offered a promising career path for men like him. During the winter of 1940, the U.S. Navy was rapidly expanding as everyone anticipated that America would soon enter the Second World War. 

The war, of course, began for America in December 1941, following the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Smith spent most of the war stationed on the USS North Carolina, a fast battleship. The North Carolina was in the Pacific for almost the entire duration of the war, and it was used to screen aircraft carriers and cover troop carriers. The ship saw combat and was even torpedoed twice during the Guadalcanal campaign. 

In February 1944, Smith was transferred to the USS Pasadena. The Pasadena was a light cruiser, a smaller and more modern ship than the North Carolina. However, it performed a similar service: screening aircraft carriers. 

On both ships, Smith served as a damage control specialist. This was an important and stressful role on a battleship that saw combat. Uncontrolled fires could be catastrophic as the North Carolina was loaded with fuel and ammunition. Combat was an especially intense time. When the ship was torpedoed, fire broke out, and the ship took on tons of water, and damage control specialists had minutes to limit the damage and save the ship, and its crew, from destruction.

At the end of the war, Smith was awarded a bronze star for participating in the liberation of the Philippines and three additional bronze stars and two silver stars for service in the Pacific theater. These awards honor his participation in fourteen separate campaigns, an impressive record of military service by any measure. 

Smith left active service shortly after the surrender of the Empire of Japan, on October 28, 1945. Although he remained in the Naval reserves for a decade, he appears to have lost interest in the military. He moved to the midwest and went into higher education. He does not appear to have recorded his thoughts about his naval service, but his activities suggest mixed feelings. He married a Japanese woman and, in 1970, moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he lived for two decades.

Smith's trajectory is suggestive of one seen with other men his age. Shocked by the destruction he witnessed during the Second World War and deeply concerned about the prospect of nuclear war, he rejected mainstream American politics, deeming it inadequate to the moment. He explored ideas like communism as they offered an alternative, but in Jim Crow South Carolina, even such modest actions made one a target for state politicians. Whatever his political beliefs, Smith certainly represented some of the best of mid-century America. He not only served the country with distinction during war, but during peace, he endured a dishonest political attack made for an abominable goal and he did so with dignity.