Shooting down suicide bombers was ‘harrowing'

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Saul Smiley skippered a ship that shot down Japanese kamikazes and held enemy air attacks at bay during the Battle of Okinawa.

“We had suicide bomb flights coming in daily,” he said. “The planes were their bombs. A forerunner of 9/11 in that sense.”

After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in architecture, Smiley entered active duty in the U.S. Navy in January 1944.

Smiley was sent to the University of Arizona in Tucson for two months of training, which was playfully referred to as “sand dune sailing.”

No ocean, no problem. Smiley said the men learned everything about the Navy right there in the desert.

“We were drilled and grilled intensely,” he said. “We had to learn hard and fast. We were at war.”

He was assigned as engineering officer aboard a training ship in Solomons Island, Md., where he schooled enlisted men, officers and U.S. Naval Academy cadets in the art of handling ships at sea.

Smiley was finally assigned as skipper of his own ship — landing craft infantry (LCI) 367 — designed with ramps to land troops during invasion operations.

After sailing around the Panama Canal and over to Pearl Harbor, the ship was converted into a gun boat.

The ramps were stripped out and machine guns and other heavy armament were loaded onto the ship.

“We had 3-inch radar-directed guns fore and aft as well as batteries of machine guns mid-ship We had guns all over the place,” he said.

While soldiers and Marines slugged it out onshore with the Japanese, U.S. Navy vessels unleashed the heavy artillery, bombing the island with a relentless barrage.

Smiley's ship — the flagship of the gun boat contingency — was sent out on regular patrols known as radar picket duty.

Destroyers, each accompanied by four gunboats that surrounded the destroyer in a diamond pattern, were sent out all around the island.

“We were patrolling to intercept suicide flights of Japanese coming in before they could get to the big ships,” he said.

The suicide bombers might appear one at a time, or they could be in droves.

“They would come zooming in, and we'd have to pick them off,” Smiley said. “It was harrowing.”

The patrol flotilla, which included 48 ships, knocked-down about 100 planes, he said.

“It was defensive maneuver the Navy had devised that was quite successful,” he said.

Smiley's ship was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese signed the surrender papers on the USS Missouri.

As ship after ship entered the bay for the historical event, each one was given a new flag to fly.

The flags were lined up as far as the eyes could see.

“It always brings tears to my eyes,” Smiley said, his eyes welling. “The pride that we had. We had succeeded — and the job we had done in our war, the flag was so meaningful.

“Everybody was part of the war effort,” he said. “ Everyone felt they had to be a part of it.”