Earl Smith Jr. was born May 17, 1920 in Lepanto, Arkansas, to Earl Smith Sr. and Elva Foster Smith.

By April 1930 “Buddy,” as he was nicknamed, was living with his paternal grandmother and in school in Bernie, Missouri. His parents had lived in Bernie in 1917 before they married, and may have been separated or divorced by as early as 1930.

Earl Jr. completed 9th grade at Chouteau School in St. Louis in 1935. When he applied to the Navy in July 1938 he said he’d been employed as a helper on a truck for one year and served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program. The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families. He said on his Navy application that he did not know if his father was alive.

The son enlisted in the Navy on Feb. 2, 1939 and was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

His youngest brother, Leon, served in the Navy near the end of World War II.

Sources: the St. Louis (Missouri) Star and Times; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Census; Navy enlistment record and muster roll; Missouri marriage license; military registration card; grave marker.