United States Merchant Marine

The United States Merchant Marine was an early point of entry into working life at sea for Perry Smith. His account presents it not as a lasting career but as a brief, consequential episode: he liked being a sailor and visiting seaports, yet remembered his time aboard ship as difficult because of how older crew members treated him when he was sixteen.

Perry Smith’s Entry into the Service

After a quarrel with his father, Tex John Smith, Perry left Alaska and hitchhiked from Anchorage to Seattle, where he visited Merchant Marine recruiting offices. In wartime 1945, he was in Honolulu, where a tattoo artist applied a snake-and-dagger design to his left forearm. Perry later recalled that he had not understood what he would face when he enlisted. His father’s account also places Perry in the Merchant Marine during the Second World War, before Perry later joined him in Alaska.

Work at Sea and a Difficult Experience

Perry said that he did not mind the work and liked being a sailor, especially the prospect of seaports. The difficulty, as he remembered it, was being a small, sixteen-year-old among older shipmates who singled him out. He described the experience as deeply distressing and said that, had he known what awaited him, he would not have joined. His recollection makes the Merchant Marine episode a contrast between an occupation he found appealing and a shipboard social environment he experienced as hostile.

Place in Perry’s Later Life

Perry connected his Merchant Marine experience with a later conflict during his Army service in Korea, where he said a tough sergeant prevented his promotion despite his good record and Bronze Star. The accounts distinguish the two services, but together show how Perry remembered repeated clashes with authority and mistreatment as obstacles to advancement. A photograph from his Merchant Marine period remained among the personal items he considered too precious to risk losing; it showed him at sixteen and carried a note recalling his younger self. The service thus persisted in his story both as an early episode of work and travel and as part of the personal archive through which he measured the distance between youth and imprisonment.