Second World War

The Second World War is a turning point in Perry Smith’s youth: at sixteen, he joined the United States Merchant Marine, leaving his life with his father and discovering that the work of sailing came with hardships he had not anticipated. The book recalls the period through both his father’s account of Perry’s youth and Perry’s later recollections, which give the wartime episode a personal rather than battlefield-centered focus.

Entry into Wartime Service

Perry’s father describes his son as joining the Merchant Marine during the Second World War. In Perry’s own recollection, the decision followed a quarrel with his father: he hitchhiked from Anchorage to Seattle and visited recruiting offices. The two accounts frame the same period from different vantage points—his father’s brief summary and Perry’s more specific sequence of departure and enlistment.

Life at Sea

A balmy evening in wartime 1945 finds Perry in a Honolulu tattoo parlor, having a snake-and-dagger design applied to his left forearm. The narrative traces his arrival there back to his departure from Alaska and his entry into the service. Perry later recalled that he liked being a sailor and the seaports, and did not mind the work itself. But, at sixteen and small for his age, he said he faced unwanted advances and bullying aboard ship, sometimes from men who joined together against him. The contrast between the appeal of the sea and the vulnerability he described gives his service an unsettled character: it offered movement and work, but not uncomplicated freedom.

Place in Perry’s Timeline

The wartime episode belongs to a broader pattern of separation and return. After leaving the Merchant Marine, Perry made peace with his father; the narrative later places his father in Alaska and recounts plans for the Trapper’s Den Lodge. Perry’s wartime service is also distinct from his later service in the United States Army during the Korean War. The book notes that he received the Bronze Star, while Perry recalled resentment at not being promoted to corporal. By distinguishing these periods, the account presents the Second World War not as a summary of Perry’s military life, but as the moment when his young adulthood first took him away from his father and into a wider, more difficult world.