“It ends here,” said JQ Smith, who celebrated his 92nd birthday Saturday at Pietro’s Pizza in the Harbor Mall in Nawiliwili. “Today is the 243rd birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps, and I’m 92. I won’t count anymore.”
Smith is a Marine, the senior vice commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps League on Kauai, and the chair of this year’s Toys for Tots campaign.
“I couldn’t wait to be a Marine,” Smith said. “I had a brother who was a Marine and he told me all about being a Marine. When I made 17 years old in 1943, I went to join, but they told me I wasn’t big enough. ‘Come back when you grow up,’ they said. I was 110 pounds,” and the minimum weight requirement to become a Marine was 120 pounds.
“They told me to eat popcorn, five pounds of bananas, and drink a gallon of water,” he said. “I did that, but that all got swollen inside me and took my breath away. They had to bring me to a hospital where everything got pumped out. That left me weighing even less than 110 pounds. When I went back, there were two stations — one for the U.S. Navy where the weight requirement was 110 pounds, and the other for the Marines with the 120-pound requirement. I went to the Navy station and got the slip before reporting to the Marines. I was a Marine!”
Smith said once he joined up, he was shipped to duty in the Philippines, Okinawa and China.
“When the war was over, we waited for the ship to bring us home from the Philippines,” he said. “We waited for more than a month, always looking for that ship. And when it did come, they shipped us to China where we had to get the Japanese out of the country. There were a million Japanese there — some who had no idea the war had ended. But we got them out on planes and ships.”
Smith returned to Washington, D.C., where he met his wife Lily, whom he married in 1945 — 70 years ago. He was on a 90-day leave, and in addition to getting married, he secured his high school diploma that eluded him in his efforts to become a Marine.
“When the Korean War broke out, I was still there,” Smith said. “And then there was the Vietnam War, and I was still in there.”
Smith served duty in Korea and two tours in Vietnam.
“I was wounded twice,” Smith said. “Once in WWII and then again in Vietnam. But I came back. Right now, there are only two three-war veterans on Kauai that I know of — Tom Batey and myself. Tom says he falls once in a while, but he just gets back up and keeps on going.”
Following his tour, Smith joined up with the U.S. Marine Corps League that was formed on Kauai by Tom Iannucci, the owner of Pietro’s Pizza.
“There wasn’t anything to keep everyone connected,” Iannucci said. “I was the commandant for a while, but things got busy so I turned the command over. This U.S. Marine Corps birthday is about the only thing I do now. It’s special, and I do it once a year — it keeps me connected with the other Marines. Today, I serve them.”
The current commandant for the U.S. Marine Corps League is Kauai Police Department Capt. Rod Green.
“I was hired over the phone for this post,” Green said. “I was at the FBI Academy in Quantico for the Kauai Police Department and Smith called. Quantico is the birthplace of the U.S. Marine Corps, and I was already excited about being there. The next thing you know, I am the senior commandant of the league.”
Smith said his father, Jessie Smith, served in World War I, the centennial of which is being celebrated today during Veterans Day.
“He was just an infantry person,” Smith said. “But he survived — you just can’t kill us country boys.”
Smith said he’ll be present when the Kauai Veterans Council hosts the 2018 Veterans Day service today starting at 11 a.m. at the Kauai Veterans Cemetery in Hanapepe.
