(Editor’s note: This is the third of three articles revisiting World War II through the recollections of three Pacific Palisades veterans. On Saturday, the new WWII Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., will be dedicated. American Legion Post 283 will host a corresponding event to observe the memorial dedication and honor Westside veterans. See story, Page 1.) By BILL BRUNS Managing Editor ‘Out here in the Pacific we have all kinds of heroes,’ wrote Robert Garrick of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in November 1944. ‘However, only a few have stood before high-ranking military officials to be received as heroes because they have been shooting pictures.’ In Garrick’s estimation, Loran (‘Little Smitty’) Smith was that kind of hero, a Navy combat photographer who for nearly three years shot still and motion pictures from aircraft and ships across the Pacific. His daring work not only provided valuable reconnaissance information, but also appeared in newspapers, magazines and newsreels throughout the world. In early 1940, when Smith was a college student in Iowa and a part-time newspaper photographer, he drove out to Los Angeles with three friends, chronicling their adventures for Look magazine. He chose to stay in L.A., working as a photographer until he was called up as a Navy reservist in December 1941 and assigned to Admiral Chester Nimitz’s public relations staff in Hawaii. ‘I understood that meant taking pictures for publication, and I wasn’t going to get them hanging around Pearl Harbor,’ Smith recalled recently at his home in Palisades Bowl. Unafraid of flying (though untrained as an aerial photographer), he volunteered for numerous combat missions, preferring to shoot from a two-man dive bomber that would take off from an aircraft carrier. ‘I sat behind the pilot, in the turret, and we would first drop down from about 10,000 feet to deliver our bomb. I’d try to take some type of picture. Then we’d go back down a second time just to shoot still pictures, ideally flying at 100 to 300 feet elevation because it’s much harder for anti-aircraft gunners to hit a fast, moving target that close. Then we’d come back a third time so I could shoot movie film.’ Smith (5’7′ tall) had to stand up in order to shoot over the side wall. One day, while his bomber was in a dive at Truk, an anti-aircraft shell exploded so close to the plane that the blast blew Smith’s motion picture camera out of his hands and into the sea. ‘When I came out to a carrier, I had to look around for a volunteer pilot,’ Smith observed. ‘Most of them didn’t want to hang around after dropping their bomb.’ Arriving back at the carrier after each mission, Smith would hand his film over to an officer, who would have a messenger fly it on to Pearl Harbor. Alas, whenever his photos were published, Smith was uncredited; the byline would simply read U.S. Navy. And in subsequent years he was never able to track down his negatives. ‘They’re somewhere in Navy files,’ he said, ‘but I found a large number of prints that I was able to donate to the Nimitz Museum in Texas.’ Smith was the admiral’s favorite photographer and would chronicle his activities in Hawaii’everything from playing horseshoes with enlisted men to conversing with President Franklin Roosevelt during a lunch at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. In November 1944, Smith was transferred to the famed Steichen Photo Group in Washington, D.C., and finished out his duty working mostly in the photo lab. ‘I missed out on the end of the war in Japan,’ Smith said, ‘but on the way to Washington I stopped off in Los Angeles and got married.’ His wife, Audrey, died in 1991. Their two sons, Stuart and Scott, both graduated from Palisades High and now live in Montana. After the war, Smith returned to Los Angeles and worked as a contract photographer for Life magazine until 1950, when he became a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Mirror. He took one of his most memorable photos when Nikita Khrushchev visited Fox Studios and watched the filming of ‘Can-Can’ in 1959. ‘I caught Khrushchev with a big smile on his face as he watched the dancers, while his wife is next to him with her typical sour look.’ In 1962, Smith got into the travel agency business, and at 84 he still works part-time doing desktop publishing for Altour International. Despite suffering a stroke three years ago, he remains active in the Masons, the Shriners, the American Legion and the Press Photographers Association of Greater L.A., which honored him last year with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
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