An obituary appearing in the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian September 6, 1944, provides the only sketch currently available as to the life of Harry L. Smith.

“Lt. Harry Smith Taken By Death
Lt. Harry L. Smith, 44, USNR, former manager of the Watsonville Montgomery Ward Company store, died last August 16 in Brooklyn Naval hospital, New York, of a perforated gastric ulcer, it was learned here Wednesday.
Lt. Smith was a member of the local American Legion post and the Kiwanis club and was widely known. He was manager of the local Ward store from June 1941, to December 1942, and went from here to the Napa store. While there he received his commission in the naval reserve on June 25, 1943. He visited briefly in Watsonville en route to the Babson Institute in Massachusetts for a month's supply corps training. Then he was stationed in the Portsmouth N.H., navy yard as a shipping officer in the supply department from Sept. 12, 1943, to July 2, 1944. He went to Washington, D.C. for special duty, then to New York August 1 to administrative offices for the purpose of an inventory of all naval supplies.
His wife joined him on August 1 in New York and was there when he was stricken. An emergency operation was performed August 5. His daughter Phyllis, PHM3c [Pharmacist Mate third Class] in the WAVES at Pensacola, Fla., naval air station was granted leave to go to New York.”

The body of Lt. Harry L. Smith was returned to Los Angeles, where his wife and mother were living, and was interred in Forrest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale.

(WRP September 6, 1944 1:1)