Laughing, almost.

Sixty years later - now a retired Air Force major general and a well-known military analyst - Perry M. Smith remembers how the world of that sailor-suited boy changed Dec. 7, 1941.

So did that little boy.

"I realized there were really bad people who did really bad things to other people," Mr. Smith said, sitting on a bench on the second floor of the Augusta Museum of History. "I didn't become a cynic, but I became a realist that day. And I think I'm still a realist now."

That Sunday morning began like any other on Waikiki, Hawaii. Nine days short of his seventh birthday, Perry Smith and his 8-year-old sister, George Anne, hopped onto an Army transport truck and headed for Sunday school at Fort DeRussey.

They never made it.

Stopped at the front gate of the post, the truck was met by an Army officer, dressed in uniform and armed. The truck turned around.

"They probably should have thrown us in a basement somewhere," Mr. Smith said.

The first wave of Japanese bombers was already buzzing the island, leaving smoke and destruction in their wake. The transport truck filled with children was screaming back to the residential area.

"I had to grab on to the seat so I wouldn't get thrown out," Mr. Smith said. "That's when I knew something was really wrong."

By the time the truck stopped in front of the Smith home, his father - an Army captain who was part of a coast artillery unit responsible for defending Pearl Harbor - already had gone to fight. His mother and grandmother were waiting in the front yard.

Something strange happened: The matriarchs hugged the children.

"We were not a hugging family," Mr. Smith said, laughing. "We were more of a shake-hands family."

The family went into the basement as the second wave of Japanese planes came. They played Old Maid and stayed in there for days, going above ground only to sleep on a double bed: his mom on one side - armed with a baseball bat, his grandmother on the other - armed with a pistol, and the children in the middle.

"That wasn't real good sleeping," Mr. Smith said.

In the midst of waiting out the attack and the aftermath, Mr. Smith's mother made a decision.

"She decided if the Japanese were going to take her house, it was going to be clean," he said.

After the attack was over, the house was cleaned and his father returned home, the boy wanted to do his part for America. He used a small shovel to help a neighbor dig a bomb shelter. He practiced shooting Japanese soldiers with his bow and arrows.

"I could only shoot about 10 feet, but I thought I was helping," he said.

Within a week or so, military dependents were ordered off the island, loaded onto the SS Lureline and sent to San Francisco. Packed among 2,000 other people on a ship built for 900 - and with the threat of an attack from a Japanese sub looming - the boy frequently participated in lifeboat drill, sometimes in the dead of cold nights.

"I remember shivering a lot," he said.

Eventually, the ship made it to San Francisco, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge and welcomed by patriotic music, family members and military supporters.

"We decided we'd take world leadership and lead the West to victory. We've held that mantle. Now, it has been reinforced." - Perry M. Smith, on U.S. stance since attack on Pearl Harbor,

"I looked up, and all the adults were crying," he said. "I said, 'Mom, I though we were supposed to be happy."'

It wasn't long before he understood the significance of Dec. 7, 1941. Within a year, he was a minor celebrity in his second-grade class in Minnesota, telling other pupils and his teachers about his experience. Since then, he has told the story a thousand times, most recently to a Wednesday afternoon gathering at the Augusta museum.

"I've been on the lecture circuit 60 years, I guess," he said.

He says the attack thrust America into the position it is in today.

"We decided we'd take world leadership and lead the West to victory," he said. "We've held that mantle. Now, it has been reinforced."

Mr. Smith says Dec. 7 will hold a always hold certain significance for Americans, but another tragic date will also be remembered - Sept. 11 - even 60 years from now.

"People who are kids now will look back and say, 'This was a highly important day in my life and in America's history,"' he said.

Reach Jason B. Smith at (706) 868-1222, Ext. 115, or jbsmith@augustachronicle.com.