Smith, Irwin S.

Irwin S. Smith and three other employees of British-American Tobacco Company left North Carolina for China in 1930, where he served as a tobacco buyer in the interior of China. He married Miss Hal Grimes in 1940 and she accompanied him back to China. With the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941, wives were evacuated but Mr. Smith was interned by the Japanese for some months before being exchanged in 1943. He returned to China in 1945 but was forced to flee when the Communists overran the country in 1949.