Franklin Benjamin Kidd was born on December 29, 1912, in Cimarron, Kansas, to Minnie Grace Payton, and Benjamin Franklin Kidd. The family lived in Ensign and Franklin attended Ensign schools. By 1940, Franklin moved to Twin Falls, Idaho.
He joined the Navy and was trained as a Radioman (Service Number: 3685282). On Nov. 20, 1941 he boarded the U.S.S. Wright in Pearl Harbor for transport to Wake Island. He was captured by Japanese forces following the fall of Wake Island on December 23, 1941, and subsequently held as a prisoner of war. Kidd was imprisoned at the Tokyo POW Camp (Shinjuku) in the Tokyo Bay area. He died in captivity on October 22, 1944, reportedly due to stomach and lung infections.
A letter from Eric Ackerman, a fellow POW. Published in THE HUTCHINSON NEWS-HERALD, HUTCHINSON, KANSAS, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1945, PAGE TEN (Also see Find A Grave)
WAR DEPARTMENT: SURE ENSIGN SON IS DEAD
Medical aid was provided too late by the Japanese for Radioman Franklin B. Kidd, son of Mrs. Minnie Kidd of Ensign, declares his buddy, Marvin W. Ballard, Garrison, Ia., writing to tell Mrs. Kidd that he believes her son is dead.
“By word of a Japanese officer,” he writes, “he died in a hospital in or near Yokohama, sometime soon after Oct. 22, 1944.”
“We were both radiomen third class on Wake at the beginning of the war. We surrendered Wake Dec. 23, 1941, and on Jan. 12 we boarded a ship and sailed for Japan. We were at Ofuna prison camp until April 17, 1942, when we were taken to Kawasaki radio station about 10 miles north of Yokohama and 15 west of Tokyo.
COPIED MESSAGES
“Here we were forced to copy messages for the Japanese. We 14 prisoners had four typewriters and four Japanese radio receivers. Each morning the guard would take the messages into the big city of Tokyo.”
“When the guards went to sleep or were outside we would make an excuse for the messages and then listen to our own Allied broadcasting stations for news or musical programs of all kinds. In this way we followed the progress of the war to its very end.”
“We 14 men lived in two rooms and walked around on a tennis court. Just walking was our best liked exercise.”
“Sometime in the spring of 1944 our food became very poor. Our three meals were all alike every day. A mixture of eight or nine-tenths barley and the remainder rice was boiled in water with no salt, sugar or anything. We had a very watery soup of either spinach or some other vegetable. The last half, the soup consisted mostly of boiled water. Sometimes we were almost starved and then again we had too much to eat.”
“Sometime during the summer of 1944, Frank took sick. His lungs were always all right and he didn’t have bronchitis, but he had a continuous pain in his chest. As we understood it then, something in his chest had been broken or become diseased.”
NOT MISTREATED
“His only suffering throughout the war and prison life was this sickness. I can set your mind at rest by saying that he was never at any time mistreated by the Japanese. But he suffered much pain until his death.”
“On Oct. 22, 1944, he was taken to an unknown hospital for treatment after we had so long urged better medical attention. By that time it was too late to help him. He was very weak and thin, but he still had enough strength and spirit to walk around. He had stayed in bed for a long time, but he moved around a little every day.”
“On Aug. 17, 1945, when we were leaving for home, we asked again about Frank and were told by an officer of the radio station that Frank had died soon after his admittance to the hospital. But the officer did not know the date. So it is by the word of Jap officers that Frank is dead, I, too, believe he is dead.”
“It is a law in Japan that all bodies must be cremated. His ashes should be buried in some military cemetery in Japan.”
“In those years I was one of his best friends. We slept in beds within arm’s length of each other for almost three years. We understood each other well and had no differences at any time.”
Submitted by
Eric Ackerman (Find A Grave)
