Frank D. Padgett

Frank David Padgett (March 9, 1923 – July 11, 2021) was an American judge and World War II B-24 bomber pilot. Padgett grew up during the Great Depression and earned a scholarship to Harvard College in Massachusetts. Before he could graduate however, he was called to active duty in the U.S. Army Air Force and for the next 13 months, trained as a pilot. Biography In 1944, Padgett and a crew of ten flew their B-24 heavy bomber from Mitchell Field in New York to an airbase in southeastern China. There, as part of the 373rd Squadron, 308 Bomb Group, 14th. Air Force, they began bombing operations against the Japanese. On January 1, 1945, while on their 13th. mission, they were hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire and forced to bail out. Coming down spread out across the French Indochinese countryside, the crew evaded the Japanese search parties as best they could. Some crewmembers were found by members of the French underground, but Padgett was eventually captured by the Japanese. He was taken to a prison in Hanoi and was tortured by the Kempetai. He spent several weeks in that prison before being transferred south to the Saigon Kempetai prison where he spent the next eight months. On the train journey south, he was reunited with two others from his crew who had been captured then dragged through the countryside in chains. The three men spent the rest of the war in the Saigon prison, starving and wracked with tropical illnesses. After the war, Padgett spent many months in military hospitals recovering from malaria, beriberi and amoebic dysentery, which he had contracted while a prisoner. He went back to school and earned his law degree from Harvard College in 1948. He and his family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1948, where Padgett was offered a job with the law firm Robertson, Castle and Anthony.