After graduating from Farrington High School in 1942, Fumio Kido began working as an electrician apprentice for the Army United Engineering Department (USED) at Hickam Army Air Force Base until his induction into the Army on March 23, 1943. While he apprenticed, all workers of Japanese ancestry wore black identification badges that prevented them from entering restricted areas.
He was first assigned to the Anti-Tank Company but was transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in December 1943. Starting in January 1944, he with 13 other Nisei lived under assumed names for security reasons and received radio operator and encoding training for several months at Camp McDowell in Naperville, Ill. Several months later they moved to Camp Savage, Minn., for Japanese language training, and eventually ended up in Miami Beach, Fla. From there they shipped out to New Delhi, India.
The team of Nisei was split up, and Kido was assigned to the OSS Strategic Unit 101 with which he researched roads in Burma. After a month his base moved to Bhamo, and he began translating documents. In July 1945, the OSS broke up that section, and he traveled by truck convoy to Kunming, China, on the Burma Road.
In Kunming he was assigned to fly to Mukden, Manchuria (northeastern China), with the Cardinal Team, a group of American and Chinese Nationalist Army officers. Flying over the city a B-24 bomber dropped leaflets to notify the locals that a group of soldiers would be parachuting into the area. After landing and having walked a short distance, the soldiers came across a group of Japanese soldiers:

> I called out to them and told them: the war was over, you should have been so informed and that we were unarmed and will not resist.... I asked the squad leader if he had heard the war was over.... He told me he had no such information. [Biography]

The Cardinal Team was taken back to the Japanese headquarters. The Japanese soldiers separated Kido from the others and shouted at him. The Japanese soldiers were incredulous that a Japanese worked for the American side. Kido tried to explain that he was Japanese American and that his group had come to bring medical relief for the Allied POWs. Not until the leader called his Japanese commander did the soldiers holding Kido prisoner learn of Japan's defeat.
When Kido and his team finally got to the Kempeitai [military police] headquarters, the commander apologized and told them they had only received the cease-hostilities orders that morning. The commander had a bottle of Scotch that he had been saving for a victory celebration, but decided that under the circumstances they might as well celebrate the end of the war, and he opened the bottle
As they sorted out the details of the cease-fire, the Cardinal Team aided Allied POWs. At the time the Russian Army patrolled the streets, and the soldiers often stopped Kido assuming he was a Japanese soldier. The Allied POWs were evacuated, and the Cardinal Team remained in the city to remain as a contact for stranded westerners until the Russian ordered them out.
Kido returned to the United States and in Washington, D.C., he received the Soldier's Medal:

> As a member of a humanitarian team, formed at the request of the Commanding General, United States Forces, China Theater, for the purpose of locating and repatriating Allied personnel interned in Japanese prisons, this enlisted man was flown deep into the midst of heavily fortified and garrisoned installations, despite the fact that the Japanese had given no previous assurance that the mission would not receive a hostile reception. By his gallant determination to accomplish this humane mission, regardless of risks involved, this enlisted man brought comfort to those unfortunates who had suffered internment at the hands of the Japanese and facilitated their early repatriation to their respective countries. [Soldier's Medal Citation]

The National Military Council of the Republic of China awarded Kido the 2nd class Kan-ch'eng, grade B, Medal for his work. He also received a letter of gratitude from the Dutch POWs rescued at Mukden. After his debriefing in Washington, D.C., Kido returned to Los Angeles where he was discharged in March 1946. Kido, Fumie - bio.doc
Scott Hoshida Page 1 4/7/03