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]
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]