F3c Henry Amis Firth

Henry Amis Firth was born May 12, 1919 at Newport, Kentucky. His father, Frank Firth, an Army veteran of World War I, worked for a safe company, and his mother, Edith Dawes Firth, was a homemaker. She had immigrated from England.

The marriage was brief and so was the son’s time in Kentucky — two years, by his account. By the time of the spring 1930 Census mother and son were in Norfolk, Virginia, where she was married to a Navy man.

Henry said he next lived in Victoria, British Columbia, for 17 years. His maternal grandmother was there.

By spring 1940 he was in San Diego with his mother, who had divorced again. He’d completed 10th grade and earned $270 for 39 weeks of work in 1939 as a blacksmith for the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal Depression-era jobs program. His mother earned $500 for 52 weeks of work as a cook in a private home.

Mr. Firth enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 7, 1940. He was a fireman third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: the Times Colonist of Victoria, Canada; Kentucky birth index; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Census; application for military headstone. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.