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F3c Henry Amis Firth
Henry Amis Firth was born May 12, 1919 in Campbell County, Kentucky southeast of Cincinnati. His father, Frank Firth, an Army veteran of World War I, worked for a safe company, and his mother, Edith Dawe Firth, was a homemaker. She had immigrated from England.
The marriage was brief and by the time of the spring 1930 Census mother and son were in Norfolk, Virginia, where she was married to a Navy man.
Henry lived in 1935 in Victoria, British Columbia, where his maternal grandmother lived.
By spring 1940 he was in San Diego with his mother, who had divorced again. The Census said he had completed one year of high school but was no longer enrolled. He 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 first 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 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.