| Summary: | Color; 45 minutes, 2 seconds. Kenneth Todd was born on November 22, 1922. He was an only child, and lost his mother in the mid-1920s. His father remarried, and raised livestock and crops near Murray, NE. He attended a one-room schoolhouse through 8th grade, and graduated from Plattsmouth High School in the spring of 1940. He was driving near Union, NE, when the radio announcer broke the news about the Pearl Harbor attack. He enlisted in the Navy in Omaha, and was sent by train to Balboa Park in San Diego, CA, for twelve weeks of basic training. He passed through the North Platte canteen on the way to the Pacific. Kenneth said that the residents of Union, NE also met the troop trains on the Missouri Pacific. He was assigned to the World War I vintage ship U.S.S. King, which patrolled the Aleutian Islands southwest of Alaska. Kenneth respected their skipper. Their mission was to protect the Aleutians from Japanese invasion. 130 men from Omaha were assigned to the King at the same time. Adak Island was their base. Those who were radar operators kept track of surface ships, and the SONAR operators searched for Axis submarines. He married in San Francisco just before V-J Day, but was not deactivated until his ship sailed back to the Atlantic by way of the Panama Canal. He was demobilized in Philadelphia, and returned to Cass County to the family farm. He and his wife had two sons and a daughter. Kenneth was a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). At the time of the interview, Kenneth was preparing to enter the Eastern Nebraska Veterans Home.
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