John Hickenbottom
July 23, 1942 Davenport Times-Tribune
John Hickenbottom, who gave the name of Ingia [Mrs. Frank] Zunker of Reardan as his nearest kin [his sister], was officially reported by the war department, Wednesday of last week, as having been captured by the Japanese at Wake Island shortly after war broke out, and is now interned in Shanghai, China. He was a civilian employee on Wake when it was captured by the Japanese.
November 1, 1945, Daily Sun-News Sunnyside, WA
John Hickenbottom, a former Mabton resident, who has been a prisoner of war for 3-1/2 years, arrived in Yakima. He says he received pretty fair treatment, the food was usually rice and water.
[This begs for more investigation... John was working on Grand Coulee dam probably for the Morrison-Knudsen Corporatin. When the construction of the dam was completed, he was asked with 1220 other civilians to join the company on Wake Island to build an air base there. The Japanese attacked Wake Island the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 8, 1941, on the other side of the intenational date line. The attack lasted twelve days before the Americans surrendered the island to the Japanese. The Japanese had some of the civilian workers complete the construction of the air base and its defences (it is not known if John was part of this group). Most Americans were eventually transferred to prisoner of war camps. The Japanese killed the remaining 98 captured Americans on October 5, 1943 (obviously John was not part of this group).
He was married in 1923 and had two children. Charles Hickenbottom and Joane Hickenbottom DesCamps and perhaps a step-son, John Radford.
In the 1940 census, he is married, but living alone in Seaton, Grant County, Wash. (This is not Seaton's Grove in Okanogan county, but maybe directly across the river. Seaton did operate a ferry before the Grand Coulee was constructed.) The constuction camps were no place for women and children. He was employed as a carpenter's helper on the dam construction.
He died in 1963 and is buried at the Willamette National Cemetery. His grave stone lists him as a private. He was a private in a WWI Spruce Squadron which were army units that forested trees as part of a federalized effort to increase production of spruce products for aircraft in WWI. Others from Reardan in Spruce Squadrons include George and August Mahrt, sons of Fred and Emma Mahrt and Herman and Gustave Wagner sons of Frederick and Magdelena Wagner. August, Herman and Gustave died shortly after their service.]