Pearson Riddle was born in Pensacola, North Carolina and grew up in the country. His father had a farm of about 120 acres. His father grew tobacco and that was their main moneymaker. Riddle recalls having to walk a mile to school every day. By the time he got in the seventh grade they had a school bus. He graduated from Burnsville High School. He did not have any power or telephone service in his house. He characterizes his life as a cruel life. Jobs were scarce and people did not have money. He finished high school in 1939 and decided to enter the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps]. Riddle stayed at the CCC camp and learned how to drive a truck. Fortunately he was able to learn quickly because he had driven a truck on his dad's farm. He was graded on his truck driving and did well. Riddle got into heavy machinery after he learned the ropes with truck driving. He worked with bulldozers. He was then sent to Oregon and then to California. In California, Riddle was sent to work with the Navy to operate heavy machinery. He was put on the USS Henderson (AP-1). He went to Hawaii and recalls being able to get a surf board for 25 cents. He was put to work in Hawaii. After working in Hawaii for awhile he was then told he was going to Wake Island to work. The convoy he was in had barges in it and seemed to stretch on forever. Wake Island did not have a dock. They had to float around for a few days since the weather was bad but finally they were able to stop and get onto the island. The first night on the island, Riddle had to get to work. His ship had 13 bulldozers on it. He worked with the plumbers; they were trying to tap into the groundwater, as well as trying to make a gutter system that would capture freshwater. Riddle would work one job and then go to another one. He helped to install pumps that could fuel aircraft. He had to fuel a flight of B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] that stopped at Wake. He was rolling drums for days. Riddle worked on the docks to build a drill barge. He recalls hearing about Pearl Harbor and thinking to himself that it did not sound right. Someone came out later that day and told him that the situation was rather serious. Later that day, they went and got something to eat. As they started up the road to the runway he noticed a formation of planes that were coming out of the clouds. Someone said that they must be American but they realized rather quickly that they were not American planes.

The Japanese hit their fuel supplies and it caused a lot of damage [Annotator's Note: on Wake Island on 8 December 1941]. Pearson Riddle had some training on a water-cooled machine gun. He never had a chance to fire it or work it. The barracks and food facilities were top notch on Wake. They had an open air theater as well as a few swimming pools. They built the pools because there were sharks in the waters around Wake. Every now and then an octopus would find its way into a pool and that usually scared a few of the guys. There was a lot of good fishing around Wake Island but it was hard to do because of the sharks. Wake Island had a breed of rare bird that was protected. As the seriousness of the situation hit them they were told to hold out as best they could. The Japanese ended up killing a lot of the rare birds because of shelling. Riddle helped to bring ammunition to the guns. He was all over the island helping to dig holes. The Japanese came onto Wake Island when it was dark. A lot of Marines and civilians were killed when the Japanese came in. They had floodlights on the beach but the Japanese took them out quickly. The Japanese fixed bayonets and took out the Marines. Riddle was next to a five inch gun when the Japanese invaded but he did not know how to use it. He recalls seeing Japanese soldiers patrolling the beach when he went down to get water. He saw when the Marines sunk a ship that was off of the coast. A lot of the planes on Wake Island were ruined and the runway had dynamite in it to blow it up in case the Japanese took it but that detonation never took place.

The US Navy had planes ready to help out at Wake Island but the admiral in charge figured that it was going to be too risky. Pearson Riddle did not have many friends on the island because all he did was work. On his last day on the island, he and a buddy went to get some water. When they were getting the water the guy changed his mind and told Riddle they needed to get a generator. He commandeered a bulldozer to try and get water and help the man with the generator. There was a hole near the ammunition dump that had water and he got the water from there. Riddle was captured; they stripped their clothes off and marched them to the airport. They were captured around 24 December. They had to make do with what they had in terms of sleeping. The Japanese were just as scared as they were. Riddle stayed on the island until February 1942, then he was put on a ship and sent to Tokyo. The Japanese went into the hold of the ship at night and beat the prisoners, trying to get information. It was a tough 14 days on the ship. They were given one cup of water and one cup of gruel. During one incident, he saw five Marines beheaded at the camp in Japan. He had to march everywhere. The food was full of rocks and glass. The soup was based off of cabbage and it did not have much nutritional value. The first camp was a terrible place and by the end of 1942 Riddle was down to skin and bones. There was a time when his feet were frozen. The punishment was constant. Everyone would be punished for the mistake of one man so sometimes he was punished and did not even know why. Riddle noticed that the Marines and civilians were bunched in together. A lot of the men were sick and diseased. The first camp he was in held about 1,600 men.

Pearson Riddle was sent to second camp that had high walls and an electric fence in 1943. He was then put on a ship to Osaka then a train to Kawasaki, Japan. Riddle was a grinder who worked on steel. He also worked with a large furnace that was used for making steel. He did not see an American plane over Japan until 1944. It was a B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. He saw a great amount of antiaircraft fire going into the air trying to shoot down the B-29. He heard through the underground after the B-29 pass that bombing runs were probably going to be occurring regularly from that point on. Riddle was near Tokyo when the firebombing raids occured. He actually worked near a bridge that Doolittle had blown up on his raid. Near the end of their imprisonment, his body was full of boils and he was in poor health. After Tokyo burned, the Japanese picked 100 people and told them to get into the yard. They were issued jackets and he assumed he was going to Russia to work in a salt mine. He took a 13 hour train ride and had no idea where he was going. They walked them up a hill and Riddle spotted an open air mine. He saw men from Singapore and the Philippines. The Japanese put them to work with shovels for the spring of 1945. He stayed there for awhile. The Japanese heard the speech from the emperor in which the emperor declared surrender. The next day the Japanese were all gone. Riddle was at the camp until September. He went into Tokyo and was put aboard a US hospital ship. They were debriefed and were allowed to state who they were so their families could be notified. The next day they went to Tokyo Bay and Riddle recalls seeing hundreds of ships. He ate real food for the first time. He went to Guam and along the way stopped and saw Iwo Jima. On Guam they were issued clothes and given physicals. He then went to Honolulu on a plane and was issued more clothes and was told to hang onto them. He got on a huge seaplane and flew to San Francisco. He was sent to a hospital outside of San Francisco then got on a train and headed back to North Carolina. He received more treatment in North Carolina. Riddle weighed 97 pounds. His hair and fingernails had stopped growing. He worked on the Mt. Fuji project during his time at the first camp.

At the first prisoner of war camp, Pearson Riddle had to work hauling earth and material in a giant cart. Riddle did get medical help from the Japanese. He had fluid accumulated in his lungs and it was eventually removed. He had to help build up a huge section of earth so the Japanese could practice live fire exercises. He had no access to the news that was going on in the world at the time. Riddle knew that understanding Japanese was a bad thing. It made the guards suspicious. The Japanese would conduct beatings for no reason. In Shanghai, China a bunch of guys had gotten away and were eventually killed for their escape effort. Escaping in China was out of the question because of the degree of difficulty. Riddle recalls getting various food packages and parcels from the Red Cross. The Japanese let the men write home but they censored the letters so it made it more difficult to relay information. Any sensitive information that was in the letters was censored out and, depending on what was found in the letters, it brought more beatings. The buildings that Riddle had to sleep in were infested with lice and bed bugs. The bathhouse afforded the men the opportunity to clean themselves as well as their clothes. The lice and bed bugs were a big nuisance. Riddle tried to boil his clothes in order to kill the bugs that were living in them. The B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] came in and gave the prisoners plenty of food and a change of clothes. Riddle recalls that the Japanese became a little friendlier; they brought a horse and a cow for the Americans to kill. The B-29s dropped soap and it was worth its weight in gold when trading for materials.

The worst camp Pearson Riddle stayed at was every camp following his experience in China. The worst camp he stayed in was in Northern Japan because it was freezing cold and they did not have proper facilities to stay warm. His feet would freeze and, at night, the swelling would spread to the rest of his body. The camp was right next to Sendai, Japan. A lot of people quit living but he was determined to get out of Japan. He figured that America would never turn their back on the prisoners. It gave him pleasure seeing the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] making their bomb runs on Japan. He found out about the atomic bombs from a political prisoner who was in the last camp he was in. The man told Riddle he did not think the Japanese could hold up to that type of bombing. Riddle recalls being told over a loud speaker to stay at the prison camp until the Americans came because they did not want them spreading around. He had three guys with him at the last camp. One of the men died right next to him. It was the first time he had someone die right next to him. Riddle was going to bring his ashes back but the Japanese did not allow it. Riddle almost lost his eyesight while he was in captivity. His nutrition was so bad it affected his vision. He had to eat a bunch of food to restore his vision. Riddle received five dollars from the Red Cross on Guam and then 25 dollars in Honolulu but he had to pay the money back. He got a job with the Beacon Manufacturing Company as a security guard in California. He was a watchman so they wanted him to carry a gun but he did not. He had to give his job up to a Navy man who came back from the war who had the job. The job allowed Riddle to make the necessary doctor visits in California. He moved to Alaska in 1947. Riddle made trips all over the world to build bases and retired in Alaska. He worked on the early warning missile defense system in Alaska and retired in 1962. He was successful in various real estate endeavors after the war.

Pearson Riddle has received continuous medical care for some of his postwar medical problems induced by his prisoner of war experience. He does not know who or what was bringing them food but he recalls that the food they ate they had to bring off of the docks. He feels that a lot of people tried to help him and is aware of that now but he never saw any of it because the Japanese would not allow it. When Riddle was in China he received scant medical attention. He did not receive any appreciable medical attention during his stays in camps in Japan. Basic supplies such as gauze and bandages were at a premium and hard to find. Inflation hurt Japan so badly that Riddle recalls a Japanese man showing him a huge bundle of money and equating it to toilet paper because it was worth nothing. Riddle discusses the current state of the economy and President Obama. Riddle went to the Aleutian Islands after the war and helped to build a naval base. He helped to establish an entire infrastructure for the base. It was a good job but the weather was terrible. It was a difficult place to work because of the weather. Riddle feels that America did very well during World War 2. He feels that the leadership was amazing and that the mistakes that were made during World War 2 were fixed through good leadership.

Pearson Riddle felt like America did what they had to do. He knows that the Japanese have a good work ethic and are genuinely not bad people, but America did what they had to do. He is not too sure how World War 2 changed the world, especially with how the world situation played out after the war. He notes that war is both expensive and destructive. Riddle feels that America came back stronger after the war. He believes that the World War 2 Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is a great reminder for younger generations that freedom is not free.