Frank D. Padgett

Frank David Padgett
Associate Justice of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court
In office 1982–1992
Personal details
Born	(1923-03-09)March 9, 1923
Nickname	Bobcat
Military service
Branch/service	Army Air Force
Unit	308th Heavy Bombardment Group
Battles/wars	World War II South-East Asian theatre of World War II

Frank David Padgett (born March 9, 1923 in Vincennes, Indiana) is a retired judge and former World War II B-24 bomber pilot. Padgett grew up during the Great Depression and earned a scholarship to Harvard College in Massachusetts. Before he could graduate however, he was called to active duty in the U.S. Army Air Force and for the next 13 months, trained as a pilot.

In 1944, Padgett and a crew of ten, flew their B-24 heavy bomber from Mitchell Field in New York to an airbase in southeastern China. There, as part of the 373rd Squadron, 308 Bomb Group, 14th. Air Force, they began bombing operations against the Japanese. On January 1, 1945, while on their 13th. mission, they were hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire and forced to bail out. Coming down spread out across the French Indochinese countryside, Padgett and several others were captured by the Japanese. He was tortured by the Kempetai while in Hanoi. He was then transferred down to the Saigon Kempetai prison where he spent the next eight months until the war ended.

Justice Frank D. Padgett

After the war, Padgett spent many months in military hospitals recovering from the tropical diseases (Malaria, Beri-Beri and amoebic dysentery) he had contracted while a prisoner. He went back to school and earned his law degree from Harvard College in 1948. He and his family moved to Honolulu Hawaii in 1948, where Padgett was offered a job with an old and reputable law firm, Robertson, Castle and Anthony.

His first case was representing a Shinto shrine in Kalihi Valley on the island of Oahu. The case involved the seizure of the Kotohira Jinsha temple by the federal government’s Alien Property Custodian in June of 1948 and the subsequent attempt to sell the property in 1949, on the grounds that the Shinto religion was enemy tainted and associated with emperor worship. Before the start of World War II, the temple, a Shinto shrine, had been a thriving center of worship, cultural activities and social gatherings for the Japanese community around that area. On December 7, 1941 all that changed. Martial law and the fear of internment made people wary and apprehensive, afraid to go to the temple and participate. they no longer saw their shrine as a place of refuge, but rather a place of potential danger. Many in the Japanese community had been arrested after the start of World War II and sent to internment camps on the mainland. In December of 1947, despite the absence of a priest, members of Kotohira Jinsha began trying to restore religious worship at the shrine.

When the case went to trial in 1950, Federal Judge Frank McLaughlin ruled against the government and the land was released back to the members of the Kotohira Jinsha community. In his ruling, Judge McLaughlin found the Attorney General’s office in violation of the First Amendment rights of plaintiffs with reference to Robert H. Jackson in "American Communications Association v. Douds". Judge McLaughlin found the Attorney General’s office had no basis on which to exercise the Trading with the Enemy Act, moreover, since 1945 Japan had abolished state religion under Douglas MacArthur and by judicial order returned seized property to Kotohira Jinsha.

Padgett went on to practice law in Honolulu for the next thirty years before being appointed to the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals in 1980. Then, in 1982, he was appointed to the Hawaii Supreme Court as an associate justice. He served on the court for ten years until his retirement in 1992. He still lives in Honolulu with his wife Sibyl.