This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
News of Carlyle Ricks' death was rather like that of his capture.
In 1942, the parents of then-Army 1st Lt. Ricks went a month without hearing from their son before the Red Cross sent a telegram to their home on K Street in Salt Lake City saying the Japanese had taken him prisoner in the Philippines.
Ricks' death was announced Sunday in a paid obituary in The Salt Lake Tribune, though he died on Feb. 6 at a veterans home in Miami. Ricks, who retired from the Air Force with the rank of lieutenant colonel, was 96.
His daughter, Carlynn Ricks, said the family delayed the obituary because they are still waiting for a date to inter her father's ashes at Arlington National Cemetery. The family has been told there is a backlog, and it may be weeks before any memorial can occur, she said.
Ricks was among the Utah soldiers, sailors and marines whose captivity during World War II and eventual freedom were closely followed back home. Ricks' capture made the Salt Lake City newspapers. So did the infrequent letters he was allowed to send to his family and his release from a prison in Korea six days after Japan's formal surrender.
On Dec. 12, 1945, in a ceremony at Fort Douglas, Ricks married Ruthann Browning, also of Salt Lake City, who had waited for him not knowing if he was alive. The Tribune published a photo of the couple, with then-Capt. Ricks in his dress uniform and the bride in her dress, cutting the cake with a saber.
In between the articles about the capture and the wedding, Ricks spent more than three years enduring captivity and war. One man died in his arms while marching between prisoner compounds in the Philippines, according to an account provided by Ricks' family.
On Dec. 13, 1944, about 1,000 American prisoners were marched aboard a converted cargo ship called the Oryoku Maru. American dive bombers attacked the ship. When the captors allowed the prisoners to come out of the hold, Ricks and other men jumped overboard. American planes shot at them until their pilots realized the swimmers were American.
He clung to a floating stool and swam ashore at Olongapo, Philippines. The Japanese captured Ricks again. He and other men were confined to a tennis court at Olongapo with no shade for five days. He was sick and emaciated, according to a history provided by his family.
Ricks and other prisoners arrived at Camp Fukuoka No. 1 in Japan on Jan. 30, 1945. Then he was moved to Korea, arriving at Jinsen Camp on April 27. It was an officers' camp, and conditions were less brutal. Prisoners worked nine hours a day with every second Sunday off and they were allowed to bathe.
He was rescued Sept. 8 and put aboard a hospital ship. Then he was sent to recover with other prisoners of war at Bushnell General Hospital in Brigham City.
Carlyle Ricks — he had no middle name — was born March 4, 1919, in Salt Lake City to Nathan Ray and Elizabeth Ellen Ricks. He was the sixth of their eight children.
Ricks graduated from East High School. He had no particular desire to serve in the military, but needed money for college, Carlynn Ricks said Tuesday, so he joined the ROTC program at the University of Utah. He studied accounting. When he received his commission, he was assigned to the Army Quartermaster Corps. He was stationed in the Philippines, keeping ledgers and payroll for the U.S. Army Air Corps, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
When Japan next began attacking U.S. positions in the Philippines, American cooks, radio operators and quartermasters like Ricks became infantry. Ricks hadn't even been issued a rifle and he volunteered for patrols with only a sidearm, according to "We Were Next to Nothing: An American POW's Account of Japanese Prison Camps and Deliverance in World War II," published in 2004 by McFarland & Company. The book has accounts from Ricks and other prisoners.
Ricks was responsible for burning the payroll, about $1 million in American cash, so the Japanese wouldn't capture it. Carlynn Ricks said her father grew up money conscious in the Great Depression, and burning the currency was as traumatic for him as some of what he endured as a POW.
"It just killed him," she said.
The last American forces in the Philippines surrendered May 6, 1942. Ricks is listed as being taken prisoner the next day.
After marrying Browning, Ricks remained in the military. The Army Air Corps became the Air Force in 1947 and Ricks became part of it.
He returned to accounting and logistics. He was a comptroller at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida when he retired in 1967. He and his wife chose to remain in Florida.
Ruthanne Ricks died in 2004. None of Ricks' seven siblings are alive. Ricks' survivors include Carlynn Ricks, of San Antonio; a son, Gary Ricks, of Bloomington, Ind., two grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Carlynn Ricks said her father received both a military pension and full disability benefits as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his captivity.
Ricks spent his retirement golfing and playing the stock market. He was proud to tell people that his investments created a sizable estate to leave his children, his daughter said.
Carlynn Ricks said her father spoke easily about his captivity, and harbored no hostility toward Japanese people. He saw his time as a prisoner as a part of warfare.
"You fight wars and people get captured," Carlynn Ricks said, paraphrasing her father's view, "and he was one of the unlucky ones that got captured."
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