Frank V. Tarkington was born in March 1916 in Oakland, California. He was orphaned, as his mother died when he was three and his father died when he was six. He was with his father in Duluth, Minnesota until he was six. His father died from a malady caused by the work he was doing with chemicals in a factory. Tarkington went to an orphanage and a family took him in. They were farmers who had lost a son in an accident. They lived near Atkinson, Minnesota. Tarkington only has one memory of his father when he was ill. They were on a cruise ship together. His father had been hospitalized for about three years before dying. The family moved, but before that Tarkington worked on the farm doing chores for about a year. They left the farm and became tenant farmers in Dana, Indiana on the Snake River. He really became a farm boy there. His foster parents were named Carmack. He was with them for around five years. He attended school too. The Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] hit and they bought a farm farther away. He lost that farm and then lost his mind. He was hospitalized in Evansville, Indiana until he died. Tarkington lived with his foster mother, and they moved to Salem, Indiana with her siblings. The situation in Europe was not discussed in school. He joined the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps; 1933 to 1942] and was assigned to Carrollton, Kentucky where the Kentucky River meets the Ohio River. They were refurbishing Butler Memorial State Park [Annotator's Note: now General Butler State Park in Carrollton, Kentucky]. He is quite proud of his role in that. It was not much money, but during the Depression, any money was good. Tarkington wanted to join due to the economic conditions of the time and did not want to be a burden. Some of his money went home.

Frank V. Tarkington joined the Indiana National Guard, but was kicked out because it came to light that he was too young. He had only had one training exercise when he was discharged. He wanted to work and earn money. He picked apples and strawberries and did farm work. He had no real objective. He accepted a day job taking care of an airport in Indianapolis for a year. He lived in the office space of the airport. He had a problem with the owner of the flying school there and left. He went to work for Van Camp's [Annotator's Note: American brand name for canned beans] through the tomato season from July to September [Annotator's Note: unable to identify what year]. He took care of a steam boiler that operated machinery for the plant. That was the hardest work he ever did. At the end of the season, he and a friend looked for another job. A meat packing firm was hiring. They went and there was a line of people waiting to apply. They were hired. He stayed there for four years. He developed a physical problem due to working in trucks a lot. A doctor told him to quit driving long periods of time. Around then the draft was initiated, and the war was building. The Naval Reserve Office had a radio school, and he was interested in radio. He joined the Naval Reserve and went to the school. He was aware of the events in Europe and the Pacific, but felt it would not happen or concern him. He was destined for duty in the North Atlantic before the war started. He came down with the scarlet fever [Annotator's Note: type of infection] the day he was to be sent on the patrol. He was quarantined for 21 days. He had told the Navy he wanted to be an air pilot before this. After quarantine, he was asked where he wanted to go. He said he wanted air training. He got orders for Anacostia Naval Air Station [Annotator's Note: now Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southeast, Washington, D.C.] to be a radioman.

Frank V. Tarkington [Annotator's Note: a radioman in the US Navy] got a message from the Naval Air Station [Annotator's Note: Anacostia Naval Air Station, now Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southeast, Washington, D.C.] that he was to be a radioman. He was there for three years. His duties varied over time. He operated radio circuits in both code and voice. He had learned Morse Code [Annotator's Note: a method of telecommunication encoding characters in a system of dots and dashes]. He did that for a year. They put up a new operations building for them. He developed a friendship, and they ran the communications. The communications officer was a Navy commander. Tarkington and the friend went fishing and brought in fish which they gave out. His shore duty time was up, and he had to leave. He was sent to a Naval receiving station in San Diego, California where they picked crews for assignments. He was disturbed that he was assigned to garbage duty. He found out that the electrical shop was short of people, so he got in there. He was sent to Tijuana, Mexico with equipment for a visiting band leader named Rudy Vallée [Annotator's Note: Hubert Prior Vallée, American singer, musician, actor, and radio host]. He spent the day setting things up for him. After returning, he was assigned to amphibious duty as a communications unit number 12 [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] in Oceanside, California for about six months.

Frank V. Tarkington [Annotator's Note: a radioman in the US Navy] was at Oceanside, California which is across from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base in San Diego County, California]. He was a Radioman First Class now. He voluntarily trained with the Marines. There was an area with three trenches. They would start at one end and go through the trench with machine guns firing over their heads. He was given a bayonet and had to participate in a charge. The bayonets were clamped to the end of the rifle. They were sharp. He was practicing when a corporal challenged him to charge him. Tarkington charged him and found himself flat on his back with his rifle stuck in the ground. The corporal walked off. Some people get into that training seriously. He trained there for about two months and until transferred to Treasure Island [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, California]. He then went with about a dozen others and was put aboard a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] and headed west. They arrived in Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii] and stayed overnight. They wound up in Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands] but remained aboard the ship. The next day they crossed to Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands]. Tinian was the B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] base. His Comm12 [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] group was there to run Navy communications. Mount Lasso [Annotator's Note: also called Lasso Hill] had a tower installed on the top by the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions]. He was there in a small Quonset hut [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building]. They had generators for power to the transmitters. He was made Chief Radioman. Six Navy guys ran the whole station for two months.

A regular day for Frank V. Tarkington [Annotator's Note: a radioman in the US Navy] was to keep the transmitters going for the Navy command communications about four or five miles away. They were on Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands] across from Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands] and north of Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. The Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions], who he has tremendous admiration for, built roads, towers, and other needed facilities. The 50th Seabee Battalion [Annotator's Note: 50th Naval Construction Battalion] was his favorite, and he ate with them most of the time. He was Chief Radioman and could go anywhere on the island. He could even eat with the Marines. The transmitter site on Mount Lasso [Annotator's Note: also called Lasso Hill on Tinian] overlooked North Field where the bulk of the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] were. He could see everything going on. The Japanese had built two fighter strips called West Field. The Seabees made two B-29 strips by chopping off the tops of hills. Tinian had six B-29 strips. Saipan had four, and Guam had four. One morning, Herb Stein [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] and Tarkington saw a commotion around one B-29. They jumped in a jeep and went under what turned out to be the Enola Gay [Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber Model 45-MO; Serial number 44-86292, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945]. They were run out of there because their jeep was blue instead of green. The next morning the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and two days later it was Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945 respectively]. The Indianapolis [Annotator's Note: USS Indianapolis (CA-35)] had come into Tinian, and everyone knew something big was happening. No big Navy cruiser ever came to a little place like Tinian. They learned later that they were delivering the atom bomb. They knew this was the end when they learned what it was, but they did not know when. He was amazed but had no real thoughts. It was the end of the war and that is what they wanted. Two days after Nagasaki, Japan had not surrendered, and they took off to bomb Japan. Tarkington has an older son that did not know that there was a bombardment after the atomic weapons had been dropped. It happened and they obliterated a part of Japan. Over 100 B-29s had gone on that mission [Annotator's Note: 828 B-29s and 186 fighter aircraft in a single mission on 14 August 1945]. Some call it murder. The Japanese surrendered then. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] was kowtowing [Annotator's Note: slang for deferring to another, usually in a reluctant manner] to the Army who insisted on a full surrender which did not come until during that raid.

The most wonderful story that Frank V. Tarkington [Annotator's Note: a radioman in the US Navy] can tell is that he was in one of the Quonset huts [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building] on Mount Lasso [Annotator's Note: also called Lasso Hill on Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands] when he began to hear a rumble. He looked to the north, and the sky was full of lights. There were streams of B-29s coming in and landing [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. They had never used lights before. There was one stream headed for Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], one to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands], and one to Tinian. The horizon was pinkish and the lights against that background was something he had never seen in his life. It was 500 or so B-29s coming home. He wishes that he had had a good camera then. That was the end of the war. The highlight of the whole thing was that end and the return of the B-29s. It was awful and beautiful. They did not have a celebration at the surrender. They just wanted to get home. Tarkington was offered a seat on a B-29 to return to the States, but he turned it down. He had seen too many of them crash on the runways at Tinian. He went home on a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] and went under the Golden Gate Bridge [Annotator's Note: suspension bridge in San Francisco, California]. He was glad to be home. They were headed to Bainbridge [Annotator's Note: unable to identify in which State] aboard a train from San Francisco. Everybody got drunk. The train would stop for meals. They lost a lot of people that way. Some people just kept going. Tarkington was discharged and he took a cab home.

After the war, Frank V. Tarkington [Annotator's Note: a radioman in the US Navy] had good reasons to stay in the service due to the condition of industry and the uncertainty of things in general. He was confident he could get a job though, so he did not stay in the service. He went to work for a radio repair shop. He later went to work for RCA (Radio Corporation of America) as a television repairman. He stayed with them for 35 years. He installed a television in the White House [Annotator's Note: the official residence of the President of the United States, Washington, D.C.] with five others. It was installed in the Oval Office [Annotator's Note: formal working space of the President of the United States] so Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] could watch the opening of Congress [Annotator's Note: the United States Congress] in January 1946. That was a temporary installation. A permanent one was made by other people. Tarkington just happened to be the manager of the group that did that. He was in the Consumer Products Division of RCA during the White House install. He then went into the government services division installing systems aboard Navy ships. He ensured it was done properly. The bulk of his career later was working under contract with the Navy and RCA.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] was a stupid thing for the Japanese to do. Frank V. Tarkington had a soft feeling for the Japanese people themselves and still has it. He quite likes them. You are always under danger in a war zone. An airplane can fly over and drop something. In his case, he did not have to worry. There was a single plane that would come in two or three times a week [Annotator's Note: while he was stationed on Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands as a US Navy radioman]. It was crazy. It would drop bombs, but it rarely did damage. The searchlights would illuminate the plane and it did not have a prayer. Seeing the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] returning from bombing Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] is his most memorable experience [Annotator's Note: Tarkington describes this in detail in Segment 6 – "War's End and Home" of this interview series]. Very few people realize that there was a huge bombing raid after Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] over Tokyo and its environs [Annotator's Note: 828 B-29s and 186 fighter aircraft in a single mission on 14 August 1945]. The atomic weapon was not the end. More damage had been done during that raid than the atomic weapons had done. B-29 crashes were common. Out of every group that took off from Tinian, at least one would not make it off the runway or crashed in the water. Tarkington did not make a conscious decision to serve, it just happened. It was like being offered a job. The war was educational for him. It taught him to deal with people. He is proud that he served. He had friends who wanted to serve, but could not. He felt sorry for them. They worked in Indianapolis [Annotator's Note: Indianapolis, Indiana] in a factory work that contributed to the war effort. There was no direct relationship though. World War 2 was an experience. What the country learned from it is hard for Tarkington to put into words. The war does not mean anything today to Americans in a direct sense. He is in favor of the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and thinks the question as to teaching the war to future generations is a tough one. They should be made aware of it, but teaching it is something else. Technology is such today that the armaments and bombs have been improved. A fresh start would be better. It is ancient history. You cannot learn anything from World War 2 except that it accelerated research and technology. Things now are more lethal and efficient.

Frank V. Tarkington was fortunate to have a mild and unexcitable experience in the war. He got a break by having scarlet fever [Annotator's Note: type of infection. He describes this in Segment 2 – "Prewar Jobs and Prewar Navy Life" of this interview series]. A good friend of his at the time in communications school, Dave Ballard [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], had five ships shot out from under him, including the Lexington [Annotator's Note: USS Lexington (CV-2)]. Tarkington was from Indianapolis and had friends aboard the Indianapolis [Annotator's Note: USS Indianapolis (CA-35)]. He heard it was coming into Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands], but they did not know why other than something big was going to happen. The atomic stuff was beyond them [Annotator's Note: the Indianapolis transported the atomic weapons that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. He applied for a transfer to the Indianapolis, but it never went anywhere. A few days later, a Japanese submarine sunk them in deep water. He could have been aboard. Some were saved after fighting off sharks. He lucked out.