Paul A. Franklin was born in in February 1922 in Elm Grove, Louisiana. He was raised during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. He graduated from high school in 1940 and got married. Franklin started working for 60 cents an hour at an oil field. Jobs were hard to find during the Great Depression. Franklin heard about war around the world from the radio. He started thinking more about it and decided to learn a trade. He did not want to stay in the oil field. Around that time, the government introduced the WERS, War Emergency Radio Service, because there was a shortage of radiomen at the beginning of the war. Franklin decided to join the program and took courses in Shreveport [Annotator's Note: Shreveport, Louisiana]. Franklin had a wife and kid by that time. Franklin did not want to be drafted, so he volunteered for the Air Force. His radio school was on his service record. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. While in the Air Force, he came down with a bad ear infection and he had to have an ear drum popped. After a hospital stay, Franklin was grounded, ending his flight career. He was sent to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to the Army Air Force radio school. It was an eight month course and he learned radio operation and international Morse code. After graduating, Franklin became an instructor for a few months. The school had three shifts that ran 24 hours a day to get radio operators into the field. Eventually the midnight and afternoon shifts were cut. Bombers were being built quickly that needed operators. Eventually there was a surplus of radio operators, so they were transferred to the infantry. Franklin was sent to the infantry and was sent to boot camp. The Army needed to replace its losses from the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. Franklin was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland [Annotator's Note: Fort George G. Meade in in Anne Arundel County, Maryland]. By that time, Europe was looking better, so he was put on a cross country train ride to ship out for the South Pacific. He was sent to Camp Stonemen [Annotator's Note: near Pittsburg, California] outside of San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. He was issued jungle camouflage. When he was on the ship, he went on deck to see the Golden Gate Bridge. He prayed to God saying he would be a good soldier and that he wanted to come back home.

Paul Franklin landed in Manila Bay [Annotator’s Note: Manila, Luzon, Philippines] 23 days after setting sail. He arrived in Manila after it had been taken, so he started marching to his encampment outside the city. Franklin was carrying his full kit and it was hot and humid. During the sailing, the men got soft. Franklin moved through the bombed out city. He became nauseated from the smell of the dead bodies. The men only had one canteen of water and some of the men drank their whole canteen at once. After a six mile march, the Americans reached their encampment. The men started fainting from the heat. Ambulances would pick up the men on the ground. The first thing Franklin saw when he got to camp was a Lister Bag [Annotator's Note: a Lister Bag, or Lyster Bag, is a canvas water bag used especially for supplying military troops with chemically purified drinking water] hanging. It was a large canvas bag that held water. The thirsty men ran towards the water. Franklin was shipped to the field artillery. He was assigned to the Headquarters Battery, 124th Field Artillery Battalion, 33rd Infantry Division. That unit was in the Sixth Army. Franklin was a replacement for a man who was sent home. He carried several radios for a few months. One day, he was promoted to communications chief. He was in charge of the whole radio system. By that time, the Japanese were being pushed to the city of Baguio [Annotator's Note: Baguio, Luzon, Philippines], the summer capital of the Philippines. One day, Franklin was told he would be a First Sergeant, but he did not want the promotion. Despite that, the officer gave him the new rank. Franklin got along with his commanding officer. The Japanese were surrounded and could not get any supplies. They were starving to death in the mountain caves. They pretended to surrender, then killed American soldiers when they were relaxed. The Americans started firing flamethrowers [Annotator's Note: ranged incendiary device that projects a controllable jet of fire] into the caves, which broke the Japanese of that habit. The Americans used Japanese interpreters. When Franklin went to Japan, he also had an interpreter's book he carried. The Japanese used invasion money when they invaded Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines]. They would throw the money away and Franklin kept some of the money he found.

When the Japanese surrendered on Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines], Paul Franklin's unit [Annotator's Note: Headquarters Battery, 124th Field Artillery Battalion, 33rd Infantry Division] was put into a rest camp to get ready to invade Japan. After three weeks, Franklin's equipment was ready for the invasion. Not long after, the bombs [Annotator's Note: atomic bombs] were dropped on Hiroshima [Annotator's Note: Hiroshima, Japan] and Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: Nagasaki, Japan]. Franklin was in one of the first units to arrive in Japan once the country surrendered. He left Luzon from the Lingayen Gulf and sailed with an armada of ships towards Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan]. LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] carried troops, but the landing craft Franklin was in had a bulldozer in it used to move artillery. One of the first things unloaded was the bulldozer. Franklin had a six wheel drive weapons carrier full of radio equipment. The vehicles bogged down in the sandy beach, so the bulldozer pulled them to shore. The vehicles and radio equipment were water proof. The tide was in during the landing, so the men had to wait a few hours for the tide could go out. The commanding officer of Franklin's craft made his men unload his jeep to get to shore so he could direct the landings. Franklin had to stand to drive because the water came up to his seat. Once ashore, the vehicles had to clean the water proofing materials off. The women and children were hiding when the Americans came ashore. After a few days, they started showing up in town. The Japanese police were allowed to keep their sword, but not their firearms. The Japanese knew where the Americans were camped and would direct them. Franklin drove for several miles looking for his camp. It had been an old training camp. Franklin thought he would be able to sleep on his cot, but fleas kept him up. The following day, the cots were moved out of the building and the old hay mats were burned and the building was fumigated. The following night, the Americans slept peacefully. Franklin's unit had to disarm the local populace. The Japanese left a radio station full of power, so Franklin's unit destroyed the power supplies to the station. There was a nearby airfield the Americans went to disarm as well. The Japanese took the propellers and machine guns off of their planes. The Americans rolled over those parts with tractors. The planes were then destroyed as well. The metals were used to make cars later sold to Americans. Franklin's area was completely disarmed. The Japanese hid ammunition in caves, so all of it had to be brought out by hand. It was all sunk in the bay. It took a few months to complete that mission. Franklin was shipped to Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] after his unit was disbanded. In Tokyo, he was put in charge of a prison that held war criminals. There were three eight hour shifts that worked around the clock. Franklin tried to rotate the men so they would have fair schedules. The prison held Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tjo; former Imperial Japanese Army General and prime minister of Japan] and Tokyo Rose [Annotator's Note: nickname given by Allied servicemen to any English speaking female radio personality broadcasting Japanese propaganda in the Pacific Theater]. Franklin checked on all of the prisoners. Tojo was bald and liked to read and write. Tokyo Rose was the only female in the prison and was kept away from the men. [Annotator's Note: Tough the name Tokyo Rose applies to any of the English speaking females who broadcast Japanese propaganda to American troops in the Pacific, in this case Franklin is likely referring to Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American who was trapped in Japan by the war and participated in the English-language radio program "The Zero Hour."] She was intelligent and was born in California. She told them that she went to Japan to visit family and when the war started, she was forced to stay and read the propaganda. Franklin saw in the papers that she was given five years in prison and was fined 10,000 dollars, but never served any of the sentence and did not pay the fine. She lived in Chicago [Annotator’s Note: Chicago, Illinois]. Franklin thinks she had a good lawyer. The prison had gallows in it where American pilots that were shot down were hanged. [Annotator's Note: Franklin shows emotion.] Tojo was hung on those same gallows. By that time, Franklin had earned enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to go home. He shipped home from Tokyo Bay. [Annotator's Note: Franklin shows emotion.] By that time, Franklin was ready to go home. He saw the evidence of what the Japanese had done to American prisoners, but he had orders to keep Tojo alive so he could face a legal execution. One day, someone informed Franklin that Tojo was in a pool of his own blood. They got him to a hospital and found that he tried to commit suicide. He survived and had extra guards. He had tried to shoot himself once before. Franklin kept him alive for his trial.

Paul Franklin went to work for an oil company after he graduated high school. While at the water house, Franklin listened to Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] on the radio [Annotator's Note: Day of Infamy Speech; President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, 8 December 1941] talk about the attack at Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. That is when he started thinking about learning a trade. He decided to sign up for the War Emergency Radio Service. Franklin was inducted into an Army reserve unit in Shreveport [Annotator's Note: Shreveport, Louisiana] and then sent to Camp Beauregard [Annotator's Note: in Pineville, Louisiana]. From there, he did his Air Force basic training in Wichita Falls, Texas [Annotator's Note: likely at Sheppard Field, now Sheppard Air Force Base, near Wichita Falls, Texas]. Franklin did basic training for the Air Force and the infantry. He was disappointed not to be a pilot, but decided to do the best he could with the assignment he was given. Franklin was interested in radio technology. He liked to play with radios when he was a young kid. His father ran a gas station, but there was no electricity. He used 32 volt batteries to run the radio. His father ran the store during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. Franklin did not want to work in the oil fields. After leaving the Golden Gate Bridge [Annotator's Note: located in San Francisco Bay, California], it took 23 days to sail to the Philippines. It [Annotator's Note: the transport ship he was ablard] held 2,300 men and they all got fed twice a day. The cooks were constantly making food to feed them all. The ship stopped at Eniwetok [Annotator's Note: Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands] for supplies and to pick up an escort to Manila Bay [Annotator's Note: Manila, Luzon, Philippines]. The Japanese submarines liked to look for ships to sink. It was a difficult trip because of how hot it was in the ship. There was no air conditioning below decks. There were five sections full of bunks. Hot air was blown below deck to try and cool it off. Many men slept on the deck because it was cooler. Monsoons would hit at the same time every day. Sometimes they would hit the ships at night and get the sleeping men wet. Manila had almost no buildings left from the two battles fought there. One was when MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] was defeated and the other was when the Japanese were run out of the city. It smelled because of the dead bodies. The Japanese would set buildings on fire that had not been destroyed in the battle. They destroyed bridges to make it harder to follow them. Franklin did not think cities in Japan were destroyed any worse than Manila. Franklin has a picture of a burned out post office. Along the coast of Japan, cities were destroyed, but not the inner cities. General Douglas MacArthur made his headquarters in Kyoto [Annotator's Note: Kyoto, Japan] in southern Japan. The city was beautiful. Franklin was given a three day pass while in Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan], so he rode an electric train to Kyoto. A friend of Franklin's was a driver for General Krueger [Annotator's Note: US Army General Walter Krueger], so they visited. The two took the generals car and drove around the city. His friend was a Mormon and they did basic training together. Franklin saw some beautiful flowers around the town. He thought the Japanese people were cooperative and did not have problems with them. The people were family oriented and took care of their elders. While on the train to Kyoto, a Japanese lady got onto the train with a business suit on. She sat next to Franklin and they started speaking together. She asked him about his station prior to Japan. She knew his unit because she had worked in the intelligence department in the Japanese Army. She would drink with the men in Manila to get information out of them. Franklin decided to stop talking to her. He knew the Japanese had women working for them in the Philippines because he found women's clothing in caves. When Franklin returned [Annotator's Note: to the United States], he landed in Seattle, Washington. It took ten days to make the trip. When the ship made radio contact, there was an earthquake that caused a tsunami. The ship had to slow down because of the waves and locked down all the compartments. The ship was quiet that night. The ship would shake as the waves hit. If the ship hit a wave sideways, it would flip over. The ship was new, only on its second trip overseas. Franklin arrived in Seattle just before daylight. He used field glasses to see a sign that said "Welcome Home" which made him happy. After landing, Franklin was processed then sent to El Paso [Annotator's Note: likely Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas], where he was discharged.

Paul Franklin believes it is important for kids to learn about World War 2. He thinks it will teach them to be more patriotic. He believes they will be more interested in politics and it will help teach them what the country has gone through. Franklin thinks The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] teaches the youth about the history of the country and what it went through. Franklin learned about the Civil War [Annotator's Note: American Civil War, 1861 to 1865] in school. He thinks World War 2 should be taught in schools. The war taught him how destructive war is and the misery and pain it causes. He thinks countries should learn how to get along better. He wants countries to mind their business to avoid war. Franklin wants people in the future to be patriotic and educated about the country. He thinks honest people should be elected over their own self-interests. Franklin hopes countries will get along better. Wars are expensive and take away form civilians. He thinks a strong military is important to fight against dictators. Militaries take away from the civilians. He appreciated The National WWII Museum for what it teaches. He thinks every country deserves freedom. He thinks citizens should be free to elect good people.