Thomas Paris was born in Nashville, Tennessee in May 1926. He had one sister. His father was a salesman for Remington. He grew up in Nashville. It was nice before the interstate days. It is where country music started. His mother went to work for the Sunday School board. He was in the Aleutian Islands [Annotator’s Note: Aleutian Islands, Alaska] when they dropped the bombs on Japan [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. He heard about the attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] on the radio. He joined the Army Air Corps so he would not be drafted. He passed the test and was then sent to basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi for three months. He liked to be flying. He did not want to get killed in a foxhole. He did not become a pilot, but was instead in air traffic control. They learned how to shoot rifles. He remembers shooting the M1 rifle[Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. He volunteered when he turned 18 years old in May 1944, and was called up in October 1944. He was sent to Houston [Annotator’s Note: Houston, Texas] and then flew to Alaska. He went to radio school outside of St. Louis [Annotator’s Note: St. Louis, Missouri]. He was in ground control approach, and learned to guide planes through the fog to land on the runway.

Thomas Paris went from radio school to Houston [Annotator’s Note: Houston, Texas] in order to go to Alaska. He got his uniform, including a hat with fur in it. In the summertime, the sun rose at four in the morning and set at nine at night. Then in the wintertime, it rose at nine in the morning and set at three in the afternoon. The weather there was strange as well. He would wear a headset to talk to the pilots. They had to fly through the fog in order to land the plane. Paris would guide them. They had a hangar and six or seven barracks. There was a blimp that flew up and down the West Coast. It was fairly new technology. He went to school on the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] when he got out of the service. He was in the 119th Army Airways Communications Systems. His boss was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. He went into the service in 1944. He was in Alaska from 1945 to 1946. He was there when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. This ended the war over there. They would walk around the beach. The Japanese were on a boat near the beach. They had barbed wire up to defend the beach and some ground troops. There were three guys working and each had their own screen. It took a little while for them to learn the machines. They lived in the barracks. They had single bunk beds. They had snow there. One time, the snow went all the way to the top of the barracks. They would have to shovel their way up. They did not have much recreation.

Thomas Paris learned about events by radio. He would write letters home. They had C-47s [Annotator’s Note: The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota]. One pilot had a stalling speed and he had to gun it to get the plane off the runway in order not to crash. They had a week off in Anchorage [Annotator’s Note: Anchorage, Alaska]. He heard about the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] on the radio. They dropped one bomb and the Japanese still would not surrender. Then after they dropped the second one, they surrendered. The men were happy. They started getting discharged. He was sent back to Seattle [Annotator’s Note: Seattle, Washington] and took a train to Chicago [Annotator’s Note: Chicago, Illinois] where he was discharged. Then he took a train back to Nashville [Annotator’s Note: Nashville, Tennessee, his hometown]. They heard about the surrender over the radio. He was discharged in 1946. He started college that September at Vanderbilt University [Annotator’s Note: in Nashville]. He went into engineering. They would test for gasoline in the air. He thought about staying in the military. He did not want to stay in. He wanted to go home. He was a staff sergeant when he was discharged. His first job was in Memphis [Annotator’s Note: Memphis, Tennessee]. He lived at home the first two years back. He sent some money home to his mother. He made about 50 to 60 dollars a month.

Thomas Paris remembers when they were checking out of the runway and the pilot landed and they were not on the runway. They were checking the runway with the instrument landing systems. They found one that was off. He volunteered in the Army Air Corps because he did not want to be drafted. He got a degree out of his service [Annotator's Note: Paris is referring to using the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, which was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. His family would not have been able to send him to college. They kept the United States' freedom. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] needed to be gone or he would have made his way across the ocean. He thinks that future generations should learn about the war.