Oral history interview with Keith Franklin

Milligan:This is Sarah Milligan with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. I'm here talking to Keith Franklin:. We're at the Chilocco alumni reunion in 2017, and we're talking about Chilocco as a school, and as well as Mr. Franklin's military experience, as well. Now that we know what that's all for--. I'd like to star--just tell me a little bit about yourself, like where are you from, where'd you grow up, maybe a little bit about your parents, and any of your family that you want to talk about, and we'll just sort of move forward.

Franklin:Okay, I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma--

Milligan:Oh, just down the road.

Franklin:--yeah, in a little house. Born in a house, not in a hospital, in 1940, 1:00January 1, and was raised more or less in Shawnee and Stroud-Cushing area. Come to Chilocco in 1953. To give a little background, my dad went to school here at Chilocco in, I think it was 1929 to 1933, and his brother went to school 1922 to ʼ29, I think it was. The family's pretty well entrenched here. Three brothers, and they were all called Happy. (Laughs)

Milligan:Really? They were all called Happy?

Franklin:Happy, Happy Franklin. If they asked you, "Are you Happy's boy," I said, "Which Happy?"

Milligan:The answer is always yes.

Franklin:Yeah, yeah. I talked to Dad quite a bit because he was an artist, too, a very good artist. His roommate was Woody Crumbo, which is a famous Indian, and he would always tell me stories. When I come to the reunions back in the middle ʼ70s, I guess, when I got back from Southeast Asia, I met him at one of them. I always liked to go sit with the old guys, see if they knew my dad or my uncle. He'd sit there, and he knew dad very well. They were talking about--he was 3:00telling me a story about Dad. He was talking about how they had to make money and also try to keep their room clean because back then I think they were just switching from uniforms to civilian clothes.

What they did, of course, being an artist, they always tried to make drawings and sell them back during the Depression because there was no money. What they done, they put drawings and designs and pictures and stuff on slicks, slickers, you know, raincoats. Whatever the guy wanted, they'd draw on them, put it in oil. He told me they would draw a picture, one picture, each of them, once a week. He said, "What we'd do is we'd think of a picture and talk stories and 4:00stuff," and then they would draw whatever they were emulating in their mind. They'd put it down and draw it, then hang it on the wall. Then when the major come in to inspect their room, he said after the first time he seen all the artwork, he'd go right over to what picture they drew. He'd be looking at it, "Wow." He said, "Mighty fine room. Keep up the good work." (Laughs) So they never really got inspected. He was always looking for the new pictures.

Milligan:So they did that on purpose?

Franklin:Yeah, they schemed that up. I thought, "Well, you guys! Maybe that's where I get all that scheming from." He told me, he says dad was telling him, he 5:00said, "Woody always had trouble with drawing hooves on his horses, well, any hooves." He said he'd sit down, and they would practice. Dad would show him how. They traded secrets and stuff on how to draw and how to do whatever they do with their art. It was fun to listen to both of them. Some of it was really so funny it would crack you up all the time to hear all of the things they did, all the conniving they did. It was good.

Milligan:That's the thing. The ʼ20s and the ʼ30s, from what I've been able to read, (there's not really anybody for me to ask anymore) what I've been able to read, it seems like a really interesting time on campus.

Franklin:Oh, yeah.

Milligan:It seems like they were really self-sufficient. Like you said, they were either finding ways to make money on their own, or they had to do a lot of 6:00agricultural work or work in the steam rooms. I know that happened, but there was--. It also makes me curious, too, because some of the other things I read is the reason why some people chose it, especially like whole sets of families came, especially during the Depression, because that self-sufficiency was attractive. Do you know why your dad and your brothers and everybody decided to come to Chilocco? Was it your parents, or was it a choice?

Franklin:It was really a family problem because my parents divorced. They got divorced, I believe, in 1952, '51. There was a little animosity amongst the kids; there was four of us. I had two sisters and an older brother. The judge 7:00decided that the two older boys would go with my dad, and the two girls would go with my mom. They moved to California, my mom and two sisters, because of the shipyards, Korean War and everything. Good for jobs. We stayed here. We lived in north Shawnee, which is over in a pretty wealthy area, but we weren't wealthy. We lived in the old Navy barracks at the airport. There used to be a naval training station, air station, so we lived in the old family quarters, barracks type. It was pretty hard times. Dad didn't make some payments, so my mom had him put in jail for child support negligence. She didn't realize when she put him in 8:00jail, we didn't have any means to eat. We didn't have any food, so pretty tough.

I was telling my buddy the other day, I said, "Man, I learned how to cook flour so many different ways." (Laughs) I was hungry, so I'd just go in there and get flour. Of course, I fried it, and then I got tired of eating fried flour with nothing in it. I didn't know how to cook. I'd mix it up, throw it in there. It'd cook, so I'd eat it. It was pretty rough time. I didn't have a whole bunch of clothes. I'm going to Wilson school, and it's all pretty posh, pretty wealthy. The one thing I did have, I could play basketball. I got on the team there at Wilson. Then, also, my dad was a musician. He played in an orchestra here at 9:00Chilocco. He was a drummer, and he had a little band they got together. Played around Shawnee and Pauls Valley and all down in there. He was a drummer and clarinet player. He got a saxophone, and when I was in, I think, fifth or fourth grade, I started playing saxophone. I had a little alto--. That's how I got--I could play pretty good. I was in the band at Wilson, so they overlooked my ragged, same-olʽ clothes that I wore.

I had to switch. I had two sets, so I had to switch them off. Then I'd pick blackberries and stuff--where I could have a little food. The guy that I run 10:00around with, Billy Forrester, his folks, my buddy's dad worked for an oil company. He run the lines around. The mother was a school teacher. I'd spend a lot of time at their place because he had all kinds of model airplanes. Plus, he played the trumpet, so we'd mess around. She found out that I wasn't eating like I should. I was skinny as a rail. I would turn sideways and disappear. She got me a job as a delivery boy. It really was--I had a little money, but I could eat. I had to clean up the grill. Back then all the pharmacies, or what do you call them, drug stores all had a little counter. It had about ten stools and 11:00four booths, and I'd fry up hamburgers. Then I made more friends because they'd come in and I wouldn't charge them. I'd go in and make them, I call it a rainbow malt, and I'd just put all the flavors in and mix it up. Look to see if they're looking, then I'd slide it over to them. I become popular in that area. (Laughs)

Milligan:What about your brother? What was he doing all this time?

Franklin:He kind of got--he had Indian friends, and they were Kickapoo. They adopted him; they Indian-adopted him. He had a place to go, and I was really not wanting to do that. I wanted to get out and see what the world was about. When my grandmother found out what was going on, she got mad at both my dad and mom.

Milligan:Was that your mom's mom or your dad's mom?

Franklin:That was my mom's mom. My dad's mom was in Stroud. What happened is that grandma pushed the issue that I needed to get someplace where I could be taken care of. It all come down, and Dad said, "I think I know where--I'm going to put him at Chilocco because they got a place to stay and good food."

Milligan:How'd you feel about that?

Franklin:I didn't like it at all. I was pretty well on my own when I got the job at the--and I could eat. If I'd had to pay rent, I'd been out there living in a cave, I guess. I really didn't want to give up my freedom because I always was trying to see what was over the next hill, kind of like an explorer, like, 13:00"What's over here?"

Milligan:So you were thirteen or fourteen when you moved to Chilocco?

Franklin:Yeah, I was thirteen, twelve, twelve when I first got there. Then thirteen come, and I was in junior high. I had to walk to school, and that was a good, good two miles, maybe more than that. I had to walk in the morning, too, to school, and then in the evenings. When school was out I had to walk. That was a pretty good jot. In the winters, I really didn't like it. Dad sat us down, and he said, "I'm going to put you guys in Chilocco because Grandma's really raising Cain about it. I went to school there and they'll--." He was telling us all the things they taught, and what we'd be able to do. Kind of painted a nice, rosy 14:00picture. Then that day came; we went up. Course, they had a dog. We'd had a dog since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and I didn't want to lose him. Like my best buddy.

I went, got out, and it was really traumatic for me. They knew him. A lot of the teachers that were still there were there when he was there, so he took me right up to the chief cook and bottle washer, Mr. [Ray] Colglazier, the head boys' advisor. They were all buddy-buddy and everything. He told me, he says, "Turn around." I looked at him, and he said, "Turn around." I turned around, and he kicked me in the rear end. He said, "That's what I had to do to your dad, and I'm going to do it to you if you get out line." I went, "Oh, my God, where am 15:00I?" It was just in jest and everything. Dad told me, he said, "You got to watch this guy, now. He's going to be watching you because he knows me and we're personal friends." I said, "All right."

Milligan:Do you think that was someone your dad kept in contact with?

Franklin:No.

Milligan:Just someone--.

Franklin:If he did, I didn't know. I had surmised that they were close friends, so I stayed away from him as much as I could. (Laughs) If I made bad grades, he wouldn't know. Which he would know, but it was just kind of dumb on my part to think that. They took me over to Home One, and it was early. Dad took me up there second week in August. School didn't start until September. They took me over to Home One and checked me in and took me down to my room. I thought it was kind of like an insane asylum or something. It was real dark. They didn't have 16:00any lights on in the hallway. It was just kind of spooky, you know. They took me to my room, and I had just like you'd almost see in a book. Had a little olʽ suitcase. It was straw-type looking. It was yellow, and it had the brown stripes on it.

I think everybody had the same one, same kind. I guess it was from Sears and Roebuck's or somebody selling them. Anyway, everybody had that same thing. I got in there in the room, and I was just looking around. I said, "Oh, my god." They had those old, Spanish-type, oval windows--. They were huge. I was standing there looking out the window and turned around, looked around, and never will 17:00forget it. They had a (what would you call it) dresser, kind of a dresser thing--where you put your clothes. The door was right next to it where the closet was. Then the light was like a pool hall light, a long light coming from the ceiling, down with that little cover with a string coming down where you turn it on or turn it off, right there.

Milligan:So you have to walk into the room and turn it on.

Franklin:Yeah, then when you're going this way, there was another little chest where you put stuff. Then the bed, it was a double bed there, and it had green and white striped bed cover on it, or not bed cover, but whatever you would call that.

Milligan:Like a comforter or whatever?

Franklin:Well, it was just like a blanket-type looking thing. It was just a 18:00cover. I kind of looked at that, sat on the edge of the bed, and started thinking, "How am I going to get out of here, how to get back to Grandma?" (Laughs)

Milligan:Was your brother with you?

Franklin:No, they put him in another--he was in another dorm. Nobody told me anything. I was taken; that was my room; they left. I'm sitting there thinking all gloom and everything. "I really don't like this dark, gloomy-looking place." Then a squirrel came down. There was a squirrel that lived in the tree there. I was looking at him. I said, "Hey, maybe I'll move in with him." (Laughs) Anyway, I was sitting there and then a whistle went off. Soon as the guy blew the 19:00whistle--I was sitting on the double bed, the bunk bed. It had a bar that went across, so I hit the bar. It scared me. They said, "Bed check! Bed check!" I said, "Oh, hell." I was sitting on that bed that's all messed up, so I got up, fixed my bed, got it all straightened out. I was just standing there waiting for him to check my bed.

Milligan:Did you know that's what you were expected to do?

Franklin:No, I didn't know what it was. I didn't have any idea. He said, "Bed check," so I literally took it as a bed check. I'm standing there waiting for him to check my bed, and he opens the door. "Is everybody here?" I said, "Yeah, I guess. I'm here." He went on out, and I said, "Damn, he didn't even check my bed." (Laughs) I'm serious. I was sitting there going--. Of course, I took everything literally then. I still do, really.

Milligan:Did he know who you were? Any indication--.

Franklin:No, no. They just go room to room, make sure if you're there. They 20:00didn't have any names because it's early. Whoever's living there usually works doing odd jobs to pay for the room and board for the summer. I guess that's what he thought I was, another worker. I went to bed. I didn't sleep very much. I'm still trying to think, "How am I going to get home? I don't even know which way to go." Another whistle blew at six o'clock, rolling everybody out. I got up, and I said, "I wonder where the bathrooms are?" They didn't even tell me that. I opened the door up a little bit and watched. Guys are coming by with their towels. I said, "Yeah, I'll follow those guys." I looked at the guy who went by and how he had his towel and his toothbrush, so I put mine on and went cruising. 21:00I watched them, and they went down in the basement. I went with them because I didn't know there was even a basement. I go down the steps, and they had this big water trough.

They had about two of them, two big ones. Everybody's all there, and they had soap up on the top of it in a little tray that went all the way around. It was lye soap. They had big brown lye soap and then the little white ones, which was the hand soap. I knew that from when grandma washed. She washed it with the big ones. I'm sitting there--and I got all lathered up, scrubbing down. The guys I was with, there was about four of us. The other three left. As soon as they left, the water went off. Here I had that lye. I don't know if you've ever had lye soap, but if you get it in your eyes it really burns. Here I'm all prettied up with soap, I was looking around, and I couldn't find the handle.

"Where is it? Where the hell's the handle?" I kept looking around. Finally, I stepped back, and here come two more guys. They walked up, and it come on. "Hey!" I went over there, and real quick I got cleaned off. Then I backed off, and I was drying myself, and I watched. They left and it went off. I said, "How did they do that?" I walked up to it, and it didn't do anything. I said, "How in the world did they get this thing to work?" I stepped back and just watched. These guys walked up, and there was a little bar on the floor. They stepped on it, and it come on. (Laughs) I never seen anything like that in my life. Oh, God, what an education. I went back upstairs, and this is my first day, my first 23:00true day at Chilocco. I said, "Well, I'm hungry. I wonder where the chow hall is. Where do I get food?"

I got dressed, went out on the porch, and I was watching. Everybody was going one way, so I said, "Got to be over there. It's got to be where they're going." I got down and cruised and got with some guys, and we went in the chow hall. When I got in, I looked, and I said, "Boy." There was twenty, thirty guys lined up on the wall, coming in the door, and there was only two girls over here in this line. I thought, "I'm going to go over there. There's only two." I got over there, and everybody in that line was whistling and catcalling. I thought, "I wonder what's going on. Are they hollering at me?" I got my food, and they kept hollering. Pretty soon, here come the matron. She said, "Did you know you're in 24:00the girls' line?" I said, "No, ma'am. There was no sign that said 'girls'." She said, "You got a point." There wasn't, and if you're brand new you don't know.

Milligan:Was she mad at you, coming up to you at first?

Franklin:She was, yeah. She was disturbed that I was over there. When I told her, I said, "Well, I didn't see no 'girls' sign," because I looked and there wasn't, she made that remark. Everybody had to be indoctrinated when you go in. You have to go in the boys' if you you're a boy, girls' if you're a girl. I went, "Oh, my God, I don't know what I'm going to do next." All these things are happening, so you're very leery about what you're going to do and where you're going to go and nobody telling you nothing.

Milligan:None of the students and none of the staff?

Franklin:No. It was just--.

Milligan:Just let you go?

Franklin:There wasn't very many. There was mostly guys, and they were all 25:00working out on the farm and doing whatever they're doing. The girls were very few, like I say, I think about two in that line. Then some of them started coming in, more students coming in, more my age, so I started making friends.

Milligan:Did you stay in Home One?

Franklin:No, I stayed there for a little bit, and then they moved me to where I was supposed to be as a freshman. They had a freshman dorm. Where I was at was the sophomore dorm. Then the big Home Six was senior and junior, so I was in Home Two. They moved me in there. It was still pretty much of a new thing. They 26:00moved me in with four roommates, me and three other guys. A lot of those guys, I found out later on, were raised there. They put them in schools when they were six years old.

Milligan:Other Indian schools?

Franklin:Yeah, other boarding schools. One of them was really, he was a con at what's going on because he was raised there. He knew how to survive. I come in to lay down for a little bit. I laid down, and there's a wet, dirty mop under my bedspread, (that's what they call them) same olʽ green and white stripe. It's the same bedspread they have in prisons. (Laughs) I noticed that later on when I watched a show after I graduated. "That's where those are from!" They're prison, 27:00or some ward, some mental institution. The mop was a stinky, dirty, wet mop. I had to go down and get all new bedding, plus a new mattress, pillow, everything because it just soaked through.

Milligan:Why did he do that?

Franklin:Well, I'll get to that. I was pretty perturbed about it, really kind of, I was mad. I wanted to know who done it. I asked my--my roommates were pretty cool. One of the guy's name was Robert Buzzard. The next guy was Homer Snell, so I had a Buzzard and a Snell in one corner. The guy on the other bed like mine, a single, his name was Sauce July. I never heard of anybody named 28:00Sauce July, really unique. Here old Keith Franklin:, good olʽ Indian name--. Just joking. (Laughs) I looked over at them two guys, and that guy was gone. Sauce was gone. I asked him, "Who done that?" Robert says, "He did. Sauce did." After I got all that set up and everything, got my new area cleaned up and bed made, I went downstairs. They had a little canteen place they opened up every now and then where you can get cookies, juice, and odds and ends, candy bars and stuff.

I bought a little package of Oreo cookies. I went back up, and, boy, his bed was made military style, head turned down, sheets were nice and tight, had a nice roll on it. That's when you pull it back, like a military bed. I pulled all that 29:00back, crumbled those Oreo cookies up, and then I poured water in there. Pulled it back and made it like it was and waited for him to come back in. He come in, finally he got his clothes off to go to bed. He slid into that. (Laughs) That was so funny. Homer and Robert got a big kick out of it. We had a big fight right after that because he asked them the same thing, wondering if it was me, so we had a knockdown drag-out.

Milligan:Like a fist fight?

Franklin:Yeah, I wasn't very big then. I weighed probably 120 pounds soaking wet, but I was scrappy. I wasn't going to let anybody push me around, especially putting a mop in my bed. I don't care how big he was. Anyway, we had a real 30:00knockdown drag-out. Then it was no talk; everybody was real quiet because my cousins come in when we were fighting. Dragged him by the hair and said, "Do you want me to take care of him?" They're pretty good-size boys, Sac and Fox cousins. I said, "No, I think we're going to settle this ourselves." He knew from this experience that I had relatives there. You know that you're not going to go over there and do that. I went to chow the next day, and he was in line in front of me. Somebody made a remark about his brother. His brother's name was Moses, Moses July. I looked at him, and where he could hear me I said, "There ain't nobody named Moses July." He got mad, and we fought again in the line. We 31:00got through that. Then the matrons come, so we cut that out. The next day, I found out his older sister's name was Omega. "Who in the hell would name their kid Omega?" After that, that was it, and we become friends. We called a truce.

Milligan:Really?

Franklin:Yeah, we didn't pick on each other at all.

Milligan:Did you ever have a sense of why he started that with you?

Franklin:He's just ornery. That's the way it was.

Milligan:Just to do it because you were new?

Franklin:Oh, yeah. God, the whole freshman year he damn near killed me with all his orneriness. They make you as a freshman pull ag. You have to take agriculture as a freshman. You got to take it three times a week. Then you go 32:00two times until your regular whatever you're going to learn to do. We'd be out. Like, they had top stud. They had some of the best Morgan horses in the state, in the United States, even. Boy, they had some fine Morgans. Old Army mules, they had the best. They had a lot of nice horses over there. A lot of--what do you call them? They were cutters; they cut the herd. What do you call those guys? I can't remember now. They would cut a cow back in when they got out. You just have to hang on because they'll clip you off because they'll jump and sway trying to get them back in. Colonel's Boy, he was a stud, and he knew it. And he was mean.

Milligan:Was that the horse's name?

Franklin:Yeah, Colonel's Boy. You had to get in there, and they train you, you 33:00know, how to clean the hooves out, file them down, take off the shoe and file them out and then clean them out, all of that to take care of them. He liked to be pampered. I'm out there, and it's my turn to clean the back hooves. What you do is you get the hoof and stick it up between your legs. You're like this with the hoof, and you're there taking care of it. He didn't care about that. What they done, they got a mare with Sauce. He backed the mare up to the pen where I was at, and he got excited. I'm sitting there trying to--and he got wild. (Laughs) I went, "Damn, you're dying for her." He was snorting and biting and kicking, and I got out of there. I said, "I'll get you back one of these days, buddy." That's just one, but everybody was around.

He told everybody he was going to do it, so they were all watching to see how I handled it. Of course, I flung it and made it and got over. We done stuff 34:00between each other, and it was strictly competition then because I got to know him real well. We'd ride horses and cattle. They'd have a cattle show, (I can't think of what you would call it) where you get all the animals and people come and look at them. They come from all over the United States to buy them from here. I met a guy thirty years later, working with him in the Air Force. He owned a sheep ranch down in Texas, down in New Braunfels, and he'd drive all the way to Chilocco when they had their auction. He'd buy our stock to stock his 35:00stock up. I was sitting there, I said, "You've got to be kidding me." He said, "No, I've been doing it for about fifteen years."

Milligan:Really?

Franklin:Yeah, because it's a good, fine line of sheep. I was really blown away. They would have that stock show every year. Every year as a freshman, you got to show something at the stock show. I asked all the seniors, I said, "What's the easiest thing you can show?" They said, "Pig." I said, "Pig?" He said, "Yeah, if you train them, they'll do anything." I said, "Okay, I'll try it." Like an idiot, I got a bigger pig. I should've got a little bitty one, but I had this big olʽ sow. I didn't have anything but problems with it. Everybody said, "Tie a rope on his hind leg and get you a switch and then teach him." Every hole in 36:00the fence, he'd try to go through it. I'd have to pull him out. This is every day. Every day I'd take him down. If I got a little one it would've been a lot easier. Then we made a pact between the four of us that were showing pigs. We'd take turns feeding them. One guy didn't feed them all week, so when I went in there they tried to eat me. They were hungry. We cut that out. I moved mine down there by himself, and I fed him good stuff, corn maize.

Milligan:Did what you need to.

Franklin:I was getting pretty proud of him because I got him where he'd stand. He'd take my command, and then I'd feed him corn, scratch his back. The day of the stock show, I went down, but there's a little bit more went into that. He took off on me. Somebody spooked him, really, and he took off running. I had to chase him to catch him. He wouldn't stop. I had washed him that night and oiled 37:00him, and he looked like a million dollars. He fell over in the mud hole and just laid there because he was pooped out. (Laughs) I had to take him back up to the barn and wash him down and do all that again. Feed him corn, try to cool him down. We got into the competition, and there was four pigs. We're all standing there. Of course, I had the big one. I had that little twig, and I'd scratch his back. He'd sit there; he liked that. He wouldn't move since I was scratching his back. Guy told us, he said, "Turn him this way. Turn him to the left."

I reached up there--I trained him to touch him on the ear and he would turn. I had nicked his ear when I was chasing him. I hit that nick, he took off, and all four pigs took off. (Laughs) Had everybody there. They were full; people were 38:00watching. We all run under the stands, and we're having to pull them back out. It was a riot. Then again, this is Sauce, out there feeding the pigs and whatever he was doing. All these guys had Herefords, calves, and they had washed them and got them really clean. They looked nice. Looked like dogs. -- We're sitting there smoking a cigarette, and somebody says, "Let's have a rodeo!" We took that first one out and put a rope around his belly and rode him for a while. To get him going, we'd wring his tail. He'd get to bucking. Put him back, got the next one. They had already trained them to be gentle where they were used to them. We just turned them wild again. We were standing there, getting 39:00our pigs and putting them in the truck, and the cattle was all stressed out, didn't want to go. "I can't understand what's wrong with them." (Laughs)

Milligan:Y'all were rascals.

Franklin:Yeah, that's really what it was. Sauce was the instigator of a lot of that stuff. It was just constant, but that's what made it interesting, too.

Milligan:I had a question. You said you had cousins there. Did you know you had cousins there before you--

Franklin:No, they come in later.

Milligan:They did?

Franklin:Yeah, like I said, I got there early, so I was there about two weeks.

Milligan:Was that their first year there?

Franklin:Yeah.

Milligan:Oh, okay, so you all went in at sort of the same time.

Franklin:We were kind of--I didn't even know they were there until they come into the room.

Milligan:Really?

FranklnYeah, I hadn't seen them yet because we were all moving into the dorm. There was about, oh, God, eight hundred kids or more, so there was a bunch of 40:00people. You were just constantly moving around, moving your bedding and stuff. I didn't even know he was there until he come over and grabbed me. I said, "Oh, good." Then there was some guys that were cousins that were Kickapoos.

Milligan:Your cousins?

Franklin:Yeah, on my dad's side. We were starting to get where we'd know them. I had some friends, but I made friends with those guys eventually, not close. Buzzard will probably be here, and I always thought that was unusual for Robert Buzzard.

Milligan:I think he was here last year, too.

Franklin:Yeah, he went all four years--and Sauce. As seniors we had a big fight again.

Milligan:You and Sauce?

Franklin:Yeah, what happened is we were going out of our room in Home Six when 41:00we were seniors, and he left the door open. I hollered at him, "Were you born in a barn? Close the door." He turned around, and he was mad about something, I guess. Him and his girlfriend had been fighting, kind of ornery. I knew he was going to swing at me, (you could tell) so I hit him as hard as I could right in the nose. I was going to try to get out of there, and he caught me. I had those blue suede shoes, with the wide rims back in that day. They put horseshoe taps all the way around the heel, and we had granite floors. I was trying to turn, and my feet went out. I hit that water fountain at the end, and it knocked me out. When I come to, all I could see was sparks. He was on top of me, and he was hitting me. My other friend, Kenneth, hauled off and hit him to get him off. Then when we got through with all that, we got up and looked at each other and 42:00shook hands, said, "Let's go eat." Four days later we had to take class pictures. You look at our--you can't tell with him because he's real dark-complected. You can look at me, and I had a big bump where I hit that water fountain, then I had one black eye here. It didn't puff up, but it was still black.

Milligan:I'm going to look now. That was 1957?

Franklin:Yeah, you'll see that. I had a flat top, and you can see that bump on this side. It's up there. It was like, wow, it knocked me cuckoo. Anyway, that was odd that we fought as freshmen, and then we fought--.

Milligan:Were you guys roommates the whole time?

Franklin:No, he went on to get other roommates, Sauce did.

Milligan:What did he end up doing?

Franklin:Sauce? I think he finally got into telecommunications, I believe. He 43:00worked for the telephone company, I think.

Milligan:Just curious, after all this experience, what happened to him.

Franklin:After what he did. That's the thing that I did also, was my dad wanted me to come to Canada. I really didn't have the--I really didn't want to leave, but I thought it may be different, interesting, so I got into it.

Milligan:While you were here in Chilocco?

Franklin:Yeah, first you have to pick a location, so they put me in the service station. You have to work your way up to the mechanic side of it. They were out there, and they were putting in a lift, hydraulic lift, to change the oil and all that stuff. That's what we were doing, was digging a hole for that lift. I said, "Man, I ain't learning no mechanics here." Then it got cold, and we were 44:00having to drive trucks and stuff to get them positioned so they can pick the grain up. That's all I was doing was digging holes and driving trucks. I really didn't care for that. I thought real long and hard, "What can I get into that's going to be nice and it's warm inside and I don't have to really work real hard doing this stuff?" I decided to go to the bakery. I went over and talked to the superintendent. He says, "Why sure, we'll switch you over to the bakery." There I was. I got what I want. Finally I was in a nice warm place, all the food I could eat, pies, cookies, donuts, whatever. I was in hog heaven for a while, so that's how I got into my vocation.

Milligan:Baking?

Franklin:Yeah, I got a certificate in baking.

Milligan:So how does this fit? That's your vocation, but you also had a career 45:00in military. Did that start--did you have military connections while you were at Chilocco? Did it start then or after you got out?

Franklin:I started--that was another story. What happens is, the only money you get is what your parents would send you, or you had to go work on the weekends. You could pull weeds or do odd jobs for the employer. Make enough money where you could, if you had a smoking habit, you buy cigarettes. Back then it was like ten cents a pack, so a buck went a long way. I decided that--my other roommate was Kenneth Ellis, we were really close, starting as sophomores. Kenneth and I decided, "Let's go join the Guard." They get a check every ninety days, not that 46:00I was a patriot and raised the flag, you know, but I said, "Yeah, I kind of like that. I like getting money and stuff. I think that'd be nice." All my relatives, all my uncles, every one of them were all Navy. The ones that weren't Navy were Marines. One uncle, my dad's brother, was killed in Guadalcanal in 1943.

He'd just turned eighteen or nineteen when he got killed. My mom's sister's husband, [Marino], was in a detachment of the Marines that was guarding the embassy in Tientsin and Peking in the late ʼ30s, 1938-39, ʼ40. Then on December 8 there, (it was December 7 here) when they bombed Pearl Harbor, they 47:00captured him because they were already in charge. The Japanese had already taken that area. They let the Marines and all the different embassies, their armies, let them stay to guard their own so they didn't have to put their troops guarding. When the war started, the allies of the United States were taken prisoner. His name is Marino, and he said what they did is--they were trying to get out of there, but it was a SNAFU.

They just couldn't get the paperwork; people were not doing their jobs. They just messed up, and 280 Marines got captured. This was on December 7, well, 48:00December 8, 1941. They shipped them to Japan, one of the islands off on Hiroshima, so he was a prisoner of war for four years, the whole war. He weighed seventy-eight pounds when they got him out of there. Just a mess. I was doing research on him. I usually wear, when I wear stuff, I commemorate those guys, but they had no patch because they weren't like fighting division. They never had a patch. What we're doing now is trying to get a patch that we'll send to Marine headquarters and give them a patch, and then at least they'll have that.

Milligan:So that was your uncle?

Franklin:That's the one uncle. The other one was in the 6th Marines in 49:00Guadalcanal. Of course, the 1st Marines was the ones that was there first, so to relieve them, the 6th Marines come in, 2nd division. They were 1st division. The 2nd / 6th Marines come in to relieve them in ʼ43, ʼ42-43. He got killed four days before they capitulated and left the island. One of their last Banzais, and he got killed. I've got a whole book. I'm studying him because if he's still over there I want to go get him and bring him home. The Indians have a ritual, and take his name back, and they have other things they do. I want to really get him back. We could, and I'll go get him.

Milligan:You could go get him and bring him back? Is that just sort of a 50:00reburial and ceremonial.

Franklin:Yeah, because there's certain beliefs they have and things I wouldn't want to talk about. They have rites that they do, and he needs to have them.

Milligan:Was he Kickapoo or Sac and Fox?

Franklin:He's Sac and Fox. I can't find a picture of him. I went through everybody. The only picture I got is where he was on the basketball team in Cushing, Cushing High School. All the relatives are dead that knew him. I don't know. I'm still working on it. I got a research book on him about like that.

Milligan:These two uncles were both Chilocco grads, right, if they were your dad's--.

Franklin:No.

Milligan:It was your dad's dad's....

Franklin:Yeah.

Milligan:Your great-uncles.

Franklin:My mom's sister's husband, which would be my uncle, versus her being my 51:00aunt, he was from California.

Milligan:So his mom's side of the family.

Franklin:Then Tom's a half-brother because my dad's dad died during the flu epidemic of the 1920s, then she remarried. Tom was, dang he was, I think he was eighteen or nineteen, real young.

Milligan:You joined the Guard, then, because you had some military history in your family and you were just looking for some extra money and--.

Franklin:Yeah, really it was, I liked the idea of looking into it. I wouldn't turn it down. I always thought you were pretty sharp to be with the Navy guys and then be a Army guy at the end, or Air Force. I always razz them. We're a 52:00steak-and-eggs bunch. I tell them, "You guys are gravy, SOS, and we're steak and eggs."

Milligan:How old were you when you joined the Guard then?

Franklin:I was sixteen years old. I got a waiver from my dad.

Milligan:So you went early.

Franklin:Yeah, I joined in '56. In fact, I'd just turned sixteen in January. I joined the sixth of February, 1956. I stayed in there until I went in the Air Force.

Milligan:You graduated from Chilocco first, right?

Franklin:Right. Then I went to Haskell Institute. Stayed there the minimum amount of time because it wasn't a college like they told us. Their rules were 53:00still like we were in high school. They had it set up where you took about six courses that were required or mandatory. If you flunked one of them, you had to take the whole year, everything over again. I said, "If I passed everything else I have to take--." They said, "Yeah, you have to go through the whole thing again." ... I said, "Well, I may not make--next year." I'd be there forever. I just thought, "I really want to go in the military and go see the world, really," because there were no wars. I thought it'd be a good chance to get overseas. I'd never been that far out of Oklahoma, so I thought it was a good chance to get away. I joined--the Air Force in Kansas City.

Milligan:That was nineteen...

Franklin:Fifty-seven.

Milligan:--fifty-seven. You graduated from Chilocco, went straight to Haskell and were like, "Meh."

Franklin:Right. It was sad. The reason I was flunking is I had caught the Asian flu back then, and I was out three weeks, three solid weeks. I thought I was going to die. That was some bad stuff. Of course, they were giving us penicillin, and it felt like horse needles because they shoot you in the rear end and stabbed and everything. I must've had a rough rear end because every time they'd go in with their hand, they'd bend the needle. The needle would bend or, it would break. They'd come in and roll me over and "AH!" (Laughs) "Oh, God, 55:00help me. Help me get well! I don't want to take any of this." I did make it through, and I went back to class.

Well, one of the required subjects was shorthand. I went to the superintendent and told her, "I'm not going to be a male stenographer. I don't want to take shorthand. If I'm going to go, I'm going to be a bookkeeper or whatever, admin--trying to talk her out of it. She said, "No, if you feel that you're behind, then I'll personally teach shorthand to you." I didn't want to hear that. I just made up my mind that I was going to--. Three other guys with me, (Kenneth was one of them) we were going to school together. We all went for the 56:00Air Force. One couldn't make it; he had a record. Kenneth didn't have his birth certificate, so he had to go home. I had mine, so they took me right on in.

Milligan:So you went up to Kansas City and just joined?

Franklin:Yeah, I went right on down to Texas.

Milligan:They just sent you to Texas, huh?

Franklin:Yeah, went to Lackland [Air Force Base].

Milligan:You have a really long military career. You were in for twenty-three years?

Franklin:Yeah.

Milligan:We don't have to go through every single detail of it, but what were some of the highlights of that, and what are some of the things that you have more intense memories of?

Franklin:The thing that--I guess at the start, I guess it's the way you're raised because then you're aggressive, for me anyway, and I always wondered 57:00what's over the next hill. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to master it, and then once I master it I forget about it. I push it over here and find something else to master. Well, I got in the service. Like I say, I wanted to become an airborne radio operator, and, of course, my hearing killed that.

Milligan:You were talking about that. You had to go to the gun range.

Franklin:Yeah, and it just totaled it.

Milligan:Shot your hearing.

Franklin:Yeah, shot my hearing. With Class B hearing, I wasn't there. I didn't know what I was going to do then because that was everything I wanted to do. They gave me some options. I could be a POL [petroleum, oil, and lubricants] guy and drive a truck with gas and go out and gas the airplanes, but I didn't want to do that.

Milligan:That's kind of like going back to being an auto mechanic.

Franklin:Yeah, it's just kind of--. They said, "Well, you can be an air 58:00policeman." I said, "I don't think I want to be an air policeman," because I could just see myself standing out on some runway somewhere with ten feet of snow, guarding an airplane. I said, "No, I don't think I want to do that." They said, "How about personnel?" I said, "Yeah, that sounds good. I'll be inside." You already know what I'm thinking, anyway. "Yeah, that sounds good. I'll do that." They sent me to school. I went to school for, I think it was twelve weeks. They sent me to Forbes Air Force Base, SAC [Strategic Air Command], and I'll give you a little irony out of that. That school was twenty-five miles from Haskell. I wanted to go see the world; here I am twenty-five miles from Haskell at Forbes. You talk about being really--. I said, "Where is this base?" He told 59:00me, and I said, "Ah!"

I tried to get somebody to switch with me, and nobody would do it. They didn't like Kansas. I stayed there for five years at Forbes and then went on to Guam. Forbes is really the foundation that got me going into the career I was in. It was into computers because back then in the '50s, '57, '58, there were no computers. They had some, but they were really far and few between. They come in with a keypunch and a sorter, and here I am sitting here doing manual stuff, doing awards and whatever you're doing, making sure everybody's records are up to date, really soft work. I went up there one day. They had it, and I said, 60:00"What is that?" The guy handed me a manual. I looked at it, and I pushed a button. I could see what it was doing. From Chilocco, I could type seventy-five words a minute. I could crack it out. I'm sitting there, and the guy comes back in and says, "You're in machinery."

I was the only one there. I didn't know what to--. I said, "Oh, my God." I had to really learn then. They got a sorter in, and I learned how to sort. They gave me a test for programming, and I flunked it. I was, like, ten questions short. The guy says, "That's too bad. You'll never be a programmer." Then he left. I kept going into that. Then they set it up, and they were IBM. They took us down to IBM, and we learned more. It got more sophisticated where we could wire a 61:00board and let it do whatever you want it to do, printer and all that stuff tied up together. I was learning all that. Then I got to meet the guys from headquarters, SAC, coming in on inspections. When I started looking at it, I said, "Somebody needs to check this against the files. I'm sitting here looking at this stuff, and it don't match." They put me in charge of doing that.

That was a mess. I had to get glasses then because I was working under neon lights. Long story short, I got to where I couldn't--. It was a unique bunch. Wherever you went in the service they put a [suffix] on it so that you had to go wherever that equipment was. Once you got there, you didn't get to leave. What 62:00happened to me is I met all these guys from headquarters that come out. We got to be just casual friends, but we always got along real good. My area was pretty clean, so I got good marks on my inspections. I went to Guam from there, and I run their machine when the war started. What happens, you have all these reports that go to the headquarters. When I was late on a report, I coined the word "inadvertently." If I missed a report, if I was TDY [temporary duty] somewhere and I didn't get back in time, I said, "It was inadvertently filed in the action depleted file. I'm sorry. Here it is." (Laughs)

Milligan:You became good friends.

Franklin:Yeah, the guy at SAC, he was just like me. I found out later on when I went up there. He said, "You will not use the word 'inadvertently'." (Laughs) He caught on to me pretty quick. All of that wound up to me getting assigned to headquarters, SAC. I got into headquarters, and they put me into just random personnel research and reporting. Then they picked me to get into programming. Chilocco didn't teach me anything. I didn't have good--in math. Remember I told you I took the test and flunked it. They didn't even test me. Said, "You're going to computer school. You're going to learn to program." They sent me the seven weeks. Ten fifty back then to learn to program assembly language.

Milligan:Is that through the military, or is that at a private school?

Franklin:That was military. That was eight hours a day. That's class for seven weeks, except for Saturday and Sunday, so that was pretty heavy stuff. You had to progress each stage. You had to be successful to get to the next stage. You missed it twice, and they pulled you out of school, reclassified you somewhere. I got in assembly language. We got there, and they said, "You guys have never programmed before?" The friend they sent me with, he looked at me, and I said, "No, I haven't." He said he didn't either. He said, "Take a certificate of attendance and go back to your base because this is for programmers. I suggest you do that, but if you want to stay it's your call."

I looked at Gary, and kind of telling us that we don't have the right gear, 65:00mental gear, to get into that. I said, "You want to do it?" He said, "Hey, it's a challenge. Let's do it." We went ahead and done it. We graduated, I think it was third and fifth in the class, and they were all programmers. It was fun. What he told us later on, he said, "It really shows us that if somebody comes in that has a fresh view, they can learn the language. You remember it, and you didn't have the other one to counter." Some questions you'd say, "Wait a minute. I know if I'd done this on this program, this is what it'd do. I don't think I want to do that here." You get into conflict. We had no conflicts because you're going to do it this way and this is what it does.

Milligan:You just follow directions.

Franklin:We got back, and we got into programming. We went to COBOL, and then we 66:00went to unique programming on certain things that were classified.

Milligan:This was all really driven to do personnel work.

Franklin:Right, it started with that. What I done at Chilocco, I took college prep courses because a couple girls I knew were in there. I just assumed--I liked them, so we had a good time going to classes together. They liked me because I worked in the bakery and I could give them all cookies and stuff. If you ever go down to the school, if you get back down there, you know where the bakery is? What they done is they took and bent that window. They did it, now. I didn't.

Milligan:The girls?

Franklin:The girls. That real thick mesh steel, they bent it up so you could drop the cookie. What we could do, we'd get a loaf of bread when we're cooking bread because everybody knew what was cooking. You could smell it all over 67:00campus. They come down there, the two girls, pulling on that thing and then slide that loaf of bread through. It's hot, hot bread. Isn't nothing better than hot bread.

Milligan:Did you ever use your bakery skills after Chilocco?

Franklin:Yeah, what they done is they put me to work in a bakery in Wichita.

Milligan:The military?

Franklin:No, in my junior year.

Milligan:Oh, in Chilocco.

Franklin:I was in the Guard then. What they done, they sent me to Wichita and got a job lined up. I run the retail part of it. The guy that was the retail baker which is donuts and--whatever you want to call them, he made wedding cakes because it was a very lucrative business for him. He was really good, those great olʽ big ones. I run part of the bakery, and I got paid a dollar and ten 68:00cents an hour back then. I had to go to work at four in the morning, light up the oven, start my dough, get it set, and then I could to breakfast and come back. Then I worked until seven o'clock that night. That was every day except Saturday. I had to go at one o'clock on Saturday because they closed at noon. I done that up until August when I had to go to Guard duty at Fort Hood. I made good money. It was a buck ten an hour, and all I had to spend it on was my room and board. That was it. I didn't have time to do anything else. I was too tired. I ate the same thing every night. I found somebody that made good, hot roast beef sandwiches with potatoes and peas.

Milligan:How old were you at this point?

Franklin:Then, I was sixteen, seventeen.

Milligan:It was while you were still in Chilocco?

Franklin:Yeah, that was my first thing to come out of the school that I tested that I could do. They wanted me to come back. They were going to buy another bakery, and I'd run that one, that retail part. The guy that was making cakes would go to the other one. I just decided I didn't want to be a baker. It was too hard. I dropped down to 117 pounds. All I done was work.

Milligan:You were there fourteen hours a day.

Franklin:I wasn't eating good; roast beef sandwiches every day. Then I got to where I couldn't stand donuts. I ate the first dozen that I made. They just melted in your mouth. I just got real sick of them. I couldn't be around them, really. I was making--the orders were, like, three or four hundred every 70:00morning, so I gave that up.

Milligan:Did I hear that one or two of the founders of Krispy Kreme were Chilocco grads? Is that right?

Franklin:Yeah, he done the icing. He invented the icing. That's pretty cool.

Milligan:I was just thinking, with the bakery--.

Franklin:Maybe he would've weaned me off because I can't stand Krispy Kremes. (Laughs) They're just too sweet.

Milligan:Probably would've been the same. You told me this before we started recording, but you enlisted your first four years. Then after that you briefly thought about getting out. So in '51,'52--

Franklin:It was '61.

Milligan:--sorry, '61, you thought, "I might go back into the real world." Since 71:00we weren't recording at that point, I'm the only one that knows that story. Maybe tell me what that thought process and why you decided to get out.

Franklin:I wanted to get out to make more money. Back then as a three-striper, I made $175 a month. That's not a lot of money. I wanted to make more money. When I read the job description, I felt I had enough confidence that I could go into that kind of a job and do it because it's just really using common sense.

Milligan:Was that the Housing and Urban Development, HUD?

Franklin:Yeah, I'd be moving families out of their place into a new place. I didn't think I would have that much of a problem. I come from not a rich background, but I can understand what they were going through.

Milligan:Were they going to have you work with everybody, or was it a--were you 72:00working with different tribal communities?

Franklin:No, it was everybody. It was mostly Hispanics and blacks. There were a few Indians but not that many in Topeka--

Milligan:Oh right, that's right. You were in Kansas.

Franklin:--that was in that.

Milligan:So you were thinking--you'd applied for that job, a HUD job, when HUD was forming, and you got it, sounds like.

Franklin:Yeah, he said that I had all the qualifications and I was his choice. I went back and was making plans of getting out and going down there and doing the thing. They walked in with a message, laid it on my desk, said, "You're extended for the duration." That was the Berlin Crisis. I went, "Oh, that's a big din." Then after that, for a while I said, "They're going to give me a big bonus." A 73:00big bonus then was like two thousand dollars or three thousand. I said, "Whoa, what I could do with three thousand bucks." I just finally decided to go ahead and re-enlist, and then they also threw Guam in.

Milligan:Eventually looking at Guam.

Franklin:Yeah, I said, "Well, that sounds good, too. That's icing on the cake, so let's go."

Milligan:Did you go to Berlin? Did you have anything to do with that at all?

Franklin:No, just on a standby. SAC was always on standby when something in Russia started. We were always cocked and ready to go over to kill them. That was the bad thing: you just sit and wait. It's all you do. When I got to Guam, that's when I got into war, Vietnam.

Milligan:So when you got transferred to Guam is when that all started to blow up.

Franklin:Yeah, when I got there in '62, one of the things I wanted to do was just go to see Guam, really. I wanted to go to the Pacific because I knew my relatives had died there. Tom had died in Guadalcanal. I really had read every book I could get on World War II and the Pacific. It was just as unique, I mean an adventure for me. Then to go around the island, they had old tanks that were blew up. There were ships that were sunk. They had a little two-man submarine that beached there. That was really great to see all that. Then you'd find ordinance laying around. I'd be shelling and dig up a hand grenade. We'd mark them and then call munitions, and they'd come defuse it and sandblast it for 75:00you. Then you could put it on a little stand and put a little plate on there, "From World War II--"

Milligan:So you could keep it.

Franklin:--keep it, tell what it was. It was actually the battle, Tumon Bay. Then we found a couple of Guamanians that knew where a tank was. It was one of ours, a Sherman. They got surrounded, and they run out of gas. What they do, they had to tap the gun, pull the carburetor off of it so they couldn't use it and take off. Well, they left the thirty and fifty on it, and that's what we were after if we could find it. We could pull that fifty off, sandblast it, and prime it and paint it and put it on a hang plaque. That's what I was really looking for and then other things.

They had a typhoon come in there. It's called Karen, and it had 225-knot winds, 76:00and gusts, I don't know what it gusted. It was a real bad storm. When that storm was over with, the other guys had found a Japanese Zero that had feathered in. Got shot up, and he feathered it in to land. Didn't tear it up; just landed good. Then the jungle grew over it. After the typhoon, there it sat just like it had landed, not tore up, just sitting there. They got a bulldozer, and they bulldozed the road down. Took the winch out and took him and put him in the bed, and then took him back to the Air Force base to maintenance. That was their project. Everybody pitched in in maintenance, and they redone it completely, everything.

Milligan:So someone could fly it.

Franklin:Fly it, yeah. They were going to give it back to Japan as a memorial, but the guys--. They were getting daily updates on what they were doing and everything. Everybody'd drive down there and see. They pulled the instrument panel out to redo it and take the rust out. All the instruments were made in the USA, and it was a Japanese Zero. (Laughs)

Milligan:Isn't that interesting?

Franklin:That was something, right? That blew our mind. We said, "They were shooting us down with our own stuff." What happened at Guam was really the start of a change of my view of the United States, really.

Milligan:How's that?

Franklin:The Japanese were still coming out from World War II. When I got there in '62, they were still in the jungle, and they were surrendering, still surrendering.

Milligan:Twenty years later?

Franklin:Yeah. What happened is that after the war, they were so bad to the Guamanians. They were just vicious. They cut the women's breasts off and just all kind of crap, really wicked stuff. The Guamanians hated them. After we had recaptured the island, they gave them Thompson submachine guns, and they formed what they call the Guam Patrol. They just went through the jungles and shot them on sight. There was no prisoners. They just killed them. Killed as many as they could. A few of them did go to the north part, which is real heavy jungle, up by our base. That's where these two guys were. They were pretty smart. Around that 79:00north rim, they had five-hundred-foot-straight-down cliffs. There ain't no slanting about it. They were just straight down. They had on one end where our swimming beach was, we called Lover's Leap. A lot of Japanese jumped off of that and killed themselves. These other two went on down a ways. They braided vines, and they found caves in there.

They moved all of their stuff into that cave, made bamboo beds and furniture and stuff. They'd go to the dump at our base and get things that they needed, and it was all right there. A little piece would be broke, and we'd say, "Eh," and throw it away. These guys were taking, like, mosquito nets and they'd sew them. They'd patch them. That's what they used because the mosquitos there are, I 80:00mean, really bad. You get in one area, and they'd be all on your arm. You could go like that, (wipes arm) and there'd be nothing but blood on your arm. That's how bad they were. There was a joke because they had that big mosquito. It was spotted. It was black with white spots, or it was white with black spots, one of the two. They said one landed on the runway, and they refueled it. (Laughter) "Hey, man, this is really bad over here." There was always jokes about it.

Milligan:There were two guys that had been living in the jungle, like, right next to your base the whole time?

Franklin:Yeah, and they come up to the--one of them had been sighted. They had turned over a report to the air police that they were out there. If you go down there--I used to go down there to scrounge parts because I had patio furniture 81:00with that soft metal, like aluminum-type. A piece would break, so I'd go down there and find stuff that they'd thrown away. Take that one piece off, and then I'd fix mine. Once it got broke they wouldn't replace it. I always liked them because you'd get out in the back and it's nice. Sit there and have a swing.

Milligan:So you'd go out to the dump, you mean?

Franklin:Yeah, the dump. I noticed that there was deer there. They had deer and wild boar on the island, pigs that were wild, too, but were domestic and just got away, and they went into the boonies. They had all kinds of fruit trees. You could live comfortably if you wanted to. Good food and stuff. The one guy was, from what I understood, he'd take a coffee can where they had cut off. They'd go 82:00down to the beach, and they'd get water. Then they'd put it out on a rock. The sun was really hot there during the day, and it would evaporate because the coffee cans really heat up. Then they'd take the salt. They had a little salt bag and put the salt in there. That's how they got their salt. They were pretty ingenious guys to do what they're doing. They had coconut crabs that were delicious and all kinds of fish. Everything was there. Water was abundant. All you had to do was find a falls. There on the island, they had waterfalls there, too, fresh water.

Milligan:After all that time, what made them decide to turn themselves in?

Franklin:They didn't.

Milligan:Oh, they didn't? You just knew they were there?

Franklin:The guy with the water can fell asleep. They had Guamanians that go 83:00through there that were coconut crab hunting because they're really good eating. They have one gigantic claw, and the other one is just small. It feeds this one. It gets in there and crushes whatever--and it's coconut. They get coconut, and they get ahold of it. They cut that hull off. Then they tap it where they can get into it, and they'll eat the coconut. Really cool. A guy took a dog tag, and he stuck it down in there, you know, with the chain on it. He just went (mimics scissors), he bent it. I thought, "I ain't putting my finger in there." That's what they'd eat. A lot of times they're luxury stuff.

Milligan:Somebody who was out hunting just came across him?

Franklin:Guamanians were coconut crab hunting, and here the guy was laying there asleep. They grabbed him and took him and turned him in. You know I was telling you where they gave the guys, the Guam Patrol, machine guns. Well, they just 84:00murdered everybody, well, not murdered, but they killed them because of the things they did. He figured he was going to die. They said he stood there and shook. He was shaking the whole time. They started questioning him, and he told them that he had a friend that lived with him that was still there. They noted that. They got him well enough and fed up, so they took him back to Japan. Well, his wife had already made a tombstone for him and already had ceremonies, and she remarried and had a kid. He was kind of melancholy about that. They had a movie about him, I believe.

I hung around the north part of the island because I used to shell. I'd get into the water. That part of the island, they had what they called silver conches, 85:00which were at that time about five bucks apiece, and that was in ʼ62. Pretty good money for a conch. I found a whole bed of them. I wouldn't take them off because I wanted to keep them and let them reproduce. I'd go up there and shell, get my twenty-five, thirty bucks' worth, and that was it. I went up one day, and they had these little sacks of goodies. It had little Japanese things, and they were tied all over the bushes, all over the trail. They were to him, the second guy, to tell him to give himself up, to surrender because the war was over with and the emperor had gave a grace that they were not going to fight anymore.

Milligan:Who had left them out there?

Franklin:The guy come back.

Milligan:The first guy?

Franklin:Yeah, he come back. They'd fly him around in a helicopter, and he'd holler his name, trying to get him to surrender. What they done, they took a bunch of, kind of like, tourist magazines I guess, and they were throwing them out in bags so he could get them and read them and see that the war had been over with.

Milligan:Did he ever turn himself in?

Franklin:Not for a long time. He found one book, and he started looking at it. It had the price of a beer, Japanese beer; he's looking at it. Well, that's more than he made a month for one beer. He said, "I know it's propaganda." He wouldn't come out. Finally, he did come out, and he did surrender. There's still others in there. That was just two guys, and there were thousands of them out in the boonies. It's so thick of jungle. They talk about Vietnam's jungle. Well, 87:00Guam's jungle is just like that. A guy could be between me and you, and I couldn't even see him. That's how thick it was, but you could hear. You got real quiet, you could hear people walking or moving around. You could hear the motion.

Milligan:You started this, talking a little bit about what--at that point you were, you became a little bit disillusioned with the US.

Franklin:Yeah, it was the beginning of a little research of what was going on, and I still didn't understand why we're having to go into Vietnam. Of course, you see all the movies, Green Berets, "they're the bad guys," as we got into the war posture. When it started they had, I think, about thirteen or fourteen 88:00[KC-]135 tankers that they had put guys on, and they were flying them in when they were bringing troops in because they were going to bring all the [B-]52s in. All we had was just the little [B-]47s. They had to make a whole new area for the 52s because there were hundreds of them coming in. That means all those hundreds had to be--the troops had to support that aircraft. They had to come in, like your maintenance and your bomb loaders. All that had to come in because there's corrosion. Everything happens. The wiring and all that stuff, and that kind of area was just limited. They brought in--thousands, and we were just a 89:00little bitty--. Our manning was about the same manning for an aircraft carrier. Now it was all the aircraft. We had to man quite a few aircraft carriers.

Milligan:They were loading you up, yeah.

Franklin:It all was really fast and furious. You got a lot of thinking, "What are you doing? Am I doing what I should be doing?" I noticed we had a real big problem because guys coming in didn't want to be there, didn't want to stay there, because their temporary quarters were terrible, and it's hot and humid. You think it's bad here? It's really bad there. They were just getting on another aircraft going back. Wouldn't tell anybody. They'd be long gone. "Where's Joe Blow?" It was our job to make sure that they didn't do that. I devised a system that I went to headquarters SAC with and said, "Hey, we got to 90:00do something because these guys are leaving. We don't even know where they're at." I went down, and being the training I'd already had with IBM, I sat there and wrote up a little program and made up a format where I could tell who they are, what their number was, what they did, when they got there, and where they come from.

I typed a card up and made that available to us so we'd know. When a guy got on a plane we'd say, "What's your name?" We had a list of who was going to go back and who they were. If you weren't on that list, you couldn't get on the plane. If they did have a flight crew that was nice to them, brothers or cousins you know, we still had them cornered because we knew what was going on. I made that up for us really, and then the wing commander got wind of it. Somebody showed 91:00him the list. I wasn't directed to do that. I'd done that for our sake so we'd know who we had there. It was really because we wanted to make sure our birds were serviced and ready to bomb. He got ahold of me, called me to his office. He said, "I want this every day at certain-certain time."

I'm looking at him, and I told him, "Well, that was just a courtesy copy for us." He said, "Not anymore." He's the guy that runs everything. So now I had an added to job to do over and above what I was already doing. I started that. Then they were building new wings to support on the bases that we supported with our man power reporting. They told me to get on a plane and go there and see what 92:00was happening because we weren't getting our reports. There I went, and I started having to do that. While we were doing that, they were flying the islands, checking to see if they had a problem with the bird, that they had the old Jap runways that they could, birds that they could set them down. Couldn't get them off. I mean they'd have to bring a ship over, dismantle them, and put them on the boat and take them back because those runways are not very built. They're old, forty years old. When I got into that, I started talking to some of the guys that were coming back, and it wasn't good.

We were a major hub of the helicopter guys that were flying in. They were bringing them in, actual pilots. They would pilot them through Guam and take 93:00them right straight into Vietnam. When they were coming back, rotating back, we would be down at the terminal just BS-ing. We'd go down and have a cup of coffee, and here these guys come strolling in. "Hey, come on over. Tell us about it." They looked like walking zombies. They were telling us stories. I said, "Oh," because they said they had a big meeting and wanted to know if any of us wanted to volunteer to become pilots, helicopter pilots. I tell you, it sounds adventurous again. When I started talking to them I said, "I don't think I want to do it," because not only the danger, but when you got out of it and come back, you got reverted back to your old grade. I said, "Wait a minute. What happens if I'm over there for a year? Then that means if you're going to take me 94:00and make me a warrant officer, and I'm drawing warrant officer pay, then I come back, you're going to make a staff sergeant again? I have to compete all over again, and I've been out of my job?" I said, "No, I don't think I want to do that." A lot of guys told us not to.

Milligan:Was that the biggest concern for you, was just that inequality?

Franklin:Yeah, I thought that was not very wise. I mean, if you want to get top notch people that are dedicated, you don't want to do that. We had a lot of guys after the war that got RIFed [reduction in force]. They had medals that you wouldn't believe, and they were captains. They busted them back down to staff sergeants. This was in--'69. It was sad. Again, as you look at this, you start changing because you see that they're not doing what they should do with the 95:00guys that are about to put their life on the line. They treat them just like nothing happened. You get that feeling that you want to know more about why they do that. It really works on you when you're doing it. When I left Guam, I was there for two bomb runs. They weren't good. The first one, I think we lost two aircraft.

Milligan:Over in Vietnam?

Franklin:Yeah, one of them was refueling, and the other one hit him. He was pulling out, dropping down, and the other one was coming up. They tipped wings. It killed both of those. Then Vietnam really started getting tough. They were losing aircraft because they brought the SAMs [surface to air missiles] in. I left there, went to Malmstrom [Air Force Base, Montana]. I spent just a minimum amount of time there. Run into all these guys I was telling you about that would 96:00inspect. They kept saying, "You want to come to SAC headquarters? I got a job for you." I'm sitting in Montana, forty-seven below. I said, "Yeah, I'll take that job! Don't twist my arm too hard. Let's go." So I got transferred to there. After I went to those program schools, they put me in a special program, and I run what they call the combat control. It was combat crews that run all the 52s--all over the world. That was my job, to run that program to make sure it went to the four-star, that his crews were identified and knew what they were doing, who was available and all that.

It was constant. I had a twenty-minute turnaround. If I was somewhere and they 97:00called me, I had to be there. If something went wrong, I had to fix it. That's really, it's really taxing. I'm still in that mode: "What's going on? Why are we having to do all that?" We're running, too; we're still at war--. We're still kind of playing ball against Russia to keep their guys in line. Then we're running bomb missions out of Guam. It wasn't real bad, but I still had that thought. "Why the inequity? Why are some guys in this thing that are putting their life on the line, like those crews, and they get treated like they do?" Of 98:00course, they're in a war. When they come back, people have just--and the guys are over there dying. Then I got transferred to headquarters USAF because the guys that had that program before me, they gave it to me. Now he went on to headquarters USAF. He come back and said, "Hey, Keith's working on this. Let's bring him up here," so I went to headquarters USAF.

Milligan:Where was that?

Franklin:It was at Randolph Air Force Base. It's manpower. They were designing a brand new personnel system for millions and millions of people, officers and enlisted. They sent me back to school, now here I go learning how to do--and this is Chilocco education. I was learning how to--I didn't know nothing. You could tell me to call a name of logarithm and algorithm, and I said, "What is 99:00that?" I had to go to school to learn communications, so that got into that. I thought it was fun. I remember now, I took the test and flunked it. I said, "You ought to throw that test away."

Milligan:Their mistake.

Franklin:We got into--actually they come in and give me books. They said, "I want you to read these and now pick a system because were designing the whole system. I want you to give me a recommendation on what system we need to use that could be a future thing." I was horsing around one day with one of the colonels. I said, "DTAP, man, that's probably the thing you need to get into." It was really simple, but I didn't know how big it would handle anything, really. I didn't test it. Went right to the general. "My boy said DTAP." (Laughs) I said, "What did I do? I'm going to go to jail--." Once we got it in, 100:00it was really good because it was user friendly.

Milligan:That's fortunate.

Franklin:You could read it just like English. You could actually say yes and no, and it generated code. All you had to do was put down what you were doing, why you were asking those questions. "What is this process?" It was really a good code. It was something that broke the thing where a non-programmer could look at the program and say, "All right." You always put your remarks in it so he knows where that flow is coming from and where it's going. That worked out, thank goodness. Anyway, I got shipped from there. Usually when you get headquarters USAF, usually they give you a prefix because you're designing systems. You're 101:00going down to the nitty-gritty--. Sit down with a guy and say, "What do you need? What's your job?" You just take off your uniform and your stripes, put on fatigues, walk over and sit down with him and watch him, see what he does, how he does it. You sit right there on the spot and design the system, instead of having somebody up there that's your general saying, "You're going to do this."

It may not cover what he needs to do. That's what was happening. We had a guy that stopped. He said, "I don't know what to do." I said, "The guy ain't got any money. You're going to have to feed his family and get him a place to live. Only way you can do that is to get in the finance system and get him a check. Simple as that." We're sitting there just scurrying away. We had all been through that, 102:00so right away we knew that's what we got to do. Doing that--I always thought back when I got into all that. I was into systems design, data analysis, I went to the Naval Computer Institute. I said, "Wow, what am I doing here?" I'm in there with White House people. They're setting teams up, and my team's all the White House. Of course, he didn't do anything. We're sitting there, "Keith, what are we going to do?" I said, "You guys are supposed to tell me." Anyway, I found that they're just everyday civilians.

They're not really programmers, and they were going through just to get a taste. Here, I am at that level and having to do all the work. I didn't like that. During that period, you get a prefix (I talked about the prefix) and a suffix to 103:00whatever you do. Once you get that prefix, then you're there for the duration. We got a new general in, and he said, "I want all my troops to have a short tour out of the way so I don't have to worry about losing them. I want you to get them over there and get them back. We'll set out on this new realm we're going into, and there's not going to be any movement. You guys are going to be right here working." What they done to me, they called me up and said, "You got to go overseas, short tour, so you're going to go into communications." Was supposed to go to Saigon, but they had just started moving it out because everything was getting too hot. They moved us into Udorn [Royal Thai Air Force Base] in Thailand.

Milligan:So you were transferred to Thailand?

Franklin:We were twenty miles from Vientiane, Laos, twenty miles, twenty clicks. We were right there. I had no background in communications, how they even worked, what they were, equipment, everything. -- When I got there, there was just two of us and an officer. The guy that when I got there, he took care of 105:00everybody. We had all of the communications--then. That was in ʼ74 because the war was closing down. What happened is that the Hmongs and CIA were still fighting the war in Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam because Vietnam hadn't went down yet. When I got there, the guy that took the cushy job, he got the air traffic controller people that handle the towers. I got the ground crew, what they call outside plant. Those guys are radio operators. They strung wire, take care of the switches. Really the radio maintenance is the big thing. We had communications still going in the jungles because of what was happening to Laos and Cambodia. Laos was really heavy because they had the Chinese were in there, and the North Vietnamese and the Russians. Our guys were fighting all that. You couldn't say anything because it was classified. Now it's been declassified, so I can tell you, I think. Don't put me in jail for that.

Milligan:I think you're safe on that one.

Franklin:I found the secret. That's what I'd say. I'd give you that secret stuff that I got because it's fantastic, really. I think you'd really enjoy it. I was always asking questions. "Why? Why are you having to do that?" Of course, it was secret then, so you couldn't really come out and say, "All right, you got clearance for that? If I tell you, you have to die." That kind of funny thing that you say. As I went through that, at that time period, it was just all really hectic. Things were happening so fast.

Milligan:When was this you were sent to Thailand? What years?

Franklin:I was there in '74 and '75. What happened is that we had that Paris 107:00Peace Accord, and they pulled our guys out. Well, we were still fighting in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam because we were still supporting the South Vietnamese. Here, I got over there and thought I was going to have a cushy job. I said, "Oh, my god." There's so much understructure stuff because those guys that are working on communications, they're stringing wire, they're having temporary RAPCONs [radar approach control] out so they can move people around, helicopters--. That was my job, to make sure that all that happened. Plus, you have that major telephone switch that runs everything, all the telephone communications between them and the United States because we went through the satellite. Before, it was a cable that run into South Vietnam. When they went over the DMZ, they got a little bit over that. They captured our cable there. 108:00They let us communicate for a little while, and then they shut us off.

That's why we're trying to get hooked into that satellite to make sure everything's going to go good. What happened is that things were always going on. .... Had a big wall, and it had all of southeast Asia. As a maintenance guy, I could look to see where my operators were, and if they were operating, they had a light on. If they weren't, then they turned red, so you know you got problems. That, plus they have a high clearance. If they start living with a Thai girl, then you have to pull their clearance. There was a lot of things you had to do as an individual to try to keep everything going. I think one of the 109:00campaigns we had the first one with, we had to evacuate Phnom Penh because the Camaroons had surrounded the city. They were killing everybody. They weren't taking any prisoners. To get in and out of there, we had to have our aircraft fly in to evacuate civilians, American civilians. We had put our mobile units in, and they were blowing them up as soon as they got off the--. They weren't slouches. They were very good marksmen and very good at what they did. They'd kill you.

Those guys would fly a plane in and drop their equipment off so we could start communicating with our evacuation. That poor guy who was sitting there, he's gone. What they do, (I don't know if you ever heard) they grid. They'll grid an 110:00area. Wherever you're at on that grid, they'll fire a round, and they'll see where it hits on the grid. Then they go over and have the coordinates, and then they'll blow you up. The old man said, "To hell with that. I want you hooked up to a truck, and when we come in to land, you take off. Don't sit still." When you get around, get flights--until dark, and then you can start communicating and get your guys in and out. That was going on. That was one of the things that we did as a campaign ribbon, I guess you could call it. Then Vietnam went down. We were there. Our communications was supporting that. That was big, and that really turned my whole attitude right there. I was never so sad in my life to 111:00see that go down.

Milligan:I hear the emotion about it, but what was your epiphany with that? What did you sort of shift from and to? That was a turning point for you, I think is what you said.

Franklin:That was real--that was it. Looking at it, they had nothing. We cut off their supply. We cut off their money. They had no ammunition. They had no fuel.

Milligan:You mean the South Vietnamese?

Franklin:Yeah, we just cut it. The government cut it. When they knew the end was near--We knew it. We were reconn-ing it. We were doing as much as we could to help them. That Laotian army bunch, the loyalists, was something to behold. Now 112:00you hear a lot of people talking about the Hmongs. The Hmongs were the guys that lost their lives. They had never been out of the mountains, and they decided to support us. And they let them die. That's--hmm.

Milligan:This makes me think of another side of this, too. You haven't really talked much about it at all, so maybe it wasn't significant. I wonder, going into not only the military but all these other places as a Native American person, did that have any effect or impact on your outlook or your experience?

Franklin:Oh, it was constant.

Milligan:Maybe talk a little bit about that.

Franklin:It was constant because when I first got to Forbes, as ornery as I am, 113:00I ain't going to let anything slide. You call me Chief, we'll give you a name. We'll call you something. It was there, when I got there, they had names, Indian things, reference to an Indian thing. They said, "Hey, we got a covered wagon," or, "We got a red skin." That was the name of something happened, something dynamic with our atomic stuff, our bombs and--.

Milligan:They would name equipment or whatever.

Franklin:Yeah, they'd name something that was happening that was in a detrimental way.

Milligan:Like derogatory.

Franklin:It was like when they got what's his name, they called it Operation Geronimo. I said, "Oh, what the heck is this?" Then they called it Red Skin. I 114:00said, "Where? I'm looking for a buddy! Might be somebody I know." (Laughs) I'd always do that, and they said, "Don't put him on that list. We'll have everything in here." We raised hell about that. It finally went back to SAC headquarters, and they stopped calling it that. You know what they called it? Covered Wagon.

Milligan:Who's we? Were there other people--

Franklin:Yeah, other Indians.

Milligan:--other Native Americans?

Franklin:Yeah, every time you'd meet somebody--especially when I went to headquarters USAF, I could get in there and look at the serial numbers. Most of your serial numbers like 442s are all in this area. I'd look and catch names, and a lot of us had Guard numbers until they changed it. The Guard numbers, I always know: 2738365. I knew that that 2738 was all of our guys in Oklahoma.

Milligan:Just the Oklahoma.

Franklin:Yeah, so I could go in there and pull him up and follow all my classmates here, see where they were going.

Milligan:You would watch where your Chilocco classmates were at?

Franklin:Yeah, anytime I could give a hand to them, I'd go down and help my buddies. I played softball, too, and a lot of the managers--. We'd talk, and I'd slide that in with a beer. I'd say, "Hey, I got a partner that's trying to get in here. It looks like he's volunteered. I think I know where he wants to go. Can you help him out?" He'd go, "Sure!" They'd go in and do that. Where we were at, we were also looking into the future on what kind of guy we wanted to get into our area. We'd bring in a recruit, look at his aptitudes, and say, "All right, we're putting him in programming school. Now we're going to follow him all the way through. If he's a crackerjack, we want him over in our box."

Milligan:You could watch that, for sure.

Franklin:Then we'd get him over. What happened is, though, we got the crew, and they were really good. They were fast. They picked up, and they were really going. What happened is they become so good, they'd only go four years. Then they'd get out into the civilian market and just clean up. It was just like Bill Gates' bunch. (Laughs) Then we had the USAA. Part of the generals there in the top brass were all from the headquarters that I was at. They'd go over there and go to work, and they were up at a high level.

Milligan:Going back to your Native American identity, when you were places like Guam or Thailand, was that still something that was constant for you, or was that--.

Franklin:It always is; it's always there. In Guam it wasn't too bad because you really didn't have that. They didn't like Guamanians; a lot of them didn't. If you looked like a Guamanian, then you fell into that.

Milligan:You mean the American military didn't like Guamanians?

Franklin:The Guamanians didn't like them because of how they treated their women, the young ones, and that's anywhere. Then some of them are just prejudiced.

Milligan:Did they think that you looked like a Guamanian?

Franklin:Oh, yeah, I had a blast with them. I had a real nice tan, not as white as I was now. I had a pretty good tan. I was always in the water, shelling and stuff when I wasn't working, or I was out scrounging around in the boonies looking for stuff. I had a couple of guys that I run around with that were 118:00Guamanian, and one of them become governor of Guam. In fact, we stood up for him for his wedding when he was a three-striper. How about that? He was Carl Gutierrez, and he was governor three times.

Milligan:Of Guam?

Franklin:Yeah.

Milligan:That's cool.

Franklin:My wife works for probation, federal probation, and one of the probation officers transferred over to Albuquerque. We got to know him, and I told him, "What about Carl?" He said, "He's going to jail." I said, "Whoa, what?" Then he told me, and I said, "Oh, my goodness."

Milligan:That was someone you knew.

Franklin:I said, "Wow, that's really something." Carl was a go-getter. We all scratched each other's back because they worked in [DAT] services and I worked in personnel. We had to use their equipment to run their reports. You sort six 119:00or seven thousand cards and you have, like, eight decks of those six and seven thousand. You got to take them all and merge them together, then run a report because they all have data in them that you extract, then make a report. I'd be down there working with him. He'd be telling me how to use stuff that I never used before. He'd sit there, key it up, dream up a shortcut. We become pretty good friends.

Milligan:Did you ever run into other Chilocco classmates while you were out there?

Franklin:Oh, yeah, in Guam.

Milligan:Really?

Franklin:Yeah, in Guam. I was sitting there--remember I was telling you they were bringing in thousands of troops? What they do in SAC is that when you get in SAC they have a contingency group. They're all members of certain jobs that 120:00have to be with that aircraft to make sure that it's functional and it can do its mission. Those guys go with it. They have that little group. When the klaxon goes off, that little group's got to run out there, grab their duffle bag, and run and jump on the plane. With SAC, you might just come out to the end of the runway, and the klaxon goes off. Then you have to turn around and come back. Well, here are all these guys with that duffle bag, and that's all your stuff. That's all your uniforms, work uniforms, boots, socks, everything. What them guys do, they just stuff paper towels in there, or regular towels, anything.

They run out there and grab their bag, run and jump on the plane. That's what happened to this guy. The klaxon went off, and we were going to war. There was 121:00no ifs, ands, or buts. I come walking in to work, come walking down the hall, and I heard, "Keith!" I turn around, and there he's sitting, a three-striper, Dion Francis. I said, "Dion, what are you doing here, buddy?" He said, "Hey, man, they diverted us out on combat. I got problems. I really need some help, man." I said, "Shoot. What do you got?" He said, "I don't have any uniform." (Laughs) I said, "What? You're not a baggie are you?" He says, "Yeah, it was full of just trash, and here I am for the duration of that TDY." I said, "All right." I told the clerk, "I'm taking him with me now, and we'll start his process tomorrow." We went down--and got him a uniform. Went over to the BX and got him all his essential toiletries and got him all fixed up.

Milligan:Did he stuff his own bag with that stuff, or did someone give it to him as a prank?

Franklin:No, he did. All those guys, you don't want to take good uniforms, stick them in a duffle bag, and never use them. Every time, we never really go to war, and they're always running around. Here these idiots come in, and we didn't have anything left after--his group got there. After that, they were out of luck. (Laughs) Had to go to work in blue jeans and T-shirts. With Dion, I sat there and cracked up. He become a preacher. We were pretty good friends. I laugh about that, oh, my gosh.

Milligan:That actually leads to--I think at this point we've been talking about two hours. I don't want to keep you forever, but I want to kind of be able to get to--I know you retired out in 1980. You went to Thailand, and then you had a 123:00little bit more time doing other things administratively.

Franklin:The Thailand part of it was the combat part of it, really. When somebody says, "You were in Thailand," I say, "Well, it wasn't any different from where you were at because we died, too." Our missions were in Laos and Cambodia and North Vietnam and South Vietnam. What they'd do is call for fire missions, and our jets would go in. We had all kinds. We had old World War II guys flying. It was really something to see. It just totally blew me away, man.

Milligan:Just their pilot skills?

Franklin:Here come a 1939 transport. I said, "My God, what are they--." That big bad baby come in and was full of Hmongs and pigs and kids. They always had white 124:00aircraft. I got to know some of those guys. They'd have a weekly feast, so they invited me down. They were really secure, in a secure area. Anytime that you're on--you didn't have to be part of them, neither. Anybody that got a threat that they were going to kill you, you had to treat it that they were going to kill you. When my comm guys would get that, then I had to make sure that they either got up-country or out of country.

What we'd do is we'd bring them up to our area from Bangkok--and put him in a job that's really secure. If anything happened to him, then we put him on a transport and get him out right away, no ifs, ands, or buts. We had some guys 125:00that didn't make it because they didn't do what we asked them to do, those commanders down south. ... This one commander let him go. He got on the bus. They'd been on that bus every day, looking for him. Finally he got on it to go get his stuff to get out, and they knew he was going to go. As soon as he got on the bus, they shot him about eight times.

Milligan:Who was "they"?

Franklin:The local people, local gangs and whatever. They had stories that they'd tell that nobody would hear. You wouldn't hear these stories because they killed--a lot of the GIs would marry the Thai girls, and they got a fantastic amount of money if they got killed, insurance, government insurance. The girls would have them killed, just for the money. That's the only reason they married them. Or they could get back to the States and get their citizenship. We knew 126:00about one guy, he was a major. He started dating a Thai girl, a very well-educated young lady. Their customs are like Spanish. You go on first date, you've got grandma, aunt, uncle. Everybody else is going with you.

You better know that you've got a group. They're very strict. They're very--I don't know what you'd say. They wouldn't take any chances. They're very earnest and honest people. He told her he wouldn't marry her. They started dating, so they got serious. Then he said, "I'm going to marry you." Of course, right away 127:00she told her family, and her family was well to do. He was getting ready to rotate, so he told her he was married. Normally when that happens over there on something like that, the girl will kill him, and then she'll kill herself because they lose face.

Milligan:So he told her he was already married?

Franklin:Yeah, and like I said she was very well-educated. She sat down and, from what we understood, I guess, thought it out. She hired two goons, or maybe more than that, and she said that she wanted them to do something to him that he would never forget her. They chopped his arms off right here, (Gestures mid-arm) both of his arms, while he was waiting on the bus. We passed that on to our troops, "Now you got to know this is going to happen to you if you lie to them 128:00and you're married and you move in with them." They call it T-locking. I didn't have anything like that happen, but I had one guy get killed for his insurance. He worked in finance, and she had him shot.

He rode a bike home every night, so these guys followed him, shot him in the back, and he fell off. They rolled him over and put two slugs in his heart. That, and they frag the--they'll find out where you live in the hooch, and they'll put a hand grenade underneath your floor, or they'll shoot you when you go to the mailroom. They'll find out when--they watch it. They said, "Wow, you guys had it good in Thailand." It was just as bad. You didn't really go in the 129:00jungle and fight, but there was a constant look that you had to be on your keen side all the time. You go downtown, they had what they call baht buses. The baht is a nickel. It's just like a Toyota truck, and they put a little top on it to keep the water off of it. They run between the basin and downtown. It cost you a nickel, so you can't beat that.

When you get inside of them, if there's five guys and you, then you better get off because they'll rob you or do something. They had this one guy--. He was a black guy, and he was pretty rough, mouth-wise. He got on, and they had enough of it, so they got him. They cut every muscle that he had; they didn't kill him. 130:00They sliced him here, here, here, and down here, (Gestures) so he was really a cripple. He done himself. All that was constant, all that kind of stuff. They were putting glass in beer, crushed glass. You had to be real constant and vigil. The water you couldn't drink because it didn't have a sanitized system. You couldn't swim in the swimming pools because they never used chlorine stuff. You'd instantly die. That's what we said. "Dive into that! Beautiful pool, but you'll come out just a skeleton." (Laughs) Then they had so many diseases.

Milligan:How long were you in Thailand?

Franklin:I was there for about a year.

Milligan:Did you know most of that going in? Did you have any inkling it would be like that?

Franklin:No, heck no. When I got there, I said, "Hell, I'm not going off base." I'd seen all this stuff. Then the guy tells you, the medic, he got up. Of 131:00course, they put a little humor into it, and then they get a wise guy in there. He says, "Well, gentlemen, I'm going to tell you this: If you get wounded, you get shot, don't fall on the trail. Fall in the weeds." We looked at him. "Why?" He said, "Well, that dirt's been there since Genghis Khan, so it's got so much stuff in it, you'll probably die before we can get you to the hospital." I said, "You can't be serious!" Some of the guys I worked with did get parasites, and it paralyzed them. It just starts a little bit at a time. They couldn't move their arms. Then they got down where they couldn't move their legs, and it just paralyzed them. What they do is they ship them out of there down to the Philippines where they have a big hospital.

I guess they go there and poison the parasite. You have to go through that 132:00system to get it out. He come back; he was okay. They cleaned him out. When you go drinking there, you carry two bottles. They have a little Army kit that you carry your bottle with. You got cigarettes and a lighter and all the paraphernalia you need to go out, and you always carry two bottles. One, you carry a bottle that you don't like because you use that to wash the glasses out. Then your good bottle's over here with Jim Beam or Johnny Walker Black or Red or whatever you're doing, so then you drink that. You can't eat any of the food. The food will get you dysentery. The girls would always steal--this is really getting to the nitty gritty. They always steal the toilet paper. We always had a stack of Stars and Stripes. "Pass the Stars and Stripes," and you'd slide it down.

Milligan:So if girls came in the base or anywhere they would just take the toilet paper?

Franklin:They worked there, a lot of them. Each one of the guys, the senior NCOs like where we were at, we had our own hooch. What happens is that they take care of it. They wash your clothes. I never had dirty clothes the whole time I was there. They ironed my socks and my underwear. Everything was ironed. The uniforms were heavily starched. The only problem is they beat your--when they wash them. You see the old days, and they twist the water out of them and slam them on the cement. By the time you get ready to get back, you put on your nice starched shirt, the sleeve will come off because all the threads are rotten. That was constant. You could see one guy go in, and he'd have a whole big wall locker full of uniforms. The guys would sell them because they weren't going to 134:00bring them back and wear them. He'd just buy them so he didn't have to worry about it. He had about sixty uniform sets.

I said, "My god." "I only paid four bucks for most of them." That's what I had to do because mine got so frail. It was a shame to wear it. It was getting frayed everywhere, so I had to do that, too. The one thing that always ticked us off was somebody said, "Oh you were in Thailand?" I said, "Yeah, we operated in Thailand. Did you ever know what they do there?" Olʽ buddy said, "Yeah, you were down at the beach and drinking beer and all this good stuff." "No, we were flying planes to help you stay alive." They call fire missions to go in for the 135:00guys who were getting pinned down. They flew all kinds of aircraft, I mean everything. Those guys put their life on the life. One guy--you ever heard of a Bird Dog? It's just a little olʽ Cessna, and all he carries is phosphorous missiles. When he finds an anti-aircraft, he'll fire that phosphorous, and you can't put it out. It burns.

He'll fire it in there, and then he'll turn around and get out. The other guys would come in behind him and bomb it and put it out of commission. That guy flying in there, that's all he's got. He might carry a pistol or improvise and do something else. Those guys, I always had a lot of respect for them. There was a lot of things happening when Vietnam, I was just telling you, that really changed me on how the United States was structured, and what we did was just 136:00really bad. Those poor people put everything they had into that war, and they died because of what we did to them, not bombing them but taking the money away, promising them. It was kind of like an Indian. When you tell us something, "I'm going to do this for you, and this is what's going to happen," well, you believe them. Then they don't do it, so then you know that they got a tongue like a snake, talking out of both sides of their mouth.

They were flying out of there, out of Saigon and all of these bases--. They had their families in there. They took pigs, chickens. Everything they could get, they put on that aircraft, all of their relatives. They couldn't get enough air 137:00height to get up off the water. A lot of them come in had jungle stuff in their cowls where they went through the trees. They splashed all the way over to U-Tapao in Thailand. They were getting sea salt in them because they couldn't get any height they were so overloaded. They'd call in and say, "We're coming in." Nothing you could do but try and clear the runway and get them in. It was just sad. When Vietnam went down, they had the Mayans. They captured a boat, Cambodia did. They had communications, and they had the base that we worked with, with fighters. They had an operation to go down to try and get the Mayans 138:00back, and the crew. They called an operation in, "You need to get that--." That was the first time we left Marines behind.

They got killed and tortured. That wasn't good. The Air Force lost twenty-four guys right off the bat. They weren't even in the battle. They were coming to join it, but they were in a big Jolly Green [Giant, helicopter] that flipped upside down. There were twenty-four guys in there, crew and the guys that were going. It's dealing with a lot of stuff that people don't understand. In my group when I went out, we wore civilian clothes, and our aircraft was black. Didn't have a mark on it. Then I got to thinking, "My God, they find us and--we'll be just like a spy because we got nothing." There's no uniform. I got 139:00to thinking, "I don't really like this." We were flying around to our place, making sure everything was good.

It was a little eerie. The thought about them, and hearing people talk about the Hmongs now like they do, some ghetto bunch, they really don't know the history of those guys. They're there because we put them there. Some of the Hmongs got out good because they had an island that they put some of them on there in the Philippines. They were still in the jungle, and they were still in the mountains. And these guys had to go to Minneapolis. The kids don't know. That was fifty years ago. Jesus, it was really terrible. There were four of us 140:00sitting there drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. We just damn near cried.

Milligan:At the base there, just watching that?

Franklin:Yeah, sad. The little guys come in. I have to put humor and cry at the same time. They fly these old World War II trainers that we gave them. That's all they had. That was their air force. They come in there, and they're just spittering and sputting and sound like an old lawnmower getting ready to blow up when they come in to land. Then they taxi over to the classified area, and those guys are the CIA type. They'd go ahead and patch them up and get the engine fixed and everything. One of them they had to get back because it was really heavy bound. They took duct tape and filled the bullet holes in the skin. (Laughs)

He come out, and I said, "My God, look at that. I sure wouldn't put my money on him." A lot of them would fly out, and they were still rough sounding. When you get that tuned ear in hearing a new one and hearing him, you know he's not long to be. They bring them down and train them how to fly. They'd fly over our base day and night, and all they do is have them fly in a circle. They're training, quick training. I said, "Well, that ain't going to do any good. He's going to get in a plane down there and take off, and he's going to fly--." (Gestures a circle) No, I'm just joking. (Laughs) He said, "They really have to be good to shoot him!" It's just really sad to see that they treat them that way.

Milligan:I think it's a really valuable perspective, though, because you're right. You often hear more about what was going on especially in Vietnam and even some of the other Asian countries in that area, or where our stations were, like Guam or some of the more specific islands. You don't hear as much (you're right) about what was going on in Thailand or even Laos, to a certain degree. It's interesting.

Franklin:Well, our guys, too. They passed a law there in Thailand that you couldn't carry a gun if you were not a citizen of Thailand. When you went out to have a meal or anything, go have a beer, go to the movies, everybody sitting around you got a gun, pistol, and they're hot headed. Thais, they're not even-keeled, I'd say. You need to have a gun if you're going to pick a fight because you're going to lose. They always stick up for each other. The more you 143:00learn the language, the more you don't want to go anymore into the language, but then you learn that they're talking about your mother, your sister in bad ways. They're looking right at you, telling you that. If you know Thai--then you're going to get shot. That's all there is to it. You got to be really vigilant. When I come back, I was always that way, when I got back.

Milligan:You were still watching.

Franklin:Yeah, I watch everything. I tell my wife that "Boy, you got to be more observant. Did you see that guy over there?" She said, "No." I said, "He's right there, and he could've grabbed your purse in nothing flat."

Milligan:You're watching for everything.

Franklin:Yeah, I'm sitting there going--and I had that. You have the feeling that if you could get through that, you could get through anything. Then a 144:00lightning bolt hits over here, and then that goes away real quick.

Milligan:That's probably true.

Franklin:That was the up and downs of it, but I wouldn't trade it for anything because it was a lot of experiences that I'll never have again that was interesting, and I made a lot of good friends. They're all dead. Most of them are dead now.

Milligan:From the military?

Franklin:Yeah, military and school. Everybody I run around with at Chilocco are all dead. They just died last year. The last two did. That's sad.

Milligan:I'm sorry to hear that.

Franklin:That was my history.

Milligan:You know what? Here's the thing. We've talked for over two hours, but I have no doubts we could sit here for another hour. We're not even to the point where you actually retired.

Franklin:I could tell you stuff about Chilocco that would just crack you up.

Milligan:We may have to revisit. We definitely--.

Franklin:If you could find, (I tax you on this) I think it was Bell Telephone. It may not have been Bell, but one of the telephone companies come out here and done a documentary on Chilocco back in '53, I think it was. Sauce, again, here's olʽ sauce. We were detailed to clean out the bull pens and get the manure out. It was pretty fresh manure, so you really had to get it out of there. They wanted you to clean it out. We had a manure spreader and a little Farmall tractor, and we filled that up. Then you go out where they tell you to spread it. We were going out there. I was driving; Sauce is hanging onto the back of 146:00the seat. My other friend, Don Anderson, worked in the bakery, and he's back there working the lever to spread the manure.

Sauce says, "I wonder how fast this goes?" He grabbed the gas gauge thing, the throttle, and he shoved it all the way forward. Boy, there we went. They were taking a picture for that documentary, a pan of the dairy barn and the stock barn, and we come flying by! (Laughs) We were getting airborne, and we had a rooster tail of cow manure. We had it all over our backs. Don was sitting back there hanging on for dear life, and he was just covered. We were all watching 147:00the movie later on, the next year they come down to show it. I said, "Sauce, look! That's us!" (Laughter) We were flying across the grass! (Laughs)

Milligan:I'll have to see if I can find that. That's awesome.

Franklin:If you can find it, it's a good documentary because it tells all about the school. But just to see us guys go by, "We're in the movie, man!"

Milligan:That's so funny. -- All right, I think I'm going to shut down at this point.

------- End of interview -------