A graduate of Hollywood High School and the University of Southern California, Ralph Gaston enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps as an Aviation Cadet on 18 August 1941. As a First Lieutenant, 306th U.S. Bomb Group, 367th Bomb Squadron, 8th U. S. Air Force, he was piloting a B-17 Flying Fortress when he was shot down 2 miles of the Ile d'Oussant on the tip of the Brest Peninsula, France on 18 November 1942. Captured as a prisoner of war, Lieutenant Gaston was imprisoned at Stalag Luft 7 from December 1942 to April of 1945.