He later attributed his fetishistic interest in uniformed men to encounters with men in army uniform, especially soldiers of the German Wehrmacht serving in Finland at that time. He served as an anti-aircraft officer, holding the rank of second lieutenant. At first he kept these drawings hidden, but then destroyed them 'at least by the time I went to serve the army.' The country became embroiled in the Winter War with the USSR, and then became formally involved in World War II, and he was conscripted in February 1940 into the Finnish Army. In his spare time he also started drawing erotic images for his own pleasure, based on images of male laborers he had seen from an early age. He went to school in Turku and in 1939, at the age of 19, he moved to Helsinki to study advertising. The family lived in the school building's attached living quarters. Both of his parents Suoma and Edwin Laaksonen were schoolteachers at the grammar school that served Kaarina.
Laaksonen was born on and raised by a middle-class family in Kaarina, a town in southwestern Finland, near the city of Turku.
