I believe the flagpole for the U.S. flag was just to the left of the camera and the Chinese flagpole was in the opposite corner of the parking lot to the left.
The porch overhang in the center of the photo was the main entrance. I always called it the front entrance, but whenever the call was put out over the speakers to bring the admiral's or general's staff car to this front door, it was always worded as, "Admiral's car alongside!" Don't ask me why. Good enough for John Paul Jones, I guess.
It seems to me that I once heard someone say that the building was originally built by the Japanese. I suppose that's possible, but I wonder if anyone out there knows for sure.
2 comments:
Don,
As to your question about whether the building was built by the Japanese, here's a little story.
I was assigned to Det 3, 7602nd Air Intelligence Group, from early May 1978 to April 1979. Our offices were on the 2nd floor of TDC Hq building.
At some point during my tour, we were having phone problems in the office. When a repairman came in, he opened up a phone junction box on the wall in the corner of one of the rooms. It was about 12x12x15, I recall. So he stops and says something to the effect: "Damn, this isn't going to be easy. All the labels are in Japanese, but I can read a date of 1945".
At the time, I just thought "Wow, that's some old stuff!" But maybe it ties in with the other story.
Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 until 1945, so it's certainly possible that the USTDC building was constructed sometime toward the end of that period.
Don
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