Victor recently sent me these images of the hospital that he believes are from around 1979, shortly after the U.S. withdrawal. In the first one he circled the hospital complex itself (to the right, in green).
In the second, he circled in red the hospital parking lot that was shown in my post from last year. Just below that is the baseball field, circled in blue. The large yellow square encloses the Veterans General Hospital complex..JPG)
You can see what that area looks like today on Google Maps. Just click on this link and you'll find that some tennis courts and parts of some buildings are approximately where the hospital parking lot used to be. You can also use Street View to see the neighborhood at street level. The tennis court fences are on the right side and are covered so you can't see the courts themselves.Like most everything else in Taipei, very little looks as it did when I was there.
10 comments:
Don, this sure brings back some memories. I recall the ball field across the street and the triangular parking lot. Also, the plus-shaped wing on the right side, about midway deep into the building, was the maternity ward where my younger son was born.
Les Duffin
Anyone ever get cotton candy at the ballpark? It came on a thin wooden stick/spear and started melting down your hand and arm in a matter of minutes.
Don, thx for the post. I was born at the Veterans General Hospital Taipei and grew up in the neighborhood. The community where I used to live is right next to the Naval Hospital. I recall that when I was a graduate student and a teaching assistant in Michigan in 1994, an undergrad student in my class told me he was born at the Naval Hospital in Taipei in 1973(?). Imagine the odds that two people who were born at the two hospitals so close in Taipei finally met each other years later in Michigan.
BTW, anybody remember there was a small diner on the west side of the baseball field? Hot dogs, hamburgers, etc., were served. The diner was not open to the public so I went there once only with my American friend.
I played little league baseball there many times. Living up Shihpai Rd just out of shot. There were a lot of foreigners in the area and quite a few diplomats/embassy/consulate people. The hospital I remember as being semi-redundant in the sense that not much ever happened there. It was always empty.
Across the road was a small store that sold a lot of things. The most important thing they sold, to anyone, regardless of age was fireworks. Sour candy or explosives? It didn't take us long to decide.
As Victor was also growing up in the neighbourhood near enough the same time then our paths would undoubtably have crossed back then.
Misty must be one of the boys I saw jumping off the yellow American-style school bus every day around 3pm? The local kids envied that a lot since our classes usually ended around 4-5pm and we got tons of homework after that. One of the things that impressed me most is seeing very young American kids(maybe still in kindergarten?) playing T-ball(Tee ball?) baseball at the ball field, because Taiwanese kids don't have that kind of baseball games.
Yep. My pickup and drop off point for the school bus was just outside the Navy Hospital. I think two or three of the English speaking schools shared the same buses.
I was a Navy Corpsman station at the Naval Hospital in 74-76. Does anyone remember eating at a place affectionately known as "The Hole in the Wall?"
Milehigh52, is "The Hole in the Wall" inside the Naval Hospital? Or it's the small diner next to the baseball field I mentioned? BTW, you got any photos of the Naval Hospital? If yes, could you share with us? Appreciate that.
The last time I saw the Hospital was in 1977 when my ex wife and I had to identify her mother's body. Her mother had been a dependent who had returned to Taiwan and suffered a diabetic coma. We were stationed in Okinawa at that time.
Milehigh52: I was stationed at the hospital the same time you were. The Hole in the Wall restaurant was actually somewhere off Chung Shan Blvd... towards Taipei proper. Where did you work? I was assigned to the In-Patient department working under Cmdr. Porter - it was a 17 bed facility at the time. I have photo's of the inside but never thought to take photos outside... silly little girl that I was. Now, I would give anything to see those outside shots. We had a great crew...
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