Saluting in Civvies

This is a bit off-topic but since most of us here are veterans, I thought it might be of some interest.

According to a US Department of Veterans Affairs press release, all military veterans and military personnel wearing civilian attire are now permitted to salute the US flag when it passes by during parades and also during the playing of the National Anthem at any venue, such as a sporting event.

It's a relatively small thing, but it makes so much sense that you wonder why nobody thought of it before. Even after all these years, I still have to make a conscious effort not to salute during the playing of the National Anthem.

The measure was sponsored by Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, an Army veteran. It was included in the Defense Authorization Act of 2009, which President Bush signed on October 14.

1931 Taipei Photos on YouTube

Sarj alerted me to this YouTube link. It's a slide show of Taipei photographs taken before 1931, long before any of us were assigned there. About 38 seconds into the clip, there's a photo of the building on Grass Mountain that once served as Hostel #1 for US military personnel.

In this entry that I posted back in May, Stev provided photographs of the place that he took in 1959. He also submitted some aerial photos of the place from Google Earth in this entry during July.

As George pointed out in that same entry, the facility ceased to be a dormitory in 1969 and it was turned over to the park authority until 1981 when it became the Taipei Teachers' In-service Education Center, as it remains today. Their website can be found here.

Does anyone know the earlier history of the building?

Marriage in Taipei

Sarj Bloom got married during his TDC tour and he recently sent me a photo of his marriage certificate, along with a few comments:

It wasn't easy getting married in Taiwan -- tons and tons of paperwork.

We got married in the chapel in the compound in the morning and then we went downtown to City Hall and got married at the Chinese court. You can see the signature of the American Consulate representative on the certificate.

There were about six couples getting married and I was the only American. There was no rehearsal and near the end of the ceremony we were told to bow to the judge, then turn around and bow to the people in the court, and then bow to our spouse.

Well, I got a big laugh because I got disoriented and I bowed to the back of the woman on the other side of me. I was embarrassed for a short time.

I know how you felt, Sarj. After I retired from the Air Force, my job required that I travel to many parts of the world and I was always very sensitive to local customs and tried hard not to be The Ugly American. I think I was successful most of the time, but probably made more mistakes than I was aware of at the time.

Big Bucks

A friend recently sent me this link to historical military pay charts at military.com. I was a little surprised to find that when I enlisted in the Air Force back in 1962, they paid me the princely sum of $78.00 per month. By the time I arrived in Taipei in 1973 as a technical sergeant (E6), I was all the way up to an astounding $577.80 per month plus allowances!

Check out the charts if you'd like to see what you were earning during your time in Taipei.

Wainright High School Query

This is a little off-topic, but it is related to the information I posted a few days ago regarding American schools in Taiwan.

Mr. David Yang sent me the following message:

Hello Don

The city government of Tainan is now asking its citizens to send in any information (photos, stories ect.) related to the Jonathan Wainwright high school. The city government plans to turn the original site of the wainwright high school into a park with an exhibition place to introduce the once existed American school. I wonder if you know someone who can help. Thank you in advance.

David Yang
Taiwan

If anyone here has any information on the school and is interested in participating in this project, please drop me an email and I'll send you Mr. Yang's email address.

MARS and Explorers

A few days ago I posted some comments from Jim Petretta, who operated the Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) in Taipei. He later mentioned to me that he started an Explorer post in Taipei with an emphasis on ham radio. Today this program for senior scouts is called Venturing, but the basic goal of providing a program of interest to young men in ages 14 through 20 remains.

Here are some of Jim's comments regarding those experiences:

I had some scouting experience of my own as a kid, so Sergeant Major Brickman of HHC asked me to start an Explorer Scout group that his son could join. Our focus was on Ham Radio. We did take a couple of camping trips with other Scouts somewhere, but I can't honestly remember where it was. We spent most of our time playing with radios and learning about different kinds of transmissions, frequencies and antennas.

I designed a cubical-quad antenna and the kids built it. I also designed the tower it went on, but Maj Barnum had the Corps of Engineers actually build that atop the MARS Station on Grass Mountain (after it relocated down slope from Gold Mountain).

The historic part of this was that during the Sino-American Scout Jamboree, our kids received a permit from the government to operate a ham radio from the Jamboree site. It was a first-ever, because of communication restrictions on their own people, and I even remember them posting a ROC military guard by our exhibit. That same cubical quad permitted emergency communication for our evacuation of Embassy personnel and their families out of Vietnam by being able to communicate directly with the embassy and boats in the harbor waiting for helicopter drops of evacuees. The drama of that entire two-day nonstop episode is indelibly printed in my mind. The roller-coaster emotional highs and lows of rescuing some, and losing some, and rescuing more was just mind-boggling. I handled much of the two-day communications and Major Barnum handled the rest. He kept saying, "Focus on the living."

MARS also served once as emergency communication for Vice President Rockefeller when he visited during Chiang Kai-shek's funeral. I did not get to handle that communication. Major Barnum took over my MARS station because of the classified nature of those communications. Remember, I had the only known direct High Frequency Radio Communication with a Ham Station in San Antonio. For me, it was big, even though I got left out, because it was made possible by my work with the Scouts.

By the way, we did not have normal scouting uniforms. The guys wore the greenish khaki scouting pants with bowling-type shirts one of the mothers designed for our Explorer Scouts. Even I had one, but I don't exactly remember what they looked like now. Hoping, some of it will come back with these memory tours.

Zoo and Children's Amusement Park

Most of us who were at USTDC, or any of the other units in Taipei, remember the Taipei Zoo and the Children's Amusement Park that were located north of the compound.

The history of the zoo can be traced back over 90 years ago. In 1914, when Taiwan was still under Japanese sovereignty, Mr. Oe, a Japanese, established a private zoological garden in Yuan-shan, in the northern suburb of Taipei City. The Japanese Government in Taiwan purchased the property the next year and turned it into a public park. After World War II, Taipei Zoo was formally taken over by Taipei City in 1946. In 1970, the amusement park next to the zoo was consolidated into a 5.8 hectare park, providing entertainment and education for several generations of children and adults.

In 1973, plans were begun to build a modern facility. Because of the limited area available at its existing location, the new facility was constructed in the Mu-Zha district in the southern part of the city. The old facility was closed in August, 1986, and the new facility held its grand opening on New Year's Day in 1987. The zoo's website can be found here.

Photo courtesy of Dennis McNelis

The Taipei Municipal Children's Recreation Center is built on the combined site of the former Yuanshan Zoo and the former Children's Amusement Park. Its name was changed to The Taipei Municipal Children's Recreation Center in 1984. The Center is divided into three theme areas with different characters: "Folk Arts World", "Amusement World" and " Science World". The Folk Arts World offers visitors the life experience of our ancestors. It was officially open to the public in January 1st 1991. The Amusement World focused mainly on the recreational activities of children and teenagers; the Science World emphasizes scientific knowledge. The IMAX Theatre was opened to the public in August 1992. The Taipei Children's Recreation Center website can be found here.

Chapels and Churches

Many American servicemen choose to attend worship services at on-base facilities, as well as in churches and synagogues in surrounding areas. This section of "Taiwan Report" discusses religious services that were available in the Taipei area during the 1970s.

Some of you were familiar with St. Christopher's on Chung Shan North Road near the compound. According to this website, the church's congregation is now mostly Filipino. Wikipedia has a very interesting article about the whole Zhongshan District of Taipei, including St. Christopher's.

Schools

I didn't have my family with me in Taipei, but those who did will surely remember Taipei American School, as well as some of the parochial schools mentioned here. Today's TAS website is located here. The TAS Stateside Alumni website can be found here.

The University of Maryland had a resident campus at TAS, as it had at military facilities all over the world. Though I didn't take any classes while in Taipei, sad to say, I later completed on-base course work through the University of Maryland, UC Berkeley, Park University and other schools enroute to my degree.

Once again, many thanks to Les Duffin for taking the time to scan these pages from "Taiwan Report."

SOFA, Customs and Identification

These pages are from Chapter 5 of "Taiwan Report," the 1973 publication that was mailed to incoming personnel. Click on any of the images for a larger version.

This chapter discusses the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which is an agreement between a country and a foreign nation stationing military forces in that country. Most nations that have military personnel stationed in other countries have these agreements.

Also discussed in this chapter are customs rules and identification requirements for military personnel who were stationed in Taiwan.




I just remembered that my wallet seemed pretty thick in those days. With all of those identification cards and maybe a couple of hundred $NT, it's no wonder!