More Typhoon Gloria Photos from 1963

A couple of years ago, Bill Amborn (formerly at USTDC/J24) sent me some photos that he took of Typhoon Gloria flooding in 1963.  Today he sent me a few more great Typhoon Gloria photos that he recently had developed from some old negatives.  He has annotated each of them for your information.

Typhoon Gloria - 1963

Sarj has come up with more photos to share. These shots were taken from the USTDC parking lot in front of the building during September 1963 after Typhoon Gloria.

Here is his description of what happened:

This storm stayed outside the island for a week, pounding us with rain, then it came ashore at high tide. As I remember, that was a Friday so we thought that by Monday we would be back to work and all would be well.

Well, it didn't work out that way. The storm stayed stationary over us for days and flooded areas that hadn't flooded for years. We had just got a new 2nd class, P.H. "Zip" Zimmerman, in our lab and I advised him to park his car in the parking lot of the compound. I told him it had never flooded there before and everyone agreed with me. Wouldn't you know this time it did flood and his car was totally submerged.

I just checked and found that Gloria was the sixth largest typhoon to ever hit Taiwan. In 1963 it was the largest ever recorded. It dumped 49.13 inches of rain on the island!

Typhoon Gloria - 1963

Sarj Bloom has provided photos of Typhoon Gloria on two previous occasions. He's recently been digging through some old negatives and has come up with a few more. As I wrote earlier, Gloria was the largest typhoon ever recorded on Taiwan by 1963, though there have been larger ones since then. He writes:

[In this first shot] my wife and I walked from where we lived up Canal Rd. to see what happened to TDC. Canal Rd. starts at Chung Shan N. Rd. and follows the river down, then bends to the south and joins Nan King E. Rd. We lived right off Canal and a block north of Nan King. As Canal heads North it turns northwest to meet the river. This shot is looking back SW toward Nan King E. Rd. because in the background you can see the back of First Hotel. I'm very sure of this and it makes sense the way the road goes. This is the first day after the typhoon that anyone could get out. On our way we also saw AF General Sanborn walking in civvies, heading the other way. You couldn't miss him; he was a big man.

I really got excited when I scanned this last negative, because at once I said, "Man that is Club 63!" I'm very sure of that because I remember they had just built a pool enclosure of sorts which you can see on the ground. It's been a long time and some things don't register with me, but this one sure did.

The Canal

Back in 2008, Sarj Bloom submitted several photographs that he took during Typhoon Gloria in 1963.

He just sent me some more information that he's discovered using Google Earth:

While looking for the Canal that ran north and south east of TDC I remembered that one of the photos I took of Typhoon Gloria '63 was taken looking north towards the east of TDC. See location photo from Google Earth.

 

 

A friend of mine told me that the Canal is still there it just runs under the new raised highway. Sure enough I even confirmed it with a Google Earth photo of the water under the Highway.

 

Anyway I got my photo out and then tried to match it the best I could looking North from the new Highway that goes over the Canal.

 

Both photos are looking north and you can see the mountains that run behind Club 63 and the Grand Hotel. I think I got the approximate position on Google Earth to represent my photo.

 

I was a few blocks north of Nanjing E. Rd. or what we called Nan King E. Rd. Our intention was to walk to TDC that day but had to turn around because of the canal overflowing the road, as you can see in the 1963 photo if you look up near the trucks. Also you can see the canal on the right is hardly in it's banks.

 

That had to be a lot of heavy construction to contain that canal and then build a raised highway over it. Most of all, look at all the big buildings that have been constructed since those days. 

Amazing what time can do.

Sarj

Typhoon Gloria Aftermath

I've posted a number of photos and comments about Typhoon Gloria that hit Taiwan in 1963.  There was tremendous damage from flooding and high winds from what was then the largest typhoon to ever hit the island.  The HSA and USTDC compounds were both flooded.  I remember seeing a plaque on the wall of either the commissary or the exchange that showed the high water mark from that typhoon.

Les just sent me some photographs of the east compound that he took after the waters had receded.  The first two show items being set out to dry from the exchange and the third shows the line of military personnel and their families lining up to buy flood damaged items at deep discounts.

Directly ahead in the third photo is the base theater and library.  The library was just to the right of the theater.

Memories of 1963-64

Bill Amborn was at TDC during 1963-64 and provided this account of Typhoon Gloria:

I was assigned to TDC from the States and arrived as a PFC in the army in late August 1963.  I was billeted at Yangmingshan first.  I took a few snapshots of the TDC compound during Typhoon Gloria as I was in it those few days.  I just ran across the photos which I'd sent to my parents.

Being the new guy in my unit I was one of three of us to stay in the compound in our little office during the typhoon.  The photointerpreters, part of J2, were downstairs and boy, did we get flooded.  As the water started coming up we put sandbags outside the steel door leading out and sat around and played cards.

Later the water began gushing in above the sandbags and we got concerned about the thousands and thousands of maps we had of all of China and started to remove them from the lower shelves and put them up higher.  While we were casually working on this activity we heard a violent snapping sound and saw that the water pressure had bent the door.  Water was coming in like gang busters.  So we started scurrying as fast as we could bringing all the maps and tons of classified stuff upstairs.  The water kept coming up. Then it became obvious we were being weighed down by our fatigues so we stripped to underwear and continued.  Some of the duty people upstairs thought we were mad men.  Then the power went out and we had a few flashlights, etc, by which we kept carrying the equiment and papers upstairs.

In the end, before we had to stop, we were up to our shoulders in that wonderful, muddy water.  We saved everything needed to keep us operating after the clean-up and got the normal thanks for a job well done (nada).

Then the C-rations ran low and we had to go to one of the warehouses to get them.  So we peons stripped down to our scivvies and formed a line of guys to walk wherever we were led.  That way if the first guy fell in a hole or something, the second guy would know where it was.  Like walking in a mine field.  We got our boxes and carried them like you see African ladies carrying items - on our heads - because the water was up to our necks.  And so we traipsed back across.  During the walk back guys started talking about all the poisonous snakes and wondering (a) could snakes swim and (b) what's that over there?

Since stressful situations bring out the best and worst in us, one could expect being stuck in a building for a bit would do just that.  Sure enough, one of the officers was found to be stealing all the C-ration cookies.  That really got some of the guys hot and required some higher rank to assure us cookies would be equitably distributed.

Like everyone who went to Taiwan, I have a ton of memories, but the strongest one still is of walking over the bridge from TDC to Club 63 with Billy Cowan (Air Force) and Larry Dugan (Navy) and Billy telling us that Kennedy had just been shot.

Bill Amborn

8/63-5/64 USTDC

Floating (Away) Restaurant

Sarj Bloom sent in some pictures of a floating restaurant that was located on the river near USTDC. These shots were taken during Typhoon Gloria in 1963. The restaurant was no longer there when I arrived in 1973.

Here are Sarj's comments:

I'm sorry about the quality of these pictures. They apparently came from 35mm film and I'm not even sure that anyone from our photo lab took them, though the lab was flooded during the typhoon and I may have made these prints in haste.

They show the restaurant floating away with the help of Typhoon Gloria. The sign was at least 15 or 20 feet high. I believe the last photo, showing the gate, was the entrance to TDC.

The restaurant was only there for maybe six to nine months, no longer than that. I left a month after the typhoon but I had a feeling that they would never rebuild.

More Floating Restaurant

A few weeks ago, Sarj Bloom provided photos of the floating restaurant that was once docked close to USTDC. Those photos showed the restaurant floating away with the help of Typhoon Gloria in 1963.

Long-time contributor Les Duffin just sent two photographs of the restaurant as it was before it became a typhoon victim.

Typhoon Amy Article

I've written a few times about typhoons that have hit Taiwan. If you enter the word "typhoon" in the search box at the upper left of this page, you should find all of those pieces.

Sarj Bloom recently sent this article from the Pacific Stars and Stripes, dated sometime in September 1962 with some photos that were taken during typhoon Amy. Some of these images were posted here previously.


You can see a short British Pathe' news film from 1962 about typhoon Amy at this link.

As bad as Amy was, twelve months later, in September 1963, came typhoon Gloria, which was the strongest typhoon to hit Taiwan at that time. However, there have been other, even stronger storms in the years since, with this year's typhoon Morakot being the deadliest in Taiwan's history.