Recalling the Early Days

I received a nice note from retired Navy CPO Joe Faszcza who was one of the early pioneers at USTDC, arriving in 1956. He was kind enough to provide a summary of his experiences from those times and here's what he had to say:

It was early December 1956 when I completed getting my shots at the Naval Station, Treasure Island (San Francisco) and was ready to begin the long journey to Formosa.

There were only "prop" planes in those days, so our first first stop was at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, for a couple of days and then it was on to Guam. The NCO club only opened for an hour each day from 1200 until 1300 where one could get a beer. Another couple of days and it was then on to Clark AFB in the Philippines. The only flights out of Clark to Taipei were on Tuesday and Thursday, so if you arrived on a Friday you were SOL until Tuesday. The seats on the flight were bucket seats and the lunches were always a sandwich and an apple.

What a shock to arrive at what the Taipei airport in those days. It looked like a lean-to shed to me. There was a Chinese military driver there to meet me. There were no paved roads; only dirt roads with big pot holes. Most of the traffic seemed to be ox carts where the driver scooped up the ox's s**t and shoveled it into the back of his cart.

A bus took me from the United States Taiwan Defense Command building up to Grass Mountain (Yangmingshan) where I was berthed. There were two hostels, a recreation building and a chow hall (closed mess). When you lost all your money playing the slots at Club 63, the closed mess would let you run a tab. The tea was free but peanut butter and banana sandwiches were $ .05. The phone number was sue-sue-limba 4412 I think! The hostels had double bunk beds and a community restroom and showers. Kerosense lamps provided the heat. Whenever the shuttle bus engine conked out, the driver would beat the engine with a hammer - but it worked!

TDC was located at the far end of Taipei off a road adjacent to a river (Tamsui?). There was a zoo nearby which housed chickens, roosters, and other "wild" animals. Also nearby was the Grand Hotel and the Club 63 was down the road.

I was a 20 year old E-3 assigned to J-1 (Personnel) with a Navy Commander as the Division Officer and a Navy Warrant as the Administrative Officer. Our big job was to publish the Plan of the Day.  We only had one stencil machine in the building and it was located in J-2 (Intelligence). The Legal Office was also located on the first floor. The Admiral, his Chief of Staff, and Comms were all located topside.

We worked and stood personal inspections wearing dungarees and a tee shirt. The motor pool, and sick bay (where you got those yellow pills for your burning sensations) were located behind the building. The Photo Lab was a Quonset hut. We used a barrel-like object made of what appeared to be chain link fencing for burning our classified documents.  We took turns turning the handle of the barrel to ensure nothing remained. The mail came in via ship at Keelung twice a week.

Many bars intersected the main drag (Chung Shin Pay Lou). I hung out at The Black Cat bar where mixed drinks, e.g. VO or CC, were about a quarter and a glass of ice was a nickel. The girls in the clubs earned their living by getting the customers to buy them drinks. If a girl left with you, it would cost you about $7.00. There was also a bar called "Dick's" and they had the best Mongolian barbeque one would taste.

There was a town nearby, called Paytoe, that had many hotels. They also had sulphur springs where one could take a hot sulphur bath and feel like Superman. Our valuables were very rarely looted.

We rode in the Admiral's plane for R&R flights to Hong Kong.  We could wear civies in Hong Kong but the fleet guys still  had to wear their uniforms. We were also able to ferry over to Kowloon. I bought a cashmere white dinner jacket for $25.00 and tailor made monogrammed silk shirts for $2.00 apiece. Dick, one of our shipmates, got caught by customs bringing in a suitcase full of glass frames. He got a special courts martial and restriction to the hostel for three months. His girlfriend used to come up to the hostel to visit him while he was on restriction.

Ed, another shipmate, got drunk and killed a local while driving back up the mountain. The locals rioted and we called it "Black Friday." They bussed us down to the compound and issued us weapons but nothing further happened.  Ed was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Japan.

At 20 years of age, I spent most of my time drinking and partying until I ended up with a collapsed lung and was hospitalized at the MAAG clinic.  While there I met an Army guy from Chicago.  Both he and I spoke Polish and we used to break up our nurses by speaking to each other in Polish. On my last day at the clinic, one of the nurses admitted that she also spoke Polish and knew everything we were saying. One good thing did happen to me during that week in the clinic. I studied for advancement and shortly thereafter got promoted to E-4.

I left TDC in July 1959 and still communicate with two shipmates.  It's been over 56 years!

Updated Photo of USTDC Gate

During 2010 I published two photos of the USTDC entrance gate (some called it the back gate).  It was located approximately where the taxi rest area next to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum is located today.  One photo showed the entry gate as it looked when I was there during 1973-74 and the other showed it as it appeared in 1957.  The earlier photo was taken by Charlie Hoppe who was an intelligence officer there during 1955-57.  That earlier post can be found HERE.

Charlie recently loaned a box of his original slides to my buddy Kent Mathieu (Taipei Air Station blog), who has been restoring the images.  He realized that one of them was the same one that I posted in 2010 of the TDC gate.  Kent has done a beautiful job on this.  Here, after more than 50 years in storage, is the restored image as it appeared in 1957.

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.

More on TDC's Back Entrance

Stev Pitchford annotated (in black) the map from the last post to show the route he used to take from the rear entrance to his workplace in the photo lab.  He says that there was no passageway from the main building to the building behind it at that time.  I extended his path to show (in red) the route that I took to the TDC main entrance.

I tried to figure out where my office was but I've pretty much forgotten the layout of the interior of the building, except for the main lobby  (shown below in a really rough sketch!) and the interior of my office.

If anyone would like to take a shot at diagramming the building's interior (lower or upper floor), please send me whatever you come up with.

Rear entrance to USTDC

Old friend and frequent contributor Dennis McNelis just sent me this shot of the rear entrance to TDC.  The tennis courts are to the right.

I think I used to enter that way to get to my office, but I must have had to walk around the building to the left to get to the main entrance, since the outside door to my office only opened from the inside.  I'm still having trouble figuring out exactly which corner of the building this shows.  Memories have faded over the past 37 years or so.

Below is a map of the compound.   The TDC building was #19 on the map.  I believe the main entrance to the building was just above and to the left of the #19.  The tennis courts shown to the right in the above photo are at #17 on this map.

If anyone remembers this any better than I do, or if you can identify anything else in the photo, please let me know.

The Main Gate

During 2008, United Tian Mu monthly magazine published a story about Charlie Hoppe, who was a 22 year old Intelligence Officer when he arrived at USTDC in 1956.  He and his wife returned to Taipei in 2008 for a visit and he brought the photo shown below with him.  Charlie took the photo in 1957 and it shows the gate at the entrance of TDC as it appeared at that time.  Below that is a photo of the gate as it appeared during my tour in 1973-74.  Just to the left of these gates was Hsinsheng North Road.

Many thanks to Ken A. (Linkou vet) and Les D. for providing these images.

Tempus Fugit

I received some Corona satellite images of Taipei via TaiwanAirPower.org.  Corona was a US military reconnaissance satellite system operated by the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology with substantial assistance from the US Air Force, used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union, China and other areas from June 1959 until May 1972.  The images were declassified during the Clinton administration.

The first image here is a diagram of buildings in the HSA East Compound as they appeared around the 1970s.  If you click on this same image down the right-hand column of this page, you'll be able to view a much larger version in which you can read the purpose of each building.  USTDC is at the top of the page.

The next image is from 1966 and shows the same general area.  You can just make out some of the buildings, as well as the river at the top of the page.  The three "H" shaped buildings to the right should help you get oriented.

The next image is from 1969, three years after the one above was taken.  The image is noticeably clearer, showing the technical improvement in spy satellites in that relatively brief period of time.  The large white building toward the north and slightly to the east was the TACF and the main USTDC building was to its left.

Finally, here is a modern satellite photo of the area.  The structure toward the upper left -- the one that looks like it was constructed with Lego blocks --  is the Museum of Modern Art.  To the east of that was the approximate location of the US Taiwan Defense Command.

USTDC Entrance and the Blue Goose

I have been busy with a number of projects recently and haven't had time to do much posting here. Who knew retirement could be so busy?

But I wanted to post these two photos that my old friend Larry Marcum sent me recently. The first is a shot of the TDC entrance from across the parking lot (I believe that's Larry in front of the steps) and the second is a shot of the Admiral's aircraft -- the Blue Goose.

In The Beginning . . .

I was recently contacted by retired Marine Colonel Darrell Davidson, who was one of the first to arrive in Taiwan for assignment to USTDC.  Until now, I've had almost no record of those early days when the command was first established.  Colonel Davidson was kind enough to allow me to post some of his comments here:

I thought you might be interested in what I might contribute to those who share a USTDC heritage from one of the "plank owners."  I believe that a Navy CPO Schremsher and I, a Marine 1st Lt, both recent graduates of the U.S. Naval Photo Interpretation Center were the first two to arrive on the scene on April 1 or 2, 1955.  My orders were classified "Confidential" and directed me to report to the Formosa Liaison Center for duty with the U. S. Taiwan Defense Command.  Neither the Chief nor I had a clue as to where to find the FLC, but somehow we ended up in a hostel that housed a number of U.S. military people, both officer and enlisted.

After a day or two of nosing around, I learned that there was a Marine colonel who was the G-2 on the MAAG staff so I went to the MND where he had his office to see if he could point us in the right direction.  Fortunately, he was tuned in and told us that a Navy captain was enroute who was to be the J-2 and instructed us on how to rendezvous with him, which we did.  We were the cadre of the working party that took over what became the TDC building as Western Enterprises, the CIA cover organization, moved out to new digs and a new identity as the Naval Auxiliary Communications Center.


As more TDC people arrived, I moved to a new western style house on Chien Kuo Pei Lu that had been rented by a Maj Haggerty, USMC.  Capt Al Wilson, USMC, and Lt. Harvey Decker, USN also stayed there until Haggerty's wife arrived.  Then, I rented a new house on the same street where my wife and daughter joined me in August '55.  All of the aforementioned were J-2 types also.  We were joined on CKPL by the Schremshers, and by fellow J-2 officers Ltjg Jed Hazel and Ltjg Ed Moser and their families.  This string of houses was just a couple blocks -- easy walking distance -- from the Taipei American School where my wife later taught.

I can't for the life of me remember how we got to and from our quarters to TDC.  I recall that while at the hostel we were picked up by sedans with Chinese army drivers.  I am inclined to think that practice continued, for there was scant parking space at TDC for our private vehicles that came with our dependents.  Also, although pedicabs were the primary mode of getting around Taipei, I can't remember taking them to TDC.  Amazing what time does to memory -- very selective!!

Semper Fidelis,
Darrell Davidson

I sent COL Davidson a photo of Hostel #1 on Grass Mountain and asked if that's where he was initially quartered and he replied that it was not.  He said that they were somewhere close to the airport.

I'm really looking forward to reading more of COL Davidson's recollections in the future.

Where is the Ship's Bell?

I have often wondered whatever happened to the ship's bell that was located just outside and to the right of the main entrance door at TDC.  I suppose it probably was either given to one of the last senior naval officers assigned to the building or else it's on display somewhere.  Does anyone happen to know?

The bell was on some sort of stand, I believe similar to the one shown in this photo and of course it had a rope attached to the clapper.  As I recall, the bell was only used when we raised the flag at the far left corner of the parking lot on Monday through Friday mornings at 0800 hours (8:00 AM, eight bells).  On weekends, when BMC Gagne (in my day) wasn't there, the person on watch just blew a whistle (one long blast) to raise the flag and then three short blasts to signal whoever had raised it that it was okay to drop his salute and return to the building.  I don't think they trusted us with that bell.

I think I mentioned a couple of years ago that one day another chief in the building had to do the honors of ringing the bell when Chief Gagne had an appointment elsewhere.  Now the backup had never done this before and apparently forgot that it was supposed to be done in four groups of two rings:  ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding.  So when his little radio beeped the 8:00 AM signal, he just clanged out eight bells...all at once:  dingdingdingdingdingdingdingding!  It sounded like the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

I happened to have flag detail that morning and I clearly remember watching the J-1 (a Navy captain 0-6 at that time) flying out of his office door in the lobby and getting up in the chief's face, inviting him back into his office for a little talk after the ceremony.   The captain was not happy and the chief was definitely not happy.  But the rest of us, including the Chinese color guards who I'm pretty sure were laughing as they raised their flag, all thought it was pretty cool.  But I always felt badly for the chief, who was a really nice guy.  Sometimes these things just happen.

So if anyone knows where the USTDC ship's bell is today, please let me know.  I'd love to ring it a time or two, if only because I wasn't allowed to back in the day.

Nights in the TDC Building

One of my earliest posts to this blog was about pulling watch duty at USTDC.  During normal duty hours, the Master at Arms sat behind the "glass cage" in the lobby, which was referred to as the quarterdeck.  We Air Force people had no idea what a quarterdeck actually was but at least we knew what they were talking about.  To the left is my very poor sketch of how I remember the area.  You're looking down from just above the main entrance and that would be the chief's cage directly ahead with the stairs to the second floor just to the right of it.  The J-1s office was to the left.  I don't remember there being an office on the right side, across from the J-1.

BMC Gagne spent his days there on the quarterdeck during most of my tour and he departed not long before I did in 1974.  I don't recall whether he was reassigned elsewhere or retired.

During evenings, weekends and whenever the chief had to be somewhere else, the quarterdeck was staffed by other available enlisted people, I think in grades E-4 through E-6.  Certain shops were exempt from the duty, but I believe that all of us in J-1 were scheduled for it.

The reason I'm writing about this again is that I just remembered one of the duties of the watch that I'd long forgotten about.  I may not have the times right, but I believe that somewhere around 8:00 PM (2000 hours; eight bells), we came out of the cage, took a right down the hall to where it hooked to the left and continued on to the other front entrance door.  We locked that door and then pulled down a steel overhead door.  At about 10:00 PM (2200 hours; four bells) we did the same thing back at the main entrance.  At some specified time the next morning, we raised the steel doors and unlocked the entrance doors for the new day.

Okay, so maybe none of this is of any interest to anybody but me, but I can still hear the clatter of those doors echoing up and down the deserted hallways of TDC late at night so I guess it's still part of the history of the place.

More Memories of USTDC

I've been corresponding with Ray Richardson, a retired Army SFC who served at USTDC from March 1978 until the day it closed.  Here's some of what he had to say:

First of all, Thank you for what you have done for the past members of the Taiwan Defense Command. I was so thrilled to find the site and have thought about the neat things I have found there since I discovered it. I was there as a member of the U.S. Army Element from March 1978 until the end. I was on the last plane taking the military members out of the country.  The flag was lowered by SSG D. J. Gemmecke (USMC). At that time I was a single E5 and was assigned to the Command Center at USTDC. If the assignment was still open, I'd still be there!

As I remember when you came in the front door, the Master of Arms office was straight ahead and the J1 was off to the right.  [Ray and I discussed this and I think the J-1 was to the left as you came in the front entrance.  Anybody else remember?]  If you went to the left you walked down a hallway and had to take a set of stairs to get up to where the J2, J3 and the Command Center where I worked. The USACC Comm Center was in the Basement of the building. The photoshop was still in a quonset hut out back of the main building.

There is a large hotel across the street from the entrance to the West compound on Min Zsu East Road. They built that hotel while I was there and it opened shortly after then President Carter made the announcement.  In the final days, they moved a large amount of the military that was left into that hotel so we were all in one place.  Nothing like putting all your eggs in one basket!  Across the street was a store, not sure what kind of place it was; could have been a restaurant or a bar but the name was "Carter" something.  Well, they changed the name shortly after the announcement...I found that hilarious at the time.

Seems to me that somewhere on the blog I read about a guy who got stabbed...His last name as I remember was Collins and he worked in the USACC comm center in the TDC Building.  I think you and I may have lived in the same hostel room...LOL  Imagine that!!  My houseboy loved Hennessey Cognac!

I think I've mentioned this before, but if any of you out there think you have a pretty good idea how the TDC building was laid out -- upstairs, downstairs and basement -- I'd sure like to hear about it.  If you could sketch out a floor plan as you remember it, then scan it and send me a copy, that would be great!  To be honest, I'd forgotten what even the exterior of the building looked like until people started sending me old photographs of it.

Building Layout -- Continued

I recently asked for input on the layout of the USTDC building and I received this email from Ed Bunting:

I was assigned to the photo lab in the quonset hut in '57-'58. The building next to it housed a 24" X 24" horizontal copy camera and darkroom. The back of the building had a printing press for our only lithographer's mate. The building behind that was the photo commander's office and a storeroom. The photo interpretation unit and crypto unit was in the basement of the main building. There was another quonset hut off to the left that doesn't show in the photo that was the Seabee unit. That is about all I can remember. I hope it helps.

Ed Bunting (PHG2)

I know that some offices were moved around over the years, but I don't remember the quonset hut when I was there in 1973-74. Does anyone recall if that's true and, if so, where the photo lab was moved to?

Also, I have no memory of a basement in the building. I believe that the photo interpretation guys (Larry and Pete, in my day) were up on the second floor somewhere. Does anyone recall where the basement stairs were?

TDC Floorplan

I often look at this photo and try to remember what the inside of the building looked like. The photo was probably taken sometime around 1960, and there were a few external changes over the years. For example, I don't remember that quonset hut to the right of the main building, nor the small building next to it when I was at TDC in 1973-74. I know the quonset was once the photo lab but I don't know what the other building was. The long canopy over the entrance was replaced with a permanent overhang, which you can see at the top of this blog.

I know that when I went in the main entrance, the J1's office was immediately to my left. Straight ahead was the Chief's office (BMC Gagne when I was there). It was almost like a ticket window kind of thing. Inside was a counter with a phone and a squawk box that was connected to the flag office. There was a small room behind the Chief's office that had a standard GI bunk for those pulling the watch at night.

If you turned left at the chief's office, there was a long hallway. I rarely went down that hallway, except when I had the watch and had to lower and lock the metal door at the end. I think the downstairs head was down that way but I'm not sure about that.

If you turned right at the chief's office, I believe the comm center was down there on the right. To get to my office (J12), you turned left toward the end of that hallway.

Just to the right of the chief's office was the stairway up to the second floor. My memory says that there were two or three steps up to the first landing, then several steps up to the right to the second landing and then two or three steps to the right again to the second floor.

I've always thought that to get to the flag office you turned left at the top of the stairs, where you had to go through the XO's office to get to either the general's or admiral's offices. But after looking at the photo, I'm wondering if those offices were over the main entrance.

I don't remember much else about the second floor of the building, except that the J-2 acquisition (?) shop was up there somewhere.

Okay, I've probably got most of this all wrong, so here's your chance to straighten me out. If you remember where the offices were located and who was in them, maybe you could draw a floorplan, scan it, and send it in. I know that some of the offices moved around over the years. I think my office was once a classified area. There was a steel door to the outside in the back that could only be opened from the inside.

USTDC Building Evolution

***UPDATE***

Good old Titojohn came up with a much better quality photo of the first photo below. He also learned that it was actually taken in 1949. As he pointed out, the lettering over the main entrance reads "Taipei Guest House" and the photo ID at the Life archive says that it was a "Guest house where exilers are temporarily put up."

I've replaced the image that was here so you can get a better look at it. Just click on the image to see the full size version. One other thing: The new photo reveals that what I thought was a park looks more like a storage dump. You can see what appear to be logs and other (building?) materials there.

***************

I don't think I've ever before seen this Life Magazine photograph of the USTDC building. It was taken somewhere around 1950. I would very much like to know what it was being used for at that time, since USTDC had not yet been established, but it's clearly the same building. The area that became the front parking lot looks like it might have been a garden or park at that time.


The next photo shows what the area looked like ten years later. The park, or whatever it was, became the front parking lot. The entryway walls were removed and the entrance was moved several yards further up the driveway.


The last photo shows the building as it appeared around the late 1970s. The shot was taken from the southwest corner of the main parking lot, with the main entrance at the center of the photo.

Among other changes, note that in the first photo there was no cover over the steps to the main entrance. In the second photo there was what appears to be a corrugated steel awning, and by the 1970s, when I was there, the awning was replaced by a permanent roof.

USTDC Building History

Taipeimarc sent me this 1945 map of the area around what later became the Headquarters Support Activity (HSA) East and West Compounds. Though I can't figure out the exact boundaries of either compound, there is some interesting stuff here.

The East Compound was mostly rice paddies in 1945 but the map shows a building at the approximate spot where USTDC was located. Below that map is a page from the 1977 phone directory that shows the shape of the TDC building (#19 near the top of the map). Allowing for the fact that I don't think the phone directory drawings are exactly right, it might be possible that the original structure was built by the Japanese. If that's the case, there would have been a number of modifications to the building after 1945.

I've also added an aerial photo that was taken somewhere around 1960 below that shows the shape of the building at that time. I think it's fairly close to the way it was when I arrived in 1973.

If the structure shown on the first map isn't the original USTDC building, then it must have been torn down by the Americans because I don't see any other structures near that location that would fit.

What do y'all think?

Enlisted Aides and Drivers

The USTDC Chief of Staff -- USAF Brigadier General Burrows, in my day -- had an enlisted aide. By regulation, an aide's job was to help maintain the general's quarters, assist at receptions and other social events, and pretty much do whatever else the general needed to have done. I wouldn't call them butlers, exactly, but that's probably close to how many of them served.

I don't recall the name of General Burrow's aide, but I remember him as a tall, thin, bookish looking guy with horn rim glasses. He once told me that his main job was to drive the general's wife wherever she needed to go. To avoid any possible legal or diplomatic issues resulting from an accident, he explained, she was not to drive anywhere in Taiwan.

I don't remember if General Burrows ever drove himself anywhere, but I do know that he was assigned a ROC enlisted man as his driver. Throughout the day, whenever the general had an appointment away from the building, BMC Gagne (or whoever was standing watch) would be alerted by the flag office via the squawk box to tell the general's driver to bring the car alongside. The driver was a nice guy who was pretty fluent in English, which I'm sure was a prerequisite for the job.

Anyway, back in those days the number of enlisted aides that any general had was based on his number of stars -- an aide for each star. The Air Force changed that rule a few years later and the officer then had to be a major general (two stars) before he got one aide. I don't know what the rules are today but I suppose they're something similar.

I assume the admiral (Vice Admiral Beshany, in my day) also had enlisted aides but I don't remember much of anything about them. He also had a ROC driver.

Memories, Real and Imagined

Two or three years ago, during a summer visit to my old hometown in Ohio, I had an opportunity to explore the school buildings where I spent my junior high and high school years. I hadn't entered either one since I left town to join the Air Force back in 1962.

A few things in both buildings were pretty much as I remembered them, but I was quite surprised to find that most of those empty hallways and classrooms bore only a slight resemblance to my memories of them. Both buildings were torn down this past summer, so I'm glad that I had a chance to see them before they were gone.

Though my memories of the USTDC building have dimmed over time, I suspect that many of the memories that remain are probably also flawed.

I remembered the main entrance to the building (which I think was officially called the quarterdeck) as very ornate with large columns. But a year or so ago when I received the photograph that's at the top of this blog, I saw that I had it wrong. I later received some earlier photos showing a long metal awning over that entrance, but it was gone by the time I arrived.

I remember that the ship's bell was on the right side of the porch just outside the entrance. Chief Gagne always brought his portable radio out a couple of minutes before 0800 each weekday morning so that he could hear the "beep-beep-beep-beeeep!" time signal to ensure that we raised the colors at precisely the right moment while he did the four repetitions of two bells. Things didn't always go as planned, as I wrote in this piece back in July, 2007.

I remember that the J-1's office (Director of Personnel - Admin) was to the left as you walked into the lobby. That was a Navy captain (0-6) when I was there in 73-74, but I don't remember his name. I believe he was a tall, thin guy with grayish hair.

Straight ahead, as you came in the main entrance, was the small room -- a sort of glassed in booth -- where BMC Gagne spent his days. That was also where we pulled watch at night and on weekends. There was a military bunk behind a wall in that room where we were allowed to sleep on watch between 2400 and 0500. The phones often rang at night (usually some idiot in the States who didn't know the time difference) so we often didn't get much sleep.

Just to the right of the chief's office was a stairway (with a fancy wooden railing?) that went up to the right. I remember almost nothing about the upstairs except that the admiral and the general had their offices up there. Admiral Beshany and Brigadier General Burrows filled those positions during most of my tour. Admiral Beshany was apparently a Washington Redskins fan because I remember seeing a helmet on a bookshelf in his office. I also remember the J-2 Acquisition Office was up there somewhere, where Larry Sherman and Pete Ayling worked (AF and Army NCOs and both great guys). Public affairs, Protocol and the Legal Office were up there somewhere and I assume that the J-2 (Intel) and the J-3 (Ops) were also.

Back downstairs and facing Chief Gagne's office, I turned right to head down the hall to my office. It seems to me that there was a ramp to the left off that hallway that went down toward my office, which was to the right at the bottom. John Cranford and Wayne Morris were Army guys with whom I shared the office. There was a big old Xerox 914 copy machine there during my time. I think the government must have bought thousands of them because I used them just about everywhere I was ever assigned.

Back to the left was my boss's office (Army LTC Blanton) where some Navy and Marine guys worked (Ken Royce, Larry Driscoll and two or three others whose names have gotten away from me). There were two secretaries; one was American (Helen) and the other was Chinese and I can't remember her name.

There was a back door to my office that opened to the outside, and it could only be opened from the inside. Not far from that door was the print shop where two or three Navy guys printed all the documents for the place. I remember that they had a paper cutter in there that could slice through a ream of paper like a hot knife through butter.

It seems to me that the floors on the lower level of the TDC building were all terrazo tile, but I don't remember if that was the case upstairs. I also don't remember anything about a basement, though I think there may have been one.

So that's about everything I remember about the USTDC building. Based on my experiences with my old schools, I'm probably wrong about much of it. I've never seen any photos of the inside of the building and I doubt that there are any around. Most of us don't take pictures of our workplaces. The building was torn down sometime after 1979 (does anyone know when?) so none of us can go back to see how things really were. I've often wondered if it was used for anything else between 1979 and whenever it was demolished.

What things about the building stand out in your memory?

The East Compound -- Today

Bill Thayer was an Army personnel specialist at Shu Lin Kou during the early 1960s. In 1973, he returned to Taiwan, this time to the HSA Compound (Signal Compound) as the Army personnel officer, where he provided personnel support to the Army folks at USTDC, MAAG and USACC (formerly STRATCOM).

He has provided a number of photos that he took during a return trip to Taipei in 2004, showing the area as it appears today, and his comments follow:

These photos are of the area which used to be the HSA East compound that contained the commissary, PX, theater, library, etc. The area shown in the photos also includes what used to be the Signal Compound which contained the softball field and the rear area of the US Taiwan Defense Command (USTDC).

The entire East Compound has been replaced by a park, as seen in the pictures. The TDC building has been replaced by an art museum.

The first photo is taken from approximately where the entry/exit front gate was for the HSA East Compound. It is now the entrance to the park. In the background, you can see the art museum and, looming above it, the Grand Hotel.

This photo was taken from about where the commissary stood.

This photo was taken from about where the old softball field and signal compound were located. You can see some folks taking a wedding photo shoot as well as the Grand Hotel in the background.

The next two photos were taken from the rear parking lot of what used to be TDC and is now the parking lot of the art museum. In these two photos are the only two remaining remnants that I found of the US military existence in Taipei. The first one shows the shack where guards used to stand to let people drive down into the TDC parking area from Shin Sheng North Road (also called Canal Road). The second shows the wall that runs from the guard shack along Shin Sheng North Road. The guard shack and wall are the only items that I recognize from my tour in the Signal Compound from January, 1973 through December, 1977 as the Army personnel officer. All other vestiges of the compounds have been eradicated and replaced by the park.

This last photo was taken about fifteen feet to the right of where the first photo was taken at the entrance to the park.

Original Gate?

This photo is of poor quality, but it's the only one I've ever seen like it. It's the main entrance to USTDC, but with a much different arch from what was there during my assignment in 1973-74. I also notice that there appear to be floodlights on either side of this arch, which weren't on the later version.

I believe the photo was taken sometime around 1956, though I understand from Stev and Sarj that there was no arch at all during the late fifties and early sixties. I think that perhaps they may have had to remove this arch to allow the passage of construction equipment when TDC was remodeled.

If anyone has any information on this structure, like when it was built, when/why it was removed or when the more ornate red arch was constructed, please let me know.