Taipei Air Station - 1966 - - - " What you have in the end are memories"......... Photo Courtesy of Richard Reesh.

Monday, August 9, 2010

What Remains of Taipei Air Station?

This aerial view of Taipei Air Station was taken in 1975.

During the past couple of months, I've ridden the MRT (subway) to the old site of Taipei Air Station a number of times to look around. Every time I walked the streets in and around the area I discovered something new.

I took many photographs of the buildings and area. Each day, back on the MRT and returned home to down load the pictures into my computer and review them for posting to this Blog.

It became a difficult undertaking to go through all of the photos and come up with a few to post on the Blog which showed the buildings as they look today. It seemed impossible to present the area as it looks today in a few photos.

As I was watching a video on
You Tube, it occurred to me that I could really show Taipei Air Station just as it is today, if I used You Tube. Everyone else was posting all kinds of video, why not me? I decided to take a video and see how it looked.

During a trip to Keelung the next day, I took video of the old port area. Many of you were in Keelung to pickup your POVs after they arrived from the Oakland. I remember my trip to Keelung in January 1966 to pickup my 1965 Mustang.

When I returned home from Keelung that evening, I downloaded the video onto my laptop and reviewed it. It looked pretty good. I decided to up-load it onto You Tube. I was already a member of
You Tube by virtue of having this Blog Account. It took just about 5 hours to up-load the Keelung video to You Tube using ADSL from Taipei. Here is the Video of Keelung Harbor area, which was very close to the Keelung Main Railroad Station.

The rest is history... When I saw the quality of the video I had taken in Keelung, I was convinced that a Video Tour of Taipei Air Station would be my next project.

Today, in the series of videos listed below, I want to take you on a visual tour in and around the remaining buildings of Taipei Air Station.

Many who visited or were stationed at TAS in the mid 1970s and later will remember these buildings.

The buildings that remain today are here because they were returned to National Taiwan University (NTU) sometime after we closed-up shop in Taiwan.

As I remember, Taipei Air Station was originally constructed on farm land belonging either to the Agriculture Department of NTU or the Taiwan Department of Agriculture.

NTU has bulldozed some of our old buildings, constructed new buildings and some of our old TAS structures are still in use by NTU. One is being used as a Children's Nursery and School.

These 4 videos cover what's left of TAS. Not much remains, but our hand is still seen today in these structures, particularly in the old Chapel, which is now some type of Arts building.

I hope you enjoy these videos. If you worked at TAS from the mid 1970s on, you will recognize the buildings.

If you would like me to take videos of other spots in Taipei, please add a comment below.

I will also take video of other cities as I visit them and will try to find what's left of other sites and bases, BUT, I need to hear from you, pointing out the spots you would like to see again. If you could give me the coordinates on Google Earth I can probably find the site.

It has been my pleasure to present these videos for each of you who read my Blog.

I'm having the time of my life walking the streets and trying to explain what you're seeing on these videos. I know I have made some verbal errors in the films, please excuse my mistakes.

Here we go -
Taipei Air Station as it looks in the Summer of 2010:

Video of the club and barber shop, we look outside and
inside the building....

Video of the old 327th AD Headquarters Building, I walk up three floors and down a couple of halls to see what's there today.....

Video from the 10th Floor of the School of Business Management, looking out the west window

Video from the 10th Floor of the same building, looking northwest.

Four video's totaling about 30 minutes, viewing the old area as it looks today.


I'll be looking for your comments and ideas for more videos.

Tsi Gen -