More photos from Captain Ralph Henricks,
USAF, the Base Procurement Officer at Tainan Air Base from November 1967 to December 1969.
Today, photos taken in and around the city of Tainan. 1967-1969
Be sure to click or double click on each photo for a larger easy to see photo
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| Small suburban Railroad Station - A welcome smile from station personnel.. | | |
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| Curious boys, something interesting behind the fence. |
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| What are these goods? More youngsters have stopped to watch something. |
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| Activity outside a Tainan Temple. |
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| A cold early morning in Tainan |
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| A busy business day in Tainan. The Palace Hotel offers a great street view with a large picture window on the 4th floor. |
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| School boys on their way to an event. Anyone have an idea where this group was headed? |
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| Same group of boys, arriving or returning? |
Typhoon Coming! Trees beginning to bend as typhoon approaches. The building is the Tainan Air Base Dispensary (small hospital.)
Captain Henricks talks about his family residence in Tainan:
"We lived in "20 House Compound," which was a military off-base housing complex for enlisted and officers assigned to Tainan Air Base. It adjoined the American School (K-12) and was owned by the Bank of Taiwan, I believe. It was a very favorable place to live and we were very fortunate to snag a place there (even if it was House # 13.)
I asked Captain Henricks about the typhoon that struck Tainan while he was living there:
"As I recall, the locals didn't think it was much of a typhoon -- but we surely did! It mostly took out trees, denuded a lot of them and took off some ill constructed roofs ( I believe no damage was incurred to the military buildings -- could be wrong, but it wasn't a big operation for the base to clean up the damage, so we didn't have much of any contracted work to do just for that event."
"It hit in the middle of the night, and our 'houseboy' Chuan Bing Han and I were out in our skivvies and sandals in a downpour of rain that was like being in a warm shower! We had to 'batten down' the hatches' on the house in an attempt to keep from having any broken windows. (We succeeded.) We lost the 20 foot avocado tree in our back yard and a lot of limbs down all over the base and town, but very little property damage, as I mentioned above. The Air Asia maintenance area on the north end of the base was fully loaded with battle damaged aircraft from 'Nam', tied down nose to tail, wingtip to wingtip. Nary a one was lost or came unmoored. Now, THAT was a miracle and the result of great planning by the Detachment Commander, Lt. Colonel George Yoo, USAF."
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| Avocado tree down at House #13. |
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| Additional damage on the grounds of "20 House Compound." |
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| Rain pouring down as the last of the broken tree limbs are hauled off. |
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| Lots of typhoon debris around the area. |
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| "My son,seen here, hiding his eyes from the strong morning son, is embarking on a pedicab ride out of our carport at House #13. We still have that pedicab. My son now has children of his own about the same age he was when this photo was taken in Tainan." | | |
Thank you Captain Henricks for sharing all of your wonderful photographs.
I hope you enjoyed our peek back into some sights of Tainan in the 1960s.
If you have old photographs and/or stories of your time in Taiwan, please contact us.
We would be pleased to display your old photos and remembrances on this blog
9 comments:
Brings back a lot of memories. I was stationed at Tainan AB Jul 66-Oct 67 in the Fire Dept.
The group of school boys was probably heading to Confucius Temple on Nan-Men Road to attend a ceremony.
I think the first picture is the Ching Shui train station which is on the coastal line near Feng Yuan.
Photo 1
Chin Shuei train station（清水火車站）.
Chin Shuei, a town in Taichung County（台中縣）. About 100 killometers north to Tainan.
Photo 3
A shop selling Suzuki motorcycles.
Photo 5
Headquarters of Chong Hwa Daily News （中華日報）.
Chong Hwa Daily News, a Tainan-based newspaper, was one of two major newspaper run by Kuo Ming Dong （國民黨） in those days.
Today, it is still run by Kuo Ming Dong but is way downsized than what it was in 1960's.
Photo 6
Chiang Hwa Commercial Bank（彰化銀行）, one of the three major commercial banks run by Taiwan Provincial Government for nearly 50 years.
It had been privatized in early 1990's but Department of Finance is still the biggest shareholder.
Photo 8
There are three commercial signboards hanging on front side of the building.
First one 「王森煥律師」means 「Lawyer Wang Sang Huan」.
Second one「南山人壽保險公司」means 「Nan Shan Life Insurance Company」. It is still running nowadays as one of Taiwan's major insurance companies.
A little bit far ahead, there is a building with a flagpole. It's a police station.
I really appreciate what the blog host has done for keeping Taiwan history alive.
Wang Chun
More great photos! Number 9 (B&W photo of a building on base) is actually the TAB dispensary. At least I believe that was what it was officially called, but it's a misnomer: it was actually a small 6-bed hospital with three doctors and two nurses assigned. I had the unfortunate experience of having spent a night in one of those beds and my wife was a Red Cross volunteer there one day each week.
thank you for these great pictures.It brings back a lot of memories.Ilived near the tainan american school when I was a child(more than 30 years ago). I was always curious what the scenery inside and envy the surrounding . thank you for your contribution
for taiwan and tainan.
PHOTO 8
It's here now!
http://goo.gl/maps/C2Tsn
The little boys are going to Confucius Temple.
It's a customs .Wish them study well!
I posted at wrong place, re-post here.
One of picture showing a group of students walking on the street. They are heading to "孔廟", cause they had a right turn far from the line and that is the location of "孔廟". The pitcure was shutten from the direction of "湯德章記念公園" toward "孔廟". I was born in Tainan, and got the education at the junior school aside the " 孔廟" from 1967 to 1972.
"孔廟"=Temple of Confucius
"湯德章記念公園" =Tang De-Jhang Memorial Park
Today sciene:
https://maps.google.com.tw/maps?q=%E5%8F%B0%E5%8D%97%E5%B8%82%E4%B8%AD%E8%A5%BF%E5%8D%80&hl=zh-TW&ie=UTF8&ll=22.991583,120.204999&spn=0.00004,0.009334&sll=23.141698,120.251273&sspn=1.053136,1.194763&brcurrent=3,0x346e767276251953:0x8b67fb153133b0d5,1,0x346e7ccc953ffe13:0xd47f4caaa5dc764e&brv=27.1-cfcb28d3_7d169ccb_7b913f65_cd3b751f_fa22d089&hnear=%E5%8F%B0%E5%8D%97%E5%B8%82%E4%B8%AD%E8%A5%BF%E5%8D%80&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=22.99139,120.204969&panoid=6GpQBm920j3st11
Hi Ralph, we were at Tainan, AB at the exact same time!! In fact, your wife worked with me as the Base Librarian while I was the Personnel Services Officer. I spent the second year as the Chief of Administration, working in Colonel Grady's office. I remember you working on your genealogy background, and of course the VW bug. You were good friends with the Base Civil Engineer and his family. All my pictures are slides, which have faded over time. Tainan was a GREAT two-year assignment. Hope all is well....Robert Ward, (Captain, USAF).
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