Taipei Air Station 1968 - 2165th Communication Squadron Personnel Office - UPDATED

I have often wondered what the percentage of personnel assigned at Taipei Air Station belonged to the 2165th Communications Squadron...

I was one of the men who staffed the Personnel Shop in the Comm Squadron at Taipei Air Station.  I saw the manning and assignment documents, but I don't recall the numbers, it's been nearly 45 years since I departed from my assignment in Taipei.

I visited my old unit again a couple of times in the 1970s and have spent many months in Taipei since I retired. 

I do know that our unit had varied responsibilities both on the physical grounds of Taipei Air Station and extensively in the surrounding area where many personnel worked with the CAF in Joint Operation offices.

My responsibilities in the Comm Squadron Personnel office were varied.

I took care of Separations and Reenlistment's, reassignments leaving Taiwan, leave papers, computer rosters updating (computers were just being introduced in the US Air Force personnel area) and every month we would receive a number of the large "print-outs" from our HQ at Wheeler AFB in Honolulu.  It was a pain to update these rosters every month, but we did our best.  They had all kinds of stuff on those original print outs.  In addition to having to update the rosters for our folks at Taipei Air Station, we sent the rosters to our detachments at Shu Linkou, CCK (the old Kung Kuan AB)  and Tainan for our personnel folks at the detachments to get their rosters up-dated each month.  

In those early days of computer rosters, everyone complained.  The problems mainly were this:  You updated the roster with new information written over the top of the old information on the print-out, we gathered-up the rosters and returned them to Hawaii via Air Mail and the information updates never got into the computer, so the next month's "new" roster has the same old information.  

You can imagine the blood pressure of the guys having to update a new roster each month when last month's roster updates were never posted into the computer...  It drove me nuts for months and months.  Finally, Hawaii began to catch up and soon, things smoothed out.

Today, we're looking at the Personnel Office of the 2165th Communications Squadron at Taipei Air Station.

Some of Taipei Air Station - photo courtesy of Richard Reesh.

The "Cotton Building" home of the 2165th Communications Squadron offices and where some of our communication related facilities were located, in the two story building with the antenna on the roof.

The Personnel Office was in one large room, situated in the area under the silver antenna, the left side outcropping on the second floor of the large building.

Here, we're standing inside the security fence on the 2165th Comm Sq grounds.

I believe this photograph was taken in 1966, on the occasion of someone leaving Taiwan,, probably the Captain on the center left side of the photograph. I don't recall his name. 

I remember a couple of names of the individuals in this photo, forgive me, it's been 46 years ago since this photo was taken and I have not had contact with any of these folks since.

The man standing under the sign on the left side is Peter Barrera.  On the right side, in the center is CW4 Thomas, our Personnel Office at the time and I'm standing next to him, wearing sun glasses.  

We had a great group of folks in our personnel office.  

 

As you entered our personnel shop upstairs, on the right side of the office were two desks.   

On the right, sits, Jan Walker, a man who pushed out reams of paper, his "flash flip of typing through stacks of paperwork" can be seen in his right hand.  So fast, it's out of focus.

Here, just in the right center of our office, our Personnel Officer, CW4 Kay. I believe Mr. Kay owned a Audi or BMW, he was a believer in Michelin tires, a name new to me at the time.

 He was a knowledgeable and wonderful man.  He knew his stuff and ran a tight ship.

Another view of the center area of our office. Here you see an old manual typewriter.

 
























Here's my old desk, in the left hand corner of the room.  The man with glasses, sitting at the desk was the NCO who replaced me. 

I special ordered that desk lamp. It was dark in that corner of the office and hard to read my paperwork.  The large windows let in little light.  They usually had the blinds closed because of the heat from the sun.

Standing, looking over some paperwork, is our Reenlistment and I believe possibly our Safety NCO.

These office photographs were taken in June 1968, as I checked-out of the unit for the last time.

I know there were many men who passed through this office through the years.  If you sat in one of these chairs, or have thoughts of your time in the 2165th Comm Sq or units before or after the mid 1960s,  please leave us a comment below or Email us.

UPDATE:  22 January 2013

   

I came across this small aluminum piece in a box of storage stuff.

I believe it probably fell off an old Zippo style lighter that was passed out by our Squadron Safety Office.  

Those safety folks were always nosing around. They would pass out goodies such as this when the showed up unannounced in your work area

  Safety First!