Taipei's American Style Homes on Yangmingshan

Many of the old American style homes which once dotted the hills of Yangmingshan, built in the 1950s as housing for US military personnel, have been removed.

Photograph courtesy of Yangmingshan Environmental Ethics Association

If you lived in one of these old houses during your tour, read through these pages to see if your old home is still standing. 

During the past three or four years, a group of Taiwan citizens has come together with the goal of finding ways to save the remaining Bank of Taiwan (BOT) homes from destruction.

I recently come across a web site, written in English, that contains some interesting articles which focus on the area and the old homes. There are articles of various subjects, all relating to the efforts to save the remaining old structures.

In one of the articles, a woman talks about her life as an "Ama" for American families residing in BOT housing on Yangmingshan.

Take a few minutes to bring yourself up-to-date with the on-going struggle and efforts to save the old structures.

History is worth preserving.  

The web site is HERE.

Perhaps you lived in BOT housing at another location on Taiwan.

We know there were American style homes in Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung,

We have no photos or information on Chiayi or Pingtung,  Can you help us?

There is a long article on the BOT homes in Hsinchu.  Read the article HERE

We also published an article on 20 House Compound, look down this article to see photos of the 20 House compound  HERE. 

Operation Homecoming - 40 Years Ago This Week.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Operation Homecoming.

Our men, prisoners of the North Vietnamese in North and South Vietnam, were released and flown aboard US C-141 and C-9 aircraft to Clark AB, Philippines and freedom.

 Taste the freedom,  at last - aboard a C-141 enroute to Clark AB.

Imagine the absolute Joy these men felt.  
You can't help but feel it yourself as you study these photos. 

The men wearing US military uniforms were "escort officers" accompanying the men from Hanoi.  They were along to take care of anything the men needed.

The first -141 out of Hanoi landed at Clark Monday 12 February 1973.

We begin with a news video from ABC News HERE.

(Editor: You have to watch the commercial before the ABC News Video begins )

Below clean film from Clark AB, February 13, 1973.

The US Air Force has an article on Operation Homecoming  HERE.

If you want to read the newspaper article, double click on the photo.

If you still want larger print, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and tap on the + key next to the backspace key.  Keep taping until the print gets large enough for you.

Continuation of the Stars & Stripes Front Page stories.

The base newspaper printed a few days before the release of our men took place.

An article in the above edition of the base paper reported,

"Exchange (Clark AB) short half million dollars last year."

 Oh my!  imagine that, $500,000. MISSING? Hummm.

The base newspaper published a "Supplement" on 16 February 1973.

This edition of the paper is crumbling from age.  

Clark base personnel and families turned-out in droves to see the men as they came off the aircraft and all along the bus route to the Clark Hospital.

The men went through a receiving line as they stepped off the aircraft, and

walked to one of those Ambulance type buses which ever so slowly drove over to the base hospital.

It was a very slow ride, as folks lined the streets cheering and waving to the men.

Our unit, the Quick Reaction Recovery Team, out of Okinawa, had our office a couple hundred yards from the hospital.  We were able to see all of the bus traffic pass by our door, and all of us were out on the street to wish the men a welcome home.  

It was emotional to stand there, watching the bus approach, seeing the men and knowing what they had gone through.

I think everyone who greeted these men at Clark, wanted to give them something more than we could express.  

All we could do was shout, wave our arms, salute, holler, jump up and down and smile as we had never smiled before.  I've never again experienced the feelings I felt on those days in 1973, as the men arrived.  You would see many of the men around the base. it was a special time, something wonderful.

For those who were at Clark sometime in your career, this will remind you of how the bus moved from the flightline to the hospital.

The hospital is the large black building just southeast of the 1973 on the map.

Our Okinawa QRT office was along the road off from the right side of the hospital.


Our team consisted of approximately 40 individuals, primary and backup personnel.  We came together sometime in late 1972 and began practicing for the release of our POWs in Southeast Asia.

We had no idea where the men would be taken for release. We set-up a complete team of personnel and equipment capable of going any where that our POWs showed up.

It was thought that the POWs held by the VC in the south might end up left out in a jungle clearing by themselves.  We had to assume and consider any and all possibilities of their release.

Personnel were chosen from a variety of fields, including, doctors and medics, communications and electronics, supply, food service, intelligence, translators and administration. Have I missed anyone.  It was a small but very capable group of men.

We loaded our equipment into wheeled trunks which could be quickly loaded and offloaded from aircraft or vehicles.

When word came in late January, we loaded our gear on a C-130 aircraft out of Kadena and flew into Clark to wait-out instructions.  Clark was designated as the receiving base for all Homecoming functions.

Our group set-up office close to the hospital, got 3 new vans from the Clark motor pool and began our operation at Clark.  Each team member had a walkie talkie assigned, so as to be immediately available for departure from Clark at a moments notice.  

Although I was not privy to discussions on the POW release news, I did hear the stories from our senior officers who attended meeting throughout the day.  It was a time of "waiting" for all of us.  

Life went on, we were restricted to Clark, so the temptations of off-base fun and games was quashed. We were given a BX card with a dollar amount of $25.00 limit.  Good enough to get most anything we needed.

I don't remember all of the folks who were in our quarters trailer, other than my boss, the ranking Sergeant Major of the team.  He was one smart man, who was from the old "brown shoe corps."  although we sometimes believed he was related to Sergeant Bilko. Bob Colvin retired in the Ft Huachuca area.   I found his obituary recently.

When news of the POW release was announced,  we knew our group was not needed as aircraft would fly direct to Hanoi and South Vietnam to pickup our men.

It was still undetermined if all of the know POWs would show up on the aircraft and we had no way of knowing if some other men might pop up at other locations in Asia.  Our group was told to sit tight and wait.

In the evening of 14 February 1973, our group was taken off alert and told to relax.

Some of our group jumped on the next aircraft to Okinawa and Japan, a few of the remaining members of our group were given the opportunity to take a few days of R&R up at Camp John Hay north of Clark AB.  

We flew up to Camp John Hay in a US Navy helicopter out of Cubic Bay.  I had never been up there and the ride was spectacular, looking out the tail of the aircraft.  

Just as we finished checking in, here came another Navy helicopter flying right over the cabin check-in building, attempting to land in what appeared to be a helo landing area.  As the bird came down, one of the rotters caught a pine tree and the helicopter fell immediately to the ground in a cloud of dirt and dust.

It was surreal...  Everyone from the area rushed to the downed bird helping the passengers up the hill and away from the crash scene. Fortunately, three or four of our medical team were with us and they immediately set-up a triage in the building and everyone from the crash was seen.  No serious injuries to anyone, although there were some strains and bruises. I believe all of the men on the crashed bird were off the USS White Plains, including the Captain. 

We stayed in the John Hay area for a few days and then returned to Clark to wrap up checking out.  We had to turn-in everything we had out on loan from the various units on Clark.  Also, we had all of our supplies, including perishable food and drinks to dispose of.  We had everything locked-up at the MAC cargo area behind locked screened rooms.  Our team had a little bit of everything.  

After we packed up everything and determined how much we had, we arranged for a C-130 ride back to Kadena.  The bird was not due for a couple of days, so we had time to shop for monkeypod ware and other Filipino goods from the shops outside the gate at Clark.

We were soon back home in Okinawa.  It was a once in a life time experience.  Although we were never called upon, we were well trained and ready for any contingency.

These are some of the men who were with the Okinawa Quick Reaction Team at Clark.

Other members of our team were with us at Clark earlier, but were sent home because they were no longer needed.

I'm the guy center front row in both pictures

The Clark Hospital is the white building just to our backs.

The other thing I remember about Clark was the NCO Club.

I thought they had wonderful food.  Always a great menu and the food was prepared well.

The stag bar always had a big-stake poker game on-going, day and night.

I often wondered if the retired guys who lived outside of Clark spent the better part of their lives playing cards at the NCO Club.

All in all, Clark was one heck of a great place to be assigned.  (Other than Taiwan)

 I found this in a box in my garage.  I'm not the type of person who displays these type of things on the walls of my home. 

 It was something the Sergeant Major wanted each of us to have, of course we had to purchase one. 

Our group was never used, but it wasn't because we weren't ready!

The old saying, hurry-up and wait.

Here's an interesting page from the Stars & Stripes

The Stars & Stripes - What we read back in the day.....
Wonder who has those Taipei telephone numbers today..

If you were involved in Project Homecoming please leave a Comment below, or you can Email us at Taipeiairstation@yahoo.com

Cheers my friends....

This San Miguel's for You.

(Back in the day, if the label didn't say, San Miguel Brewery Philippines, it wasn't fit to drink)

FOLLOW-UP  - 40 years after Homecoming

https://youtu.be/LemllfcAY8A

The Pensive Hour

More thoughts from Joe Brooks

     No matter what the season, we often find a reason for lifting ourselves from the couch of ease and wending our way unto the presence of the Pharaoh’s.

     It was with this sense that I entered the other day into the garden at my friend’s home and saw the beauties of nature unrolled.  It was a pleasure, just once in a while, to become one of the gifted-treasured unto heaven and walk among the blossoms of spring; to touch the budding promise of eternity and laugh at what the Romans called, “the fear of happiness.”

     The day had been cloudy and threatening of rain, the hour of the “Sheep” had passed and nothing promised to make the day become more cheerful.  In my friends’ reasoning it was simple that I should be happy so he invited me to visit his home.

 

     As I passed along the walks, I saw the flowers blooming with a promise that was eternity; that budding promise, swollen with the flush of life.  Within the ponds the tiny, golden fish flickered back and forth from shadow into brilliant light until they adorned themselves with incandescence of rainbow flame.  Watching them I envied, for the moment, their contentment to be confined within the narrow bend.

     I talked with my friend and we wondered of the past days and the coming hours for our beliefs.  What of the hope of freedom and enactment, the prayers of liberation, the dreams of self-acclaim.  This tiny emerald dream within its pearl-jade setting was more than just an island, so we said.  This land must be an inspiration for the greatness of mankind, the assurance of the oppressed that someday they, like us, might wallow in the trough of happiness.

     And as we chanced to past, just once again the pond of golden fish, I saw one – that renegade – jump and try to flee the borders of his home.  He lit upon the mossy bank, and in his landing flattened two or three small ferns which grew among the lichen green of lacy fen upon the stones.  

      And in the wake there followed others, bravely defiant of the boundaries which life had set upon their way of life, seeking a moment’s daring; a short and garish span of elementary heaven among the foreign fields which hemmed them in.

     And watching them, I began to know the reason for this feeling.  Here was all of mankind, hemmed within the dry and brackish water of our daily life and feeling, striving, wanting something which is always beyond our touch.  This, then, is our life.  Passing back and forth unto our daily work; our hemisphere a bleak and barren landscape of nights and days.

     But there are those among us who are daring, who will chance the fate and breast the currents of the day, and leaping forth will land among the strange and untrod banks that border our narrow lives.  There are among us who have visions and dreams of other ways.

     How lucky we are for these, the pioneers of our society, who knowing our restrictions, strive with might and life to thrust themselves through the barriers of their existence into those wild and untried fields of other life.

     This then is progress; civilization upon the march.  It is our purpose and our background; the long and sorry history of man, that measured inch by inch upon the printed page, becomes a soliloquy of waste, but taken in the whole reflects the progress of the ages.

     These several hundred words or so,  are my emotions penned upon the visit through a friend’s spring garden walks.  They are nothing but impressions, and as such are vague and elemental as a touch of fog that kisses the curtains of our open windows upon a cold and elemental night.

     I love to walk in gardens, for there we find a digest of our lives, comparable to only that which challenges us within our days.  I love to walk in gardens, but sometimes I find it frightening to know my limited existence, don’t you?

Reprinted with permission. 

COPYRIGHT 1955 BY JOE BROOKS
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Joe Brooks wrote a column for the China Post newspaper in the mid 1950s.

  This story and other articles found in this Blog came from his book, 

"From A Yankee Notebook in Taiwan"

Find more information about Joe Brooks and this series of articles HERE

Please leave your Comments below, or e-mail me ~~   Taipeiairstation@yahoo.com

Old 1961 Silent Film - Formosa Celebrates Freedom From Communism

You might enjoy watching the 1961 Double 10 celebration parade in Taipei.

The film is black and white and has no sound.

Watch it HERE.