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TAIPEI AIR STATION |
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James R. Zant Remembers…. Page 2.
Those Chinese women in their high collar dresses split up to mid thigh on the sides were the most gorgeous women I’d ever seen. I fell in love with the first one I saw. And the second. And the third. And the fourth. I’d seen them in a comic strip, I think it was “Terry and The Pirates,” and I’d seen them in the movies, but to seen anything like that live before.
Hsinchu was a bright and bustling place at night and Chinese music was every where. It was everything I thought I would see in Tokyo, but didn’t. We GI’s didn’t have any trouble getting around in Hsinchu. The people were as helpful and friendly as they could be, and they wouldn’t try to take advantage of you even though you didn’t know the language.
I went to town with Freddie a number of times. Freddie was an important man somehow. He had connections. A week or two before our 90 day mission was up I went to town with him and the driver to meet with a well-to-do Chinese man at a restaurant. Now to have dinner at a real Chinese restaurant is quite an experience. There was Freddie and me and our driver, and the “man” and his driver. Five of us in all. There were two attendants whose job it was to bring us finger bowls and towels and any thing else we wanted. There were several servers who served us in courses. I don’t remember what all we had, but I remember courses of chicken and pork. I thought at first, “These are mighty small portions,” but they kept coming and after a while I could eat no more. There was any kind of vegetable and fruit you could imagine on that table when they got through.
The drivers just listened and listen is all I could do. I’d ask Freddie a question every now and then during the meal and he’d tell me what was said, but I never could figure out why we were there. Then they brought out the finger bowls and towels again and I thought we were through. And the “man” asked Freddie and the drivers something in Chinese and Freddie indicated his concurrence and his driver indicated his reluctant concurrence but our driver declined, indicating so with his palms turned. So they brought out this little plain looking bottle of clear liquid and served the willing participants in dainty looking little bowls that looked like it would hold about as much as a shot glass. It looked like a bowl they drank sake from in Japan.
The “man” seemed to ignore me in the toast and I was feeling a little offended, seeing as how I was there to save his country and all that. So they began to drink, just sipping along, and almost as an afterthought the “man” asked Freddie to ask me if I’d like some. Freddie said to me, “He wants to know if you’d like some.” I really didn’t want any but I thought I’d been slighted. So I said, “Of course.” I’d had sake before and I thought it was supposed to be the strongest thing they had in the Far East. And sake wasn’t near as bad as a drink of North-Florida moonshine I tried when I was a teenager. (And I was only 20 now!) So they poured me a little and, following their etiquette I raised the little cup and just wet my tongue. I discovered that this stuff had fumes. Just that little bit got in my nose and burned and made my eyes water. I could see why our driver declined so emphatically.
I was too embarrassed to admit to a cultural mistake and I couldn’t breathe anyway. So I just sat there silently getting back my breath and acting as if nothing had happened while they kept talking. I thought maybe it was like whiskey and if I got a swallow down quickly everything would be alright. So after a while I got up enough courage to try it again, and the same thing happened. There was no way to get a sip in my mouth, let alone get a swallow down my throat. I just sat there and marveled at that cup.
When Freddie finished his business we started back to the base. On the way I asked Freddie to stop and let me buy a bottle of what ever it was they were drinking. It was smaller than a coke bottle. I wanted it for a souvenir to take back to the states. So he did and I took it back to my tent and put it away.
At the end of our TDY tour Tiger Wong’s wife came to bid us farewell, telling us how much their government appreciated what we did. It was a moving event for me. I had grown to love the Nationalist Chinese. She gave each of us three little certificates we could frame.
I remember a S/Sgt named Pettyjohn and one named Gist. When we broke camp to return to Johnson they put us up in a youth hostel for a day or two on the Chinese side (the south side according to my reckoning) of the base to wait for a flight back to Japan. It was so comfortable there at the hostel I wanted to stay forever. We actually slept on mattresses with springs. So to keep this bottle of what-ever-it-was safe from breaking I set it on top of a chest of drawers they had in the room. And I roomed with an old staff sergeant they called Dutch, because he was from Holland. He had blond hair and was graying a little and he had a slight under bite. He didn’t talk much, he just he smiled a lot. He was reputed to have a high tolerance for strong drinks. I made the mistake of telling Dutch that I had the most powerful stuff in the world in that little bottle. We’d been at the hostel for about a day and a half when they called us guys from Johnson to base operations to be scheduled for a flight back. I was gone about an hour. When I got back and was going to my room through the lobby to get my gear, I thought I overheard somebody say Dutch cussed the major out. I got to my room and Dutch and my bottle were gone. But let me hasten to add that I never saw an airman at Hsinchu with too much to drink
We left the hostel and flew back on a CAT airline C-46 to Tachikawa by way of Okinawa. The trip to Okinawa was the roughest I’ve ever been on. I almost got sick and a few of the guys did get sick. The seats were canvas and down each side facing the center. It seems it was designed to whiplash you.
I got back to Johnson it was a few days before Christmas to find they’d changed the MPC. I had over five dollars worth of worthless money, and my bicycle was gone. One good thing though. They’d moved me to the west bay and I was bunking by the best friend I ever has in the Air Force, A/2c Clarence P. Tavares from Honolulu, Hawaii.
I was due some TDY pay but it never came. So First Sgt. Bowers sent me to group HQ to see what was the matter. The clerk told me they had me down as being AWOL. That didn’t upset me too much, because I still had that one set of orders! I learned from the clerk I could get some time cut off my tour for being in Taiwan for over 90 days. So I told him I wanted to do that. When Sgt. Bowers got the order resetting my MOT date, boy! Was he mad. I told him he sent me there and the subject just came up. He put me on guard duty that very day.
One morning at sunup while I was on guard duty I got a picture perfect view of Mt. Fuji for the first time. It was only about 50 miles away but the atmosphere was such that I never saw it very clear. That February morning it was cool and crisp and the pink rays of the sun on the mountain was beautiful. I had a lot of time to think on guard duty. And I realized that they had me AWOL because in all the excitement I had forgotten to sign back in from my three day pass to Tokyo!
THE AIR BATTLE AS I SAW IT When we got to the our camp at Hsinchu the first thing the major in charge told us is, “Boys, when those 50-cal quads start going off don’t get excited.” I realized then they expected an invasion right close by. The Taiwan Straits in the China Sea were just a short distance away. There were no F-104’s based there but every few days a couple would come over and do something I thought was dangerous. They’d come in from the west really low over the runway as fast as they could and fly over the runway and climb out. The first time or two they did that I heard them but couldn’t see them. The sound would be just coming to the west end and they would be climbing out at the east end. You had to look ahead of the sound to see them. I figure they must have been checking out the defense system in some way because surely they couldn’t be doing something that risky for the fun of it.
One day I was sitting leaning back on the wall of the kitchen reading an article in the Stars and Stripes that reported the China was protesting the U.S. arming the ROC planes with some new weapon. The reporters asked Ike about it and he told them he didn’t simply know what they were talking about. One day the major brought over a couple of journalists and they took a picture of me climbing a power pole. That’s as close as the press got to us. It was really something seeing those ROC F-86 Sabers loaded go out and come back with no drop tanks, no missiles, and three black streaks of burnt gun powder down the sides. They looked tired and naked I understand some of the fighting took place over the straits but we couldn’t hear them.
The Americans didn’t get into it but they did have four F-86Ds (like the one you see on Ashley Street in Valdosta, Ga.) armed with rockets and two of them on the hot pad all the time. We had a carpenter, I believe he was from Johnson, but I didn’t know him there, who built a toilet for the people manning the hot pad and enclosed it with canvas. One day a puff of wind hit it and left one of the F-86D pilots stranded atop it.
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