Excerpts from Letters to Mom in italics.
AG2 Stephen Fehr, USN
NSGA Box 201
APO San Francisco 96360
31 August 1965
I finally arrived here in Taipei this past Friday the 27th but couldn't write because I didn't know my return address. Today I just about got all checked in and moved from the city to the air station on the mountain at Shu Lin Kuo about a forty minute bus ride away. The base is run by the Air Force and is one of the nicest I've seen.
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Steve had heard of Formosa from high school, especially during his World Cultures class where he was first exposed to the New York Times on a regular basis, and knew the island was close to China and was then sometimes called by its Chinese name, Taiwan. The Portuguese during their occupation in the early 16th century called it La Isla Formosa or "beautiful island." Fehr was very much aware that Presidents Truman and Eisenhower had pledged the 7th Fleet muscle to patrol the Formosa Strait to protect the fleeing free Chinese Nationalists in 1949, and thereafter from the frequently threatened invasion by the Communists.
Taiwan lies less than 100 miles off the coast of China making it a convenient location for a listening post for electronic communications intelligence. The island is about 240 miles long with a width about 85 miles. It parallels the mainland coast, but tilted slightly off a N-S axis a tad to the NNE. The climate is subtropical with hot and humid summers, especially in the lowlands of Taipei, the capital, surrounded by mountains. The typhoon season ran or rained from September to November. At least 70 percent of the island is hilly and extremely mountainous with the Central Mountain Range running up the spine. A busy railway connected the bustling southern port of Kao-Hsiung with the capital in the north, Taipei. Taipei, home to one-twelfth the total population, was not too distant, about 15 miles, from the north coast and the port city of Keelung (Chi lung).
The Shu Lin Kuo Air Station was perched upon a mountain top northwest of Taipei. It was ideally situated for the U.S. to plant an antenna farm, an array of antennas to listen to electronic signals, in the mid 1950s. Taipei, and the best looking girls in the Far East, was a 40-minute bus trip away. Fehr soon learned to sleep sitting up despite being jerked around, often violently, on that morning up, evening back down commute. Sometimes, a couple guys would hire a taxi if they were in a hurry or missed the free bus.
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As the blue Air Force bus descended on its regular schedule toward the capital carrying its happy mixed cargo of NSGA (Naval Security Group Activity) liberty seekers and companion off-duty Air Force 6987th Security Group trick workers, the scenery changed dramatically with the decrease in elevation. Atop LinKuo Mountain, beyond the antenna farm, there were immaculately kept rows of peanut plants and fields of tea leaves. As the bus rolled down gradient, there were villages of brown huts or small houses adjoining a clear, shallow mountain stream maybe ten feet wide. Women would be washing clothes on rocks by the edge next to others brushing their teeth. Steve would often see a baby being dangled over the bank adding a tiny bit to the stream flow.
A few minutes later, the growing stream changed hue due to its multi-purpose use as a waste disposal system for a textile factory. Closer to Taipei it would become a bright orange subjected to more industrial abusers. Water buffalo and straw hatted women worked the adjoining flooded rice paddies. It was an interesting, moving panorama.
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Down in the valley floor air pollution was a problem. In that basin called home by over a million densely packed Chinese and Taiwanese, the main source of electrical power for the capital was bituminous coal - it could not have been a low-sulfur variety. You didn't always notice the air pollution until you blew your nose and the hanky turned black. It was pervasive; worse during some hot days when low clouds and an inversion trapped the haze. Many people wore white hospital style gauze masks. The fuel of choice to heat the woks and hibachis was charcoal which contributed to the Taipei haze. Regardless, it was a great, much envied, duty station!
The roads were crowded with red Datsun taxicabs, bicycles, and trucks cruelly packed with bleeding hogs or top-heavy with wire crates of live chickens, feathers flying off in the draft. In the melee of traffic mix were the energy efficient pedicabs that the authorities wanted to eradicate because they made Taiwan look too backward. And there were numerous private cars, buses, motor cycles with at least one passenger, ox carts - damn near anything - and all jammed together in a chaotic mess. It was interesting-random, riotous order.
At the multi lane intersection of Min Chuan Road and Hsin Shang Road, which divided Taipei into quadrants, it was not unusual to see a Chinese bus in the far right lane crisscrossing in front of another bus in the far left lane of a four lane street to execute a left turn. It brought new meaning to the old expression about the hilarious look of a Chinese fire drill.