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Tainan Air Base |
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My bride of 40 years as we were waiting to board a very plush Navy C-47 on the way to Hong Kong for R&R. The C-47 was flown out of Tainan Air Base Naval Air Facility Det. Tango |
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It’s Tea time. We are on the train en-route to Taipei from Tainan. Look at that heavy drinking glasses with a glass top to keep the tea warm and also to help keep it in the glass as the train sways down the tracks. (Did you have lunch in the dining car?) |
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Hostel on Taipei Air Station where wives waited to have their babies. The facilities were not adequate at Tainan, so wives came to Taipei three weeks before their due dates. Our oldest was born at the Navy Hospital in Taipei, December 31, 1971. |
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Editor’s Note: I saved this photograph for last because it touched my heart. What a wonderful picture! It captures the beauty of the children. What could be more exciting than riding the children’s Carousel on a lazy afternoon? I suspect this was a special day for these children. How often would the Carousel visit the neighborhood? It had to be a joyous time in their lives that day. Spend a few moments looking at the children. While the young girl is waiting her turn, she watches the ride operator make a sewing repair, looks like he is threading the needle. The 2 older boys standing in back are deep in conversation, another boy is hanging on to the ride chair. The children by the front tire are jumping around, maybe to a tune coming from the music box on the ride. And, if you look closely, you will see 3 children with only their legs showing. Two are standing to the side of the ride operator and one can be seen next to the rear tire wearing yellow trousers. 10 children, all waiting their turn to ride on the Carousel. A day in the life of a child in Tainan in the early 1970s…. Wonderful….. The photograph was taken in Ed Wexler’s housing compound. |
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Thank you Ed Wexler for taking time to sort through your slides and then converting them to digital pictures. If someone else has photos or slides of your tour in Taiwan, why not sort through them and prepare a few for our Taipei Air Station web site. If you enjoyed these pictures, just think how much other folks will enjoy seeing your photographs. Special thanks to a friend in Alabama who has assisted me so many times in cleaning and bringing back to life many old photographs. The photos in this post were originally slides taken by Ed Wexler in the late 1960s early 1970s. Ed had the slides converted into digital JPEG files last month and he sent the files to me. I worked on them with Photoshop Elements, trying to bring out the best possible results for posting on the web page. My work was acceptable, but no where near what they originally looked like when taken. I posted the photos after my work with them was complete as the initial release to the web. After the Tainan pages went up on the net, I asked my friend Bruce if he was interested in trying to clean up and bring out more of the coloring and sharpness in the these photos. He graciously said yes; I sent the files to him. The outcome is what you see in these photographs today. I’ve replaced every photograph I worked up, with copies Bruce sent to me after he cleaned them up. Thank you Bruce for taking so many hours of hard work to bring to life, in their original colors, these wonderful photographs of Tainan AB as it was, so many years ago.
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