Shulinkou Air Station – Part 1 of 3 (early 1960s) – S5-E37
It was one of Taiwan’s most secretive Cold War outposts: Shulinkou Air Station (樹林口空軍情報站), a joint-service U.S. intelligence base perched on a misty plateau west of Taipei. Built in 1955, it was a hub for the interception, decryption, and analysis of enemy radio and electronic communications.
In Part 1 of this three-part series, we focus on the early 1960s and the everyday world of the young servicemen and officers stationed there. Join them as they resist the character-destroying temptations of Taipei’s back alleys, face vengeful thieves, ride the rails in a stolen locomotive (probably a tall tale but you be the judge), and encounter ghostly road vehicles. This is Part 1. Parts 2 and 3 will take us deeper -- into the looming Vietnam War.
For this episode, we relied heavily on the excellent Shulinkou Air Station Taiwan website, which is run by men who served there between 1955 and 1977.
It was one of Taiwan’s most secretive Cold War outposts: Shulinkou Air Station (樹林口空軍情報站), a joint-service U.S. intelligence base perched on a misty plateau west of Taipei. Below and in cover (left): Aerial Photo of Shulinkou, 1967. Source: United States Air Force, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Cover image (right) via: Jack Flash/Facebook.
For this episode, we relied heavily on the excellent Shulinkou Air Station Taiwan website, which is run by men who served there between 1955 and 1977.
On the website, you’ll find lots of recollections of the young soldiers, airmen, and sailors who served there, and some evocative photographs of a base that no longer exists and a very different Taiwan.
Our Formosa Files episode concentrated on the early 1960s, and we drew on a memoir posted on the site: Jeff Kuhn’s All the Tea in China. This young morse operator served at the base for two and a half years, 1961 through 1963.
Another source, passed along to us by U.S. Navy veteran Joseph Miller, was Confessions of a Code Breaker: Tales From Decrypt (2004), an autobiography written by Lieutenant Commander Norman Klar, who was in charge of the Navy Security Group at Shulinkou and had additional intelligence duties. He served in Taiwan from June 1963 to September 1965.
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