Grass Mountain Hostel, Taipei,Taiwan

When the Japanese occupied Taiwan from 1895-1945, they built many resorts for their leisure. And they built the hostel in Yangmingshan to last. 

During the American presence it was called the Grass Mountain Hostel. Either way, imagine the many thousands who have used it over the centuries.

The whole complex now has nothing to do with being a place to live and sleep for travelers and service people.

According to the literature, since 1981, it has been known as the Taipei Teachers' In-Service Education Center. It's considered to be in the Beitou (Pei Tou) District of Taipei although it's just off YangMing Road.

There are many people who, through their pictures and individual efforts, have made this post possible. My contribution was to assemble these people's bodies of work and put them in some semblance of order.

The first person to thank is fellow blogger, Don Wiggins of ustdc.blogspot. If he hadn't posted references to the hostel in May 12, 2008 and July 18, 2008, that would have been it. Stev Pitchford is the first person to post photos in 2008.

His permission to use them was crucial. Then, Victor W. Cheng is to thank for contacting Miss Liangcw to gain permission to use her photos from her blog. Of course, a big thanks goes to Miss Liang for taking and posting her pictures. And then, there's Andy Savin, my friend.

With that, then, here is the Grass Mountain Hostel as it was then and now. 

To give some reference to the site, I chose DaHeng Road where our apartment was. About .25 miles north of it, the district and road name change. It's still a steep climb.

To the left is the turnoff which takes you on the back road to Pei Tou. Many GIs were familiar with this route where hotels and hot springs awaited. For those interested, it's now called YangTou Road.





Continuing through the village, we are almost there.

 

Here is the entrance to the education center.



Photo courtesy of liangcw/blog

This statue stands just outside the entrance.



Photo courtesy of Stev Pitchford

This October, 1959 picture posted May 12, 2008 on ustdc.blogspot shows the hostel as many of us remember it.

Quite alone by itself, it housed many Stratcom Army personnel in 1968-69. The sulphur bath is to the left.

Photo courtesy of liangcw/blog

Taken from a similar angle as the previous picture, the main entrance to the education center is shown in October, 2007. The landscaping is not the only thing that changed.





Photo courtesy of liangcw/blog

The entrance was not this inviting in 1968.

 



Photo courtesy of liangcw/blog

Moss often adds character.



Photo courtesy of liangcw/blog


The windows, eaves, soffit and fascia are well preserved.







Photo courtesy of Stev Pitchford

Here is the hostel in 1959 from another angle.

 

This photo is from the Yangmingshan National Park collection.  Hopefully this reference link will do. I tried to e-mail them to get permission to use this picture, but was unable to submit my request.

Since It is so similar to the previous picture the hope is that YMSNP will approve of its use on this blog. Otherwise, this picture will come down.





Photo by L. Andrew Savin Jr., August of 1969

Your host of this blog is shown here at the Grass Mountain Hostel's sulphur bath. About two minutes after Andy took this photo, I was under a shower, trying to remove as much of the sulphur smell as possible.

The presence of sulphur in Yangmingshan was so pervasive that it would make the chrome bumpers of our car rust.



With a large parking lot in front  it, the old hostel can be plainly seen. Surrounded by large complex, the building is just part of of a sizable teacher education center. 

Our Yangmingshan Apartment, Taipei, Taiwan, 1968-69

There was fresh air, lower heat and humidity, cool winters and views that were sometimes astounding.

Having an apartment within the Grass Mountain community was a treat. There weren't that many of them available.

We latched onto a broker who showed us ours and the deal was approved by the housing authority in the West Compound.

We moved into the place in August of 1968, and left in August of 1969.







Sometimes a good picture is accidentally taken. Given that our camera was a fixed-lense Kodak, this picture still looks good. Here you see the DaHeng Road community in Yangmingshan.

Taken from the main road going to the Grass Mountain work site, this photo is one of my favorites. Our apartment building is the one that is the third one from the far left end.





With the help of Google Earth, this is the best picture that could be gotten from the new road. The DaHeng Road community is still visible.

Most of the good views were in the 1960s, when the roads were shaky and the peril was greater.



Guess which apartment was ours?

LTC Scott Ellinger took the time to shoot this photo in 2011. Our old apartment is the black one on the third floor with the closed-in balcony.

LTC Ellinger also used a little photo magic to place then and now pictures side-by-side.

Here is the view from our balcony at the end of DaHeng Road, looking toward the main road.

Back in 1968-69, many military families lived here as well as diplomats and the staff from AFNT after it relocated to Yangmingshan. 

A gate protects DaHeng Road today. 
Our old apartment is not in view. 

Mr. Chen again provides an excellent photo of the DaHeng Road community. The apartment would be to the left of this picture.

There weren't too many multi-story buildings here during our tour of duty.

It took some doing when first trying to find the place. Our lease read "Ta Heng Road." Fooling around with the spelling finally got this view.

Frankly we were surprised that the apartments were still standing. The electrical, water, plumbing and sewage methods were pretty basic.

The Landis Resort is just north of the entrance to DaHeng.

Initially, the incorrect apartment building was circled.

We then found some other pictures which confirmed the exact building.

There is a huge drop-off behind the apartment complex. A large ceramic pipe was used to gather all the water and sewage coming from the complex and deposit it over and down the hill.

The light green house across from us had a huge circular concrete drive with a fountain in the middle and a well-manicured golf hole.

To give you some perspective of where we lived  relative to the Yangmingshan community, look about .5 miles north to the former Grass Mountain Hostel.

Just .3 miles south of us is the main entrance to the Chinese Culture University.

Back in 1968, it was the Chinese Culture College, and it was a relatively small commuter school. The buses ran on time.

Again, there is a straight line from DaHeng Road to the Grass Mountain work site. The line is .7 miles long.

To drive this distance would be about 1.5 miles

SCM Kleinschmidt At Grass Mountain Taipei, Taiwan

Joining some military related groups sometimes opens doors. My thanks to the Yahoo group, Commcenter-1 which had some photos of equipment which looked really familiar. 

We actually used much of this equipment at Grass Mountain DCS Major Tape Relay in Taipei, Taiwan in 1968-69.

Lip service is paid to Mr. Boudot, who invented the original code in the 1790s. However, when comparing this code card with other codes, it's letter punches are identical to the simplified code New Zealander Donald Murray invented in 1901. Thanks to phulamer for including this card in his Phu Lam collection.

This 1968 Kleinschmidt catalog page displays much of the teletype equipment SCM/Kleinschmidt offered. Thanks to D. Nelson for this one.

Photo from D. Nelson of Nha Trang tape relay or possibly Phu Lam

This is a great picture of a transmitter bank. At 100 wpm, these read stations were an always-busy part of any tape relay. 

Not sure of the year, but it looks as though it could have been the late 60s in South Vietnam.

Photo from phulamer

Now, this is a major tape relay send bank at Phu Lam South Vietnam in 1969. Notice the message "trees" in which torn tape messages to be sent were inserted. Atop each "tree" was a routing indicator which had a card printed with the exact location the message would be sent.

Most messages were "Routine", while others were "Priority." Then came "Immediate", and finally the "stop everything and send this"  "Flash" message. 

Messages were placed on the tree in order of sending importance from low to high. Flash messages were logged in and sent as fast as possible.

Just to give you a comparison, our RUAG send relay bank in Taipei, Taiwan had about 8 transmitters with a couple of spares. We never sent or received any message which was designated any higher than "SECRET."

Photo from phulamer

On the right are torn tape receive banks at Phu Lam. Incoming messages were read by the specialist to determine the destination. 

Then, the soldier then would look for the NNNN at the end of the message. 

This meant to tear it off, log it in, and turn around and place it in the send tree. This became second nature after awhile.

The main thing was not to put the message on the wrong tree and not to run out of tape. At the back of this picture is a station where tapes could be corrected.

This picture of Asmara shows a tape relay center laid out almost exactly as ours in Taipei, Taiwan. This is Asmara tape relay in Africa. On the far right are the receive banks.

In the middle are the send banks. On the far left are the monitor reels which made a copy of all messages sent. In the foreground is an area which may have been used to correct rejected messages.

In all these photos, I check the floors since ours in Taipei, Taiwan were white with flecks. Every night they were scrubbed, waxed and polished. Thanks to D. Nelson for this one.  

Photo from Fynisdbiddle

This final tape relay photo collage was taken at Taegu South Korea. It shows most of what one would find at a major tape relay center.

Photo from duncanancy

For those out there who know the equipment and nomenclature, here is a bunch of it from the AWA Museum in Bloomfield, New York.

Photo from duncanancy

More equipment from AWA Museum, Bloomfield, NY

Teletype Art Grass Mountain Taipei, Taiwan

An e-mail from my first Stratcom contact opened up memories that had been buried. Teletype art usually began to arrive around the end-of-year holidays.

Since our Univac 1004 had been installed long before December of 1968, we were able to receive this art quickly. Sending or printing it was another story.

Our machines only had a top speed of 100 wpm, and some of these mailings took seemingly forever to print or send on to our Air Force locations.


Here are a few one-page samples. You may want to stand back from your monitor to get a better look at them. Thanks go to RTTY.com which has over 260 documents in its collection. Some go way beyond wishing someone a happy holiday. 



This would be the typical Christmas greeting which usually had the point of origin. Seldom were they signed.





Abe Lincoln may not be looking too crisp. Clicking on this one shows that his profile is composed from all the words in his Gettysburg Address. Very creative and unique, don't you agree?





Stan Laurel





Oliver Hardy





M-I-C-K-E-Y





Alfred E. Neuman-- --What, me worry?





Brigette Bardot





Thanks go out to Gary Roske from Tech Control on this one. Unfortunately, the bottom two-thirds had to be deleted. Can't get by those censors!



The Taipei, Taiwan, Terminal Station, Grass Mountain, 1968-69

Tucked away in a corner of the Grass Mountain DCS Major Tape Relay was an area known to all of us as "the terminal." It was the center for all punched tape messages for Taipei coming and going. 

Theoretically, it was supposed to be as separate from the relay floor as any of the Air Force locations we served. In reality, terminal operators were actually involved with both Tech Control and the relay floor.

When we 16 arrived in June of 1968, we were split up into groups of 5 each. A few of us were fortunate enough to be assigned to the Taipei Terminal, where we really put to practice much of what we were trained for in signal school.

We prepared messages and sent them out to the relay floor. We received messages and printed them on rolls of mimeograph paper to be run off for whomever they were meant.

There were three teams working in the following rotation: Team A worked three days in a row from 08:00 to 20:00 local time. Then on day four,Team A came in at 20:00 hours and worked the next 3 days until 08:00. This was followed by three days off. Teams B and C did the same and the rotation was set.

The only non-draftee was quickly assigned to USTDC and worked banker's hours downtown. So, Baby-san, you certainly drew the long straw on this one!

The terminal had a Smith-Corona-Marchant/Kleinschmidt teletype which was attached to a printing punched tape reperforator. The reperforator also had attached to it a transmitter which sent messages we had prepared out to our receive station on the relay floor.

There was a monitor reel which made copies of all of our sent messages. Army security would keep us on our toes by randomly checking the rolls of tapes which were saved. 

In addition, there were also two printers, which were receive only, meaning no keyboard. One of these made a hard copy for our files and the other was for the mimeograph messages.

Taipei had a four-letter prefix which told routing equipment or personnel where to send the message. This routing indicator was RUAG. The terminal had a designated address of RUAGST.

All of our Air Force locations had a similar address. For instance, Tainan AFB had an address of RUAGTN. And so it went. It was easier to do than to describe.

This "address" allowed those working the receive bank to know the exact location to which a message would be sent.

Finally, all messages received from Taiwan locations or from the Univac 1004 ended with several blank lines, followed by the four letters, NNNN which meant "end of message."

This is the model ASR-28, made by the Teletype Corporation, which was the basic machine used for decades to follow. The teletype machines WE used had a Smith-Corona badge logo and had only three rows of keys.

All letters were in CAPS. Our teletype's numbers were on the top row when the shift key was used. Symbols and punctuation were basically on rows two and three.

The ASR-28 actually had round keys and an auxiliary row of keys at the top. This is how our Smith-Corona-Marchant/Kleinschmidt printed when connected to a transmitter, sending the message to the relay floor. We never saw one of these machines on this link.

The printer on the right looks like the ones we used in the terminal. They certainly made a racket when the cover was off. Other than that, they were heavy duty machines.

Most of this equipment was an upgrade from that which was being used during WWII and Korea. The company that made all of this equipment was the Teletype Corporation in Skokie, Illinois.

In 1930, the Bell System purchased the old Kleinschmidt Company and the name was rettained as Teletype Corporation. It was a division of Western Electric.

However, in 1931, Edward Kleinschmidt decided to restart his company and sell mainly to the military. The machinery itself was still made in the Chicago suburb.

In 1956, Smith-Corona-Marchant became the parent company of Kleinschmidt Laboraties. This was then part of the SCM Corporation.  Again, we didn't use this particular printer, but the various speeds will give you an idea of what we were dealing with.

Easily attached to the teletype machine was this tape reader. This transmitter was similar to what we used in the terminal.

When the message was complete, it was put in the reader and transmitted to the relay floor. A hard copy was made for our records.

Shown above is a composite of all the machinery for the ASR-28. Notice that the logo is the Teletype Corporation. 

Teletype Corporation, under ownership of Western Electric, competed with SCM/ Kleinschmidt. Teletype Corporation's machines were known as "Chicagos."

After searching for months and months, we found this picture of our Smith-Corona/Kleinschmidt equipment at the signal school at Fort Gordon. What we used may have been a fortified version of an already existing Kleinschmidt model.

The history of the teletype indicates that so many were produced during WWII and afterwards, that a huge surplus existed and was used during the Korean War, Vietnam and into the 1980s. 

The important thing is that the tape code used by all the services was the same and, although different, the machinery was compatible with what was being used in the Air Force and Navy.

Those of you who were STRATCOM Army teletype repairmen and service techs, please let us know exactly what equipment we used. 

Clicking on this picture will show you the military designation given to this SCM/ Kleinschmidt combination of teletypewriter and reperforator/transmitter.

Shown is a photo of a like new Smith-Corona/-Marchant/Kleinschmidt unit that Randy and Sherry Guttery had in a bedroom in Guam in 1974.  I commented on his dresser and he assured me that it was full of parts.

These folks are carrying on the teletype and radio communications history for all of us who are RTTY buffs. At the lower left, you can see a restored KSR-28.

So, what was under the hood certainly was a Kleinschmidt, with a skin that said Smith-Corona. If you want to see tedious, dedicated work restoring a Model 28, Click on Randy's website HERE.

Easily attached to the teletype, this printing reperforator knocked out the punched paper tape as we prepared messages for transmission.

Rolls of paper are shown beneath this equipment as well as rolls of paper tape on top of the teletype.

Again, this machinery looks similar to what we used. Funny how the rolls of paper tape and spools of copy paper have faded.

Actually typed during our training at Fort Gordon, this message was then run off on a printer during sending.

It was then sent home, so my wife and both sets of parents could see what we were doing.

It has been in our Taiwan scrapbook for over 40 years. Incidentally, this message, and all others, used the Murray Code.

Made by the National Band and Tag Company of Newport, Kentucky, this chicken toe punch was our low-tech tool. 

If a message couldn't be corrected easily at the terminal station or relay floor, we simply put thin, adhesive tape over the area to be corrected.

Then, the correct letters, numbers, and symbols would be punched into the tape using this punch. The size of the punches made coincided with holes already on the message.

If you have a dog, cat or any possible animal that can be tagged, then you may have bought it from National Band and Tag. They are still in business and going strong. Check their website at http://www.nationalband.com

We always heard that the Air Force went first class. They seemingly had the best quarters, mess halls and equipment.  This young guy in the 1980s is actually using an ASR-28 model that was described in the literature above.

Also, notice the 24-hour clock set to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or Zulu time as used by the military. Using this time made it easier to understand when messages were actually composed, sent and received around the world.

Out there somewhere are thousands of folks who, being in the Air Force and Navy, received training similar to what the Army gave us at Ft. Gordon. Relations with our Air Force locations were very cordial.

The teletypes shown in these pictures are in a museum on a Navy ship and are actually under glass! 

Thanks go out to the following communications museums: commcenter-2.net, nadcomm.com, kekatos.com/teletype, museumofcommunications.org, baudot.net, navy-radio.com and knobstick.ca