USTDC

Photo of USTDC courtesy of Les Duffin

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Red Cross at MAAG Compound in 1958

Scott Ellinger alerted me to a great commercial website for historical videos. It's at criticalpast.com and they offer thousands of old government films. All of the films have samples that you can view at the website.

This afternoon I found one from 1958 of the American Red Cross in Taiwan during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.   It shows the hospital in the west compound.  A Red Cross Gray Lady comes out of the building.  She goes to the Exchange in the east compound and shops inside, apparently with a shopping list of things for people at the hospital. She pays cash at the counter, gets into a pedicab and returns to the west compound. She enters the hospital, talks to servicemen and delivers items to them. A serviceman lying in bed pays her for the cigarettes.  This is the only image I've seen of the inside of the Exchange.  Of course this was 1958 and it had probably changed some by the time I got there in the 1970s.

Click on the above image to see the video.

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