By Danny Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan– For a small island nation like Taiwan, she sure
gets a lot of visitors from around the world, some coming here for the
first time, and others coming back for nostalgic reunions with old
U.S.military buddies.
Joel Aronson, who lives in New Jersey, is one such man. The former
U.S. serviceman has ties with Taiwan and happy memories of his time
here that he still recalls today and shows in online photography sites.
Aronson was stationed in Taiwan 54 years ago, and a few years ago he came
back to the island nation as as part of the 50th anniversary of an
incident in 1958 that became known as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
The group of eight American servicemen he was with attended a luncheon
with Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou, and had the chance to tour
modern-day Taipei to see the changes that have occurred in this colorful, tasty
ever-evolving nation.
The week-long visit to Taipei in 2008 marked his
second trip to Taiwan since his military service 50 years ago, Aronson
told San Diego Jewish World in an email, noting that he “enjoyed
seeing the sights — and the people of Taiwan — again.”
During the historic incident in 1958, communist China shelled the islands of
Kinmen and Matsu. Aronson, who had signed up for a stint in the
U.S. Air Force in 1956 and was assigned to study Chinese at Yale
University before coming over to Taiwan, was working at a radio
monitoring station on an air base north of Taipei, he told me by email.
Now a retired college photography professor, Aronson used his interest
in photography in 1958 when he was serving in Taiwan
to take hundreds of black-and-white photographs of Taipei street
scenes in those days.
According to an article about Aronson in the Daily Record in the
U.S., America “responded to the shelling by communist China by
deploying warships and warplanes in the region and by supplying the
Taiwanese with AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, which the
Taiwanese fired during dogfights with communist Chinese MiG fighters.
Then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower also made forceful statements in
defense of Taiwan.”
Aronson actually was stationed in Taiwan twice. When the 1958 crisis
was over, Aronson returned to the U.S. in March 1959 to take some
advanced Chinese language classes at Yale, and\ he returned to Taiwan
for another tour of duty from early 1961 to June 1962, he told me.
“During my second tour in Taiwan, I continued my work in
electronic intelligence and branched out into photography,” Aronson
said. “I was also lucky enough to take some pictures of VIPs who visited
Taipei, including then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird,
when they visited in 1961.”
The highlight of the U.S. veterans’ trip to Taiwan in 2008 was when
they attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Taiwan’s Tomb of Unknown
Soldiers, Aronson said.
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted
at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com