WWII History Help

[Shane Wilson]

I'm an American, living in the United States. My Grandfather served in the US Army during World War II and was bombed by another US plane above him on April 15th 1945. 5 men, including my Grandfather were killed. The remaining 6 crew members escaped but were taken captive and held in a Japanese prison camp until the end of the war. My Grandfather was on a mission with 23 other B24 bombers to bomb "Shinshoshi" Airdrome 10 miles from Taichu, which, according to maps is likely modern Taichung. I've been researching my Grandfather's death and would like help looking into where the plane crashed, what happened to the wreckage, whether there is anyone that remembers a plane crashing 57 years ago and most importantly if I can find any remnants of the plane. I've published some of the imformation I've collected at:
Joe Leavey

If anyone would be interested in a history project, I'd be very grateful,
Shane

[cranky laowai]

Thanks for posting the link.
Have you been in touch yet with the people behind the site on the WWII prisoners of war held in Taiwan? They could probably be useful.

www.powtaiwan.org

HowGreenIsMyFormosa also knows something about this topic. I haven't seen any posts from HowGreen in a while, though.

Please keep us posted. [img]images/smiles/converted/neverforget-911.gif[/img]

[sandman]

What a fascinating story. From the map on your site, the location looks to be very near what is now the town of Shalu or Wuchi, although its hard to tell for sure.
My parents-in-law were born and raised in Wuchi and live there still. I'd imagine they would have been children or teenagers at the time of your grandfather's crash.
I'll be visiting them for the Chinese New Year holiday, which begins this weekend and I'll be sure to ask them if they know anything about this incident.
Good luck in your research.

[cranky laowai]

I forgot to add earlier that I can confirm "Taichu" is indeed an obsolete name for Taichung.

You might also be interested in this page on my site:
www.romanization.com/ww2/
It lists World War II Allied code names for places in Taiwan. But the list isn't very useful as is, because it usually gives Japanese rather than Chinese placenames.

[Ampuero]

I think I've probably found Shinshoshi on my map of Taiwan. Following the coordinates on Shane's web page (24 degrees 11 minutes north, 120 degrees 34 minutes east) I find a place about 2 kilometers due west of Tunghai University called Hsinchuangtzu (Chinese characters: 新莊子 ) . I can confirm that Hsinchuangtzu would be pronounced Shinshoshi in Japanese.

Google turns up about 90 hits for the Chinese place name. I tried throwing in a few other choice Chinese keywords to see if I could nail down a connection between Hsinchuangtzu and Japan/airplanes/etc, but didn't find anything in ten minutes of browsing. Maybe I'll dig some more later. (If I have the time!)

[jidanni]

By the way, have you considered what datum your geographical
coordinates are in? As we move along the 24d 11m parallel, we pass
thru Shuinan Airport, [before ending up in my backyard, where I have
erected a marker "24d 11m", 20 km further east]

Oops, I checked some old maps [published by Yuanliu,
,]http://www.ylib.com.tw], which one can see in many university
libraries here in Taiwan. Anyways, the datum the Japanese used is not
too different from that of today. When I say datums I mean like on
http://www.geocities.com/jidanni/taiwan-gps-qa.htm

[Shane Wilson]

I thought I'd recieve an email if anyone replied - sorry I've been absent in my own conversation.

Ampuero, that's very big news! Let me do some research and see what I can find - I'll repost if you all are interested.

Dan, I visited the site you mentioned. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent guy but feel downright dumb after looking at all those numbers. I have no idea what they all mean. What's a datum?

Thanks for the help - this is great- Shane

[Ampuero]

Yes, keep us posted. I keep thinking I'll call a librarian or something, but haven't gotten around to it.

Dan's info threw me for a loop too. I guess you have to expect a curve ball from a guy who makes a hobby of determining his geographic position by looking at the hieroglyphics on utility poles!!! But things started making a wee bit of sense when I followed the link on Dan's page to "A Geocentric Reference System In Taiwan". (The link is now dead, by the way, but Google has it cached, so you can still dig it up. But I guess that's irrelevant to your quest.)

Good luck.

[jidanni]

Sorry, geodetic datums are explained in
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/datum/datum.html
Anyway, I was saying that the difference in the datums concerned was
say, less than 1 km, and thus probably not a factor in your problem.

[Shane Wilson]

I just wanted to let you all know that I have gotten some help from several people and have added the new information regarding where the plane crashed at:Current Research
I still have a long way to go but am consistently amazed at the warmth and generosity of the people living in Taiwan. This part of my experience has taught me a lot not only about my Grandfather but of Taiwan.
I've really come to like Taiwan and it's people. Regardless of whether I learn anything more about my Grandfather's plane, I'll always think fondly of Taiwan. Someday, I will visit, until then, I enjoy learning more and keeping up to date with what's going on some 8000 miles away there in Taiwan.

Shane