by Larry Taylor 60
My mother, older sister Kathleen and I (age 12) arrived in Subic Bay aboard the USNS Barrett in the fall of 1955 to join my father who had flown there earlier to become the Assistant Fire Chief of Subic. President Magsaysay was head of the country, as I recall. The East Kalayaan housing was about nine months from completion, so our family lived in Olongapo near the open market for nearly a year. Officers lived either on the main base or in West Kalayaan, where a new officer’s club was under construction. The Teen Club, an L-shaped Quonset hut with pool and ping pong tables, jukebox and a dance floor, would soon be located near there as well.
Larry Taylor, Mrs. Taylor and Kathleen Taylor in 1958.
Virtually everything else, the PX, commissary, etc. were located near the waterfront. Dredges were being brought in to begin filling the swamps behind the base where all new shopping and recreation facilities were planned. Cubi Point was under construction. A new high school also was rumored to be on the drawing board, to be built at the base of the hill along the road to Kalayaan. At that time, grades 1-12 were held in Quonset huts near the waterfront. By the time we left Subic in 1960, most of the new base, including the high school, had been completed.
The school grounds in 1956
A few people traveled by plane, but most spent the better part of a month aboard one of the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) ships getting between Subic and San Francisco. The Barrett was the newest and the only one that was air conditioned. Others I remember were the Sulton and the Breckenridge.
Fire Chief Don Farrar, bandleader at heart, picked the musically inclined from his firefighter ranks to form a band that greeted each ship when it arrived.
There was no TV in Subic, or anyplace else in the Philippines that I know of. But there was radio on the base. KCMB, armed forces radio. My mother was the first of our family to volunteer her talent to the radio station. She hosted a morning talk show called “Coffeetime” that included live piano performances by some guy named Jimmy. Later, my sister and her little friend Squeeky the Mouse hosted a Saturday morning children’s program. And still later, a bunch of us from the Teen Club talked the station into letting us host a Saturday night, one-hour rock & roll show called “Teen Turntable.” I have reel-to-reel tapes of several of the shows.