Heart in Taiwan

I was watching an interview the other day between Dan Rather and Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart, and I was surprised to hear them mention that the Wilson sisters had spent some time in Taiwan as children. Their father was in the Marines, and they were stationed in Taiwan for 3 years. At the time, according to their memoirs, Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll,* Ann was six years old, and Nancy was "only a few years old."

In 1956, Ann, Nancy, their older sister Lynn, and their mother took a troop ship from San Francisco to Taiwan to meet their father, a major who had already gone to Taiwan a few months earlier. Ann Wilson recalls that as the ship left San Francisco, they stood on deck to wave goodbye, and "Nancy was wearing a tether harness tied to a railing on the ship to keep her from falling into the sea. She pretended she was a wild horse."

Ann Wilson describes their three years in Taiwan as "an innocent time, but always one of tension." She recalls the typhoons and frequent trips to air raid shelters, but also remembers how her mother tried to make life normal for them, decorating the house and organizing the Girl Scouts.

They don't have much else to say about their three years in Taiwan (perhaps not surprising since they left when Ann Wilson was 9 years old). They don't even mention where they were living in Taiwan. It would be interesting to know where their father (Major John Wilson, USMC) would have been stationed there. (Ann Wilson mentions that Wilson's father had been a general in the Marines. Their grandfather was the Brig. Gen. John B. Wilson that Camp Wilson at Twentynine Palms, California was named after.)

I'm not sure they ever went back to Taiwan (perhaps for a Heart concert), but I do recall that during my first trip to Taiwan in the summer of 1990, ICRT (the English-language radio station in Taiwan) was playing that awful song, "All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You)"--don't worry, Ann Wilson hates it, too, calling it "hideous" in the interview with Dan Rather:

* Link is to a 2012 interview on WBUR radio.