Far East Network - The Birth of A Pacific Network

The Birth of A Pacific Network

In May 1942 the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS), was established on the Alaskan island of Kodiak. Radio broadcasts were used to provide information to members of the American armed forces serving off of the U.S. mainland.

Evolving from the Morale Services Division of the War Department, the new American Forces Radio Service (AFRS) also included a combination of such activities as command troop information programs, local command news, information broadcasts and morale-building transmissions. By late 1942, the new AFRS had begun receiving direct support from both the Army and the Navy with the assignment of personnel tasked with producing special radio programs. In 1943, a complex of high-powered radio transmitters was organized to transmit programs to military men and women serving in Europe, Alaska, and the South Pacific.

When AFRS broadcasts were transmitted in the Pacific, they were done so under two different commands. Outlets in the Southwest Pacific were operated under Army General Douglas MacArthur; those in the Central Pacific, under Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz.

By July 1943, AFRS had set up two stations in the Southwest Pacific (SWP) Region, operating a small station in New Georgia. The following month, a similar mobile station began broadcasting near Vella Lavella.

The first AFRS stations established under the Central Pacific Command were set up on the Tarawa Atoll and islet of Makin, both located in the Gilbert Islands, in November 1943. Three more stations, on Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands and one on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, went on the air in February 1944.

Teams of military broadcast specialists were trained at AFRS' headquarters in Los Angeles to operate radio stations. Later, they traveled to Hawaii, where they picked up equipment and briefed on their assignment and local conditions, and then proceeded to their posts by whatever means they were able to travel. Some of the teams carried complete radio transmitting equipment: 50-watt transmitters, turntables, a tiny mixing console and several boxes of records. A few teams were provided with short-wave receivers so they could monitor AFRS newscasts from San Francisco.

Each team usually consisted of an officer and five or six enlisted men. Upon reaching its destination, a team operated by whatever means they could. Electrical generators were often hard to acquire, and a station often had to provide its own independent power source.

In the Central Pacific, once a station had been set up and broadcasting, locally-based servicemen were trained to operate the outlet. Usually, after the team was sure that the station could be run by the local GIs, they returned to Honolulu for reassignment to another location. This connected conglomerate of military stations became known as the Pacific Ocean Network (PON).