Lecture: America's Voice to the Pacific War
A Shortwave Station is Born at the Fair
This talk traces the history of American shortwave broadcasting to the Pacific, starting on Treasure Island at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. It was given at the Treasure Island Museum via Zoom on August 29, 2020.
To demonstrate its shortwave technology, General Electric built KGEI, the West Coast's first shortwave radio station on the grounds of the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939.
The station's powerful signals were the only American voices that could be heard in the Far East. After Pearl Harbor, this capability became of huge strategic importance as KGEI was the only American voice to reach the Phillippines during the Japanese invasion of 1941 and 1942. General Douglas MacArthur's famous "I will return" speech was broadcast to the Phillippines over KGEI. As the war progressed, a dozen more shortwave stations were built in the Bay Area to broadcast the American government's messages to the Pacific War Theater.
This presentation traces how the radio voice that began on Treasure Island proved so vital to the war in the Pacific, and led to the formation of the Voice of America, the United States government broadcasting facility that has been heard worldwide since World War II.
Speaker: Radio historian John Schneider began researching radio broadcasting history as a special study project while attending San Francisco State University in 1969, and continued this pursuit throughout his professional career in radio broadcast electronics. He is the author of two books and dozens of magazine articles on radio history, and is a Fellow in History of the California Historical Radio Society.
23 окт 2020
