Thank you to Ray Robinson, Jeff White, and Dr Adrian M Peterson, for the Wavescan program - another excellent nostalgic story in radio history.
Reminiscing with a Radio: Radio to the Rescue – Lost in China!
Author: Dr. Adrian M. Peterson 
Jeff: A few weeks ago in the middle of April, we presented a feature on some of the shortwave stations that were pressed into service for broadcasting across the Pacific from California during World War II. As a follow-up to that today, we have a story that was written up by our editor-in-chief Dr. Adrian M. Petersen, about the way one of those stations was used to broadcast an emergency message, in June 1939. From Los Angeles, Ray Robinson has the story.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. These days we are quite familiar with the multitudinous forms of electronic communication that are available for the purpose of passing on information in emergency situations. Hand held walkie-talkies can be used for directing search and rescue teams, the telephone can summon help with the dialing of emergency numbers, the “Amber Alert” system in the United States alerts motorists along busy highways to keep a look out for wanted cars with a kidnapped passenger, radio and TV stations can provide important emergency information to the public very efficiently, and of course there are many ways of using the Internet to pass on information quickly. All of these modern communication procedures might be described as “Lassie to the Rescue”, electronically. However, as we are aware, it has not always been this way. Back more than three quarters of a century ago, there was just the telephone and wireless and these were the only forms of electronic communication that could be utilized for quick emergency contact.
During the tumultuous events in Asia in the era immediately prior to the Pacific War, a famous Chinese dramatic soprano, Louise Kwan, was married to a professor at Nanking University in China. He was granted the opportunity of postgraduate studies at Cornell University in New York State, and in order to make the journey, Louise Kwan left her infant son in the temporary care of her own parents. However, while the university couple were in the United States, Nanking University, along with many other enterprises in coastal China, packed up and trekked inland ahead of an anticipated Japanese invasion. While still in the United States, Louise made many attempts to find the location to which her parents and her infant son had relocated, but without success.
Finally, Louise and her husband decided that it was time to return to their homeland and they began their homeward-bound journey by traveling across the continental United States. Arrangements had been made by the Reverend Stanley Hunter of St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California for Louise to stop off in San Francisco and make a live broadcast from the new shortwave station KGEI. This was the only shortwave station in the United States at the time that was heard with a reliable signal in China. During this era, it was on the air for the early morning broadcast with 20 kW on 9530 kHz in the 31 metre band.
This new shortwave station in California was established by the General Electric Company, which had previously placed stations WGEA & WGEO on the air in Schenectady, New York. The original plans for their California-based station, as announced in 1937, called for two shortwave transmitters at 20 kW each, though the station was launched two years later with just one unit. The first test broadcast from this new station, under the experimental callsign W6XBE, went on the air on February 18, 1939 on 15330 kHz. This initial broadcast, on the opening day of the “Golden Gate International Exposition”, was heard in several areas of the United States and also in Australia. Initially, this station verified by letter, though at least one listener-prepared card verifying the first test broadcast was signed and posted in San Francisco.
Thus it was that Louise Kwan stood before the open microphone in the Treasure Island studios of station KGEI in the early morning of June 21, 1939, and she sang songs in Chinese that she had sung on previous occasions, and in much better times, to her infant son. She then made an urgent appeal for anybody in China who knew the whereabouts of her parents and her son to pass the information along. Three days later, she and her husband boarded an ocean-going steamer for the long, and potentially treacherous, journey across the Pacific to mainland China.
At the time when Louise Kwan made her emotional broadcast, the General Electric station was still operating under the original experimental callsign, W6XBE, though a few weeks later, on September 1, the call was officially regularized to the more familiar KGEI. The studios in which Louise made her broadcast were located in the “Palace of Electricity” on man-made Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay during the 1939 “Golden Gate International Exposition”. The antenna was strung across two poles located at the harbor entrance to Treasure Island. During the Pacific War, station KGEI was taken over by the United States ‘Office of War Information’ (or, OWI) as the first west coast station for the Voice of America.
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| photo via Ray Robinson |
After some time of heart-wrenching searching
in China, Louise and her husband did finally manage to locate their missing
son, though Louise also discovered that her parents had died during the arduous
trek inland. The information was passed
on to station KGEI in California via the Presbyterian church pastor, and
listeners throughout the world heard the “rest of the story”, as radio-man Paul
Harvey would say, about the re-union of the famous Chinese soprano, Louise
Kwan, and her missing son.
Back to you, Jeff.
Listen to Rare Audio of from the former KGEI San Francisco, California in 1941:
