The small island of Corregidor lies at
the entrance to Manilla Bay in the Philippines.
The island is shaped like a tadpole and it is four miles long, and 1½
miles wide at its widest point. The name
Corregidor is Spanish, meaning Chief Magistrate, Mayor.
During
the crucial times as the Japanese armies were moving towards Manila, there were
11,000 American and Filipino personnel on the island. The voluminous Malinta Tunnel had been
excavated beneath 200 feet of rock and it contained a 1,000 bed hospital. When General Douglas MacArthur evacuated from
Manila, he established his temporary headquarters in a side passageway in
Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor Island.
It
was on December 10, 1941, that the Japanese air force bombed the United States
navy base at Cavite, just three days after Pearl Harbor. Ten days later the Marines were ordered to
evacuate Cavite; and on January 2, 1942, Cavite was totally evacuated except
for medical personnel and patients in the hospital.
In
the meantime, American forces had also retreated into the Bataan Peninsula, a
peninsula 50 miles long and 15 miles wide, jutting into Manila Bay just
opposite Corregidor Island. Some radio
programming was broadcast from Bataan with the use of army and commercial radio
equipment.
It is understood that the radio
broadcasting transmitter in use on this occasion was a 1 kW mobile unit
licensed under the callsign KZRB which was owned by the former FEBC Far East
Broadcasting Company (not related to the subsequent/current FEBC) in
Manila. The American army took this
transmitter over for use mainly as a relay station for the programming from
shortwave KGEI in San Francisco.
These transmissions from KZRB Bataan
contained mainly news and information, sometimes produced locally and sometimes
on relay from elsewhere including the Voice of Freedom Radio on
Corregidor. This station was heard in
Australia at times on 11850 11940 or 15545 kHz.
The American forces on Bataan surrendered on April 9, 1942 and mobile
KZRB was silenced.
In
December 1941, a 1 kW shortwave transmitter had been removed from the
commercial radio broadcasting station KZRH in Manila and re-installed in
Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor Island.
Additional radio equipment, including mobile transmitters from elsewhere
throughout Manila, was hurriedly collected and also transferred to Corregidor
Island.
The
United States army blew up all private and commercial broadcasting equipment in
the Manila area including all of the large transmitters, as well as the newly
imported American equipment so recently installed for mediumwave and shortwave
station KZRM. Studios and papers and
documents throughout the city were also hurriedly destroyed.
The
Malinta Tunnel also contained a bevy of radio equipment for use in
communicating with Philippine regiments throughout the islands and also with
forces headquarters in Australia, Hawaii and the United States. The 1 kW shortwave transmitter previously on
the air in Manila was installed in Malinta Tunnel along with a make-shift
studio, and it was placed into use as a radio broadcasting station with antenna
systems directly above, on top of Malinta Hill.
The
new “Voice of Freedom” was inaugurated at 6:00 pm on Monday January 5, 1942
with a recorded version of the Star Spangled Banner, followed by opening
announcements and news in English from Carlos Romulo, the previous General
Manager of FEBC. This FEBC was a
commercial organization, and as just mentioned, it was not related to the
subsequent religious FEBC organization in Manila. The initial English station announcement from
the Voice of Freedom was followed by similar information in the Tagalog
language presented by Francisco Isadoro.
The
main frequency for the shortwave Freedom Radio was 9645 kHz, though other
nearby channels were taken at varying times in order to avoid Japanese
jamming. The Japanese reactivated
station KZRH at its original location in Manila, and a broadcasting war took
place between them and the Voice of Freedom Radio. The KZRH operating channel was nearby 9640
kHz.
Soon
after the Voice of Freedom was launched, one of the radio personnel on
Corregidor went surreptitiously back into Manila and climbed into the revived
KZRH via a fire escape ladder and stole some more equipment, including a
recording of the Philippine national anthem.
This
new and relatively low powered shortwave Voice of Freedom Radio was heard far
and wide, throughout the Philippines and beyond; in Australia, New Zealand,
Hawaii and the continental United States.
Another broadcasting station in the Philippines, KZRC in Cebu, regularly
relayed the off air programming from the Voice of Freedom Radio via their own
transmitters on 1200 kHz mediumwave and 6105 kHz shortwave, both at 1 kW
each. This tandem relay ended on April
9, 142, at the time when the American forces on Bataan surrendered.
Although
the Voice of Freedom did its best back then during the tragic events of 1942,
yet there was some dissatisfaction on the part of its listeners. Some locals described the station as the
Voice of Boredom, due to a lack of variety in programming and poor quality
production. Another writer stated that
the hopeful slant in their news bulletins lacked reality and sounded hollow.
Interestingly,
there was another clandestine radio station during this same era. Radio transmission equipment was installed in
a hidden area in the art deco Jai Alai sports building on Taft Avenue, Manila
and this was activated in an attempt to obtain discreet communication with
Corregidor. However, this transmitter in
Manila was on the air with no more than a few experimental test transmissions.
On
Wednesday May 6, the American General Wainwright made a broadcast over the
Voice of Freedom in which he addressed the Japanese military governor, General
Masaharu Homma, requesting surrender.
This broadcast was on the air three times in English, with a follow-on
translation in Japanese, at 10:30 am, 11:00 am and finally 11:45 am. Next day just before midnight, the surrender
was implemented.
Before
the American surrender on Corregidor, most of the radio equipment in Malinta
Tunnel was destroyed. However, the 1 kW
shortwave transmitter on the air previously as KZRH in Manila
and then as the Voice of Freedom on
Corregidor was spared intact.
(AWR Wavescan/NWS 262)