Press Wireless Returns to Shortwave
As the opening feature in our program today, we make a return visit to the Philippines. This is the final feature in our year long series under the title Focus on Asia. Next year, we are planning to present a year long series of topics under the new title, Focus on the South Pacific. Even so from time to time, we will still present interesting topics regarding the fascinating historic backgrounds of other radio stations, large and small, in other parts of the world.
On this occasion, we pick up the Philippine
story towards the end of the Pacific War at the time when American forces made
a return visit to the Philippines. That
was towards the end of the climactic year 1944.
But first though, let’s go back to
the year 1929, and that was when the American news and radio organization,
Press Wireless Inc, PWI was formed. At
that time, a powerful group of news organizations in the United States
established PWI in an endeavor to improve the flow of news information into and
out of the United States.
At the time, radio was quite young, and the concept of international broadcasting on shortwave was just beginning. Thus it was that PWI began to establish their own network of communication stations around the world; in some countries they installed their own shortwave communication stations and in others they utilized the facilities of already established stations. PWI also began to manufacture their own transmitters and associated electronic equipment.
The first communication station
established by PWI was licensed under the callsign WJK and it was established
at Needham in suburban Boston in 1930.
This station at this era operated as a longwave station and it
communicated with a longwave station in Halifax Nova Scotia that was receiving
a news flow from a longwave Post Office station in England.
It is probable that the London end of this
news link wireless network was at Rugby, with either of the two longwave
transmitters, GBT or GBY. It is known
that the Halifax station was operated by the American Publisher’s Committee and
it was installed at the British cable station at St. Margaret’s Bay. An earlier temporary station had been located
at Dartmouth, across the bay from Halifax.
Station WJK, with its receiving and
transmitting facilities, circumvented the expensive landline costs from Nova Scotia
into the United States, and it also overcame the usual delay in transmission
over the landline system. In addition,
there were occasions when longwave WJK was able to communicate directly with
London, thus making the relay of news messages via Halifax unnecessary.
Then in 1932, PWI began construction
of their massive shortwave station located near Hicksville on Long Island
together with their nearby receiver station at Long Neck. At the height of its activity, PWI Hicksville
was operating a total of 28 shortwave transmitters ranging in power from ½ kW up to 100
kW, together with a bevy of antenna systems beamed on Europe and Latin America.
It would appear that the lone
station WJK at Needham in Massachusetts was a temporary unit that closed when Hicksville
became fully operational. Hicksville
itself was closed in 1957 when another more modern station at Centereach was
inaugurated.
The first PWI wireless factory was
opened in the late 1930s at West Newton in Massachusetts. Then, in 1941 a new and additional factory
was opened at Hicksville in association with their shortwave communication
station. During the war years, their
famous 40 kW PWI shortwave transmitter was manufactured in quantity and these
units were installed at many different locations in many different countries
around the world.
Press Wireless entered the
Philippines in 1933; they opened an office in downtown Manila and they
installed a shortwave station on the edge of Manila. Two years later, PWI Manila was amalgamated
with two other international news agencies and the combined organization was
registered as Globe-Mackay Cable & Radio with offices and a studio building
in Manila.
The entire facility in the
Philippines was shut down in late December 1941 as Japanese forces began
closing in on Manila. American forces
deliberately destroyed all of these press radio facilities in Manila on
December 26, 29 and 30.
Three years later, Press Wireless
returned to the Philippines with a contingent of personnel and equipment at the
time of the MacArthur return invasion.
Two PWI sub-units, identified as PZ & PY, had been formed at
Hollandia on the north coast of the island of New Guinea and they were shipped
into the Philippines as part of the massive invasion fleet.
The PZ party installed a radio
communication facility at what was described at the time as a secret location,
though subsequently it is known that it was located at Tacloban on the island
of Leyte. The studio for PWI station PZ was installed in a warehouse just
opposite the MacArthur headquarters, and the transmitters were installed in a
nearby sandbagged bunker, together with MacArthur’s military transmitters.
The PWI shortwave transmitter PZ
with 400 watts was voice capable, though usually it was on the air with high
speed Morse Code transmissions via a Boehme speed sender. Callsigns in use at PWI Tacloban ran from PZ1
up to PZ9, according to frequency.
The inaugural news transmission from
PWI PZ took place on November 14, 1944 and it was received by the new PWI
shortwave station on the edge of Los Angeles in California. Station PZ also acted as an intermediate
relay for the transfer of news reports in Morse Code from the auxiliary ship
FP47 for reception in Los Angeles.
The PWI shortwave station at
Tacloban was not a mobile station installed in a group of army trucks, though
it could be removed and re-installed at another location quite speedily. On February 28 of the following year (1945)
PWI PZ in Tacloban was closed down, and the equipment was then transferred to Manila;
and that’s where we pick
up this story on the next occasion.
(AWR/Wavescan/NWS 305)