Thursday, December 06, 2018

Reminisces of Global Wireless Guam

Thank you to Col. USMC (Ret.) Jorgenson, for sharing with our readers, his memories of Global Wireless Guam. 
Gayle Van Horn

I just came upon your Shortwave Central and thought you might be interested in some personal history.


My father Alf A. Jorgenson operated the Globe Wireless facility on Guam in the mid 1930s. I have vivid memories of leaning over the counter at his station and watching him as he listened to Morse code (turned up very loud on his earphones) and typed the message.  ( He couldn’t type as fast as he could receive so he was always a few carriage returned behind). Then he would pull the paper out of the typewriter and turn to his bug and retransmitted the message.


This is the “bug” my father used.  My memory is that the electrical tape was applied in the mid 1930s to make the grip less slippery.


I was very young (born 1931) so details in my memory are scarce. I do remember the first Pan Am flight landing, probably because it was the biggest excitement so far in my life. My mother and her three children left Guam in about 1937 and my father left and rejoined us in California 1939. Very shortly after that he was called to active duty as a navy radioman. He served all of WWII In the Pacific.

I have a couple of pictures of Guam but sadly none of the radio station. I remember we lived in a fairly large white house with a balcony around it and my father's radio shack was a smaller building behind the back of the house.  Behind the radio shack there was  very tall hill that held the transmitter towers.

Sorry this is not much, but I thought you might like to know there is still (at the moment) a living witness to the Globe Wireless period in Guam.

Sincerely,

C. Allan Jorgenson
Colonel USMC retired