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.
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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