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| A classic QSL from Indonesia |
Jeff: Today, we begin a two-part look at the story of radio broadcasting in the Southeast Asian country of Indonesia. Over the last few years, a number of countries have celebrated the centenary of radio broadcasting within their borders. Today, it’s the turn of Indonesia, where there have now been 100 years of broadcast radio, both domestically and for international audiences. And actually, the beginning of wireless communication in Indonesia goes way back even further than that, to about 110 years. Ray Robinson in Los Angeles has the story.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Indonesia is an archipelago of over 17,000 islands, spread over an area almost as large as the United States. The five main islands are Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, most of Borneo, and the western half of the island of New Guinea. It’s a predominantly Muslim country, although some islands, such as Bali, are majority Hindu. The total population is now over 282 million, which makes it the fourth most populous in the world after only India, China and the United States of America. Approximately half of the population lives on the island of Java, which is the most densely populated island in the world.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area had been administered by the Dutch East India Company, but when that was dissolved due to bankruptcy in 1799, the Dutch East Indies was established as a nationalized colony of the Netherlands.
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| A classic QSL from RRI Palemberg |
In the era just before the beginning of World War I, two spark wireless stations were established in the Dutch East Indies for navy communication. This was in the days before internationally recognized callsigns were in general use, and one of these stations, located at Sabang, was on the air in Morse Code under the irregular callsign SAB.
Immediately after the end of the war, there were four such stations in the Dutch East Indies, and these were all designated with callsigns in the new PK series as:
PKA Sabang
PKB Weltevreden
PKC Sitoebondo
PKD Koepang
Soon afterwards, the Dutch government in the capital, Batavia, now known as Jakarta, announced that a monster-sized wireless station, using Telefunken arc equipment, was under installation at Malabar, near Bandoeng. The date for the official opening of this station was set for May 5, 1923. However, a tropical lightning strike destroyed some of the wireless equipment and the auspicious day was postponed until repairs were completed.
This massive 3.5 megawatt wireless station was established for reliable communication with the Dutch Foreign Ministry in Holland. However, in the mid-1920’s, spark wireless transmitters were rapidly becoming obsolete, and so it was only a few years before this transmitter was replaced with one of a newer valve, or tube, design.
The first radio broadcasting station in Indonesia was installed in the capital, Batavia, exactly 100 years ago in mid-1925 under the callsign BRX. Other broadcasting stations began to sprout throughout the Dutch East Indies and many of these were amalgamated into the newly-formed government NIROM network in 1934.
Shortwave broadcasting in the Dutch East Indies began in 1928 as a dual effort on the part of smaller local radio stations and the large communication stations. In Batavia, the first on shortwave was station JFC. The main communication station at Bandoeng, about 100 miles southeast of Batavia/Jakarta in the center of West Java, began to relay broadcast programming on shortwave for the benefit of listeners throughout Indonesia, as well as in Australia, other countries in Asia, and also back in Holland itself.
Over the years, a large number of stations appeared on the shortwave dial, mostly in the tropical shortwave bands. These stations were on the air with callsigns in the P series and also the more recent YD series.
Three transmitters of Radio Batavia were installed at Bandoeng, rated at 2, 40 and 80 kW, with antennas beamed to Europe, North America and other parts of Asia and the Pacific. Weekly music broadcasts were conducted on 15.93 metres (18820 kHz). The three transmitters, using the callsigns PLE, PLW and PMB, took part in a round-the-world relay in June 1930, and again two years later. These transmitters were frequently also used as intermediate stations for the relay of broadcasts from London and Holland to Australia and New Zealand.
In the pre-war era, the big shortwave stations in the Dutch East Indies, and several of the smaller stations also, were recognized as good verifiers. The QSL cards from the communication stations were usually in the form of typed postcards in English, though the most famous card of that era was the NIROM certificate which listed complete details, including callsign.
Then, on Saturday March 7, 1942, at the end of its broadcast day on 15150 kHz, the announcer on Radio Batavia, Bandoeng was heard in Australia to sign-off with this announcement: "This is Radio Bandoeng closing down. God save the Queen. Goodbye everyone until better times come." And with that, the station left the air.
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| RRI Surabaya |
Eleven days later, on March 18, 1942, the Dutch officially surrendered to the Japanese, and the Japanese began to take over the radio networks throughout the former Dutch East Indies. The large colonial radio station in Bandoeng was by far the largest radio station operated by the Japanese authorities during the Pacific-Asia War, even larger than their home base at Nazaki in Japan with its three 50 kW transmitters.
A month after the Japanese had occupied the city, the shortwave service was revived, with communications beamed to Japan and Germany and with programming beamed towards Australia, New Zealand and India. Using very high power, as it was in those days, of 40 and 80 kW, programming beamed towards Australia and New Zealand was heard under new callsigns, such as JBC and ABC. The signals were always reported as "strong" in Australia and New Zealand.
The callsign JBC indicated Japanese Broadcasting Company, and ABC was a callsign for clandestine programming that mimicked Radio Australia. Japanese station personnel in Bandoeng recorded off air the tuning signal, station announcements and other significant items from Radio Australia and then wove those segments into their own programming, with the intent of capturing unsuspecting listeners in Australia.
At around this time, an Australian government listening post near Melbourne took directional bearings from these transmissions and verified they were indeed coming from the 80 kW shortwave transmitter located at Bandoeng.
Several different callsigns were in use during this era. There was ABC and JBC as we have just mentioned, and then some broadcasts were identified simply as Radio Batavia, and at one stage they apparently used an earlier callsign, PMC. The broadcasts on the air as "Radio Batavia" always signed off with the "Liberty Bell March" by John Philip Sousa, better known these days as the Monty Python theme tune.
In early 1943, the name of the city of Batavia was changed to Jakarta, with several variations in spelling. Radio magazines ceased listing broadcasts from these stations soon afterwards, not because they had left the air, but because of wartime reporting restrictions in Australia and New Zealand. It is known that the final Japanese broadcast from the radio station at Bandoeng was on July 26, 1945.
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| Indonesia 1942 via Wikipedia |
During the occupation, the Japanese had encouraged Indonesia’s independence movement, and only two days after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, a Proclamation of Independence was issued by Sukarno, who was to become the country’s first president. But there were still strong Dutch interests in the country including ownership of many plantations as well as it being rich in oil and other natural resources. Immediately after the war the country was administered by Australia (since it had been the Australian Army which had liberated it from the Japanese), but in 1946 they transferred the administration back to The Netherlands, which wanted to re-establish colonial rule. This led to a three-year guerilla conflict which only ended in 1949 when the Dutch, under international pressure, finally recognized Indonesian independence.
The first edition of the World Radio Handbook in 1947 lists all of the shortwave stations on the air in what has since become Indonesia under two series of callsigns, some in the new Y series and some in the old P series. Not listed anywhere are the high-powered shortwave transmitters that were on the air during the occupation years. It would appear that these units did not survive the war.
And we’ll continue the post-War story next week. Back to you, Jeff.
Ray Robinson-Wavescan/10 Aug 2025)
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