War in the Pacific and the Final Surrender

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Winning the Home Front

Though Hitler and his henchmen were certainly reviled, war-time America reserved a special enmity for Japan. Whether because of lingering bitterness over the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor or simple apprehension of a people who looked, talked, and acted in ways that seemed strange and unsettling (or, more likely, a mixture of both), more slurs, prejudice, and pejorative stereotyping seemed directed at Japan than Germany. Radio was equally biased. Along with offering news, boosting morale, and selling war bonds, the medium's depiction of our Pacific enemy was as inaccurate as it was stirring.

The six radio broadcasts presented here come from original studio transcription disc recordings in the Arthur B. Church - KMBC Radio Collection and the J. David Goldin Collection in the Marr Sound Archives.

Broadcast #1
According to the announcer, the National Broadcasting Company's "Pacific Story" was offered as a "public service" to enlighten Americans on the Japanese people and their culture. Instead, listeners were treated to stark propaganda, appalling accents, and a pandering documentary on a seemingly desperate, grim people brainwashed into militarism and subsisting on "rice, eels, and raw roots." There is no accompanying date or broadcast information for this recording, which was cut to a lacquer disc directly off the air. However, based on the tone of the story and its "news," the show appears to have aired early in the war.

Broadcast #2
The attack on Pearl Harbor sunk America's morale along with most of its fleet, leaving little to cheer in the months that followed. One of the first bright spots came in early 1942 when 16 B-25 bombers hit Tokyo and three other Japanese cities. Though the raid, led by Lt. Col. James "Jimmy" Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Corps, did little damage, its value to the nation's morale was immeasurable. Still, the government waited nearly a month to announce this daring first strike on Japanese soil. Gabriel Heatter, a national favorite on the Mutual Network, provided one of the first reports. Heatter, who gained fame reporting on the Lindberg kidnapping trial, became synonymous with morale-boosting war reports. Following the sinking of a Japanese destroyer, one of America's first bright spots, Heatter announced "There's good news tonight," and the slogan became his catchphrase. In this broadcast from May 10, 1942, Heatter offers some "good news" about Doolittle's raid three weeks earlier.

Broadcast #3
Though the 80 fliers who took part in the raid on Tokyo were among the nation's first World War II heroes, the planes they flew were just as popular. The B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, built by North American Aviation, flew in every theater of the war and was as potent as it was versatile. Nearly 10,000 B-25s were built between 1939 and 1945, with the majority of them rolling out of North American's Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kansas. Between December 1941 and August 1945, more than 50,000 employees built 6,608 B-25 bombers at the Fairfax plant, making it one of the region's main contributors to the war effort. According to this KMBC public service announcement from July 1944, the Fairfax plant needs more workers to help build B-25 bombers.  Read a Text Transcription

Broadcast #4
Another of KMBC's B-25-related contributions to the war effort was its "Buy a Bomber" campaign. Throughout the late summer and fall of 1942, the station aired regular programs that combined dramatizations, interviews, and special events, all focusing on the Fairfax-born B-25. The programs urged listeners to "buy" a bomber through the purchase of war bonds, and send it off to Tokyo or Berlin with the name of each contributor listed on a scroll in the cockpit. The response was overwhelming: Area listeners bought not one, but three B-25 bombers. This program, from October 25, 1942, features a testimonial from Jimmy Doolittle himself, along with interviews with the men and women who are building "your" B-25.

Broadcast #5
The Second World War established airpower as one of the keys to modern warfare, and from sleek fighters to massive, lumbering bombers, the planes of World War II achieved near celebrity status. Arguably the war's most infamous aircraft was the B-29 Superfortress. Though in development before America entered the war, the B-29 wasn't deployed until 1944, and was used exclusively in the Pacific. On June 15, 1944, B-29's flying out of China hit the Japanese mainland. This was the first direct attack on Japan since Jimmy Doolittle's raid nearly two years earlier, and the news was just as stirring for home-front listeners. The next day, General Electric trumpeted its contributions to the B-29 in this June 16, 1944 ad from "The World Today." A year later, the plane would again make history, when, on August 6, 1945, another B-29, the Enola Gay, would drop the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

Broadcast #6
With Japan all but devastated by August 1945, World War II's end was imminent, though far from official. On August 14, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his nation's defeat to the Japanese people, and accepted unconditional surrender. However, American listeners were used to radio reports outpacing actual developments on the battlefield, and received the news with a guarded optimism. In an attempt to separate fact from fiction and gauge public response, Paul White and Bob Trout were busy checking sources and fielding telegrams in the Columbia newsroom around midnight on August 14, 1945. Most reports told of citizens who either hadn't heard the news or were waiting for the official shoe to drop before celebrating. One example was this wire from KMBC, which reports on developments in Kansas City, and receives a rather derisive response from the New Yorkers.  Read a Text Transcription

Text by Scott O'Kelley, Marr Sound Archives
Digital Audio by Scott Middleton, Marr Sound Archives

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