For several months I have searched for the short wave radio station where my grandfather, Dr. Hugh MacMillan, broadcasted propaganda to the Japanese during the latter part of World War II.
Recently my friend, John Bracken, loaned me a old paperback called “Room 3603″ by H. Montgomery Hyde. This book, published in 1962, chronicled British espionage activities in North America during the war, focusing on the propaganda, intelligence and counter intelligence efforts of Sir William Stephenson (a.k.a. his codename “Intrepid”).
Hyde’s book included the following sentence, which interested me greatly:
“…Station KGEI, owned and operated in San Francisco by the General Electric Company [was] the only station broadcasting to the Far East at this time…material put out by Stephenson and broadcast by KGEI…was picked up and rediffused by the Malaya Broadcasting Company in Singapore and the Australian Broadcasting Commission…”
Naturally I looked up the station’s call letters on the Internet and found a link to the Bay Area Radio Museum, where I found a photo of the KGEI transmitter circa 1960. The building still stands, though it now houses a church. Incidentally, “KGEI” stands for “General Electric International” [the "K" is the standard first letter for all radio and t.v. stations broadcasting in the western United States]. That link also led me to a lot of other information on wartime broadcasting in Japanese to civilian and military audiences across the Pacific, with which Hugh was involved directly.
Without going into the messy bureaucratic mechanics of military intelligence (which I will unravel in my book) Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian, recruited Hugh to join the team of British/Canadian and American experts who were waging “psychological warfare” against the Japanese. This involved a variety of strategies and tactics (including military deception, pamphlet drops, analysis of enemy messages and broadcasting news and commentary to Japanese listeners).
I’ll have more on this in the manuscript. For now, this is one of those little victories that make writers and researchers excited.
Comments on: "KGEI" (2)
How cool is that? Recruited by a man called Intrepid!
Yeah, Bob, though I need to hire a researcher to drill into the war records to get more info. Interesting, though, and exciting to have found the link with both Stephenson and with KGEI.