Radio & Bataan

So self -sufficient is General MacArthur's army that the silencing of Singapore, Batavia and last week of Bandung, princi pal rebroadcasting points for radio to the Far East, made little difference in the amount and quality of programs received on Bataan. Last week, indeed, U.S. contact with the Philippines was peculiarly intimate -even including parts of the islands held by the Japanese.

Communications between General MacArthur's headquarters and the War Department in Washington are naturally through military channels, which the War Department naturally keeps subterranean. But the forces on Bataan are far from being dependent on such bulletins.

When MacArthur withdrew to Bataan he took with him enough of Manila's dismantled station KZRH to make, on reassembly, a 1,000-watt medium-wave transmitter. Bataan thus became a fairly powerful rebroadcast point for short-wave programs from the U.S. The Japanese confiscated all the Filipino short-wave receivers they could find; but to have confiscated other radios would have interfered with their own propaganda purposes. That suited Competitor MacArthur.

From California's short-wave KGEI the Army Signal Corps on Bataan now picks up and rebroadcasts some two hours of English programs every day. The stuff begins to come in on Bataan at 5 every afternoon (2 a.m. in San Francisco). It starts with a quarter-hour of straight news. Another quarter-hour is devoted to a roundup of editorial comments from the U.S. Since Bing Crosby's request performance (TIME, Feb. 9), KGEI has added a daily half-hour of entertainment from fresh recordings: Monday, Jack Benny; Tuesday, Cavalcade of America; Wednesday, Bob Hope; Thursday, Eddie Cantor; Friday, Rudy Vallee. There is also news in Tagalog, and a discussion in English, Freedom for the Philippines. The Philippines listen.

Last week a special MARCH OF TIME program dramatizing the Bataan fighting was recorded Friday night and sent out to the real dramatis personae on Saturday. On Saturday, too, Cleveland's station WGAR did itself proud with the most notable program by an inland station yet short-waved to the Philippines. Dedicated to General MacArthur and his men was a Te Deum composed in 1936 by the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Budapest's emancipation from Turkey. The program -by the Cleveland Orchestra -was short-waved "live" from Cleveland's Severance Hall, reached Bataan at churchtime Sunday morning. Said Conductor Artur Rodzinski, introducing it: "To you, our salute and our prayers." Said Commentator Kay Halle: "In such moments a hymn of praise and thanksgiving can say more than any words. . . ."

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