I am working on a book about my grandparents' years in China 1911 - 1952/3. Eva and Albert Dunlap lived in Shanghai during that time, except about twelve years spent in Peking/Beijing. They lived through just about all of the geopolitical history of the time. I am working on a mystery which started during the lead up to and through the WWII years. They lived in Shanghai in 1937 when the Battle of Shanghai occurred (August 14, 1937), and the Japanese occupation of China began. Four of their six children were living at home when the Battle happened. The other two were back in the USA, in or finishing college. My mother, one of their children in Shanghai, came back to California in September 1937 to get reoriented and start college eventually. She lived with family, and worked summers in Yosemite. She was able to start at Berkeley in the fall of 1938. During this period, late fall of 1937 through 1939, and maybe longer, I have references to radio messages from my mother, aunt, and a few others, to my grandparents and the three children with them in Shanghai. The Radio station they refer to is KGEI, which is still located in San Francisco. The mystery I am trying to solve is "what was the scenario for people recording messages to send to people in southeast Asia?"
By scenario I mean that I want to write a vignette for my book that tells the story of figuring out how to get a message overseas during WWII. I have an enormous amount of daily life source material for my grandparents, 4000+letters, dozens of diaries, and many more items of ephemera (e.g., professional papers, et.al.) The mentions of messages from home come in bits and snippets such as "Radio message, at [such and a time]”, "heard your message Sunday", "will get to KGEI tomorrow". These are not exact quotes, but they are accurate in the sense that they are written references that informed me that everyone knew what was happening to get the messages sent and received. I have the impression that some messages came in the form of broadcasts along with entertainment and news broadcasts. There is sometimes a mention in a letter or a diary entry, that they (my grandparents) will be listening on Sunday, or they "got the message about..." (By the way, many letters had to be hand-carried by friends who were returning to the USA.)
I have found a fair amount of short historical writing on the facts of KGEI (I think it's the only shortwave station that reached the far east for the war years), but nothing that tells me exactly how US citizens had messages sent. Did they come to the station and record a message that was actually part of a live broadcast? Were they recorded and broadcast to a transcriber? I have the impression that they were broadcast over shortwave radio at regular listening times in Shanghai (and of course wherever else they reached.) My grandparents were not wealthy, but they were connected. My grandfather was a doctor, and my grandmother's brother, Gen. Willard G. Wyman, was a career army officer, a general by WWII, and between a wide array of patients and the information my great uncle could provide, they stayed informed. They also always managed to keep a radio, hidden if necessary, an automobile, and gas to run it. I know for a fact that the radio got regular use.
So the short, multi-part question is, "How did the average citizen get a message out? Was their voice recorded reading their message? How was it received? Was the message broadcast with regular live airtime via shortwave radio? Or did someone transcribe and deliver radiogram messages on paper, like a telegram?”
How people can have real communication with each other is as relevant today as it was almost one hundred years ago.
This is why we tell our family stories.