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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N581, April 12, 2020
American Radio Station on Vanuatu Island in the South Pacific
The island of Espiritu Santo is the largest island in the now independent South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, or the condominium French and English colony of the New Hebrides, as it was known during its colonial era. The island is almost square in shape, with two long fingerlike peninsulas jutting out from the northwest side of the square.
The total area of the island is 1,500 square miles, with a population of 40,000 people who are fluent in their own local language, and also in either French or English. Espiritu Santo is the only habitat for a rare bird known as the Santo Mountain Starling, which is found only in the cloud forest areas. For a few months back in the 1980s, the island of Espiritu Santo declared an unsuccessful independence from Vanuatu.
The main town on the island is Luganville, the second largest town in Vanuatu. Luganville was laid out by the American forces during World War II, and the main street was planned so wide that four army tanks could travel abreast over its full length.
The first contingent of American service personnel arrived on Espiritu Santo on April 8, 1942, an advance survey party of 500 personnel who made preparation for several American bases on the island. Additional American forces began to arrive on February 3 of the following year (1943), and at the height of their occupation there were half a million American personnel on the island.
On August 4, 1944, the first radio broadcasting station in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) was opened at Luganville on Espiritu Santo Island with 1 kW on 1045 kHz. Very soon afterwards, this new mediumwave radio station in the South Pacific was heard in New Zealand, and then in Australia. Due to a salt water pathway, this little 1 kW station on the mediumwave split channel 1045 kHz in the New Hebrides was heard quite regularly during the hours of darkness in both New Zealand and Australia, one thousand miles away.
Initially, this new American radio station identified on air as the Voice of the New Hebrides, and also as AES, American Expeditionary Station, and AEF American Expeditionary Forces. However, at the time when this station was inaugurated, regular American callsigns were being allocated to all of the American stations in the Pacific, so the station on Espiritu Santo became WVUR, the American Forces Radio Service.
AFRS WVUR was a member station of the loosely applied Mosquito Network, which had its headquarters with the AFRS station WVUS at Noumea, New Caledonia. In November 1944, the AFRS stations in the Mosquito Network participated in a genuine network radio event, by rebroadcasting off-air the mediumwave signal from WVUS Noumea which was operating on another split channel, 975 kHz. Three other Mosquito Network stations successfully carried this relay programming from WVUS Noumea, and these were: WVUQ Guadalcanal, 1ZM Auckland, New Zealand, and WVUR in the New Hebrides.
AFRS station WVUR on Espiritu Santo was closed on February 14, 1946. The Pacific War was over, and large numbers of the American forces had moved on, and some had even gone home. However, that was not the end of AFRS WVUR.
The station was taken over as it was by the American air force, though it was no longer part of the Mosquito Network. For another three months, this station was still on the air, and it was consistently heard in both New Zealand and Australia. After that, it was indeed silenced forever.
Just a very few international radio monitors living in New Zealand and Australia were successful in receiving a QSL from WVUR Espiritu Santo, in the form no doubt of a letter typed out on an old manual typewriter, perhaps even in hunt and peck style.
More about the radio scene in Vanuatu next time.