This is a contemporary amateur home recording of a live WWII-era radio news broadcast (see note below). The label is marked "#1 Japs Surrender Aug 14, 1945 7:05 PM". It contains live descriptions of the street celebrations that followed the announcement of the Japanese surrender that ended WWII.


This audio is part of the collection: Old Time Radio
It also belongs to collection: Radio Programs

Artist/Composer: WWII News Broadcasts
Date: 1945-08-14 19:05:00
Source: Home recording disk digitized by old78collector
Keywords: News Programs; Radio Broadcasts; Spoken Word

Notes

This is a contemporary WWII-era home recording of a live radio broadcast. It is from one of a batch of 40 twelve-inch plastic-on-aluminum "Audiodisc" home recording disks that were salvaged from a garage, still packed in their original wooden crates. These recordings often start and stop abruptly and contain some noise and static, but with digital cleanup most are quite listenable. The only information I have about these recordings is the brief handwritten descriptions on the labels, so sometimes the content is a bit mysterious. I have no idea who made the recordings or where they were made. The recording times given on the labels (and in my titles) suggest they were made in the US Central time zone, since the label times are consistently earlier than the time referenced within the programs originating from East Coast broadcasters.

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Reviewer: old78collector - - September 20, 2012
Subject: More like this
If you click on the blue text link "WWII News Broadcasts" above next to "Artist/Composer" you will find several additional items from the same batch of disks.

Reviewer: Buzz350 - - September 20, 2012
Subject: Sounds pretty good
Despite earlier posts about overcompression, sounds pretty good to me. At least the teletype background is comparable to that in the CBS D-Day broadcasts, Does anyone have any more like this?

Reviewer: RayDio - - July 25, 2010
Subject: WOR as ID
Mutual, being a very loosely run network, likely threw the local WOR programming on the network and forgot to caution the announcers to ID as "The Mutual Broadcasting System". That would explain the Central time notes, don't you think?

Reviewer: mjb784533 - - February 27, 2010
Subject: Real recording, but overprocessed
This is a real recording from WOR, New York, and the Mutual Broadcasting System network. The problem is that it has been digitally overprocessed which has caused the sound to turn into mush. Listen to the newsroom section after the Times Square section just before Fulton Lewis, Jr. The fuzzy sound behind the voice is supposed to be the teletype machines. The person who digitized tbis seems to have thought it was static noise and stupidly tried to eliminate it. The same with the crowd. Please don't ruin recordings by too much digital processing. Five star content with one star processing leaves it a three.

Reviewer: iame - - August 8, 2009
Subject: great piece of history!
I'm no radio historian, but having lived in NY, I do know that WOR is indeed a radio station in NYC (originally in NJ but at that time and later in NYC) and used to be a Mutual station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOR_(AM)

Reviewer: Mike D0001 - - July 6, 2006
Subject: MORE INFO PLEASE!!! :)
This is a great clip. But the only problem I find is the lack of info on wether this is considered public domain or not.

Please, Please, Please, if you have any info on that, it would be GREATLY apprecaited!

Thanks again,

Mike D

Reviewer: nowherian - - December 2, 2005
Subject: excellent salvaging work
Needless to say this is an extra-ordinary find. Sixty years ago this was the vibe that shook the world and somebody managed to capture it, and, even more remarkably, unknown people and circumstances preserved this recording from perishing. I recommend that everyone give this atleast one hear, and preserve it for posterity.

The only reservation I have is with regards to the genuine nature of this recording. If only a radio-historian could verify it...