Shortwave Radios Confiscated

[k4kyv]

We have heard stories that the Nazis restricted radio use in Germany during WW2. Shortwave radios were confiscated. At the height of hostilities, it was reported that anyone caught listening to BBC or other Allied radio stations was subject to summary execution. 

It is a little-known fact that similar restrictions were imposed in the US.  Legal resident aliens of German, Japanese and Italian descent were required to surrender their shortwave radios to police.

In the years just prior to WW2, it was very common for ordinary broadcast receivers made in the US to include one or more shortwave bands.

Wonder what happened to all those radios.

The knock on the door came in 1942. Alfio and Mary Bonanno could no longer fill their south Philadelphia home with Enrico Caruso and other sounds of their native Italy. Federal government orders: The shortwave radio had to go.

Their son Sam didn't know it. He was busy risking his life in the Pacific with the U.S. Marines. His mother, a housewife who was not an American citizen, had been classified an "enemy alien."

The Bonannos never got their radio back.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_19991219/ai_n10555142

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Authority

Whereas it is provided by Section 21 of Title 50 of the United States Code as follows:

"Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies...

(5) No alien enemy shall have in his possession, custody or control at any time or place or use or operate any of the following enumerated articles:

a. Firearms.

b. Weapons or implements of war or component parts thereof.

c. Ammunition.

d. Bombs.

e. Explosives or material used in the manufacture of explosives.

f. Short-wave radio receiving sets.

g. Transmitting sets.

h. Signal devices.

i. Codes or ciphers.

j. Cameras.

k. Papers, documents or books in which there may be invisible writing; photograph, sketch, picture, drawing, map or graphical representation of any military or naval installations or equipment or of any arms, ammunition, implements of war, de vice or thing used or intended to be used in the combat equipment of the land or naval forces of the United States or of any military or naval post, camp or station.

All such property found in the possession of any alien enemy in violation of the foregoing regulations shall be subject to seizure and forfeiture.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/dec/dec07.htm

[Tom WA3KLR]

We've mentioned this on the forum before, but during WWII each of your ham transmitters had to be registered with the FCC.

If a home radio came into a radio repair shop in the coastal areas for work, it had to have any shortwave bands disabled.

[The Slab Bacon]

If a home radio came into a radio repair shop in the coastal areas for work, it had to have any shortwave bands disabled.

Tom,
       you know that it kinda interesting. I have a rather large collection of antique radios. Many of them had non working shortwave bands when I first got them. Some of the reapirs were as simple as a broken (maybe cut??) wire on the bandswitch, others were much more complicated. That is a piece of radio history that i didnt know about,
Hmmmm............... I always considered myself somewhat of a radio historian, but you got me on that one. I will have to make some serious inquiries at the next month antique radio club meeting. That is rather interesting.
                                               The Slab Bacon

[k4kyv]

The presidential order said that resident aliens of enemy countries were not allowed to have shortwave radios.  There was nothing in the order that prohibited US citizens from owning or using them.

I have run across scores of pre-WW2 shortwave radios over the years.  I have repaired them, used them and parted them out.  Never recall ever seeing one with the shortwave bands intentionally disabled.

And if there ever was an order to register transmitters, many of the hams who owned them would have already been serving in the military by the time the order came.  All I have ever heard was that amateurs were prohibited from transmitting for the duration of the war.  In the majority of cases, the amateur station would have been at the home of the parents of the soldier-ham (in those days, the vast majority of hams were teenagers and people in their 20's), and they probably wouldn't have known a transmitter from a code practice oscillator.

Wonder if you could find any documentation to that story.  I'm sure the AWA people and other radio historians would find it of interest.

[W1GFH]

I have heard rumors that during WWII, people who SWLed were looked upon with suspicion in the US, I suppose in the same way that people who wear turbans and have arabic last names are sometimes looked upon today. People's overactive imaginations caused them to think "axis spies" were everywhere. Jittery citizens often made phone calls to police, reporting "a man on the roof of a building with binoculars" and "sounds of morse code coming from the upstairs bedroom of the rooming house late at night".

German spies using SW equipment in the US were rare, but not nonexistant. If you ever get a chance, read "Spy For Germany", an autobiographical book by
German radio enthusiast/spy Erich Gimpel. Gimpel was teamed with American malcontent William Colepaugh and transported to the USA by the U-boat U-1230, landing at Hancock Point, Maine on 29 November 1944 and hitchiking to NYC. The pair's mission was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort, especially the Manhattan Project, and transmit it back to Germany using an 80-watt radio Gimpel was expected to build. Gimpel scoured Manhattan's "Radio Row" for parts, built a CW rig, and selected a top floor building from which to transmit (I think it was Beekman Place), using an indoor antenna on 40 meters. He established that the rig worked by making a couple of short QSO's with Germany, but before he could gather any intelligence, Colepaugh abandoned him to pursue drunken sprees and womanizing all over Manhattan. Colepaugh was caught and ratted out Gimpel. The pair spent years in prison before being pardoned in the late 50s.

[Tom WA3KLR]

I didn't know about the registration of the amateur transmitters until this past year or so when I saw one of the certicates with a home-brew transmitter on ebay.  I never heard or saw one before, but that doesn't mean it can't be so.  

Below is the photo from that ebay ad.  I asked my father about the registration (he's 87 now) and about a month later he was able to dig out and show me his copies of the certificates of registration for his 2 homebrew transmitters.  He got his license just a few months before Pearl Harbor.

As far as the radio shops disabling shortwave on radios coming in for repair - I never heard of this until a few years ago, and from a ham that I have known all my life.  I think he is 88.  He is from the Norristown area just northwest of Philadelphia.

Perhaps there was another rule or perhaps the one you quoted got twisted by word of mouth.  If you owned a shop at the time what would you do?  Nothing, or question each cutomer as to their background or just disable SW?  Then if they call back and complain that the set does work on BC now, but the SW band doesn't, tell them that's the law now?  Who knows.  

Since we never heard of these things, especially sooner after the war, I presume it must not have been a big deal at the time.  Just interesting trivia now.

[Tom WA3KLR]

If you look at the fine print near the top of the FCC form, it says, "by FCC Order No. 101, June 19, 1942.  So this is 6 months after December 7.  I guess it took quite a while for other priorities to settle and some paranoia to build.

Could you imagine having the Internet disabled for a few days?

[k4kyv]

If you look at the fine print near the top of the FCC form, it says, "by FCC Order No. 101, June 19, 1942.  So this is 6 months after December 7.  I guess it took quite a while for other priorities to settle and some paranoia to build.

I'm sure many of the owners of those transmitters were dodging bullets in Europe and in the Pacific by then.  The radio transmitter back home was the least of their concerns.

The complete list of emergency wartime orders is published in the 1943 ARRL Radio Amateurs Handbook.  I'll look and see what it says there.