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Dear Friend Dies -JORO on OkiBy JIM LEA I understand you’re on ass oktiwwo Bureau time schedule.” the caller said.NAHA, Japan — The only commercial, full-time, English-language radio station in Japan— JORO — went off the air atmidnight Wednesday.To a lot of people on Okinawa, it was like the death of a dearfriend.The Ryukyu Broadcasting Co.-owned station operated on Okinawa for 18 years, as KSBR before reversion, then as JORO.It was a de facto victim of reversion.Under the Japanese government’s radio broadcasting law, one company can operate only one AM frequency station. The RBC also operates a Japanese-language AM station, JOFF.People knew for weeks that it was going, but a lot of listeners spent the last few hours hoping it was some kind of gigantic Halloween prank that would end, miraculously, Thursday.It didn’t.JORO filled a great need in Okinawa, where thousands of Americans were, unnerved a year and a half ago when U.S. rule ended after 28 years. It was a frightening thing to some people, and JORO perhaps more than any other mass communication media on the island helped calm them.It had the charisma of a hometown radio station. When things weren’t going exactly right and being 10,000 miles away from home made it worse, you could turn on the radio and listen to a bunch of zany disc-jockeys just like the ones backin the “land of the big PX.”JORO was best known for its “Opinion Line,” a three-hour, M o n da y-ihru-Friday listener-participati.cn show that performed probably the station’s greatest service.It was a release valve. When things weren’t going exactly right, people could call and let off steam. A lot of the things they talked about were puny, a lot more were very important to the American community on Okinawa.No matter what they talked about, though, everybody had a chance to let off steam, to say what they thought, Even the people who called seemed to convey the opinion that no one else should be entitled to an opinion.Wednesday, the last day, was like “Opinion Line” all day. Even though the DJS tried to keep it light for the most part, it was like people calling in condolences at a wake.The final call to Opinion Line came in at 11:58:37 p.m.“so when the time comes, and you get ready to shut it off, go ahead and cut me off. . . best of luck . . . goodbye to JORO.”“Right now,” said Bob Wales, station manager, “we’re in the last 30 seconds and one thing we’ve gotta say is, we don’t have tomorrow.”One of the pretty songs they used to play came up and, over it, Wales said, “Bye-bye. . . . God bless you.”There were three time beeps and it was over.
Newspaper Details
Pacific Stars and Stripes
Tokyo, Tôkyô, JP
Fri, Nov 02, 1973
Page 18
Full Page
Clipped by
Sammi B.
NA 16 Feb 2021
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