The closing stage of the war was August-September 1945 and the battlefronts
had shifted to the Far East. The hostilities drew to a close with the surrender
of Japan, the then ally of Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union went into war
with Japan in full compliance of the Great Patriotic War the Soviet leadership
saw to it that military operations did not start on the Western and Eastern
fronts simultaneously. That had to be avoided and so it was, which was
to the credit of Radio Moscow too. In the years of the Second World War
Radio Moscow began to broadcast in Japanese and the staff of the Japanese
service were so few you could count them quite easily. As the announcer
Katayama Yasu recalls, employees of the service did everything they could
to tell the Japanese more about the Soviet Union.
Act of Capitulation of Japan did not spell out the end of the war. Since
the country had lived in occupation for seven years, the Japanese saw war
as their permanent state of living. That’s why Radio Moscow’s Japanese
service presented so many cultural programs in those years. Love of classics
was seen as the basis for common language and literary programs became
a distinguishing feature of the Japanese service. Okada Yoshiko was the  author
of the programs.
“When I joined the service in 1959 I met Okada Yoshiko, an announcer and
an actress of a Japanese theatre in her past,” the head of the service
Lipman Levin recalls. “For me it was the ultimate of happiness to work
side by side with an actress who was ranked along with Lyubov Orlova and
Ingrid Bergman. I called her “kamban-musume” or “a girl from our radio
cover”. Due to her the ratings of our service went up high enough.”
But unlike the majority of foreign language services who received piles
of letters after the war the Japanese department had little feedback. An
avalanche of letters from Japan fell on Radio Moscow after the resumption
of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1956. Since then the
Japanese section has been the leader in the volume of correspondence from
the listeners.
The defeat of Japan in the Second World War triggered a fresh outburst
of national liberation movements in South East Asia. In August 1945 Indonesia
declared independence and Radio Moscow was among the first world broadcasters
who started broadcasting to Indonesia. The first announcer and translator
for the Indonesian service was Semaun.
“That was a legendary personality, one of the leaders of the Indonesian
National Liberation Movement and the founder of the Communist party of
Indonesia,” a radio veteran, Igor Kashmadze, recalls. “In 1922 he was sentenced
by the Dutch to exile in malaria camp in New Guinea for mounting a rail
strike.
The first broadcasts, however, were far from perfect. Semaun left Indonesia
in the 1920s and the Indonesian language underwent important changes since
his departure. To Radio Moscow modern Indonesian was introduced by professional
announcers from Indonesia who arrived in Moscow in the 1950s. The broadcasts
became much more fascinating.
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