Cincinnati Radio: The War Years (1941-1945); Part 2

During times of rapid and complex change, we tend to seek out a few constants, some connections with our past that can help to reassure us as we look forward to an uncertain future. Perhaps this is why Moon River seemed to be more popular than ever as it celebrated its first decade and a half on the air. It is not a long time, major, for the duration of its just long enough for a dimpled baby bearing into the mirror and rubbing it in with hopeful thinking. It's just long enough for a pig to a little girl to become the camel in some young lady peering out the window and hoping to see a young man in blue or olive drab and driving up the wall. Now, 15 years is not a long time. And yet. And yet, when a radio program marks the end of the 15 year old movies, it's more than half as old as radio itself.

Permanently on the river for six years, the divorced sisters are still remembered by their thousands of listeners. They come back tonight to plan their voices in an unforgettable harmony. Based on your.

So while. When I. Like his mom. Nadja's. I mean, again, right from

the. No war for. Across the miles from Hawaii comes transcribe the voice heard through many years beside the bright waters of warm weather, the voice of Peter. My love is like a red red rose that's newly

sprung in June. All my love is like a melody that sweetly played in your. As far as my personal life, so deep in love and I and I will love this film, I feel all the is good. I feel all the sea is go dry and the rock melt with the sun. And I will love this film. My. While the sounds of life. And the fare thee well, my only love and fare thee well, I fly and I will come again, my love, though it were 10000

by. Remember those two young ladies who auditioned with a great version of Straighten Up and Fly, right? Well, they got the job and one of their first adventures in broadcasting came when they joined the cast of Moon River. Here they are, Rosemary and Betty, just as they sounded on the show when they sang together as the Clooney sisters. Going to take a sentimental journey, gonna set my daddy, gonna make a sentimental journey to renew. Mary Guzman

says a gas reservation spent each day. I could feel like a child. And wild anticipation long to hear that. Seven. That's Tom. I'll be waiting for boy. Come every mile of railroad track that takes me back. I never thought my heart could be so yearning, why did I?

I decide to go and make this sentimental journey, save my. Jenny. Not all of the people who appeared on Moon River style programs were lucky enough to receive the kind of public approval that was given to the Clunies, the divers or Peter Grant. Listen carefully to this somewhat battered paper disc of WUIS gems of poetry and music. And you'll hear poetry reader Jane Grea responding to a listener letter with what can only be described as a really rare good grace. Before we give you our closing on tonight, we have all of our hearts as a reader of poetry and address

our daughter to someone who writes, I have a friend for your own sake, my dear, whoever you are with your criticism and you know all of the facts in every case. It's a very weak person who takes time out to criticize someone else. It takes a great deal of courage to be oneself. And that's what we shall always be before the microphone or anywhere else. You have the opportunity to redial your radio at any time in your life, and we in the future shall take a life liberty with your left. If you lived in Cincinnati during the first week of March 1945, you probably weren't paying much attention to the war reports that spoke of imminent allied

victory in the European theater, your memories of the destruction and death that followed in the wake of the 1937 Ohio River flood had been rudely reawakened at a similar disaster, seemed to be in the making. Duke's Tom McCarthy, workwise, Jack Foster and George Skinner are on the air to help you and thousands of others chart the course of the rising river here in Cincinnati, a city built upon hills rising from the banks of the Ohio. A grim fight is being waged against the swirling yellow flood waters, which, if they had their way, would bring to a halt some of the most important oil production in the nation. Traffic to Riverside and of by way of Hillside Avenue had been maintained by a bypass behind the top row of buildings on Riverside Road between Sohi Avenue and the boldface drive. But the water surged over that hill ground when the river reached the 62 foot mark early today.

The Cincinnati weather forecaster says the river will rise sharply in the Queen City during the next 24 hours, but it declined to predict the crest and said only that the river would reach a stage of 68 to 70 feet tomorrow. So far tonight, it is not known definitely what schools will be closed and what schools remain open for further news on the school subject. Stay tuned to see why tonight and tomorrow morning. So Swift has been the rise of the waters that the Cincinnati Suburban and Bell telephone company has been calling on residents of low lying areas to cut their phone wires and carry the phones along with them when they move out. Home parks in wartime are virtually irreplaceable. Three deaths in Cincinnati have been ascribed to the flood so far. A 16 year old boy drowned on a flooded street while trying to evacuate stranded family and older man collapsed and died in the exertion of moving precious more goods in the flooded basement area of the city. A soldier attached to the Ferring Division Air Transport Command on guard duty at Flood covid Lincoln Airport, drowned when a boat upset as he and three other soldiers were returning from a tour of duty.

10 communities in northern Kentucky were virtually isolated tonight by the floodwaters of the Ohio and the leaking rivers. And hundreds of families labored throughout the day to remove furniture and personal belongings by boat to places of safety. Seems reminiscent of the record. 1937 were enacted. Soup kitchens sprang up to feed refugees. Hundreds of rescuers as they patrolled the river to complete the evacuation of some 12000 persons and affected areas of Kamble and Kenton County. Workers at the Right Aeronautical Corp. plant in Lafayette, Ohio, which produces the engines for the big three times. The super boats were sent home early today as rising waters threaten to isolate the plant from the outside world. And tonight, what does go on in many a Cincinnati war plant, even though floodwaters coursing through the basement right now, the Ohio River in Cincinnati stands at nearly 68 feet, about 18 feet above flood stage. Backwaters of the Ohio and little Miami rib, the 40 foot section from the Beach, Mont. Levee protecting Lumpkin airport, isolating suburban Washington and

cutting all city gas service there. The airport already had been flooded by KRC, will remain on the air throughout the night, operating on a 24 hour schedule until this flood situation has been alleviated. Keep your dial at 55 for the latest on the flood in spite of its severity. Most of us seem to have forgotten that March flood. Perhaps it was displaced in our memories by the shock and sadness we would feel just over a month later, April 12th, 1945. We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just announced that President Roosevelt is dead. The president died of a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that the president died at Warm Springs in Georgia. The drums are wrapped in black, muffled as you can hear. I can see the horses drawing the caisson. And behind us is the car bearing the man on whose shoulders

now was the terrific burdens and responsibilities that were handled so well by the man whose body we're paying our last respects now. God bless him. President Truman returning now to the studio. That was the voice of Arthur Godfrey covering Franklin Delano Roosevelt's funeral procession for CBS on May 8th. The new president, Harry S. Truman, made the announcement that millions throughout the world had waited to hear since 1939. General Eisenhower informs me that the first. Is of Germany has surrendered to the United Nations, the flags of freedom fly all over Europe. Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when the great day came just over three months later on August 14th, 1945? If you were listening to KRC, you got the news from Robert Trout and Tom

McCarthy, ladies and gentlemen, we're monitoring the Columbia Network and they are in New York City at their world news service. But meanwhile, they are not taking us to to London, England. Here we go. The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. That is the word we have just received from the White House in Washington and I didn't expect a celebration here. And you've heard it. Ladies and gentlemen, and we're here in the Thamesdown newsroom with a traveling microphone. The war is over. The Japanese have surrendered. The victory has been won. It's still official from the White House you just heard from President Harry Truman has announced the end of the war. The Japanese have accepted our conditions, reply to their surrender offer. They will lay down their arms. There it is. The news you've been waiting for. It's over all over by some neighbors of yours and mine. The war ended long ago when the messenger arrived with a telegram saying killed in action or died of wounds.

Let's have a thought for that. Tonight, the sounds of the guns have been stilled. This is August the 14th, the day to remember. No word from Washington that President Truman has announced the acceptance of the Japanese surrender term. This is the day you wondered about on September 1st, 1939, when the voice of Adolf Hitler swept upon the News of the World to announce the Nazi attack on Poland. This is the day you wondered about on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor. And then you said, this is it. And whether you fancy yourself an isolationist or an internationalist, you know that that was it. You wondered about your own loved ones back there, December 7th. Forty one. You wondered whether they would survive it. Well, many of the boys will come marching home and others will lie beneath the white crosses and stars and fireplaces, places whose names we've never heard before that Pearl Harbor Day. And so now the war is over.

The victory is one. The American people have a new litany of names which have been consecrated by American blood, the blood of boys and men from Cincinnati and Covington, Newport, Lebanon, Ohio. Greenville, Dayton. And Connersville, Indiana. And Lawrenceburg, a litany which tells of far places and calls up the vision of beach landings in an inferno of fire and steel. We can hear the whistle from downtown Cincinnati. They're breaking loose because this is it. This is your friends now. It's all over in the Pacific. Over in Europe, it's over. Stay for the white crosses in the memory of those place. Names you'd never heard of before this war started. The job has been done in the Western world and on the land and seas of the Orient. And let's not forget it. We're traveling alongside our newswire. Now, as a matter of fact, if we can get to the window, maybe we don't have to get there. You can hear the bells of officials in downtown Cincinnati. I don't know whether they cut in above the news wire, Ticky, but Mr.

Truman made the announcement that it's over. At a press conference. He read a statement which said, I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan in the reply. There is no qualification. That's the way President Truman said it. Let me see if I can get to a window. You can hear the bells and whistles out there. Now, Cincinnati can really celebrate, the thing is over and Johnny is going to come marching home, friends, possibly Columbia Broadcasting System has got something that I haven't got down here on my ticker. So we take you to CBS News Columbia News headquarters in New York. Our last great enemy is defeated. The Second World War is at an end. Ladies and gentlemen, the Christ Church wishes to announce it will hold special V-J Day services at 8:00 p.m. tonight and will 10:00 tomorrow afternoon. We'll repeat the Christ Church wishes to announce it will hold special

deejayed services at 8:00 p.m. tonight and 12:00 10:00 tomorrow afternoon. The town is just getting into the depth of the celebration about an hour, I believe. And President Truman will later on this evening make a formal declaration of the peace treaty with Japan. And we heard the whistle blower and all sorts of things will happen to be going on all at one time. And so we decided that that was the end of the war and it was that we drove around the block and we went over to Fountain Square and there were tons of paper, I guess not tons and a few waste baskets for paper being thrown out from the crew tower. It's pretty it's pretty thrilling, I think. Ladies and gentlemen, we're speaking to you from the roof of the Thamesdown building in downtown Cincinnati. Can you hear those whistles? Can you hear those bells? Cincinnati is celebrating. We thought we'd let you hear what the old hometown is doing.

Just listen to the noise. Even up here at Eighth and Broadway, which is a little off the main drag in Cincinnati, the paper and the confetti is blowing around and somebody must have tied down the whistle of a train because one of the most infernal rackets is being brewed over in the middle part of a city. And we can hear it up here at the time, start just as though it was being made downstairs. For now, that's the story from The Times, Don. It was really over. After three years, eight months, two days and one million casualties. America's involvement in the Second World War had come to an end, a new world would emerge from the rubble and ruin of the old, and it would turn out quite differently from what we had expected. But that was all in the future. For the present, international concerns would have to wait. There were other matters needing immediate attention that were much closer to our homes and hearts.

Just kiss me once, kiss me twice, kiss me once again. It's been a long. Long time haven't felt like this smartest since, can't remember when it's been a long. You never know how many. I dreamed about. Or just how empty will seem without. So kiss me once, kiss me twice, kiss me once again. It's been a long. Just kiss me once, kiss me twice, kiss

me once again. It's been a long. Haven't felt like this, my dear, since can't remember. It's been a long. You never know how many. I dreamed about. Or just however they will see without. So kiss me once, kiss me twice, kiss me once again. It's been a long. We hope you enjoyed our presentation of Cincinnati Radio, the War Years, and

we also hope that you'll be looking for other releases in this series of WVXU recordings that preserve authentic sounds from the golden age of Cincinnati Broadcasting. The WVXU stations would like to thank the Cincinnati Historical Society, Ed Dooley, Burt Farber, the Ohio Historical Society, Richard Trout and George Wagner for providing original source material used in this recording. The WVXU stations would also like to express its appreciation to Blanken of Hyde Park Photography, laser Systems, the Merton Company and Earl Silva Fine Photography for furnishing, printing and photo services. Digital Transfers for Cincinnati Radio: The War Years were made by Ed Dooley with audio restoration by Mark Magistrelli and technical producer George Zahn. Cincinnati Radio: The War Years was produced and written by Mark Magistrelli. Executive producer, Dr. James C. King. For Nick Clooney and the WVXU stations.

I'm Paul Keels.