Getting messages to loved ones during the war

Tweet

Apart from being in the same museum as the information below, the photo has nothing to do with the discussion. John Charles Peters was born in 1890 and taught in Muchea, Western Australia, for 21 years, before taking over the store in 1937. Two sons enlisted in the armed forces. Young John enlisted in December 1941 and was posted overseas. The family had one letter from him from an unknown destination but then heard no more. Anxious to know young John’s whereabouts, John senior purchased a dual wave, shortwave radio, which ran on batteries, and began listening to all radio programmes that were sending out messages from Australian prisoners of war. Reception was always good. John, his wife and daughter would write down the messages as they came in. Over the war years, they relayed hundreds of messages around Australia. If they had a phone number they would ring the family immediately. Other messages would be written down. John would wait up until the train came through the town and, while it was filling with water, he would walk down to the station and drop the letters in an open mail bag in the guard’s van. Over 800 letters are in existence but many more have been lost. I can only imagine the joy and relief that families would feel on receiving messages from their loved ones. It was not until November 1945 that the family learnt that their son John had lost his life in Singapore in February 1942, just a few months after he’d arrived.