Also part of AFN-Japan is AFN-Okinawa, located in the Rycom Plaza Housing Area adjacent to Marine Corps Base Camp S.D.
Its radio stations DWFE-AM in Olongapo and DWFA-AM in Balanga, Bataan, and Far East 95.1 (now RW 95.1) on FM are as a part of their network's operations from 1946 to 1991 but the TV channel was forcibly shut down due to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo and the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Clark.
By late 1942, the new AFRS had begun receiving direct support from both the Army and the Navy with the assignment of personnel tasked with producing special radio programs.
In 1943, a complex of high-powered radio transmitters was organized to transmit programs to military men and women serving in Europe, Alaska, and the South Pacific.
The first AFRS stations established under the Central Pacific Command were set up on the Tarawa Atoll and islet of Makin, both located in the Gilbert Islands, in November 1943.
Teams of military broadcast specialists were trained at AFRS' headquarters in Los Angeles to operate radio stations.
Some of the teams carried complete radio transmitting equipment: 50-watt transmitters, turntables, a tiny mixing console and several boxes of records.
By late spring of 1944, the island-hopping campaigns of the war had made household words out of the names of previously little-known islands in the Central and South Pacific.
AFRS stations were set up on most of them, including Bougainville and New Britain (Solomon Islands—March 1944), New Guinea, New Ireland, Kavieng, and the Admiralty Islands (April 1944) and Rabaul (May 1944).
So, even the threat of reporting AFRS problems to a higher headquarters often resulted in quick action by local commanders to do whatever they could to solve them.
Leaflets, dropped by patrol planes flying over the islands, alerted the Japanese forces there as to when the special broadcasts would be made.
It was only after the surrender of the islands months later that captured documents revealed the tremendous successes of the broadcasts in convincing the Japanese commanders that their war efforts were futile.
Other hazards in the tropics were jungle swamps, unbridged rivers and streams, and patches of mud into which men sank to their waists.
On the larger, foliage-blanketed islands, from which outcrops of rocky mountains extended above the jungles, there was an ever-present, all-pervading scent of rotting vegetation that made breathing miserable.
Except for the sounds of exploding bombs and artillery shells, the stillness was so profound that an occasional harsh cry from a startled bird seemed to be sinister and awe-inspiring.
Drifting clouds that wreathed the treetops in swirling mists fed the dense canopy of dripping foliage far above the ever-saturated and almost sunless floor of the primeval jungle.
The Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) building in Tokyo was the home to station JOAK, and shared its facilities with WVTR from 1945 to 1952.
With the consolidation of all the AFRS outlets under the newly established Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP), the fledgling Far East Network had eighteen stations in Japan broadcasting daily to troops ashore and afloat.