By Yasmin Assemi

Dixon -- A few miles outside Dixon's core lies the old Voice of America
radio station nestled among a web of communication wires.

For more than 40 years, it broadcast in short-wave in 44 different languages
to the Far East, Central America, South America's West Coast and Oceania.
The typical program was a mix of news, sports, music and cultural
information about the U.S. gathered at VOA's headquarters in Washington,
D.C.

It was an institution believed in by John Wiswell and Frank Green, the two
surviving Dixon residents who worked there.

The station in Dixon and its nationwide counterparts educated people
worldwide about America and "let them know what kind of country we were,"
said Green, a station radio engineer and plant supervisor from 1953 to 1986.

"If (the rest of the world) knew everything about us, we'd be in a better
shape than we are now," the 84-year-old said.

It was "kind of a high-pressure job," but Green, a Pearl Harbor survivor,
found it interesting work after serving in the Navy during World War II, he
said.

"I believe what they were doing was right, and I thought it was pretty
wonderful for the government to want them to know what was going on here,"
Green said.

Wiswell came to Dixon in 1979 and worked for VOA for about a year as a
technician. He shares Green's mentality.

"A lot of these foreign countries (didn't know) what Americans were like,"
Wiswell, 80, said. "It gave the public - the ones who could listen to it -
an idea of what (America) was about."

The station hosted contests for listeners and some programs featured
announcers who spoke slowly for those who couldn't understand English well.

Russia and other countries often tried to jam programs to prevent people
from listening but stopped once the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Green said.

"It used to be information was not quite as easy to send to bigger
countries," Green said. "A lot of countries had their propaganda, but ours
was pretty straight."

"They did a lot of good stuff," Wiswell said. "It was not so much propaganda
like some of the others. It was factual stuff."

"The main thing was to do the job out there, and if we had problems with the
transmitters we had to immediately notify Washington," Green said.

Dixon's station was one of four in California and went on the air under the
leadership of NBC in 1944. The government took it over in 1949 and broadcast
until the station closed in 1989.

"They wanted a place on the West Coast that was pretty good for transmission
(and Dixon was the) ideal spot to have a short-wave transmitting station,"
Green said.

Voice of America operated under the U.S. Information Agency, which was
created in 1942 after Pearl Harbor "to deal with Nazi and Japanese
propaganda," VOA spokesperson Joseph O'Connell said.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors operated VOA after the State Department
absorbed USIA in 1999. The agency now broadcasts under a charter which
requires content to be comprehensive and objective, O'Connell said.

Only two VOA transmitting facilities still broadcast from the U.S. - one in
Delano and the other in Greenville, N.C. Wiswell blamed satellites for
putting Dixon's station out of business.

"The viewpoint changes from time to time," Green said. "I think now a lot of
people feel the United States is very rich and helps out more and if we
don't, they don't like us."

State Department officials said there are no records of the government's
monetary investment in Dixon's station over the years. A 1977 document
obtained by the Daily Republic states the U.S. government had an overall
investment of $7 million in the facility.

Green, a matter-of-fact man of few words, gives a good summary of the
station's popularity.

"If people like us, they like it," Green said. "If they don't, they don't
like it."

People can still listen to VOAs short-wave broadcasts. For more information,
visit www.voa.gov.

Reach Yasmin Assemi at 427-6953 or .

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