BOCA RATON — Arthur Polacheck still remembers receiving the message, in Morse code, that World War II was coming to an end.
“I was privileged to get a code that the Japanese were at the point of calling it quits,” he said.
He was 17 years old and stationed in Okinawa, an island of Japan, as a radio operator for the United States Army. At the time, he knew that if he’d waited until he turned 18, he would have been immediately drafted as a foot soldier into the army.
“I had skills,” said Polacheck, 96, who lives in Boca Raton and has lived in South Florida for the past 40 years. “I thought I could better serve my country in a field that I was very well-versed in. Electronics and radio repair.”
He’d spent three of his teenage years building up those skills. Since he was 15, Polacheck had his own ham radio station (the use of the radio frequency spectrum for non-commercial message exchanges) — he’d earned his license for it and was permitted to operate it on two wavelengths.