They run programs in the Filipino languages of Ilocano, Tagalog and Visayan more than half the time. But then there's the Marshallese show Wednesday nights and the Hispanic program Sunday afternoons, the Tongan show late Friday and Saturday nights and a Vietnamese program on Monday evenings.

In all, radio station KNDI 1270 AM carries programs in at least 11 foreign languages during the week.

The humble radio station that operates out of an old-style wooden house in McCully and is run by a Hungarian refugee celebrates its 45th anniversary with a banquet and dance Friday night.

Advocates for immigrants praise the station for being an essential link for people with limited English and the rest of Hawai'i.

Amy Agbayani, director of the Office of Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and a longtime civil rights advocate, is among the supporters.

"The reality is there are individuals in communities in this state that do not speak English at all, or very little, but they speak another language," Agbayani said. "Just like with speakers of English, there is a need to communicate information to this group, and from this group."

Patricia McManaman, chief executive officer of Na Loio — Immigrant Rights and Public Interest Legal Center, agreed.

"Anytime you can provide news and information to people in a language that they speak, it provides a lifeline to the community," McManaman said. "People are informed about events and topics in their state and in their local communities, and nationally. It gives them an opportunity to participate in the larger society and have their voice heard."

KNDI "plays a vital role for government agencies when they say there's going to be a tsunami, or a hurricane or a vaccination, or diabetes information or a no-smoking campaign," Agbayani said. "You can't say, 'Well, we can ignore them,' because they are a part of Hawai'i. And their not being served impacts the larger community as well."

The Department of Health is one of the organizations that KNDI has worked with most.

Judy Strait-Jones, a DOH public health educator, said KNDI has helped her agency broadcast public service announcements about everything from flu shots to dengue fever.

The station doesn't just provide free time for the public service announcements, which is standard for broadcasters, but also provides translations for free, Strait-Jones said.

Most recently, the Health Department has worked with KNDI owner Leona Jona on programs dealing with health issues for the Panapean and Chuukese communities, Strait-Jones said.

If the Asian flu virus were to hit Hawai'i, KNDI would be crucial in informing those in immigrant communities on what they should do to protect themselves, she said. "Communications is going to be the key, if and when something like that happens."

Strait-Jones said one key to the success of KNDI as a communications link to immigrant populations is Jona, who has worked at the station since 1976 and bought it in 1988.

"What I appreciate about KNDI is, it's not just about the money, it's about trying to reach people with a message," Strait-Jones said. "She wants to make sure that needs are being met; she's an advocate for those folks."

Often, Strait-Jones said, it's Jona approaching the Health Department with ideas about programs they should be putting on the air for immigrants. "Maybe it's because she's coming from an immigrant standpoint as well."

Jona, who turns 76 next month, came to the United States after the failed Hungarian Revolution against Soviet rule in 1956. Jona said she and her husband had minor affiliations with the revolutionists but were in the rural part of the country away from Budapest at the time of the conflict.

Jona and her husband, an architect, eventually settled in California, where she was an accountant with Shell Oil. They divorced in 1976 and she wound up in Hawai'i. Within months of her arrival, she landed a job as KNDI's office manager.

Jona credits James T. Ownby, a lifelong radio man, with pushing KNDI into ethnic programming. Ownby, she said, actually started the station in 1960 as an allfemale station. But that didn't work, and it gave way to the first ethnic programs in Chinese, Korean and Filipino, she said.

When Ownby died, Jona said his son not only offered to sell the station to her, but helped her finance the purchase.

Ethnic programming made up about 40 percent of the station's programming when Jona took over. Today, about 80 percent of the programming is ethnic. The exceptions are 4 1/2 pre-dawn hours each day of metal rock music and a popular blues program on Saturday nights.

Of the ethnic programming, Jona said, 70 percent is in Filipino languages while 30 percent is Samoan, Tongan, Hispanic, Chinese, Okinawan, Vietnamese, Laotian, Marshallese and, most recently and temporarily at least for now, Panapean and Chuukese.

"It was a gradual process," Jona said.

A landmark year for KNDI was 1982, when KISA, an all-Filipino station, decided to change formats to English, which sent a majority of its on-air personalities packing. Among them was Filipino icon Faustino Respicio, who took many of his colleagues with him to KNDI.

KNDI also once carried Japanese and Korean language programs. Today, each of those two groups have their own stations.

KORL radio, AM 690, meanwhile, now broadcasts Filipino, Japanese, Latin and Chinese programs, according to its Web site, which calls itself "Hawai'i's talk and multicultural radio" station.

Jona broadcasts education programs for the ethnic communities, something she has been able to do with the help of the Ethnic Education Foundation of Hawai'i, a nonprofit that works closely with KNDI and has enlisted grant money to put on programs dealing with everything from child support to housing.

Harvey Weinstein, KNDI vice president and station manager, is a 38-year radio veteran who once worked at the fabled KPOI rock station at its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Weinstein has been working at KNDI the past 15 years and, like others, he credits Jona for the station's success. "I think if she were to sell this station to somebody else, I don't know if they could perform the same commitment that she has to the ethnic community," he said.

"Where else are these people going to go find out about what's happening in their homeland or even what's happening here in the community in Hawai'i?"

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.