The myth of Tokyo Rose

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, September 28, 2006
Iva Toguri D?Aquino, Known as Tokyo Rose and Later Convicted of Treason, 
Dies at 90
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Iva Toguri D?Aquino, the Japanese-American convicted of treason in 1949 for 
broadcasting propaganda from Japan to United States servicemen in World War 
II as the seductive but sinister Tokyo Rose, died Tuesday in Chicago.

Mrs. D?Aquino, who served more than six years in prison but steadfastly 
denied disloyalty and received a presidential pardon in 1977, was 90. Her 
death, at a Chicago hospital, was confirmed by a nephew, William Toguri, 
The Associated Press reported.

Tokyo Rose was a mythical figure. The persona, its origin murky, had been 
bestowed by American servicemen collectively on a dozen or so women who 
broadcast for Radio Tokyo, telling soldiers, sailors and marines in the 
Pacific that their cause was lost and that their sweethearts back home were 
betraying them.

The broadcasts did nothing to dim American morale. The servicemen enjoyed 
the recordings of American popular music, and the United States Navy 
bestowed a satirical citation on Tokyo Rose at war?s end for her 
entertainment value.

But the identity of Tokyo Rose became attached to Mrs. D?Aquino, a native 
of Southern California and the only woman broadcasting for Radio Tokyo 
known to be an American citizen. She emerged as an infamous figure in a 
rare treason trial.

Convicted in 1949 by a federal jury in San Francisco on one of eight 
vaguely worded counts, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a 
$10,000 fine. She served six years and two months, then lived quietly in 
Chicago, running a family gift shop. On Jan. 19, 1977, she was pardoned, 
without comment, by President Gerald R. Ford on his last full day in 
office, and her citizenship was restored.

?A mere wartime myth, Tokyo Rose was to become a disgrace to American 
justice,? Edwin O. Reischauer, the American ambassador to Japan from 1961 
to 1966 and a scholar at Harvard specializing in East Asian affairs, wrote 
in his introduction to ?Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific,? by Masayo Duus.

The treason charges, Mr. Reischauer wrote, were ?egged on by a public still 
much under the influence of traditional racial prejudices and far from free 
of the anti-Japanese hatreds of the recent war.?

Iva Ikuko Toguri was born in Los Angeles on the Fourth of July, 1916, a 
daughter of Japanese immigrants who owned a grocery store. She graduated 
from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1940 with a degree in 
zoology, hoping to become a physician.

In the summer of 1941, she visited an ailing aunt in Tokyo at the request 
of her mother. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, she was stranded in 
Tokyo, knowing virtually no Japanese, deprived of a food ration card by the 
authorities after refusing to become a Japanese citizen and hard pressed to 
find work.

In 1942, she obtained a job with Japan?s Domei news agency, monitoring 
American military broadcasts, and late in 1943 she became an announcer and 
disc jockey for Radio Tokyo?s propaganda broadcasts, playing American 
musical recordings on the ?Zero Hour? program beamed to American 
servicemen. She called herself Ann or Orphan Ann, short for announcer and a 
play on the Orphan Annie character.

While continuing to work for Radio Tokyo in 1945, she married Felipe 
D?Aquino, a Domei news agency employee with Portuguese citizenship and 
Japanese ancestry.

When the war ended, several American reporters learned of Mrs. D?Aquino?s 
broadcasts and interviewed her in Japan. She said she was Tokyo Rose, 
evidently presuming no great notoriety would be attached to that and 
perhaps hoping to embellish an intriguing story for American readers, 
having been paid for her account in a magazine article.

She subsequently denied ever having called herself Tokyo Rose in her 
broadcasts, and no evidence was produced to the contrary.

As an outgrowth of the publicity, Mrs. D?Aquino was arrested and questioned 
by American military occupation authorities and the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation. United Press quoted her at the time as saying, ?I didn?t 
think I was doing anything disloyal to America.?

In the fall of 1946, Mrs. D?Aquino was released from custody in Japan after 
the Army and the Justice Department concluded that there were no grounds 
for prosecuting her. But the Justice Department reopened the case in 1948. 
Loyalty issues were becoming a national political flash point, although 
mainly in the context of the cold war, and the American Legion and the 
powerful columnist and broadcaster Walter Winchell had spoken out against 
Mrs. D?Aquino.

Mrs. D?Aquino, who had unsuccessfully sought permission from the American 
authorities to return to California, was arrested on charges of treason, 
transported to San Francisco, held in a county jail for a year, then put on 
trial in 1949.

Treason, the only crime outlined in detail in the Constitution, is defined 
as ?levying war? against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its 
enemies. A defendant may be convicted only ?on the testimony of two 
witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.?

Up to the end of World War II, there had been only about 30 treason cases 
in United States history. When Mrs. D?Aquino went on trial, five Americans 
had been convicted of treason for actions in the war, four having broadcast 
for Nazi Germany, most notably Mildred Gillars, known as Axis Sally.

Tom DeWolfe, a special assistant attorney general, told the jury that Mrs. 
D?Aquino had engaged in ?nefarious propagandistic broadcasts? without being 
under duress. Former supervisors for Radio Tokyo testified that she had 
made propaganda broadcasts willingly, and a few broadcast tapes were played 
for the jury, though none were identified as containing Mrs. D?Aquino?s voice.

Testifying at the 12-week trial, Mrs. D?Aquino denied that she had ever 
made any disloyal statements on Radio Tokyo. She was supported in testimony 
from former Allied prisoners of war who had worked in the Japanese 
broadcasting operation. In a statement that she had given to the F.B.I. in 
Japan and that was entered in the court record, she said that she had 
sought to reduce the programs? effectiveness as propaganda by inserting 
double meanings in some of her broadcasts.

Mrs. D?Aquino was convicted on a single count of treason, relating to a 
broadcast she was alleged to have made to American servicemen in October 
1944, referring to the loss of their ships. According to prosecution 
testimony, she said: ?Orphans of the Pacific, you really are orphans now. 
How will you get home now that all your ships are lost??

After serving her sentence at the federal penitentiary for women in 
Alderson, W.Va., Mrs. D?Aquino fought government efforts to deport her. She 
ran an Asian grocery store and gift shop on Chicago?s North Side that 
family members had opened after their release from a wartime internment 
camp in Arizona. Her husband returned to Japan after her trial, and she 
never saw him again.

President Ford pardoned Mrs. D?Aquino after she appealed to him in writing. 
The decision was supported by a unanimous vote of the California State 
Legislature, the national Japanese-American Citizens League, and S. I. 
Hayakawa, a United States senator-elect from California.

?It is hard to believe,? Mrs. D?Aquino said on receiving word of President 
Ford?s action. ?But I have always maintained my innocence ? this pardon is 
a measure of vindication.?

===


http://hnn.us/articles/461.html
12-11-01
The Myth of Tokyo Rose
By Rick Shenkman

Mr. Shenkman is the editor of HNN and author of several books on myths, 
including, "I Loved Paul Revere Whether He Rode or Not," in which he 
debunked the myth of Tokyo Rose.

UPDATED 9-28-06 On Tuesday Iva Toguri died at age 90. NBC News, repeating a 
mistake made five years ago, claimed on Wednesday's Nightly News that she 
had been "Tokyo Rose," "the voice of propaganda and the voice of the enemy 
... [who] went on the air for Radio Tokyo, notoriously telling US 
servicemen that their cause was lost and that their sweethearts back home 
were betraying them." As this story published on HNN in December 2001 
noted, Toguri was innocent of the charge.--Editor

Of myths E.M. Forster once wrote, "Nonsense of this type is more difficult 
to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves when no one 
is looking." This quotation came to mind this week when we came across 
several references in the media to the World War II traitor Tokyo Rose. Old 
traitors like Tokyo Rose have been in the news since the capture last week 
of Suleyman al-Faris (aka: John Walker), the wan 18 year old from posh 
Marin County who turned to Islam and then volunteered to fight with the 
Taliban.

The New York Times was the first to make the association of Walker with 
Tokyo Rose in an article published December 4 titled, "Could Seized 
American Face Treason Count?" Toward the end of the piece reporter Neil A. 
Lewis noted that only about 30 Americans have ever been charged with 
treason, among them, "Iza Ikuko d'Aquino, known as Tokyo Rose, who served 
seven years in prison for her role in broadcasting appeals to American 
soldiers to desert during World War II." Playing catch-up, NBC News finally 
got around to Tokyo Rose on December 10, reporting that she had been 
charged with treason and then pardoned three decades later by President 
Gerald Ford.

Alert viewers might have wondered why President Ford gave a known traitor a 
pardon, but NBC didn't bother explaining. Too bad. The story, though little 
known, is an appalling study in media hysteria, prosecutorial misconduct, 
and judicial incompetence. To jump to the end of the story: there was no 
Tokyo Rose. The Japanese-American woman convicted of broadcasting 
propaganda to soldiers during World War II -- her actual name was Iva 
Toguri -- was innocent of the charge of treason.

(clip)

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