Iva Toguri D’Aquino | PureHistory You are here: Home / Education / Women Who Made History / Iva Toguri D’Aquino Iva Toguri D’Aquino By: Lawrence Walker 1976 CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT: Iva Toguri D’Aquino (A.K.A) Tokyo Rose Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino (July 4, 1916 – September 26, 2006) was an American who participated in English-language propaganda broadcast transmitted by Radio Tokyo to Allied soldiers in the South Pacific during World War II. Although on The Zero Hour radio show, Toguri called herself “Orphan Ann,” she quickly became identified with the moniker “Tokyo Rose”, a name that was coined by Allied soldiers and that predated her broadcasts.[not verified in body] After the Japanese defeat, Toguri was detained for a year by the United States military before being released for lack of evidence.

Department of Justice officials agreed that her broadcasts were “innocuous.” But when Toguri tried to return to the US, a popular uproar ensued, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to renew its investigation of Toguri’s wartime activities. She was subsequently charged by the United States Attorney’s Office with eight counts of treason. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one count, making her the seventh American to be convicted on that charge, for which she spent more than six years out of a ten-year sentence in prison. Belatedly, however, after investigative journalists found that key witnesses claimed they were forced to lie during testimony, Toguri was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977. The next time you feel you just can’t get a break in life, consider Iva Toguri D’Aquino, better known as “Tokyo Rose”… Sixty-five years ago today on October 6, 1949, Iva Toguri D’Aquino became the seventh person in the history of the United States to be charged with treason.

At the time her 13-week trial was the most expensive and longest trial ever recorded, totaling around $750,000 (by today’s standards, over $5 million). Despite being charged on eight counts of treason, D’Aquino ended up being convicted of one, the crime being that the radio broadcaster spoke “into a microphone concerning the loss of ships.” With anti-Japanese sentiments still raw post-Pearl Harbor, U.S. authorities were hungry for retribution, and they found Japanese-American D’Aquino an easy target, accusing her of spreading anti-American propaganda on a Japanese radio station. But before she was legally marred in a San Francisco courthouse in 1949 — slapped with a $10,000 fine, a 10-year prison sentence, and stripped of her U.S. citizenship — D’Aquino had already suffered a great many hardships…all because she had a Japanese face and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ironically, D’Aquino was as American as one could be. Born on Independence Day in 1916 in Los Angeles, she was raised in a middle-class household that spoke strictly English.

Her father and mother embraced assimilation and offered their daughter a normal life; D’Aquino enjoyed going to church, was a popular student at school, loved swing music, and took tennis and piano lessons. In 1941, she graduated from UCLA with a degree in zoology. D’Aquino wasn’t the only “Tokyo Rose” − a term coined by South Pacific Allied troops, which referred to any English-speaking female broadcaster accused of spreading Japanese propaganda − but she was the most punished, among the dozen or so women who were given the label. Here are five unfortunate life events that would seal her fate as the most notorious “Tokyo Rose.” 1) Visiting her extended family in Japan to attend to a sick aunt, D’Aquino was denied re-entry into the U.S. once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 2) Refusing to renounce her U.S. citizenship, D’Aquino was labeled an enemy of Japan and was unable to receive a food ration card. Angered by her pro-American sentiments, her extended family banished her from their home. Iva Toguri D’Aquino being interviewed by reporters.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons) 3) In need of work, she eventually decided to become a radio broadcaster on a Japanese station show called the “Zero Hour.” With her gravelly voice, she and her fellow expat co-broadcaster decided to mock the pro-Japanese propaganda-filled program. (Thankfully for their sake, the Japanese did not pick up on their nuanced sarcasm. . .but unfortunately, the U.S. didn’t, either.) 4) By 1945 WWII was over, but the post-war battered economy compelled D’Aquino, who was still stranded in Japan, to take a chance and claim herself as the one and only “Tokyo Rose” — this, after a Cosmopolitan writer offered her $2,000 to share her story. Little did she know, she was tricked, and her story was interpreted as a confession. She was arrested, and U.S. authorities threw her into a Tokyo jail before she stood trial in America. 5) So what were the damning words that had a U.S. jury convict her of treason? She allegedly said in a 1944 broadcast on the “Zero Hour”: “Orphans of the Pacific, you are really orphans now.

How will you get home now that your ships are sunk?” D’Aquino was released from prison after serving six years out of her 10-year sentence. Almost 40 years old, she had to find the strength to move on from her misfortunes, which included: losing about a decade of her life living on foreign soil; not being able to see her mother before she passed; losing her baby soon after giving birth, and eventually (albeit reluctantly) divorcing her Portuguese husband who was forced to never step foot on American soil. Iva Toguri D'Aquino mug shot, Sugamo Prison, March... - F-YEAH HISTORY 3 September 2012 Iva Toguri D'Aquino mug shot, Sugamo Prison, March 7, 1946 Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino (July 4, 1916 – September 26, 2006) was an American citizen who participated in English-language propaganda broadcast transmitted by Radio Tokyo to Allied soldiers in the South Pacific during World War II.

Although on the “Zero Hour” radio show, Toguri called herself “Orphan Ann,” she quickly became identified with the moniker “Tokyo Rose”, a name that was coined by Allied soldiers and that predated her broadcasts. After the Japanese defeat, Toguri was detained for a year by the U.S. military before being released for lack of evidence. Department of Justice officials agreed that her broadcasts were “innocuous”. But when Toguri tried to return to the US, a popular uproar ensued, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to renew its investigation of Toguri’s wartime activities. She was subsequently charged by the United States Attorney’s Office with eight counts of treason. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one count, making her the seventh American to be convicted on that charge. In 1974, investigative journalists found that key witnesses claimed they were forced to lie during testimony. Toguri was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977.

Iva Toguri D'Aquino biography, Later life, Legacy, Post-prison life Iva Toguri D'Aquino : biography July 4, 1916 - September 26, 2006 Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino (July 4, 1916 – September 26, 2006) was an American citizen who participated in English-language propaganda broadcast transmitted by Radio Tokyo to Allied soldiers in the South Pacific during World War II. Although on the Zero Hour radio show, Toguri called herself "Orphan Ann," she quickly became identified with the moniker "Tokyo Rose", a name that was coined by Allied soldiers and that predated her broadcasts. After the Japanese defeat, Toguri was detained for a year by the U.S. military before being released for lack of evidence. Department of Justice officials agreed that her broadcasts were "innocuous". But when Toguri tried to return to the US, a popular uproar ensued, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to renew its investigation of Toguri's wartime activities. She was subsequently charged by the United States Attorney's Office with eight counts of treason.

Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one count, making her the seventh American to be convicted on that charge, for which she spent more than six years out of a ten-year sentence in prison. Belatedly, however, after investigative journalists found that key witnesses claimed they were forced to lie during testimony, Toguri was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977.Masayo Duus, Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific, Kodansha International, 1979; Ann Elizabeth Pfau, Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II, Columbia University Press, 2008, chapter 5, Later life On January 15, 2006, the World War II Veterans Committee (sponsors of the Memorial Day Parade in Washington D.C. and the National World War II Memorial, the newest monument on the National Mall), citing "her indomitable spirit, love of country, and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans", awarded Toguri its annual Edward J.

Herlihy Citizenship Award.Setting the Record Straight According to one biographer, Toguri found it the most memorable day of her life. On September 26, 2006, at the age of 90, Toguri died in a Chicago hospital of natural causes. Legacy The FBI case history cited under References states, "As far as its propaganda value, Army analysis suggested that the program had no negative effect on troop morale and that it might even have raised it a bit". The New York Times in her obituary noted, "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." Post-prison life After her parole, resisting efforts at deportation, Iva moved to Chicago, where her father had opened the J. Toguri Mercantile Company Japanese-import retail store during the war, following the release of the Toguri family from internment at the Gila River War Relocation Center in September 1943.

She lived and worked at the store on Belmont Avenue in the Lakeview neighborhood until her death in 2006, her former notoriety all but forgotten. Following the trial, Iva's husband, who had been arrested and put on parole immediately upon his arrival in the U.S. to be a witness for the defense, was required by law to return to Japan. Operatives of the FBI and INS boarded his ship as it was leaving Hawaii and coerced him into signing a document that barred him from returning to the U.S. He and Iva would never see one another again, as he was precluded from entering the country and she could never leave it for fear of not being allowed to return. Although they remained technically married, they were effectively separated by decree, until 1980, when Iva resumed her maiden name. Toguri never reunited with or again saw her husband and, after 30 years of forced separation, they divorced in 1980 so that he could get on with his life without her. He died in 1996, nearly half a century after the trial that separated them.

As 'Tokyo Rose,' radio announcer symbolized myth | The San Diego Union-Tribune 1916 ï¿½ ï¿½IVA TOGURI D'AQUINO ï¿½ ï¿½2006 As 'Tokyo Rose,' radio announcer symbolized myth By Richard Goldstein NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE September 28, 2006 Iva Toguri D'Aquino, the Japanese-American convicted of treason in 1949 for broadcasting propaganda from Japan to U.S. servicemen in World War II as Tokyo Rose, died Tuesday of natural causes in Chicago. D'Aquino, who served more than six years in prison but steadfastly denied disloyalty and received a presidential pardon in 1977, was 90. Tokyo Rose was a mythical figure. The persona, its origin murky, had been bestowed by U.S. 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 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 D'Aquino, a native of Los Angeles and the only woman broadcasting for Radio Tokyo known to be an U.S. 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 Ford 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, 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 July 4, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. servicemen.

She called herself “Ann” or “Orphan Ann.” 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 D'Aquino's broadcasts and interviewed her in Japan. As an outgrowth of the publicity, D'Aquino was arrested and questioned by U.S. military occupation authorities and the FBI. In the fall of 1946, 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 political flash point, though mainly in the context of the Cold War. The American Legion and the influential commentator Walter Winchell had spoken out against D'Aquino. D'Aquino was arrested on charges of treason, transported to San Francisco, held in a county jail for a year, then put on trial in 1949. Testifying at the 12-week trial, D'Aquino denied that she had made any disloyal statements on Radio Tokyo.

She was convicted on a single count of treason, relating to a broadcast she allegedly made to American servicemen in October 1944, referring to the loss of their ships. After serving her sentence at a federal penitentiary in Alderson, W.Va., 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. She never saw him again. 1000+ images about history on Pinterest | World War II, Wwii and Soldiers Forward Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, known as "Tokyo Rose", was an American citizen who participated in English-language propaganda broadcasts by Radio Tokyo to Allied soldiers in the South Pacific during World War II. At the end of the war, she was held for a year, released, and was subsequently charged with high treason and received a 10-year sentence. She was pardoned by President Ford in 1977 and died in 2006 at the age of 90.

See More A Rose by another Name: The Tokyo Rose Story - InfoBarrel A Rose by another Name: The Tokyo Rose Story The Zero Hour Iva Ikuko Toguri d'Aquino “There is no ‘Tokyo Rose’; the name is strictly a G.I. invention. The name has been applied to at least two lilting Japanese voices on the Japanese radio . . . Government monitors listening in 24 hours a day have never heard the words ‘Tokyo Rose’ over any Japanese-controlled Far Eastern radio.” - U.S. Office of War Information, August 1945 Tokyo Rose: the name evokes a response even from those who have no idea who or what the name represents. Propaganda is used by governments to sway not only public opinion on the home front, but is also a tool used historically to undermine the morale of a perceived enemy. It comes in many forms: rumors, lies, well-placed (but deceptive) advertisements and political announcements, or in printed pamphlets. The likes of conservative radio “personalities” (such as Rush Limbaugh or anybody associated with the Fox “News” Network) use right-wing propaganda and lies to subvert or negatively influence public opinion about political and cultural issues.

The net of such efforts is nil—they have no influence on anyone except those already predisposed (and brain-damaged enough) to receive their messages and buy into them. A thinking person is immune. In the last worthwhile military action involving the United States, World War II, propaganda was used by all of its participants to a greater or lesser degree of effectiveness. [And America’s involvement against the Nazis in that war was incidental—the only real enemy America faced in that conflict, the only reason for its involvement, was Japan. Japan had aggressively launched an assault on the United States on December 7, 1941.] While some propaganda programs were more effective than others, it was radio that was most widely successful. A British milquetoast, William Joyce, defected to Germany from his homeland believing in the Nazi cause and broadcast anti-British, pro-Nazi propaganda under the silly name “Lord Haw-Haw” during WWII. [“Haw-Haw” was an onomotopeiac sound making fun of upper-British class speech patterns. His last broadcast from Hamburg was a drunken ramble, made as British soldiers advanced on a defeated Germany.

He was captured, tried for treason by the British, and hanged on January 3, 1946.] Naiveté plays a huge role in the effectiveness of propaganda . In Japan, playing on the sexual ignorance and vestigial Victorian morality of American G.I.s, a propaganda machine, using radio as the medium, was devised. This was Japan’s “The Zero Hour” radio broadcast. It was wildly successful. It used innocent sounding female broadcasters, under equally innocent sounding noms de guerre (such as “Little Margie”), to demoralize insecure American male troops in the Pacific. The broadcasters played music and offered news feeds; during breaks, they might ask loaded questions such as, “Hey, American Joe—do you know where your wife is tonight?” There were several of these women, some from different places (one was Canadian). They all had their on-air nicknames. The most famous one, though, was an educated American Credit: biography.comwoman of Japanese descent who went by the broadcast name “Orphan Ann”. Though there were many of them, this one woman came to generically personify a reviled, traitorous propagandist.

The name assigned to her by the American press (one coined by the Allies earlier in the war, but never heard on-air before then) was “Tokyo Rose”. Later in life her name was Iva d’Aquino. But she was born with the culturally specific Japanese name, Ikuko Toguri. Rose Bud The woman whose name would (like World War I-era exotic dancer and courtesan , Mata Hari ) become synonymous with treachery, treason, and deceit, was born to Japanese parents in Los Angeles, California, ostensibly on July 4, 1916. [The date of her birth is not clear; the Independence Day annotation is probably a paean by her newly-minted American citizen parents to their adopted country. It is unknown if she was actually born on that day, but 1916 is the accepted year]. The American name “Iva” was given to the girl in addition to her traditional sounding Japanese name, Ikuko. Her father, Jun Toguri, was an immigrant from Japan, arriving in California in 1899. Her mother, Fumi, immigrated to the US in 1913.

Jun and Fumi embraced all things perceived as American; he owned an import shop and was able to provide well for his family as a result of his work. Iva, while perhaps not a spoiled child, did not grow up lacking in many things, including the regular activities of any American girl. She was raised in the Protestant Methodist faith. She was a Girl Scout. Her father sent her to school in Mexico; upon returning she finished out her grammar schooling at an institute in San Diego. Afterward, she went back to live with her parents, and completed high school in LA. The young woman decided she would like a career in medicine, but what kind just yet she hadn’t settled upon. She enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles. Reflecting her family’s conservative politics, she registered as a Republican. She voted for Wendell Willkie (though he was far more liberal than the average Republican in his day) in the 1940 US Presidential election (he lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt). Iva graduated from UCLA in 1941 with an undergrad degree in zoölogy. Familial expectations being what they are in the Japanese culture, Iva went to work in her father’s shop after receiving her degree.

Stranger in a Strange Land Iva, sometimes at odds with her parents’ traditional values, realized she was wasting her education merely working in her father’s shop. But, as a dutiful daughter, she complied. Fate played a direct role in the outcome of not only her career path but of her entire life. Back in Japan, Iva’s aunt (her mother’s sister) developed an illness that required some in-home care. In a gesture of both practicality and largesse Iva’s parents “gifted” her a trip to Japan (as a graduation present) with the understanding she would stay with the aunt and tend to her during her health problems. International travel in those days, dependent upon the reason for traveling, did not always require a government-issued passport. Because Iva’s trip to Japan was not a residence change and she was going merely to help out a relative, she obtained only a Certificate of Identification from the US State Department. This document would see her clear once she arrived in Japan. On July 5, 1941 (the day after her 25th birthday), Iva sailed from the port of San Pedro in the Los Angeles area.

She harbored some hope of possibly starting the study of medicine in Japan (for however long she might be there) while she tended to her aunt. Perhaps she could get a class or two of medical learning in while she was in the Land of the Rising Sun. She was in for a major culture shock, though. Iva, who could speak fluent Japanese, was technically a “full-blood” Japanese (both her parents were first-generation Americans of Japanese descent). Japan, though, even as late as 1941, adhered to many archaic rituals and cultural norms. Women were generally to be seen and not heard. Iva had been born and raised in America; she had enjoyed a relative degree of independence without male patronage or chaperoning. Japan’s Geisha culture of servile catering to men still existed (though not as great or influential as it had been in previous decades). Iva also found the most mundane things, such as the native foods, to be difficult in adapting toward. Of course, she had eaten traditional Japanese foods at home, prepared by her mother, but in America that was for special occasions, not a daily occurrence. A simple hamburger in Japan might be nearly impossible to find.

In the meantime, diplomatic and cultural relations between the US and Japan were very strained (and had been for several years). Japan was suspicious of America’s seemingly boundless growth, its alleged eye toward global imperialism (and its perceived interference with Japan’s plans for empire expansion), and its influence overseas on not only Japan but its neighbors. Iva felt the hostility in the air every time she, a “foreigner”, interacted with the natives. Finally, in September 1941, having been in Japan for about two months and sensing the changes to come, she applied to the US Consulate in Japan to get a passport (her simple Certificate of Identity was of little value) to go back home. This request was sent on to the US State Department for review and approval. On the morning of December 7, 1941, a surprise Japanese air fleet bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This act ensured the United States’ entry into what was then considered a war between European concerns, World War II. Iva’s passport request had not been answered by the time of the assault on Pearl Harbor.

A hasty evacuation effort was assembled; Iva, though, could not get passage on any of the ships—it can only be presumed that, with her 100% Japanese features and lack of proper traveling documents (i.e., the passport she so desperately needed) no American personnel would dare take her on board on faith. And it didn’t matter that her English was inflected by the jargon and California slang of her day and was flawless—Americans traveling abroad and the Allied soldiers fighting in Europe since 1939, had heard broadcasters in the Pacific and on Japan’s radio programs who spoke flawless English, too, and many of these were Japanese women. These women, merely voices in the air heard by destitute, desperate, unloved, or lonely Allied soldiers in the field, were given a name by their listeners: “Tokyo Rose”. Iva Ikuko Toguri, US citizen, was not able to get out of Japan. The last ship bound for America left without her. To worsen matters—knowing of her presence, her recent request for a passport, and her attempts to gain passage on one of the American evacuation ships—members of Japan’s secret police arm visited her.

It was demanded that she renounce her US citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Japan’s emperor, Hirohito. She refused. She was left unharmed, but her position was very bad. As Japan’s economy rocketed into that of a wartime economy, Iva was denied a food ration card. This meant she could not legally purchase certain food items, mostly staples to stay alive. She was also classified by the Japanese government as an enemy alien in residence. To at least help her aunt avoid government harassment Iva moved out of her aunt’s house and into a boarding house. She was friendless and stranded in Japan. The Zeroth Degree As the war effort in Japan became a part of daily life, the populace adapted to certain things. Radio Tokyo, under the ideological aegis of not only Japan’s sense of cultural “right” but of Prime Minister (and Imperial Army general) Hideki Tojo, became a major propaganda tool. With only a very few countries having experimented with television broadcasting (the UK had regularly scheduled televised programming as early as 1936; the US started around 1940) radio was still the most powerful medium of information dispersal on the planet.

Radio Tokyo devised a simple concept as part of its war effort: use Allied prisoners of war to go on-air and read news to their fellow soldiers in the field interspersed with pro-Japanese, anti-Allies’ sentiments. The POWs either read the scripts they were given or they would be put to death. The idea was the creation of a member of the Imperial Army’s Psychological Warfare group. The first of these broadcasts went out on August 1, 1942. That was when an Australian major, Charles Cousens, was forced on-air at 6:00 that evening to read a propagandist message —or be executed. Later, Cousens was forced to write his own material as well as broadcast it as an on-air “personality”. The program’s format varied little. In the beginning, it was very short, but by 1943 there was a change in the air waves. Cousens (and other POWs) were reaching some US armed forces personnel but not with the degree of intimacy needed to demoralize the troops. In that year Japan founded listening stations to pick up domestic broadcasts from the US.

This let Japanese intelligence know what casual news was happening in the US in a timely manner (natural disasters, such as tornadoes or forest fires) and problems related to the modern world—train wrecks and car crashes. The propaganda show was changed. It was christened “The Zero Hour” (presumably wordplay on the Japanese fighter plane , the “Zero”). It debuted in its new format at 5:15 PM on March 31, 1943. The idea was to intersperse a 15- to 20-minute radio show of music with the “bad” news from America (and other Allied countries) read by Philippine Army Lieutenant and prisoner of war, Norman Reyes. This show was beamed out on shortwave where it was picked up by US (and other) forces in the South Pacific. The program later expanded to an actual hour of air time and then later to 75 minutes. The news items specifically focused on things that, while true (floods at home, etc.), had been censored for distribution to Allied troops for fear of lowering their morale.

The deejay’s talking portion of “The Zero Hour” was similarly expanded to accommodate the new format—15 minutes of talking air time (aimed at bringing only the worst news from home to Allied service men) became the norm. Tailoring, dependent upon the listening audience, might happen, but most broadcasts focused on the Western Allies and their home-front problems. Thanks to their naiveté it was US service men who seemed most vulnerable to the psychological ploys used by Radio Tokyo’s “The Zero Hour” (as well as the roughly dozen or so similar propaganda broadcasts coming from Japan). It was in these 15 minutes that the legend of Tokyo Rose was born. Radio Tokyo’s operators came to the wise and healthy conclusion that a sexy female voice would garner more attention and thus, paid attention, to the messages being broadcast. With that model in mind the station began “recruiting” (coercing in many cases) female on-air talent to read the “news”. And once these static-y female voices began to be heard over radios on American ships in the Pacific the lonesome sailors, dogfaces, and jarheads on these ships (either serving aboard or in transit elsewhere) gave her a name: “Tokyo Rose”.

Not Men: Boys As it had been during World War I, the United States was a mostly agrarian society in the early 1940s. Statistically speaking, the majority of enlisted in the US Armed Forces during WWII (as in WWI) were young, sexually inexperienced farm boys. Of those enlisted men, who might have engaged in sexual intercourse or were married before getting drafted or volunteering, their sexual sophistication was at the most basic level. Most sex during that time was of a clandestine nature (except for the married men), hastily done in fields, barns, woods, car back seats, or in the back rows of the “picture show”. These boys did not know what the word “foreplay” meant. They had no idea of the true workings of a woman’s sexual anatomy. Their take on sex meant intercourse, preferably (or almost exclusively) missionary position intercourse, quickly executed. When the Americans (and some other young Allied soldiers) got away from their rural communities and came into contact with foreign prostitutes for the first time it was a whole other vista that awaited them. For a price the virgin American G.I. could “have” a woman.

She was compliant and submissive, doing whatever he wanted (and that was to be expected considering he was paying her). Foreplay was not part of the act—the American john was too ignorant to know what it was, the prostitute (while perhaps knowing about her own sexual needs) didn’t care and merely wanted “Junior” to hurry up and toddle on so she could move on to her next customer. For the average Europeans and Asians this model of human sexuality was not the norm. These other cultures recognized women as sexual beings and as having sexual needs of their own. In the United States during the early part of World War II a particular “entertainment” flourished that allowed men and women casually, but with purpose, to meet each other. This Credit: streetswing.comwas the realm of the Taxi Dancer, a woman who would dance with a man for the price of a cheap ticket in a club (to which she owed part of her earnings). The practice started as early as 1913, but by the 1920s it was an established (and lucrative) American institution. Usually, men bought tickets at the door (generally a dime each, with some places charging a few cents more or less).

For the ticket, the lonely man got a chance to spend a couple of minutes on a dance floor shuffling along to the sounds of records or a live band, talking to the woman of his choosing, getting to hold her close. Men were in short supply in the US during World War II, and many women were either left destitute or forced to work low-paying jobs to help make ends meet (and this was true in almost every other country affected by the war during that time). The Taxi Dancer racket allowed many single (and married women with husbands overseas) to make extra money. [And a dime went much further in those days than today—it was the equivalent of $1.54 in 2012. Thus, a woman who maybe danced 10 dances in a night—about 30 minutes’ worth of actual “work” less the conversation either before or after—earned the buying power of about $15 in today’s money, or about $30 per hour.] Drinks were on the “joes”, so a Taxi Dancer might get a few watered-down mimosas or some beers or colas.

Regardless, for many lonely married women, or engaged women, or otherwise single (but still lonely) women the Taxi Dancer racket was a good way to make a few honest dollars, have a good time, and not think so much about the outside world. Better still, for the women (and the men who patronized them) the Taxi Dancer racket could be a gateway to the more lucrative money of prostitution: if some goober would pay 10¢ for a lousy dance and a chance to talk to or touch a woman what would he pay to actually have sex with her? Many women in America (and in the UK as well as other Allied countries) engaged in part-time prostitution to help put food on the table. The American G.I.s in the South Pacific knew all of this because in many cases known married women in other countries were prostituting themselves for the same reasons (even though many found Westerners loathsome), and these sexually inexperienced G.I.s were frequenting them. It caused them great anxiety to think their wives or girlfriends might be enjoying the attentions of other men (either with or without money changing hands).

“The Zero Hour” and its 15 minutes of deejay banter preyed upon the sexual inexperience and insecurities of the average American grunt in the South Pacific. The idea was to demoralize these young soldiers, telling them any women they had attachments to back in their home countries were probably out with other men (either as Taxi Dancers being pawed and manhandled nightly or outright prostituting themselves). The first time American media picked up on the idea of “The Zero Hour” it was completely misunderstood. A major magazine reported in 1943 that the deejays were sympathetic with the American G.I.s who comprised the listening audience: “The fellows like it very much because it cries over them and feels so sorry for them. It talks about the food that they miss by not being home and tells how the war workers are stealing their jobs and their girls.” The naïve American rag failed to understand the context—any lonely G.I. hearing about the foods he was missing by not being at home or how his girl was being courted by another man did not feel “cried over”—he was incensed and demoralized.

And that was “The Zero Hour”, an audio propaganda tool designed to rip open the heart of the average, unsophisticated American service man in the South Pacific who couldn’t get past the fact that while he was having sex with other women his girlfriend or wife might have been having sex with other men. And that ate at him. Another Rose in a Large Bouquet Iva Toguri, meanwhile, was having some major problems. She had been allowed to write to her parents; her letters got out of Japan, and she had received some responses from her mother and father. Knowing of her plight they had appealed to the State Department for help as soon as they could but they soon developed their own woes. The United States government, in one of its more heinous and disgusting acts of human rights abuses, created a series of concentration camps in the Western US. These were used to house anyone of Japanese ancestry (regardless of place of birth) or who might harbor pro-Japanese sentiments.

Despite the fact that Iva’s father, Jun Toguri, had been in the US since 1899, was a citizen, and a successful small business owner with no history of incorrigibility or anti-US government expressions he and his wife, Fumi, were rounded up and dumped in one of the Japanese-American internment camps. [Actors George Takei (Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu) and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita (TV’s “Arnold” from Happy Days and Mr. Miyagi of the Karate Kid movies), though both born in America, were imprisoned with their families when they were children in such camps.] Iva knew none of this, only that she had stopped receiving letters from her parents. She assumed this had to do with communications services being disrupted thanks to the war. She was forced to stay in Japan; without a food ration card she needed a steady source of income to stay alive. As a fluent Japanese speaker who also was fluent in English she found a job at an English-language newspaper, transcribing short-wave radio broadcasts into English there.

Iva then managed to take on a second job with Radio Tokyo as a typist; she typed out scripts for the propaganda programs broadcast for the G.I.s in and around Southeast Asia. Her income from Radio Tokyo and her other job was minimal, but she bought some foodstuffs and smuggled them into a local POW camp that housed not only Australian Major Charles Cousens (before he was tapped for the nascent “Zero Hour”) but also an American US Army captain, Wallace Ince (who would also later be forced into working for “The Zero Hour”). Cousens, with previous broadcast experience, had been tortured by the Japanese before submitting to being used as an on-air stooge for “The Zero Hour”. When he later learned that Iva Toguri was working as a typist with his “employer”, he clumsily tried to repay her earlier life-risking kindnesses by getting her a better-paying job at Radio Tokyo—as a propaganda broadcaster for “The Zero Hour”. This was in November of 1943. Certainly needing the money, and definitely wanting to stay on her involuntary host country’s good side, she accepted the position.

When the subject was brought to her attention Iva flatly refused to engage in any on-air anti-American diatribes. Cousens, forced into writing scripts for the show, assured her he would not put such words in her mouth, but that she would have to indulge in some of the “demoralizing” banter. [And a review much later of all 340 broadcasts in which she participated revealed no anti-American sentiments coming from her mouth.] Among the (preferred) female propaganda broadcasters (not only at Radio Tokyo but at other stations) were several foreigners. At Radio Tokyo another American, Ruth Hayakawa, filled in for Iva on weekends. The station also employed a Canadian named June Suyama (who used the on-air name “The Nightingale of Nanking”). Another station, the Japanese-controlled Radio Manila, employed Myrtle Lipton (using the nom de guerre, “Little Margie” as well as some other names). Iva had taken the pseudonym “Orphan Ann” as her moniker. While it is most likely this name referred to the hugely popular comic-strip character, “Little Orphan Annie”, there are other Credit: angelfire.com theories as well about the name choice.

Iva first used the simpler name, “Ann” (allegedly a truncation of the word “announcer”, abbreviated “ANN” in her scripts). More likely, she took the later “orphan” part of the name from conversations with the Aussie major who “recruited” her, Cousens. In the slang of the Australian army, “orphans” were those soldiers separated in battle from their main division. Thus, Iva Toguri, separated from her American homeland by circumstance, may have considered herself a “battle orphan” as well. Her first broadcast under the moniker was on August 14, 1944 (though she had appeared as an announcer anonymously before that time). The programming was beamed out to make sure and hit the ears of American G.I. listeners as far away as the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands chain (which includes the Russell Islands group and Guadalcanal, both bases for the Allied Pacific Theater of Operations). All of the foreign female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda radio, heard by the Allied soldiers, came to be called collectively “Tokyo Rose” by servicemen.

However, over time, the distinctive voice of “Orphan Ann”—Iva Toguri—was the one that came to most readily be associated with the fictitious “Rose”. She had about 20 minutes per broadcast (when she was scheduled) for ad-libbing and for doing her scripted routines. Unlike Cousens and the Filipino, Norman Reyes, she did not ever read the “bad” news on the air. She did, however, have opportunities to dig at the Allies (gently) with statements in which she called them “boneheads”. [The term is an Australian one she learned from Cousens. The slang is the equivalent of the Americanism “dogface” for its G.I.s.] In at least one known instance (documented in a surviving recording) she called herself “your ‘Number One’ enemy”, directed at her listeners. She also struck at their male insecurities about their women back home by innocently insinuating that perhaps their wives or girlfriends might not be sitting home alone and pining for their soldier boys.

Mostly, though, Iva was given some comedic routines in which to participate as part of her broadcast, and she also did the deejay work of introducing songs she played (mostly classical tracks or semi-classical with a few pop tunes or dance records thrown in the mix occasionally). She was paid by Radio Tokyo for her broadcast work; in Japanese yen her income was about $7.00 US per month (the equivalent of about $97 US in 2012). She still managed to squeeze out some cash to buy food to smuggle to the POWs as she had done when working only as a typist and transcriber. The Show Must Go On . . . And On . . . And On Iva not then or ever called herself “Tokyo Rose”, nor did any other female broadcasters (the number reached 13 “Roses” by the end of the war). She stayed with Radio Tokyo for the balance of the war starting in November 1943 (a total tenure of about 21 months).

The bulk of what she did on-air, unlike that of the other “Roses”, rarely strayed into the territory of anti-Allies’ propaganda or attempted to demoralize the troops (with a few rare exceptions). Her function was truly that of an on-air entertainer and personality. As “The Zero Hour” gained in popularity, Iva was allowed to write some of her own material, some of which she used to cleverly send out pro-Allies’ sentiments. Later, as Iva felt more comfortable she began thinking that perhaps Radio Tokyo and the Japanese Army were interfering too much with “her” show’s content. She began skipping out on work, sometimes spending weeks incommunicado. This infuriated her supervisors, but they did nothing to discipline her. While doing what her employers (Radio Tokyo and the Japanese Army) generally told her to do on-air, when she was off-mic Iva was a very outspoken supporter of the Allies. She spent time visiting POWs in their cells, smuggling food, medicines, and some clothing (had she been caught doing this, it is likely she would have been summarily executed).

In the fall of 1944 when US bombers began appearing in the skies over Tokyo, Iva cheered aloud in the streets. [In an interesting footnote the advance aircraft was a reconnaissance plane, named “Tokyo Rose”.] Her barely-contained support for the Allies caused much dissent at Radio Tokyo, and she was involved in frequent arguments at work. In December 1944, “The Zero Hour” was scaled back to a more streamlined, and solid, 60 minutes. Iva met a man in Japan of mixed Japanese-Portuguese ancestry named Felipe d’Aquino. She and he married on April 19, 1945. [Iva converted to Catholicism, the religion of her fiancé, just before marrying. She took a month off work to take training in Catholicism at a Church college without telling “The Zero Hour” where she was.] Though their marriage was registered with Portugal’s consulate office in Tokyo and she was offered Portuguese citizenship (because of her husband) Iva refused—she wanted to remain American, even though she could not yet get home. Going home was a closer dream than she imagined at the time of her marriage to d’Aquino.

Nearly four months later, on August 6, 1945, the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. “The Zero Hour” aired its final broadcast on August 12. Three days later, on August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied forces (though the official surrender document was not signed until September 2, 1945). Radio Tokyo was shut down immediately after Hirohito’s surrender speech. Iva Ikuko Toguri d’Aquino and her husband wanted to leave Japan, but they had not enough money to do it. And an offer of quick cash would change every plan she had for getting home. All is not Quiet on the Eastern Front In the wake of Japan’s surrender two American reporters teamed up; from their respective publications the pair offered a $2,000 fee to get an exclusive interview with “Tokyo Rose”. Technically, there was no such person as “Tokyo Rose”.

However, the $2,000 fee offered equaled what an average person in the now-Allied Occupied Japan could earn in a year (over $25,000 US today). Although almost any of the 13 known female broadcasters of Radio Tokyo or other Japanese stations could have claimed to be “Tokyo Rose”, it was Iva who stepped forward. She and her husband were desperate to leave Japan and the money offered was too great a temptation to overlook. Presenting herself as “Tokyo Rose”, Iva granted the interview. But it did not lead to the promised interview fee. Instead, she was arrested in Yokohama on September 5, 1945. She was allowed to call a press conference to defend her position—the reporter to whom she gave her interview used her “press conference” appearance as an excuse to claim she violated her “exclusivity” clause for the interview he’d been granted, and thus he weaseled out of paying her. [This same journalist then tried to sell the transcript of his interview with Iva as a “confession”, the kind of thing the gossip rags of the day might buy.] Credit: public domain images; US Dept.

of Justice Iva was jailed in Sugamo Prison. She stayed behind bars for a year. An investigation into her activities during the war was conducted by the FBI and members of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff (who spent time listening to recorded broadcasts of Iva). Interviews with the American and Australian POWs (Cousens, Ince, and others) who wrote scripts for her led to the conclusion that she had not engaged in any wrongdoing. Nor could any evidence of her aiding the Japanese or any of the Axis forces be found. Iva was set free in October 1946. Meanwhile, thanks to the publicity surrounding her arrest and the mystique of the name, the villainess “Tokyo Rose” was truly given life in a 1946 film of the same name. Wildly fantastic in its melodrama, the movie starred an actress of Japanese-Hawaiian ancestry, Lotus Long (born Lotus Pearl Shibata, in New Jersey) in the title role.

Though Iva d’Aquino was never mentioned, it was clear from the make-up job done on the star that Iva was popularly believed to have been the femme fatale, Tokyo Rose (Long was made up to look as close to Iva as possible in the film). The movie was absurd in many ways and it did nothing to help Iva d’Aquino restore her reputation of not being complicit in aiding the Japanese. Though out of jail, Iva still couldn’t get home to America. She spent time trying to get the passport she had desperately needed back in 1941 to no avail. She and her husband were now expecting a child, one that she sincerely wanted born on American soil. Though it is hard to imagine today the gossip columnists of the 1940s wielded much power and influence over popular opinion. People such as Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons could make or break a celebrity’s career. Others with more of a social agenda, such as Walter Winchell, could likewise unduly influence public opinion, and more importantly, lawmakers and others in the public eye.

[Such “influence” was usually because the columnist had some piece of negative information about a person; the threat of extortion caused fear in many.] When Iva made it clear she wanted to go home Walter Winchell (who also hosted an incendiary radio show) took it upon himself to persecute her and sway public sentiment so badly out of favor for her that she was not only denied entry to her own country US military authorities went to Japan and placed her under arrest for treason (based on lingering rumor-mongering and Winchell’s inflammatory lobbying against her). Shortly before that, though, Iva had given birth in Japan, but the baby died soon afterward. In military custody, Iva was taken to San Francisco where she was charged on September 25, 1948, with treason for “adhering to, and giving aid and comfort to, the Imperial Government of Japan during World War II” (despite the fact that the FBI and MacArthur’s people had already concluded she had done no such thing). Prison and Beyond Her trial started on July 5, 1949, in San Francisco’s federal court.

Iva was charged with eight counts of treason, any one of which could have meant a lengthy prison sentence or even the Credit: public domain; US Dept. of Justice death penalty ( treason being one of the few offenses for which the death penalty was routinely applied in convictions). Her trial turned out to be, up to that time, the longest and costliest in US history. The price tag ran to half a million dollars in 1949 money—today, that is the same as several millions of dollars, an extraordinary waste of public funds. Forty-six prosecution witnesses were called, two of whom were Iva’s supervisors from her time at Radio Tokyo. Others were soldiers who had heard her broadcasts, but most of whom, thanks to the passage of time and all the negative publicity surrounding Iva since 1946, were unable to sort fact from fiction. Some admitted they couldn’t recall, from memory, if what they had “heard” had indeed been broadcast or was the product of rumors that had been passed around. The prosecution had her radio shows’ tapes on hand, but none of these were ever entered into evidence or played in open court.

The only truly damning piece of “evidence” came in the form of testimony from one of her supervisors at Radio Tokyo. This man claimed on a particular day in October 1944 he had received a report of the loss of several American ships in a sea battle. This supervisor then claimed he had asked Iva to mention the loss of the American ships in that day’s broadcast (as a demoralizer) and he said she agreed to do this. And another Radio Tokyo worker stated on the stand that Iva had indeed made such a statement: “Now you fellows have lost all your ships. Now you really are orphans of the Pacific. How do you think you will ever get home?” [The tape of this broadcast was presumably available for review but it seems this was not done to confirm or refute the testimony.] Her two co-writers/producers, the former POWs Charles Cousens and Wallace Ince, appeared in her defense (at their own expense, it should be pointed out). They reaffirmed that Iva had not read any demoralizing newscasts and was limited to her deejay and comedy sketch duties.

The jury verdict of “guilty” (on one count of her indictment) was brought in on September 29, 1949. Specifically, the jury believed Iva had indeed mentioned the loss of the American ships on-air during October 1944 (based solely on witness-stand testimony). She was given a 10-year prison sentence and levied a fine of $10,000. [The jury foreman, John Mann, later claimed he was dismayed by the “guilty” verdict of his jury peers, and believed he helped send an innocent woman to prison.] Iva d’Aquino was sent to a women’s federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia. She served her time quietly, and after six years and two months of imprisonment she was released on parole on January 28, 1956. She moved to Chicago, Illinois, and remained silent on the subject of her involvement with “The Zero Hour” for over a decade. Her US citizenship, because of the nature of her conviction, had been stripped from her. Bizarrely, after her release, there were rumblings to have Iva deported from the US!

[Though, as she held no citizenship in another country, it is interesting to ponder where, exactly, she was supposed to be deported to.] Her parents had been released from the Gila River War Relocation Center (read: “Japanese internment camp”) in September 1943. The Toguris then moved to Chicago where Jun opened a new retail import business, the J. Toguri Mercantile Company. Iva took a job in her father’s store, living on the premises in quarters designed for occupancy. Felipe d’Aquino, her husband, had been taken into custody as a defense witness during Iva’s trial. When her case was over, he was deported to Japan. He was coerced by agents of the FBI and INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service) into signing a document that prohibited his ever returning to the United States. Though Felipe and Iva were married he could not see her in Chicago after she got out of prison because he was legally barred from the US. She, in turn, was afraid to leave and visit him for fear she would not be allowed back into the country. Iva broke her silence about her time with “The Zero Hour” in 1969.

She gave a 30-minute radio interview to Bill Kurtiss (in more recent years the voice and moderator of A&E’s Investigative Reports and American Justice programs). Her reason for allowing this interview was because Kurtiss was a trusted friend of hers, one of few she had. In 1976, an investigative reporter from Chicago’s Tribune newspaper found that the two most damaging witnesses at Iva’s 1949 trial had perjured themselves. They had been coached extensively by the FBI before their appearances, and both had been threatened with treason charges themselves if they didn’t cooperate. From this, television’s popular news magazine, 60 Minutes, featured a segment about Iva and her case. Her case was re-examined. Based on the newer findings, on January 19, 1977, President Gerald R. Ford issued an executive pardon to Iva d’Aquino for her treason conviction. Her US citizenship—which had been stripped away because of her treason conviction—was restored to her. As time wore on, it was plain Iva d’Aquino could never re-unite with her husband.

In 1980 she resumed using her maiden name and to at least allow Felipe to move on with his own life the couple divorced the same year. Felipe died in 1996. Enough research had shown, over time, that Iva had not been actively engaging in any anti-American propaganda during the war (and in fact, as time went on her broadcasts were increasingly, albeit subtly, supportive of the Allies). As a result of this more enlightened view of the woman, on January 15, 2006, the World War II Veterans Committee presented her its annual Edward J. Herlihy Citizenship Award. The Committee cited Iva’s “indomitable spirit, love of country, and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans”. The woman who was not Tokyo Rose, but who would forever be infamously linked to that icon, died at the age of 90 on September 26, 2006. She was in a Chicago hospital when the end came.

In popular culture the name Tokyo Rose (not that of Iva d’Aquino) has come to symbolize an intangible evil, a treasonous turncoat who (like the British ex-pat Lord Haw Haw) used words to lower troop morale of a perceived enemy. Fictional representations (and they can only be Credit: trumanlibrary.com fictional since Tokyo Rose, like Paul Bunyan or Wonder Woman , was not a real person) abound in cartoons, in literature, and in motion pictures, all using roughly the same femme fatale/treacherous woman template. Iva Ikuko Toguri d’Aquino was a woman caught in a foreign country, unable to leave. To survive she donned the garb of a collaborator, though she never actually collaborated or conspired or contrived or co-opted anything to help the Axis powers over the Allies that she openly supported. Though at one time the US military and other agencies had complete recordings of Iva’s broadcasts these almost all have been lost over time. Only a handful remains. The voice that comes forth from almost 70 years ago is of an airy sounding young woman , trying to make the best of a very bad situation.

*** Archeology Project Group 9: 1946- Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, radio broadcaster (and possibly the "Tokyo Rose") charged with Treason Thursday, December 3, 2009 1946- Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, radio broadcaster (and possibly the "Tokyo Rose") charged with Treason In March of 1946, Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino was convicted and imprisoned on the charge of Treason. Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino was an American born citizen, born in Los Angeles. Her parents were immigrants- her father came to the US in 1899, her mother in 1913. She grew up a girl scout and attended Methodist schools. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in Zoology. A relative became ill in Japan so in July of 1941 she traveled to Japan from LA, she was also interested in perhaps studying medicine in Japan.

Before she left, she was issued a Certificate of Identification because she did not have a passport, so when she applied for a passport from the UC Vice Consul in Japan to come back to California in September, they did not get to address her request before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December. The attack had cut her relation to the US, from America’s perspective. She was employed by a radio broadcasting company by an American in Japan, and she received her own show entitled Zero Hour. Many veterans of World War 2 believe that she was the voice of Tokyo Rose, a nickname the Allied soldiers gave to one of the female radio broadcasters they had been listening to from the NHK- Nihon Hoso Kyokai- Japanese Broadcasting Association. NHK was a Japanese propaganda broadcast, but Toguri claimed to be loyal to the US. Witnesses claimed that she had been giving away military information over the radio and that she was announcing planned US attacks but She denied ever saying any of what the witnesses claimed she said over any of her shows. She remained in jail for one year, but was released on good behavior and lack of evidence, for no actual recordings were found of Toguri ever saying any of what was supposedly said.

In 1976, Ron Yates exposed the two witnesses as they gave false testimonies- they were coached before the trials to lie against Toguri. Yates wrote articles arguing her innocence, and in 1977 President Ford pardoned her and restored her citizenship. Imprisoned, 1946 Toguri being questioned Iva Toguri was a Japanese American caught up in a sticky situation in which her American-ness was ignored. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was no way the US would continue to let any person of Japanese descent into the country, regardless of circumstance. The fact that she was an American born citizen did not matter in the least, regarding legality. As long as she had a Japanese name and particular narrow eyes, she could not get back into the US. Her forced stay in Japan, however, opened an opportunity for her to maintain a form of connection to her homeland as her broadcasts were tuned in to by American and other Allied soldiers. She kept the soldiers updated on frontline news and played popular American music during her Zero Hour show. The false accusations against her made by the two witnesses convey the idea that people were agitated by the fact that a Japanese woman was making broadcasts to the Allies.

Even though NHK was a Japanese Propaganda radio corporation, Toguri remained loyal to the US in trying to make her broadcasts propaganda-free and lighthearted. Her pardon in 1977 by President Ford portrayed to Asian Americans that they finally understand and fully recognized Iva Toguri’s American citizenship, and that she was truly an American in remaining loyal to the US. Ultimately, (the suspected) Tokyo Rose’s plight from her trip to Japan to the present illustrates how non-Asian Americans have become more accepting and trusting of Americans of Asian descent. Asian Americans gained a sense of relief and satisfaction from Toguri’s redemption as an American citizen. Furthermore, this event helped open the minds of both Asian and non-Asian people alike; that ethnicity is diminishing as an obstacle for citizenship. Posted by

Question: American Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, who was convicted for treason in 1949 and pardoned by US President Gerald Ford in 1977, was popularly known as whom?
Answer: Tokyo Rose