Iva Toguri D’Aquino was born to Japanese immigrants in 1916 in Los Angeles. In 1941, she reluctantly went to Japan to care for an ailing relative. Although she did not intend to stay, she was caught in Japan when Pearl Harbor occurred. She was 25 years old. Pressured by Japanese authorities, she refused to renounce her American citizenship and swear allegiance to Japan. This resulted in harassment which caused her to move to Tokyo. She got a job as a typist at Radio Tokyo. She met Major Charles Cousens who had been captured at Singapore. Having been a radio announcer, the Japanese forced Cousens to produce an English language propaganda program called the “Zero Hour”. Cousens wrote the scripts as thinly disguised satire. He loved Iva’s “gin fog” voice. He persuaded her to become the voice of the broadcast. The show became popular with American servicemen because of the popular American hits and the laughable propaganda. Although she called herself “Orphan Ann”, she became known as “Tokyo Rose”. This name was applied to the several women who tried unsuccessfully to demoralize Americans on the war front and the home front. When the war ended, Iva married and wanted to resume her life in America. She was detained by the military for a year, but released when nothing serious could be proved. However, she made the mistake of giving an interview to an American reporter for $2,000. This cemented her identification as the infamous “Tokyo Rose”. Columnist Walter Winchell and the American Legion launched an effort to bring her to justice. She was arrested when she returned and tried for treason. In 1949, she was found guilty of one of eight counts and sentenced to eleven years (she served six). She was only the seventh American to be convicted of treason. A 1974 investigation proved that several witnesses had lied under pressure about provocative statements she supposedly broadcast (which the transcripts of the broadcasts did not prove she made). An example was witnesses falsely claimed she said (with regard to the Battle of Leyte Gulf): “Orphans of the Pacific, you are really orphans now. How will you get home now that your ships are sunk?” Ironically, this statement used to convict her was a classic example of “Zero Hour” claims of ship sinkings that were far from reality and the source of much mirth among American combatants. As a result of the investigation and skillful lobbying, Pres. Ford pardoned Iva in 1976. The pardon was long overdue for a woman who was the victim of anti-Japanese lunacy and poor sportsmanship on our part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Rose
https://www.history.com/news/how-tokyo-rose-became-wwiis-most-notorious-propagandist
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