Tokyo Rose
(b. July 4, 1916) Radio Tokyo broadcaster during World War II.
In October 1945, General Douglas MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters arrested Iva Ikuko Toguri d'Aquino, a program host on Radio Tokyo, which broadcast Japanese propaganda to Allied troops during World War II. Ambitious and at times unscrupulous reporters referred to her as "Tokyo Rose," the name given by American soldiers to all female broadcasters for Radio Tokyo. The name has since been associated primarily with her. D'Aquino spent the next year in jail, treated as a Japanese national despite her American citizenship. Her ensuing legal journey highlights both the continuing prejudice faced by Japanese Americans after the war and the paranoia concerning disloyalty in the United States during the early years of the Cold War (1946–1991).
Toguri had traveled to Japan in 1941 to visit a dying aunt and to see her parents' native land. She left the United States without a passport, a decision that would cause insuperable problems when she attempted to return home before and during World War II. Trapped in Japan after hostilities commenced, Toguri found work in Radio Tokyo's business office. At Radio Tokyo, two Allied prisoners of war, Major Charles Cousens of Australia and Major Ted Ince of the United States, asked Toguri to read scripts for a radio program called Zero Hour. In wartime Japan, such a "request" was in reality an order. Thus Toguri became "Orphan Ann," host of the program. Cousens and Ince secretly assured her that their program would focus on entertainment in an attempt to soften anti-American propaganda. Toguri, who had been providing Allied prisoners of war with food and accurate news, refused persistent pressure from the Japanese secret police throughout the war to renounce her United States citizenship and even maintained her American citizenship after marrying Felipe J. d'Aquino, a Japanese-Portuguese with Portuguese citizenship, in 1945.
Although thirteen other female announcers had broadcast in English during the war, only d'Aquino was arrested as the fictitious "Tokyo Rose." Both the Army and the Justice Department initially decided not to pursue treason charges after lengthy investigations determined that d'Aquino had only introduced music on the program. In 1947, however, d'Aquino's plans to return to the United States prompted protests from the popular radio personality Walter Winchell, the American Legion, and the Native Sons of the Golden West. These
Tokyo Rose being interviewed by correspondents in 1945.protests convinced Attorney General Tom Clark to re-open the case. Bowing to public pressure, Clark eventually decided to prosecute d'Aquino, despite reports from subordinates that recommended dropping the case and the fact that Ince was never tried.
Tom DeWolfe, a Justice Department lawyer, presented the government's case, a task made more difficult by the perjury of a key prosecution witness. Wayne Collins, an advocate for many Japanese Americans involved in key World War II cases, represented d'Aquino. The trial took place in the context of the "fall" of China and the Soviet Union's successful testing of an atomic device. After three months of testimony, an all-white jury convicted d'Aquino of one of the eight charges of overt acts of treason she faced. The judge then stripped her of her citizenship, sentenced her to ten years in jail, and fined her $10,000. With the help of Collins, d'Aquino successfully contested a deportation order upon her early release for good behavior in 1956.
Japanese Americans largely ignored d'Aquino's story until the early 1970s, when Dr. Clifford I. Uyeda and later the Japanese American Citizens League and Senator S. I. Hayakawa of Hawaii campaigned for a pardon that had been rejected by the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Positive media coverage of d'Aquino's case, most prominently on the television program 60 Minutes, added to the growing support for a pardon. President Gerald R. Ford granted d'Aquino a pardon on January 19, 1977, his last day in office.
The story of "Tokyo Rose" highlights Cold War paranoia and racism. D'Aquino's trial and conviction resulted largely from the Truman administration's concern to avoid appearing soft on disloyalty. Public pressure from influential individuals and groups in addition to, as Stanley Kutler puts it, "bureaucratic inertia, timidity, and, at times, chicanery" exacerbated these concerns (The American Inquisition, p. 29). Furthermore, the Japanese-American community's reaction to d'Aquino's case reveals the continued existence of racism in the postwar United States. The trial demonstrated that Japanese Americans, victims of exile and incarceration during the war, continued to face postwar prejudice. Japanese Americans provided scant support for d'Aquino during the trial, perhaps preoccupied with rebuilding their lives after their wartime losses or fearful that the trial might add to their already considerable problems. The increasing willingness of Japanese Americans to support d'Aquino in the 1970s, on the other hand, suggests an increasing psychological comfort on the part of Japanese Americans, who no longer sought to avoid the subject of World War II and its effects on their lives and community.
Enemy, Images Of; Japanese Americans, World War Ii.
Bibliography
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.
Duus, Masayo. Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific, translated by Peter Duus. New York: Kodansha International, 1979.
Kutler, Stanley I. The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.
Yoo, David K. Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–1949. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Uyeda, Clifford I. "The Pardoning of 'Tokyo Rose': A Report on the Restoration of American Citizenship to Iva Ikuko Toguri." Amerasia Journal 5 (1978): 69–94.
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