TOKYO ROSE
Iva Toguri d’Aquino
[Note: For the record, "Tokyo Rose" never existed. Servicemen referred to any female announcer on Radio Tokyo as Tokyo Rose. The woman who broadcast as Orphan Ann, however, at least in the eye of the American media, became Tokyo Rose after the war. She broadcast for a daily program called The Zero Hour, later renamed The Pacific Hour after Japan surrendered. The name of this woman, as the U.S. media would not discover until 1945, was Iva Toguri.]
During World War II Japanese radio propaganda not only distorted the truth, but often fabricated farfetched stories seen mostly as entertainment to Naval, Marine, and Army Air Forces personnel. For example, the Japanese would often manufacture imaginary battles in their nightly broadcasts such as one in which Radio Tokyo reported the loss of 30,000 sailors, “numerous aircraft carriers and hordes of planes.” Another broadcast listed American losses after one battle at almost one hundred vessels sunk or damaged with over 268 planes shot from the sky.Yet another proclaimed the Japanese Imperial Navy destroyed the aircraft carriers Lexington, the Enterprise, and the Saratoga. American sailors aboard the Lexington received the news their carrier had been lost while sailing aboard her at sea.
Not all Japanese short-wave radio programs were innocuous and humorous. Radio Tokyo utilized the strategy of division through racial themes. For example, Radio Tokyo broadcasters often fashioned their broadcasts after civil rights issues across America not only to turn minorities against the U.S. Government but also to spread doubt as to America’s intentions toward minority races worldwide.
The female broadcaster known only as Orphan Ann, ironically, broadcast no such messages of division, and military personnel in the Pacific listened to her for the lighthearted jokes and popular music of the period. Due to events that occurred in 1945 shortly after the Japanese surrender and the U.S. entered mainland Japan, the woman who broadcast as Orphan Ann would forever become linked with a fictitious siren, one the GIs, Marines, and sailors referred to as Tokyo Rose.
During the early to mid 1940s, radio propagandists represented a new kind of mass communication threat, one unfamiliar to the public and the media. Radio propaganda was rampant on all sides of World War II, but perhaps no broadcaster was as infamous as Iva Toguri - better known to her Allied listeners as Tokyo Rose. The American-born Toguri became stranded in Japan when the war began, and she was eventually coaxed behind the microphone and instructed to read radio scripts aimed at demoralizing U.S. troops in the Pacific. Toguri always maintained that she was a loyal American who had been forced onto the radio by circumstance, but after the war ended she was convicted of treason and sentenced to several years in prison. Despite a lack of evidence against her, it would take nearly three decades before she received a presidential pardon. This is her story.
Although nearly a dozen female broadcasters were given the moniker "Tokyo Rose" during World War II, Toguri became most associated with the name, which along with Hideki Tojo came to personify infamy in the Pacific. As the female Japanese announcers did not reveal their name, they were quickly dubbed by the American troops: Tokyo Rose, Orphan Annie (Iva Toguri), Manila Rose, The Nightingale of Nanking (Ruth Hayakawa) and Madame Tojo (Foumy Saisho).
Iva Toguri was born Ikuko Toguri in Los Angeles, California on Independence Day, July 4, 1916. She was the daughter of Japanese immigrants who owned a small import business in Los Angeles. During her school years, Ikuko Toguri started using Iva as her first name. She had spent her youth serving in the Girl Scouts and playing on her school’s tennis team, and later graduated from UCLA with a zoology degree. As a graduation gift her parents sent Iva to Japan to visit her sick aunt.
On July 5, 1941, Toguri sailed for Japan from San Pedro, California, without a U.S. passport. In subsequent years, she gave two reasons for her trip: to visit a sick aunt and to study medicine as she hoped someday to become a doctor.
The 25-year-old Toguri had never been abroad before and quickly grew homesick. She didn’t like the food and felt very alien. In September of that year, Toguri appeared before the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan to obtain a passport so she could return home. Because she left the U.S. without a passport, her application was forwarded to the Department of State for consideration. Before arrangements were completed for issuing her a passport, Japan bombed Pear Harbor and war was declared.
Iva later withdrew the application, saying she would voluntarily remain in Japan for the duration of the war. She enrolled in a Japanese language and culture school to improve her language skills.
Photo of Iva Toguri taken outside Radio Tokyo on 5 December 1944
With war starting with the United States Toguri found herself trapped in Japan. At the same time she could not receive any aid from her parents as they had been placed in internment camps in Arizona. Unable to return, Toguri lived with her aunt and uncle until Japanese investigators began harassing her for being an American citizen. She refused to renounce citizenship and asked to be sent to an internment camp until the war’s end. The Japanese refused her request, and Toguri had to find work to survive. The months that followed severely strained Toguri both physically and mentally. She suffered from severe malnutrition to the point of being hospitalized for six weeks due to pellagra and beriberi. Recognizing her vulnerability, the Japanese military police repeateedly tried to persuade her to renounce her U.S. citizenship and swear allegiance to Japan—a route many other Americans in Japan took—but she stadfastly refused. As a result, she was classified as an enemy alien and was denied a food ration card. Her movements were also closely monitored. Toguri spent the next several months living with her relatives, but frequent harassment by neighbors and military police eventually led her to move to Tokyo. Toguri taught piano lessons to survive and eventually found work from mid-1942 until late 1943 as a typist for the Domei News Agency. At Domei, she befriended American POWs and met her future husband, Felipe d’Aquino, a Portuguese National living in Japan. D’Aquino shared Toguri’s pro-American views, and he occasionally loaned her money to pay her rent.
The Radio Broadcasts
In August 1943, Iva Toguri obtained a second job as a typist for Radio Tokyo. (NHK). Her job included preparing English-language copy for propaganda announcers to read over the air. While in this capacity, Toguri met Charles Cousens, Wallace Ince, and Normando Reyes, all Allied POWs forced to work at Radio Tokyo. Major Charles Cousens, an Australian military officer who had been captured in Singapore. Cousens had been a successful radio announcer before the war, and he was now being forced to produce the propaganda show the “Zero Hour” for the Japanese. Ince held the rank of captain in the U.S. Army while Reyes, a Filipino lieutenant, had been captured by the Japanese at Corregidor. In defiance of their captors, Cousens and his fellow POWs worked to sabotage the program by making its message as laughable and harmless as possible. Over the months that followed, Toguri secretly aided these prisoners by sneaking them food and medicines. Toguri later testified at her trial the shock she felt seeing how malnourished these men were and that she “did everything I could for the Americans,” even spending over half her monthly income bringing them needed things.
Major Charles Cousens
The Japanese ordered Cousens, Ince, and Reyes to design an English-language propaganda program for Radio Tokyo to be beamed to U.S. forces in the Pacific. The program would be called The Zero Hour and would include a female disk jockey who alternated propaganda messages and popular American music. The Japanese goal of the broadcast included negatively affecting servicemen’s morale and inducing homesickness.
Unbeknown to the Japanese leadership at Radio Tokyo, the three men worked to covertly sabotage the Japanese propaganda effort through the use of on-air flubs, innuendo, double entendre, and sarcastic, rushed or muffled readings. Cousens, the ranking leader of the group, wanted a female that could deliver this innocuous version of propaganda but trusting enough to keep the truth from the overbearing Japanese management of Radio Tokyo.
Major Cousens had become friendly with Iva Toguri, a Japanese-American girl, who, stranded and unable to return to California. He knew that Iva was pro-American and that she spoke English fluently It was only logical that he chose her to work as the announcer on his radio show as he wanted a genuine American female voice to join his team.He later said:
With the idea that I had in mind of making a complete burlesque of the program, her voice was just what I wanted, It was rough, almost masculine, nothing of a femininely seductive voice. It was the comedy voice that I needed for this particular job.
Iva Toguri accepted the job at a rate of 150 Yen per month--about $7 in U.S. currency. By so doing, she had taken the first step along the road to being branded as a traitor.
The program originated in NHK studios in Japan, and was beamed to different theaters of war over NHK short-wave transmitters.
The Japanese gave her the name of Ann to broadcast under since the scripts labeled her ANN for announcer. Cousens embellished the name by expanding it to Orphan Ann. Whether this had anything to do with Toguri’s childhood affinity to the film version of Little Orphan Annie is debatable. Cousens, Ince, and Reyes wrote the on-air character of Orphan Ann as playful, friendly, and always cheerful as to dilute the propaganda potential of the program. Toguri as Orphan Ann would address U.S. servicemen as “Orphans of the Pacific,” which had an endearing quality to it when delivered by Toguri’s cheerful, nonthreatening voice (Note: The word 'orphan' was often used in Japanese broadcasts to describe the fate of the Australian forces, caught up in a war not of their own making, sent to defend Singapore, captured and abandoned to their fate by the British). Her first broadcast came in the Fall of 1943. She playfully referred to fighting servicemen as "boneheads and sometimes “wandering boneheads of the Pacific Islands” and always followed the word “enemy” with an innocent giggle as to diminish its harsh meaning.
Iva Toguri at the microphone on the air with The Zero Hour
A typical 'Orphan Annie' broadcast, August 14, 1944:
Hello you fighting orphans of the Pacific. This is your little playmate Orphan Annie. How's tricks? This is after her weekend off, Annie is back on the air, strictly under union hours. Reception OK? Well, it better be, because this is all request night and I've got a pretty nice program for all my favorite little family, the wandering boneheads of the Pacific Islands.
Following the news section she said:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now, let's have some real listening music - you can have your swing when I turn you over to Zero Hour. Right now my little orphans, do what mama tells you. Listen to this, Fritz Kreisler playing 'Indian Love Call'…..boy oh boy, it stirs your memories doesn't it? Or haven't you boneheads any memories to stir? You have? Well, here's music 'In a Persian Market' played especially for you by the Boston Pops Orchestra…Orphan to orphan-over.
You say you want to see me every night, But every time you see me, you want to only fight, I have to say no . . ."
According to union hours, we’re all through today. We close up another chapter of sweet propaganda in the form of music for you, for my dear little orphans wandering in the Pacific. There are plenty of non-union hours coming around the corner, so being see you tomorrow. But in the meanwhile, always remember to be good, and so . . .Good-bye now, Good-bye now, Good-bye now, Good-bye.
These broadcasts were believed to be scripted by Major Cousens, who coached Iva Toguri in reading technique. The scripted words "Thank you, thank you, thank you" and "Good-bye now, Good-bye now, Good-bye now, Good-bye" were later claimed to be used as a deliberate 'wipe out' device to clear the listeners mind of what has gone before. The program took advantage of slang, jokes and puns to get across his hidden message, that Zero Hour was really coming from one American soldier to another.
Soldiers in the Pacific listening to The Zero Hour
By mid-1944, Radio Tokyo NHK overseas broadcasting bureau had honed and crafted its skills in making authentic American-style radio programs. By patience and dedication, the Japanese had overcome all initial problems and were setting a new standard in radio propaganda, which was unequalled by anything existing.
While she was initially hesitant to get behind the microphone, Toguri eventually became a key participant in Cousens’ scheme. Starting in November 1943, her voice was a recurring feature on the “Zero Hour” broadcasts. Toguri adopted the radio handle “Orphan Ann” and grew adept at reading Cousens’ scripts in a joking manner, sometimes even warning her listeners that the show was propaganda:
So be on your guard, and mind the children don’t hear! All set? Okay! Here’s the first blow at your morale—the Boston Pops playing ‘Strike Up the Band!'
In another broadcast, Toguri called her listeners:
My favorite family of boneheads, the fighting G.I.s in the blue Pacific.
It is hard to know exactly when the name of Tokyo Rose first came into the vernacular of servicemen. The name certainly predates Iva Toguri’s very first broadcast on November 13, 1943, as GIs usually referred to any female Japanese voice broadcasting propaganda as Tokyo Rose. Some reports credit the first use of the name as far back as December 11, 1941, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was found in a submarine log book and included the entry, “Tokyo Rose introduced by a jiu-jitsu rendition of ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning,” followed by a line presumably from the female announcer saying, “Where is the United States Fleet? I’ll tell you where it is boys. It’s lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.” Other reports claimed soldiers stationed in the Aleutian Islands first coined the term. What is clear is that in 1943 many press reports surfaced regarding Tokyo Rose and her broadcasts on The Zero Hour. At first, many articles expressed humor, a little sarcasm, and outright fascination with this unidentified female who seemed to entice American military personnel.
It is likewise hard, if not impossible, to know which quotes from Tokyo Rose came from Iva Toguri. Only a few audio recordings and transcripts remain. Several women broadcast on The Zero Hour including Iva Toguri. Some estimates say around six female broadcasters, more recently the number has been reported as high as two dozen. This chapter attributes these quotes to “Tokyo Rose” and not necessarily to Iva Toguri; however, since Toguri ostensibly becameTokyo Rose in the American press in 1945, she is often held responsible for the broadcasts whether she had anything to do with them. One recording that does exist of an actual Iva Toguri broadcast contains the line:
Hello there, enemies! How’s tricks? This is Ann of Radio Tokyo, and we’re just going to begin our regular program of music, news and the Zero Hour for our friends—I mean, our enemies! [slight giggle]—in Australia and the South Pacific. So be on your guard, and mind the children don’t hear! All Set? OK. Here’s the first blow at your morale—the Boston Pops playing “Strike Up the Band!”
The “Orphan Annie” show was a 15-20 minute D.J. segment of the 75-minute program The Zero Hour on Radio Tokyo (NHK). The program consisted of propaganda-tinged skits and slanted news reports as well as popular American music. Zero Hour was as good as anything that came out of America - it was well produced and directed. A typical hour's program included the following features:
- A loud opening number Strike Up the Band by the Boston Pops Orchestra
- Messages from POW's: Hi mom, this is Corporal X, we are OK but we need socks and food
- The Orphan Annie Show: 20 minutes of high quality American jazz and semi-classical records introduced by Annie
- American home-front news: tidbits picked up from America by Japanese monitoring stations
- Juke Box: 15-20 minutes of popular jazz
- Ted's news highlight tonight: more news from overseas SW broadcasts
- News summary: sometimes read by Charles Yoshii.
- Military marches
The official view of the US government was that these programs were propaganda. This view was not always shared by its armed forces: reports from the US Navy in the Pacific thought that the Japanese broadcasts did a lot for the American soldier on the Pacific atolls. This view was certainly shared by the US Army, and the enlisted men who huddled around at the time of sunset to hear their favorite announcer.
Taunting millions of servicemen with stories of infidelity on the home front, false reports of battle outcomes meant to demoralize them and frequent spins of pop songs to keep them listening, the broadcasts of Radio Tokyo were deemed notorious instruments in the propaganda war.
It is interesting to note that Iva only spent twenty minutes a day broadcasting at Radio Tokyo. The rest of her time was spent as a typist and on scavenger hunts for black-market food, medicine and supplies for what she had come to regard as “her” POWs.
Undoubtedly, it can be argued that the GI-created caricature known as Tokyo Rose did more for U.S. servicemen’s morale than any other single entity in The Pacific Theater. The constant playfulness in her tone, the slight giggles between jibes, and her always friendly demeanor set Iva Toguri apart from the other female propagandists analyzed in the current study and other female propagandists at Radio Tokyo. Ironically, however, these character traits of Orphan Ann aided in the media’s portrayal of her as a femme fatale, a radio siren whose sexual appeal to U.S. military personnel could not be denied. Her broadcasts became legendary, and the press’ continual attention enhanced her reputation not only among U.S. forces but also Americans back home. In fact, Time Magazine once referred to her as:
..the darling of U.S. sailors, GIs and marines all over the Pacific.
The American press often made claims regarding her that can never be fully substantiated, such as various newspaper articles crediting her with the first use of the term “kamikaze.” Collier’s Weekly reported that in October of 1943, during a period of severe Naval losses for Japan, that Rose warned American servicemen of:
a "Special Attack Corps” created in Japan for the express purpose of suicide missions.
As far as the GI reaction to Tokyo Rose, Collier’s Weekly, reported on June 9, 1945 that:
The GIs credited her with having not only charm but a master mind. They said she heralded the arrival of new divisions in a Pacific theater by welcoming the commanding officers and others by name. They said she predicted new American landings with amazing accuracy.
Stories of Tokyo Rose’s legendary ability to procure inside knowledge of military matters heightened the nation’s interest in her. Questions about Tokyo Rose filled national headlines, especially from ex-servicemen later in the war who regularly listened to her while overseas.
On September 14, 1945, The Havre Daily News, published an article titled “Ex-servicemen want to know where ‘Tokyo Rose’ got her information”. The article asked:
Where did she get recordings of last minute American music that hadn’t even broadcast on U.S. networks? Where did she get information as to who was and wasn’t going home, what we had for dinner, where we were going and what kind of equipment?
Other press reports speculated that South American receiving stations would transcribe news information as it was broadcast from the U.S. and ship it immediately to Tokyo by way of a submarine network.
American servicemen regularly gathered around radios to listen to the Zero Hour
During World War II, American servicemen regularly huddled around radios to listen to the Zero Hour, an English-language news and music program that was produced in Japan and beamed out over the Pacific. The Japanese intended for the show to serve as morale-sapping propaganda, but most G.I.s considered it a welcome distraction from the monotony of their duties. They developed a particular fascination with the show’s husky-voiced female host, who dished out taunts and jokes in between spinning pop records. She said during one broadcast in 1944:
Greetings, everybody! This is your little playmate—I mean your bitter enemy—Ann, with a program of dangerous and wicked propaganda for my victims in Australia and the South Pacific. Stand by, you unlucky creatures, here I go!
She signed off one of her broadcasts by saying:
According to union hours, we are through today! We close off another chapter of free propaganda in the form of ‘Music For You’—for my dear little orphans wandering in the Pacific. There are plenty of non-union boffs coming around the corner, so be seeing you tomorrow, but in the meanwhile always remember to be good!”
You seldom see any of the messages of a Tokyo Rose broadcast, but there is a dairy by James Heineoki aboard the destroyer Robinson in mid-1944 to late 1945. He mentions her quite often. She says:
The stupid Americans are fighting a useless war.They are being slaughtered by the tens of thousands in Europe and the South Pacific. How would you like to be home now with your best girl. [“You’d be so nice to come to” in the background].
The Americans have nothing to gain in the South Pacific but the lives of their men. [“Bolero” in the background].
The British and Americans are in full retreat in the European invasion [“Tiger Rag” playing in the background].
The foolish American forces are making a sad attempt to gain positions in the Marianas, but the Japs are too strong for them.
Some comments from Heineoki:
Tokyo Rose has reported over the radio that the destroyer 562 has been sunk. They got our number at Lingayen when they came up to our bow that morning. I hope nobody at home heard the broadcast over the short wave. Mom would hit the overhead.
I just heard ole Tokyo Rose over the radio sending us her daily cheer. According to the Japs, we have lost the damn war. Their news broadcast said that we lost two battleships, three cruisers and about a million tin cans.
Just heard from my good friend, Tokyo Rose, shouting her mouth off. She is having a hell of a time explaining the Japs getting their asses kicked clear on back to the China Sea. They sure left the Nips on Saipan and Tinian in a heck of a fix. They cannot even retreat. I feel so-so sorry for them. Here is hoping they will not give up. Then we can butcher them down to the last man.
According to "Tokyo Rose," we are really doing awful. I guess it is bad when we lose more carriers than we have ever owned. They still have good music so they can blab from here to hell for all I care.
The surviving recordings and transcripts of Toguri’s programs indicate that she never threatened her listeners with bombings or taunted them about their wives being unfaithful—two favorite strategies of wartime propagandists.
Things had changed at Radio Tokyo when Cousens was hospitalized following a heart attack and was taken off the air, the heart went out of Iva as well, but she carried on as best she could, re-writing Cousens’ old scripts as much as possible, writing in his flippant style, keeping the faith.
Toguri performed her “Orphan Ann” character on the “Zero Hour” for roughly a year and a half, but she appeared with less frequency as the war worsened. Her pro-American sentiment was tolerated less and less by her co-workers. As a result Iva quit her job at the radio station and found work at the Danish legation, where she took part of her pay in luxury items from the legation’s diplomatic rations, which she then traded on the black market for even more goods for the POWs.
Iva and her husband, Felipe D’Aquino, in Japan 1945
On April 19, 1945, Iva Toguri married Felipe Aquino, a Portuguese citizen of Japanese-Portuguese ancestry. Iva moved in with Felipe d’Aquino’s family in Atsugi and contrived to stay away from Radio Tokyo as much as possible. Various women filled in for her at this time, reading straight propaganda as in the other NHK programs. B-29s launched from China and Okinawa began to firebomb Tokyo for days on end. A month later, Iva was ordered by a plainclothesman to report back to Radio Tokyo. Three months later, the war was over.
Iva Toguri d’Aquino reportedly cheered as the Emperor’s broadcast on Radio Tokyo announced the unconditional surrender. She made plans for a triumphal return to America with Filipe. This would soon proved not to be the case.
At the time of the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Iva and her husband were in dire financial straits.
When General Douglas MacArthur’s plane set down at Atsugi on 30 August 1945, it also carried dozens of military and civilian reporters covering the historic event. Among them were Clark Lee of INS and Harry Brundidge of Cosmopolitan. These two reporters had joined forces to get the beat on the two most sought-after interviews in post-war Japan: Hideki Tojo and “Tokyo Rose.” The former was easy to find, he was under house arrest in Tokyo, but “Tokyo Rose” was a mystery.
Brundidge offered a $250 reward to anyone who could put him in touch with “Tokyo Rose” and $2,000 to “Rose” herself for an exclusive interview. The $250 reward was equal to $3,750 or about three year’s income. $2,000 was over $30,000—a fortune by either standard. Leslie Nakashima, a Nisei at Radio Tokyo, gave them Iva Toguri’s name, which Clark Lee promptly reported to the world at large. Iva Ikuko Toguri d’Aquino naively stepped forward and signed a contract identifying herself as Tokyo Rose. It would prove to be a disastrous decision. Once her identity became public, Toguri was made into the poster child for Japan’s wartime propaganda.
But Brundidge had jumped the gun. His editor at not only rejected the story, but also refused to authorize the $2,000 payment. The money would have to come out of Brundidge’s own pocket unless he could void the contract. He took Lee’s 17-page notes of the interview to 8th Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Commanding General Elliot Thorpe and urged him to arrest Iva Toguri:
She’s a traitor and here’s her confession.
He also suggested a mass news conference between Toguri and the other 300 reporters, which would negate the terms of his “exclusive” contract and allow him to escape payment.
Not knowing Brundidge’s hidden agenda, everyone agreed and Iva met with reporters at the Yokohama Bund Hotel. She subsequently gave interviews to Yank, Pacific Stars & Stripes and recorded a simulated “Orphan Ann” broadcasts for the American newsreels. Iva thought that “Tokyo Rose” was the popular darling of the GIs, as “Orphan Ann” had always been intended to be. She thought she was now a radio celebrity and happily signed autographs and posed for pictures as “Tokyo Rose.”
Iva Toguri D'Aquino being interviewed by reporters.
Iva cheerfully answered all the questions put to her by 8th Army CIC, laughing off suggestions that she might have done anything wrong in broadcasting for the Japanese. She was puzzled by questions about her giving predictions of troop movements and impending counterattacks, talk about wives in the arms of 4-Fs (Iva had never even heard the term “4-F” before, much less used it any of her broadcasts) and other such nonsense, but offered her Radio Tokyo scripts to set the record straight.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the news that “Tokyo Rose” was an American citizen who intended to return to her home in California sparked angry protests.
In September 1945, after the press had reported that Toguri was Tokyo Rose, U.S. Army authorities arrested her on suspicion of treason. The FBI and the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps conducted an extensive investigation to determine whether Toguri had committed crimes against the U.S. She would remain in custody for over a year until a government investigation concluded that the evidence then known did not merit prosecution, and she was released.
Before the year was out, Toguri again requested a U.S. passport. American veterans groups and noted broadcaster Walter Winchell learned of this and became outraged that the woman they thought of as “Tokyo Rose” wanted to return to this country. They demanded that the woman they considered a traitor be arrested and tried, not welcomed back.
On 17 October 1945, Iva Toguri d’Aquino was washing her hair when three Counter Intelligence Corps officers arrived at her apartment in Setagaya and asked her to accompany them to Yokohama to answer a few more questions. As they were leaving, she was told that she might have to stay overnight and that she should bring a toothbrush.
Only after she arrived at the 8th Army HQ brig was she told that she was in fact under arrest, with no warrant and no charges. A debate ensued as to whether she was Japanese or American, to be fed rice or bread, to be given a futon or a cot.
She finally got the bread and the cot, but was kept awake for the next three days by a constant stream of curiosity-seekers and rowdy name-callers outside her cell. She was allowed one bucket of hot water every three days to bathe herself and launder her clothes. Felipe d’Aquino was denied a visitor’s pass when he tried to see her. One of her guards extorted a “Tokyo Rose” autograph from her by leaving the lights on in her cell for a week.
Mug shot of Iva Toguri taken at Sugamo Prison in March 1946
Sugamo Prison
Iva’s arrest for treason was announced publicly, but Iva herself was never told the reason for which she was being held. A month later, she was transferred to Sugamo Prison and placed in a cell on “Blue Block,” where diplomats and women accused of war crimes were held. She spent the next eleven and a half months locked in a 6-by-9 cell, allowed only one 20-minute visit from Felipe on the first of each month and a bath every three days.
The public furor convinced the Justice Department that the matter should be re-examined, and the FBI was asked to turn over its investigative records on the matter. The FBI’s investigation of Toguri’s activities had covered a period of some five years. During the course of that investigation, the FBI had interviewed hundreds of former members of the U.S. Armed Forces who had served in the South Pacific during World War II, unearthed forgotten Japanese documents, and turned up recordings of Toguri’s broadcasts. Many of these recordings, though, were destroyed following the initial decision not to prosecute Toguri in 1946.
Early in her imprisonment, she learned of her mother’s death enroute to the internment camp in Arizona and her family’s subsequent relocation to Chicago.
Iva Toguri's release from Sugamo Prison
On 25 October 1946, Iva was told at 11 am that she was to be released “without condition” from Sugamo Prison later that day, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the prison until 7 p.m. that evening.
A platoon of soldiers formed double ranks as an honor guard and Sugamo Prison commandant Colonel Hardy presented her with a bouquet of cosmos flowers before escorting her past the reporters, flanked by two MPs. Her husband Felipe, now working as a Linotypist for an English-language Yokohama newspaper, shielded her from the press as they got into a waiting jeep amid popping flashbulbs. Iva had spent a year, a week and a day in military custody without ever once being charged with a crime.
Iva Toguri after she was released from prison in 1946
Iva and Felipe hid out for awhile, then she applied for a passport to return home, but was again frustrated by the lack of documentation that had gotten her stranded in Japan in the first place. Iva became pregnant in 1947 and vowed her child would be born in the U.S., but the baby died shortly after he was born in January 1948. It is likely that this loss, too, was a result of her imprisonment. She was physically exhausted and emotionally devastated by this tragic loss.
Toguri made an attempt to return home after her release, yet anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States remained high. Several influential figures—among them the legendary radio commentator Walter Winchell—began lobbying the government to reopen the case against her. The campaign worked.
The Department of Justice initiated further efforts to acquire additional evidence that might be sufficient to convict Toguri. It issued a press release asking all U.S. soldiers and sailors who had heard the Radio Tokyo propaganda broadcasts and who could identify the voice of the broadcaster to contact the FBI. Justice also sent one of its attorneys and reporter Harry Brundidge to Japan to search for other witnesses.
Iva Toguri being escorted by Military Police
With new witnesses and evidence, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco convened a grand jury, and Toguri was indicted on a number of counts in September 1948. She was detained in Japan and brought under military escort to the U.S., arriving in San Francisco on September 25, 1948. There, she was immediately arrested by FBI agents, who had a warrant charging her with the crime of treason for adhering to, and giving aid and comfort to, the Imperial Government of Japan during World War II.
Iva Toguri behind bars
Iva spent the next nine months awaiting trial in San Francisco County Jail, without bail. Feeling she had to stay busy and be of service to others, she helped out at breakfast and dinner, waiting on tables and cleaning up afterward. She worked as a clerk/typist in the Marshal's Office weekdays from 8am to 4pm and embroidered in her free time from 6 to 9pm, producing bright floral designs on three tablecloths for the jail dining hall. She had lost 30 pounds during the sea voyage and still suffered from chronic dysentery. Despite her own troubles, she earned the nickname "The Little Nurse" for her assistance and advice to the staff and other inmates.
The Trial
The trial itself lasted 13 weeks and cost $750,000 (by today's standards, over $5 million); the most expensive trial in American history to that time. No one who had ever met Iva believed her guilty and the local press corps voted 9-to-1 among themselves for acquittal. The government brought in a parade of witnesses flown in from Japan with all expenses paid and a per-diem allowance that would give most of them a good start back home. The defense, paid for entirely by Iva's father, could only afford to bring in depositions from witnesses in Japan, many of whom had already been visited by the FBI and CIC. When the defense uncovered evidence of perjury in the grand jury that indicted Iva, the judge ruled it inadmissible on the grounds that the alleged perjurer wasn't testifying at the actual trial. All references to Iva's work with the POWs was ruled inadmissible as being irrelevant to the question of treason. Charles Cousens flew in at his own expense to testify on Iva's behalf.
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, known as Tokyo Rose, is escorted from Federal Court
by US Deputy Marshal in San Francisco, California, photo AP
Toguri stressed that she had remained loyal to the United States by working to make a farce of her broadcasts. Charles Cousens even came to the United States to testify on her behalf, but the prosecution produced a series of Japanese witnesses who claimed to have heard her make incendiary statements on the air. Much of the case centered on a single broadcast that occurred after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when she was alleged to have said:
Orphans of the Pacific, you are really orphans now. How will you get home now that your ships are sunk?
Iva Toguri listens to broadcast recordings
This remark, which didn’t appear in any of her show transcripts, proved to be a deciding factor in the case. The jury could not arrive at a verdict. The judge told the jury that the trial had cost the U.S. government over a half million dollars and instructed them to resume deliberation and bring in a verdict. Their final determination was not guilty on seven counts, guilty on one:
That she did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships.
Iva Toguri and her attorney Wayne Collins
Iva Toguri after hearing the guilty verdict of the court
The minimum possible sentence was five years imprisonment and a $5,000 fine, the maximum sentence was death. No one expected the latter and the local press corps speculated that she would receive the minimum sentence and be out in three years. She was stripped of her American citizenship, given a $10,000 fine and sentenced to ten years behind bars. The judge, whose son had served in the Pacific during the war, later admitted to AP reporter Katherine Beebe Pinkham that he had been prejudiced against Iva from the start.
FBI Trial Synopsis
Prison
Iva Toguri escorted to prison by US Deputy Marshal
Women's Federal Reformatory at Alderson, West Virginia
Iva was Prisoner 9380W in the Women's Federal Reformatory at Alderson, West Virginia, a small facility in the Alleghenies with an inmate population of three to five hundred, few of whom were vicious or hardened criminals. Most were moonshiners brought in from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the Carolinas for federal liquor tax law violations. Although her official classification as a "notorious offender" -- and the reputation of the "Tokyo Rose" legend -- engendered some initial hostility, Iva was soon regarded as a model prisoner by the Alderson staff, always cheerful and helpful, keeping the floors of her cottage clean and shining.
The leather goods and bookends that she made in the prison handicrafts program won three 1st Prizes and one 2nd Prize at the 1952 West Virginia State Fair. Her IQ tested out at 130 on the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale.
Iva was also highly lauded for the quality and quantity of her work at the prison. She worked first as a supply clerk, then did a card study, then became an assistant to the medical aide, working her way up to X-ray operator, medical purchaser and finally laboratory assistant, where her duties included running the X-ray lab, taking EKGs and testing Basic Metabolism Rates (BMR). Her own BMR was 84, the highest she ever tested, which concerned the prison doctor so much that he put her on tranquilizers, to which she reacted badly. Her family visited her as often as possible and she played bridge with the other inmates, including Mildred Gillars, who was serving 10 to 30 years for treason for her "Axis Sally" radio propaganda broadcasts from Berlin. Iva continued to correspond with Felipe in Japan and her family in Chicago.
Iva’s official prison record speaks most eloquently for itself. On 17 June 1953, Iva received her one and only disciplinary action, a reprimand and loss of “meritorious good time” (MGT) for the month of June. Her offense? She extracted another inmate’s rotten tooth without authorization or supervision during the absence of the Dental Officer.
Reporters interview Iva Toguri upon her parole from prison
Finally after serving six years and two months she was released on parole to face another round of protest. As she walked out of the prison, she was handed a deportation notice ordering her back to Japan. . Even so, she earned an early release after serving six years and two months, by virtue of 1,200 days of accumulated MGT, only to face yet another round of public protest. As she walked out of Alderson prison, on 28 January 1956, she was handed a deportation notice ordering her back to Japan.
Life after Prison and Pardon
She reunited with her family, settled in Chicago and began working as an employee at her father family gift shop business, but her reputation as “Tokyo Rose” continued to follow her. She was forced to fight off a deportation order from the U.S. government, and received no answer from repeated presidential pardon requests. She mostly stayed away from the press, granting occasional interviews considering the newfound media interest in her life’s story. The press continued to report on the trial’s corruption allegations, and some papers expounded upon the fact that Cousens received credit for his efforts to thwart the Japanese propaganda machine for doing the same thing that sent Iva Toguri to prison.
Iva's lawyer, Wayne Collins, took her into his home for the two years it took to fight the deportation order. Iva joined her family in Chicago and did her best to disappear, to put the past behind her. A few years later, former AP Japanese Bureau Chief Rex B. Gunn became the first journalist to speak out on Iva's behalf.
Stories regularly came out regarding her treason trial and how it may have been a gross miscarriage of justice. For example, of the 340 known broadcasts Iva Toguri made on The Zero Hour, only a small number, around thirteen, existed. Of those that did, none contained anything more than playful banter and introduction to popular musical selections, just as the defense team contended in the trial. Veterans of World War II began openly expressing support for Iva Toguri. One poll done for a graduate thesis and published in a Christian Science Monitor article indicated roughly 93% of Pacific War veterans felt The Zero Hour did not lower morale with 84% claiming the program to be entertainment.
Probably the first call to pardon Iva Toguri occurred way back in 1956 when the press reported a petition backed by the Culticeward American Legion, composed of Pacific War veterans calling upon President Dwight D. Eisenhower to exonerate Iva Toguri. This and subsequent calls to pardon her all fell on deaf ears, because in the years immediately following her trial, the press, and the American people, did not feel it justified. But with the nation’s changing sentiments on the matter, plus a newfound rethinking of Iva Toguri’s situation in the American press by the early 1970s led to a new call for a presidential pardon, this one coming from the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), a thirty-thousand-member organization. JACL felt that Toguri’s conviction resulted from a combination of factors including: racial prejudice, Anti-Japanese hysteria in the late 1940s, corruption surrounding the trial, and the media defining her as a traitor. Interestingly, the media supported the request for Toguri’s executive pardon. News reports came out from former jurors and trial witnesses who claimed to have been pressured to side against Iva Toguri. One article stated:
The proceedings were marred by bribery, government obstruction, unscrupulous journalism, missing evidence [“lost tapes” and transcripts] mistaken identity, witness intimidation, violation of constitutional safeguards, and racism.
Petitions for a Presidential pardon were filed with the Eisenhower administration in 1954, the Johnson administration in 1968, and the Nixon/Ford administration in 1976.
The final chapter of the Iva Toguri/Tokyo Rose saga revolved around changing American sentiments regarding women in society as well as a revised portrayal of Toguri in the press. The legal hardships Iva Toguri endured after the end of the Second World War directly resulted from a combination of factors: the American mass media disseminating misinformation regarding her, popular columnists like firebrand columnist Walter Winchell calling for her prosecution, and Clarke Lee and Harry T. Brundidge’s Tokyo Rose confession. Ironically, the same press that helped convict Iva Toguri played a large roll in her eventual pardon.
As the 1950s ended, the media kept the legend of Tokyo Rose alive with occasional articles throughout the 1960s. Many of the articles dealt with the federal government’s quest for the $10,000 fine Toguri owed. In 1968, the government seized two of Iva Toguri’s insurance policies valued at around $4,745. The action launched a new wave of interest in the Tokyo Rose legend.
In the 1960s, the American press occasionally told humorous stories regarding Tokyo Rose.
On July 19, 1961, The Chicago Daily Tribune, published an article titled “Unsuccessful Siren”in which it reported that Marines serving in the South Pacific listened to a broadcast where she teased them for being in such drought conditions that they were rationed to one canteen a day for washing and drinking. According to the story, Rose claimed she wished there could be something done about the dry, almost intolerable heat the servicemen endured. However, no drought existed where the Marines were. In fact:
It had been raining for days. In at least one tent, the radio receiver was on stacked foot lockers to keep it dry, the listeners sat on cots with their feet curled up, and flood water swirled in on one side and out the other, wetting the canvas and the cots. Just as Tokyo Rose seemed ready to choke from thirst on her own story, the commanding officer’s prized white tennis shoes floated by, jungle bound.
The author then claimed that Tokyo Rose’s broadcast kept the night from being “pretty glum.”
Around the turn of the decade, the media’s narrative of Tokyo Rose and Iva Toguri rapidly began changing. Stories regularly came out regarding her treason trial and how it may have been a gross miscarriage of justice. For example, of the 340 known broadcasts Iva Toguri made on The Zero Hour, only a small number, around thirteen, existed. Of those that did, none contained anything more than playful banter and introduction to popular musical selections, just as the defense team contended in the trial. Veterans of World War II began openly expressing support for Iva Toguri.
On August 26, 1973, David Holmstrom reported in The Journal News
, that of 94 men who listened to The Zero Hour while serving in the Pacific:89% recognized it as propaganda, and less than 10% felt "demoralized" by it.
93% of Pacific War veterans felt The Zero Hour did not lower morale
84% listened because the program had "good entertainment".
Less than 10% felt "demoralized",
One of the interviewed veterans remarked:
Lots of us thought she was on our side all along.
CBS correspondent Bill Kurtis produced the 4 November 1969 broadcast of The Story of "Tokyo Rose" documentary for CBS in 1969.
Iva Toguri told Bill Kurtis:
I suppose, if they found someone and got the job over with, they were all satisfied. It was Eeny, Meeny, Miney … and I was Moe.
The trial? Well, it covered thirteen weeks and there was just a multitude of witnesses who appeared whom I’d never seen before, never heard of before and yet they professed to have known me. They testified that they saw the broadcasts, heard the broadcasts, which was impossible because the Allied POWs were under guard and they couldn’t have got into the studio. But they all testified that they heard me say these things and they saw me actually perform. So many witnesses were brought over here. I suppose, after the war, they were asked to come and given so much and three meals a day, a trip to the US, that a lot of people just jumped at the chance. It didn’t make any difference what sort of witness they would make.
When Wayne Collins died in 1974, his son, Wayne Collins Jr, took up the fight.
In 1976, investigative journalists found two key witnesses that admitted that they had been threatened and goaded into testifying against her. One of them said:
She got a raw dead. She was railroaded into jail.
Around that same time, the foreman of her jury said that the judge in the case had pressed for a guilty verdict.
Morley Safer produced a 60 Minutes interview with "Tokyo Rose"
For only the second and so far the last public interview in the fifty years since the trial, Iva agreed to appear on "60 Minutes" in 1976, for what became the ground-breaking event leading to her pardon by President Gerald Ford. Morley Safer produced a segment for 60 Minutes that helped bring the pardon movement to public awareness.
Several articles produced interviews from former treason trial jurors who expressed remorse for the outcome of the trial but felt threatened at the time by government officials who routinely pressed them for a guilty verdict.
On March 5, 1976, The Bridgeport Post, published an article titled "Tokyo Rose may yet be heroine; Jury pressed to find her guilty". The article reported that:
Iva Toguri was pre-tried by the press and convicted before the trial.
On March 23, 1976 the Chicago Tribune published an article titled: “Tokyo Rose ‘just a scapegoat’: Husband,”. The article quoted Toguri’s estranged husband, Felipe d’Aquino, stating that his wife became a victim of postwar hatred prevalent in the U.S. at the time. Felipe d’Aquino also stated in the interview that his wife could not have been the seductive voice most GIs remember chastising them over the radio because his wife had a voice that sounded like “Molly’s on the Fibber McGee and Molly show.” He added:
Believe me, Iva was the furthest thing from a siren you could imagine.
Incidentally, Felipe d’Aquino remained barred from entering the U.S., and Toguri, stripped of her American citizenship, could not leave. By 1976, the couple had not seen one another for almost thirty years.
On August 9, 1976, The Los Angeles Times wrote that her conviction had been based on:
...perjured testimonies of two ‘witnesses’ who, 27 years later, admitted that they were coached by the prosecutor under severe duress.
By the mid 1970s, lingering frustrations nationwide over the government’s handling of The Vietnam War, ongoing civil rights problems, a more radical feminist movement, and a pervasive anti-government mood swept over America.The nation still reeled from post-Watergate fallout resulting in the August 9, 1974, resignation of President Richard Nixon. Articles with titles such as “‘Tokyo Rose’ Was a Victim of War Hysteria,” “Tokyo Rose Still Suffers from Myth,” and “Let’s Forgive Tokyo Rose” graced newspapers all over the nation in the mid-1970s. A national momentum to pardon Iva Toguri spread throughout the United States. The same mass media that helped convict Iva Toguri now championed her cause. Editorials outright called for an executive pardon, and the Japanese American Citizens League continued putting pressure on President Gerald Ford to finally end her decades’ old struggle with the federal government.
In an article dated December 13, 1976 the Christian Science Monitor stated:
She doesn’t expect to be exonerated for her deeds. She just wants to end this lonely limbo which the law long ago consigned her.
On December 12, 1976, the Los Angeles Times published a letter to President Ford from a former U.S. Marine and veteran of the Pacific Campaign, who appealed for a presidential pardon on behalf of Iva Toguri. The letter closed with the statement:
...after all, it was only two years ago that you displayed your great courage by pardoning ex-President Nixon in the face of much public criticism.
The pardon finally came on January 19, 1977, President Ford’s last day in office. The press celebrated Toguri’s pardon, which ended almost thirty years of hardship and turmoil for the Toguri family. The federal government reinstated Toguri’s citizenship. When asked by the press what her plans were now, Toguri, never one to say very much, simply replied:
to finish this day…
Iva Toguri spent the remaining decades of her life working her family gift shop, granting occasional interviews, and trying to move past the hardships of the past, which included almost two years of incarceration in Japan, years spent away from America and her family, a broken marriage, a treason trial, subsequent prison term, and two and a half decades thereafter without a country or legal permanent residence. Her name never completely left the American press. To this day, articles still find their way into circulation, remembering the trial, the war years, and the legend of the mythical Tokyo Rose. Being that Independence Day was also her birthday, articles circulated whenever Toguri reached a new age-related milestone, such as turning eighty years old in 1996.
On June 26, 2003 the Far Eastern Economic Review published:
The story Iva wants to tell, is the story of the heroism of the people who stood up for the truth… To the loyalty and courage of Iva Ikuko Toguri. She never changed her stripes.
In the media’s eye, Iva Toguri went from an entertaining mythical figure named by lonely servicemen to a femme fatale traitor who wished to undermine GI morale to a patriotic elderly woman who, despite innumerable hardships and injustice, never lost her love for country.
Iva Toguri reluctantly divorced Felipe D'Aquino a few years later, since she would never leave the U.S. again and he was forbidden entry as an undesirable alien, but she never stopped loving him. He died in Japan in November 1996, forty-three years after their forced separation and fifteen years after the divorce, but to Iva it was still like losing him all over again.
Death
Iva Toguri D'Aquino in her later years
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, died of natural causes at home in Chicago on 26 September 2006. She was 90.
-- Iva Toguri, to Masayo Umezawa Duus, 20 May 1976.You can either sit in a room and feel sorry for yourself or you can go outside and look ahead. I’ve tried to look ahead. … I try to forget the past and live with an eye to the future, trying to make a new life for myself while I forget the old one. … I believe in what I did. I have no regrets, and I don’t hate anyone for what happened.