Iva Toguri D'Aquino

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Iva Toguri

Iva Toguri D'Aquino (July 4, 1916 – September 26, 2006), a Japanese-American, was most identified with "Tokyo Rose", a generic name given by Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II to any of approximately a dozen English-speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda.

Identified by the press as Tokyo Rose after the war, she was detained for a year by the U.S. military before being released for lack of evidence. Regardless, upon return to the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation charged her 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 key witnesses had lied during testimony and other serious problems with the conduct of the trial. She was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977, becoming the only U.S. citizen convicted of treason to be pardoned.^[1]

1 Early life
2 Zero Hour
3 Postwar arrest and trial
- 3.1 Arrest
- 3.2 Treason trial
4 Presidential pardon
5 Later life
6 Legacy
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Early life

She was born Ikuko Toguri (戸栗郁子, Toguri Ikuko^?) in Los Angeles, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. Her father, Jun Toguri, had come to the U.S. in 1899, and her mother in 1913. Ikuko, who went by the name Iva, was a Girl Scout as a child, and raised as a Methodist. She attended grammar schools in Calexico, California, and San Diego before returning with her family to Los Angeles. There she finished grammar school, attended high school, and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Zoology. She then worked in her parents' shop.

On July 5, 1941, she sailed for Japan from Los Angeles' San Pedro area, ostensibly to visit an ailing relative and to possibly study medicine. The U.S. State Department issued her a Certificate of Identification; she did not have a passport. That September in Japan, Toguri applied to the U.S. Vice Consul for a passport, stating she wished to return to the U.S. for permanent residence. Her request was forwarded to the State Department, but the answer had not returned by the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), and she was declared an enemy alien in Japan.

[edit] Zero Hour

Toguri in December 1944 at Radio Tokyo

Following American involvement in the Pacific War, Toguri, like a number of other Americans in Japanese territory, was pressured by the Japanese central government under Hideki Tojo to renounce her United States citizenship, which she refused to do. She gained work as a typist at a Japanese news agency and eventually worked in a similar capacity for Radio Tokyo.

In November 1943, Allied prisoners of war forced to broadcast propaganda selected her to host portions of the one-hour radio show The Zero Hour. Under the stage name "Orphan Anne" and possibly "Your Favorite Enemy, Anne", reportedly in reference to the comic strip character Little Orphan Annie, Toguri performed in comedy sketches and introduced newscasts, with on-air speaking time of generally about 20 minutes. Though earning only 150 yen, or about $7, per month, she used some of her earnings to feed P.O.W.s.^[2]

She married Felipe D'Aquino (last name sometimes given only as Aquino), a Portuguese citizen of Japanese-Portuguese descent, on April 19, 1945. The marriage was registered with the Portuguese Consulate in Tokyo, with Toguri declining to take her husband's citizenship.

[edit] Postwar arrest and trial

Toguri being interviewed by the press in September 1945

[edit] Arrest

After Japan's unconditional surrender (August 15, 1945), reporters Henry Brundidge and Clark Lee offered $250 — an act considered unethical checkbook journalism by press associations and journalism professors — for the identity of Tokyo Rose. The identification led to D'Aquino's arrest, on September 5, 1945, in Yokohama, but she was released after a year in jail when neither the FBI nor General Douglas MacArthur's staff had found any evidence she had aided the Japanese Axis forces.^[2] As well, the American and Australian prisoners-of-war who wrote her scripts also assured her she had committed no wrongdoing.^[3]

The case-history at the FBI's website states, "The FBI's investigation of Aquino'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 Aquino's broadcasts". Investigating with the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps, they "conducted an extensive investigation to determine whether Aquino had committed crimes against the U.S. By the following October, authorities decided that the evidence then known did not merit prosecution, and she was released".

Nevertheless, influential gossip columnist Walter Winchell lobbied against D'Aquino in 1948 upon learning of her attempt to return home. D'Aquino, forcibly separated from her husband, was brought to San Francisco, on September 25, 1948, where the FBI charged her with the crime of treason for "adhering to, and giving aid and comfort to, the Imperial Government of Japan during World War II".

Mugshot during Toguri's first detention in Japan

[edit] Treason trial

Her trial on eight "overt acts" of treason began on July 5, 1949, at the Federal District Court in San Francisco. During what was at the time the costliest trial in American history, totaling more than half a million dollars, the prosecution presented 46 witnesses, including two of Toguri's former supervisors at Radio Tokyo, and soldiers who testified said they could not distinguish between what they had heard on radio broadcasts and what they had heard by way of rumour. Although boxes of tapes were brought by prosecutors to the courthouse and rested near the prosecution table, none were entered into evidence and played for the jury. Toguri claimed she and her associates subtly sabotaged the Japanese war effort.

The supervisor at Radio Tokyo testified that:

“

I said to Toguri I had a release from the Imperial General Headquarters giving out results of American ship losses in one of the Leyte Gulf battles, and I asked that she allude to this announcement, make reference to the losses of American ships in her part of the broadcast, and she said she would do so.

”

Another co-worker testified that Toguri said, "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?"

On September 29, 1949, the jury found Toguri guilty on a sole count, Count VI, which stated, "That on a day during October, 1944, the exact date being to the Grand Jurors unknown, said defendant, at Tokyo, Japan, in a broadcasting studio of The Broadcasting Corporation of Japan, did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships." She was fined US$10,000 and given a 10-year prison sentence. She was sent to the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. She was paroled after serving six years and two months, and released January 28, 1956. The FBI's case history notes, "Neither Brundidge nor the witness testified at trial because of the taint of perjury. Nor was Brundidge prosecuted for subornation of perjury."

[edit] Presidential pardon

President Ford pardoned Mrs. D’Aquino on January 19, 1977, his last full day in office, after she had appealed to him in writing. The decision was supported by a unanimous vote in both houses of the California State Legislature, the national Japanese-American Citizens League, and S. I. Hayakawa, then a United States Senator-elect from California. Previously an investigation by Chicago Tribune reporter Ron Yates located Toguri's accusers, who publicly admitted they had committed perjury, claiming they had lied under oath under pressure from prosecutors, which was followed by a Morley Safer report on the television news program 60 Minutes.

[edit] Later life

After the pardon, resisting efforts at deportation, Toguri moved to Chicago, where her father had opened the Japanese-import retail store J. Toguri Mercantile before the war.

Toguri never reunited with or again saw her husband, who had returned to Japan after her trial. Toguri divorced him in 1980; he died in 1996.

Toguri died of natural causes in a Chicago hospital.

[edit] Legacy

The FBI case-history cited under References, below, 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."^[4]
On 15 January 2006, the World War II Veterans Committee, citing "her indomitable spirit, love of country, and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans", awarded her its annual Edward J Herlihy Citizenship Award.^[5] According to her biographer, Toguri found it the most memorable day of her life.^[1]
In 2004, actor George Takei announced he was working on a film titled Tokyo Rose, American Patriot, about Toguri's activities during the war.^[6]
Iva Toguri has been the subject of two movies and four documentaries:
- 1946: Tokyo Rose, film; directed by Lew Landers; Blake Edwards played Joe Bridger.
- 1969: The Story of "Tokyo Rose", CBS-TV and WGN radio documentary written and produced by Bill Kurtis.
- 1976: Tokyo Rose, CBS-TV documentary segment on 60 Minutes by Morley Safer, produced by Imrel Harvath.
- 1995: U.S.A. vs. "Tokyo Rose", self-produced documentary by Antonio A. Montanari Jr., distributed by Cinema Guild.
- 1995: Tokyo Rose: Victim of Propaganda, A&E Biography documentary, hosted by Peter Graves, available on VHS (AAE-14023).
- 2008: Tokyo Rose, film; in development with Darkwoods Productions, the only entity granted life story rights by Iva Toguri, Frank Darabont to direct. Christopher Hampton, is the screenwriter for Tokyo Rose.