Tokyo Rose

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For other uses, see Tokyo Rose (disambiguation).

Tokyo Rose (alternate spelling Tokio Rose) was a generic name given by Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II to any of approximately one dozen English-speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda.

1 Iva Toguri
2 Tokyo Mose
3 Popular Culture
4 Footnotes
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Iva Toguri

Main article: Iva Toguri D'Aquino

The name is associated with Iva Toguri D'AquinoHi mom (born Ikuko Toguri, July 4, 1916, Los Angeles, California - died September 26, 2006, Chicago, Illinois). A U.S. citizen by birth who was visiting relatives including a sick aunt in Japan at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she was unable to leave after the start of hostilities. She was subsequently treated as an enemy alien and refused a war ration card due to her refusal to renounce her American citizenship.^[1] "A tiger does not change its stripes" is a quote atributed to her.^[1]. To support herself she took work at the Japanese radio show The Zero Hour ^[2] as a transcriber and later as an on air announcer named "Ann" (for "Announcer") and later "Orphan Ann".^[1] Her producer was an Australian Army officer, Major Charles Cousens, who had pre-war broadcast experience and had been captured at the fall of Singapore. Cousens had been tortured and coerced to work on radio broadcasts,^[1] as had his assistants, U.S. Army Captain Wallace "Ted" Ince and a Philippine Army Lieutenant, Normando Ildefonso "Norman" Reyes. Captain Ince was also tortured into working for Japanese Radio.^[1] Toguri had previously risked her life smuggling food into the nearby Prisoner of War (POW) camp where Cousens and Ince were held, gaining the inmates' trust.^[1] Toguri would host a total of 340 broadcasts of The Zero Hour.^[1]

After she indicated her refusal to broadcast anti-American propaganda, Toguri was assured by both of them that they would not write scripts having her say anything against the United States.^[1] After the war, she was investigated and released when the FBI and the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps found no evidence against her. "Tokyo Rose" was actually a legend generated by allied military personnel for the amalgam of female broadcasters working for the Japanese government.^[1] At no time did Toguri call herself "Tokyo Rose" during the war. Further, true to the word of the two prisoners of war that Toguri worked under, no anti allied propaganda was found in her broadcast.^[1] However, upon her request to return to the United States to have her unborn child born on American soil,^[1] the influential gossip columnist and radio host Walter Winchell lobbied against her. She was brought to the U.S., where she was charged and subsequently convicted of treason. ^[2] Prior to her being brought back to the U.S. for trial, her baby was born but died shortly after.^[1]

In 1949, D'Aquino was convicted of one of eight counts of treason by the U.S. government.^[3] She was given a sentence of 10 years and a $10,000 fine. Her attorney, Wayne Collins, citing the gross unfairness of it, called the verdict "Guilty without evidence".^[1] After six years, she was released and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where Chicago Tribune reporter Ron Yates identified her. Yates later went on to discover that Kenkichi Oki and George Mitsushio, who delivered the most damaging testimony, lied under oath.^[3] They stated they had been threatened by the FBI and U.S. occupation police and told what to say and what not to say just hours before the trial.^[3] On January 19, 1977, she was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford, who also restored her citizenship.^[4] She died in a Chicago hospital, of natural causes, on September 26, 2006, at the age of 90. ^[5]^[6]^[2]

[edit] Tokyo Mose

As “Tokyo Mose” during and after World War II, Walter Kaner aired on US Army Radio, answering Tokyo Rose’s broadcasts. In Japan, his “Mushi, Mushi Ano-ne” theme song, sung to the tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down,” was so popular with Japanese children and GIs alike that Stars and Stripes , the Army paper, called it “the Japanese occupation theme song.” Elsa Maxwell’s column and radio show in 1946 referred to Kaner as “the breath of home to unknown thousands of our young men when they were lonely.”

[edit] Popular Culture

Tokyo Rose 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.

In 2004, actor George Takei announced he was working on a film entitled Tokyo Rose, American Patriot, about Toguri's activities during the war.^[7]

A scene in the 2006 movie Flags of Our Fathers of American servicemen listening to a radio broadcast, ascribed to "Orphan Ann" and done in a style previously attributed to "Tokyo Rose" that conflates the two, is a complete fabrication, with no basis in fact.

Tokyo Rose is a 1989 album by Van Dyke Parks. The album attempts to reflect an intersection between Japanese and American cultures, a common concern during the 1980s. Tokyo Rose also is the name of an emo/pop band hailing from New Jersey.

There are various restaurants and establishments named Tokyo Rose.