As World War II ended in the summer of 1945, journalists went looking for the Pacific Ocean in the ruins of Tokyo. They were hunting Tokyo Rose, the owner of the voice that SAP Morale wanted by spreading propaganda through the countless radios of scratchy adried allies.
His identity was a mystery, and reporters rushed to kill him. They found a woman who spoke in detail in Los Angeles who loved America.
Her name was Iva Toguri d’Aquino, and she was born in Watts to Japanese parents in 1916 and earned a degree in Zoology from UCLA. He wanted to be a doctor. But he went to Tokyo in 1941 to take care of a sick uncle, at a bad time. He made this trip without a passport, making his best efforts to board a ship where war broke out.
He was stuck in a country that didn’t belong to him and was swarmed by police officers who suspected his integrity because he refused to renounce his American citizenship. Neighbors and authorities harassed his relatives to arrest him; He went out to lift another pain.
He couldn’t read Japanese and just spoke. But he got a job as a scriptwriter at Radio Tokyo, who wrote for the show in the propaganda division and hired him in late 1943 as a disc jockey.
In a melodic, chirpy voice, speaking in American English and calling himself ONTPan Ann, D’Aquino has made hundreds of news broadcasts and a music show called “zero hour.” He would correct the troops by saying “my bones are in the South Pacific.”
In this series, Christopher Gocard sends old cases to Los Angeles and beyond, from famous ones that have been forgotten, caused by the forgotten, stealing from the archives and the memories of those who were there.
‘He was a man who was a lawyer for his country and a traitor to his government in a time of need,’ said the federal prosecutor. He was a ‘turcoat and benedict arnold.’
D’Aquino’s defense: He has been dismantling the Propaganda machine all along, entertaining the American people with a refreshing language that no one can take seriously and presenting the beloved American music. (A post-war questionnaire found most soldiers viewed “zero hours” as harmless fun, rather than psychologically toxic.)
D’AQUINO surrenders to his lawyers in San Francisco on September 30, 1949, after being found guilty of one of eight counts of treason.
(Clarence Hamm / Associated Press)
Tried treason in San Francisco and was sent to prison for six years, D’Aquino was nicknamed “Tokyo Rose,” it is closely related to the legend of the long-lasting war as he tried to lead a quiet life and reclaim his name.
The case against him was Trivebare, a product of Postwar Rancor, false testimony and deceitful journalists who were organized by naivete. Surprisingly, his stubborn patriotism also helped; If he had renounced his American citizenship, as the Japanese government demanded, he would not have prosecuted.
In fact, the Japanese ProFAGANDA chiefs had pressured more than ten English-speaking women at the Financial Conference. The plan was to demoralize the war-weary, homegrown troops scattered around the Pacific Theater. The women broadcast from Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Bangkok. Others spoke of the desperation of fighting Imperial Japan. They urged the men who were fighting the Americans to stop. They emphasize the certain unfaithfulness of wives and girlfriends back in the regions.
None of the women went by “Tokyo Rose” – It was a combination, a nickname used by GIS who never knew how many there were. And it was used before Iva Toguri d’Aquino came to the transmission shift.
After Japan’s surrender, journalists wanted to find three people: Emperor Hirohito, former Prime Minister Hitki Tojo and an obscure broadcaster with a hairy name.
D’Aquino, right, poses with her husband Filip in Tokyo in August 1948.
(Charles Gorry/Press Press)
“Those are the three names that Americans know, even though there was no Tokyo Rose and no one ever called themselves that,” Ron Yase, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who covered the case, told the Times in a recent interview.
Two American journalists found Iva Toguri d’Aquino in Tokyo and promised $2000 for the rights to his story. Desperate for money, he signed a contract proving that he was ‘only a Tokyo-born person.’ He never had money; Instead, he became the flash of post-war anger.
The American government in Japan threw him in prison for a year, before deciding whether it was possible for him. But Ranc reigned supreme when she tried to return to the states with her husband, a radio tokyo reporter who bore her name. She was pregnant and wanted her child to be born in America.
The Los Angeles city council voted for his return, his child died when star mothers were born and gold fueled the hope of his return. Walter Winchell, the fearless and powerful Colossist colossus, was sold.
A group of Japanese people arrive in San Francisco from Tokyo on June 19, 1949, preparing to testify in the trial of Iva Toguri d’Aquino.
(Robert Houston/News Press)
“They said, ‘Look, Tokyo is back, and my son is gone,'” Bill Kurtis, the CBS Othellist who covered the story and cheered him on, said in a recent interview. “So they used pressure. We all just got Japan even after they dropped two bombs. He didn’t have a chance because of the anti-Japanese sentiment.” He added: “He was the most unlikable person I’ve ever heard of.”
With the collapse of the pressure on the Truman Administration, D’Aquino was dragged to the federal court in San Francisco to face eight charges of treason in 1949, in that year he is guilty of obtaining consent, more broadcast from Berlin.
Testifying on D’Aquino’s behalf was Charles Coowauseen, a major in the Australian army who was captured by the Japanese and forced to work at Radio Tokyo. He said he had smuggled food and medicine to share. He hired her at “zero hour,” he explained, because he thought her “gin-fog” voice would help create “the perfect burlesque” for a propaganda show.
MAJ. CHARles Coowauseen, Witness who testified on behalf of D’Aquino.
(Barney Peterson / San Francisco Chronicle)
Accountants had written his writings, and offered a sample:
Hello there, enemies. Tricks? This is Ann Of Radio Tokyo, and we’re just about to start our usual music, news and “zero hour” program for our friends – I mean our enemies – in Australia and the South Pacific. Therefore, be careful and the sense that children feel! All set? That’s right. Here’s the first hit to your injury, the boston pops playing “hit the band.”
The prosecution’s star witnesses were Kenkichi Oki and George Mitsushio, two California-born men who had become Japanese citizens and directed him to Radio Tokyo. In similar language, they testified that they had heard them speak of the magnificent ships after the naval battle in October 1944:
“Orphans of the Pacific, you really are orphans now. How are you going to get home now that all your ships have been burned?”
In the stand, D’Aquino firmly denied it, and no written record of the transfer exists. It was the only count on which jurors found him guilty, after a 13-week trial. Years later, Judge Michael J. Roche commented, “I always felt there was something special about that girl who went to Japan when she did something.”
Iva Toguri d’Aquino in Chicago in January 1977.
(Charles Knoblock / Associated Press)
Upon his release, six years later, a Chicago Tribune headline read: “Tokyo Rose Takes Jail, Shows No Repentance.” He ended up being deported from the process and went to work at the family’s gift shop in Chicago. (During the war, his parents were captured from their home and imprisoned at the Gila River camp in Arizona, where his mother died.)
In the mid-1970s, Tribune reporter Ron Yates, then working in Tokyo, looked into the case.
“It hit me when the evidence against them was that,” he said. He followed the two Star Witnesses down. They admitted that the FBI had pressured and trained them. They also allow their damning testimony about the Sumpen-Shondcast broadcast.
“They were told what to say,” Yates said. “He never said anything like that, they told me. They told me they meant: these people were sure they were going to be hanged.”
D’Aquino applied for a presidential pardon, to restore his American citizenship. “Age is destroying me and I can’t wait forever,” she said. “America is my home. It will always be my home.” The state of California lends itself to its support. President Ford granted a pardon in 1977.
D’Aquio presents a petition to San Francisco Postmaster lim P. Lee during a news conference Novve 17, 1976. The petition was to be sent to President Ford Christic.
(Japan / Associated Press)
Wates asked him if he could forgive the two men who testified against him.
“Never,” she said.
At one point, Yates said, he and D’Aquino planned to write a book about his experience. He told her that she should continue with Oprah. “He was nervous about that,” Yates said. “He was scared people were threatening bombs in his shop.”
He said that his own Father, who used to be heard, remembered hearing the spread of superstition in Japan during his time in the Pacific during World War II.
“My father said, ‘I listened to him and he said bad things.’ I said, ‘There were 14 of them.’ I had to encourage her with this. I said, ‘Dad, it was a lie.’ “
When D’ Aquino’s husband came to the United States to testify in his case, the US government demanded that he excuse himself from returning. This effectively saved her husband for the rest of his life. He found another woman. Until his death at the age of 90 in 2006, he never married.
He never got over him, said Barbara Tribley, a film producer who tried to make a movie about D’Aquino’s life.
“It’s a beautiful story of a very bad love – he was really in love with her,” Trible said. “He felt that it would bring him bad luck.”
In an article in the magazine, historian Jacob J. Martin described the case as a show of Agent “glorious aimed at trying to accept the legend of the sports of World War II, not a person with constitutional rights.” It was a metaphor, he argued, “That the word ‘rebellion’ is more political than anything else.”
Long after departure after departure, D’Aquino lived up to the infamy – and handled the sharp money – the history of the Moniker sponsored him. Years, books poured out, threaten to die and give up marriage.
“Every time a case is mentioned in the papers,” he would say, “I seem to hear from every maniac in the country.”
