Iva Toguri D'Aquino

File:Iva Toguri.jpg

Iva Toguri

Iva Toguri D'Aquino (born July 4, 1916) is frequently but erroneously identified as one of the World War II propaganda-radio hostesses dubbed Tokyo Rose by Allied soldiers. She was exonerated in the 1970's through the efforts of investigative journalists and pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford.

Early life

Born Ikuko Toguri in Los Angeles, California, United States, 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 in the Methodist religion. She attended grammar schools in the town of Calexico, California, and the city of San Diego, California, 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. A registered Republican, she then worked in her parents' shop.

On July 5, 1941, she sailed for Japan from San Pedro, California, ostensbily 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.

Zero Hour

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. 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 one-hour the radio show The Zero Hour. Under the stage name "Orphan Anne" and possibly "Your Favorite Enemy, Anne", reportedy in reference to the comic strip character Little Orphan Annie, Toguri performed in comedy sketches and introduced newcasts, 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.

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 take her husband's citizenship.

Postwar trial

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. A monetarily tainted identification led to D'Aquino arrest, on September 5, 1945, in Yokohama, but she was released, after a year in jail when the United States Justice Department's FBI found no evidence she had aided the Japanese Axis forces, as did General Douglas MacArthur's staff. As well, the American and Australian P.O.W.s who wrote her scripts also assured her she had committed no wrongdoing.

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, California, 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".

She stood trial at the Federal District Court in San Francisco beginning July 5, 1949, on eight "overt acts" of treason. 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 they could not distinguish between what they had heard on radio broadcasts and what they had heard by way of rumour. 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 released January 28, 1956, from the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, the same facility holding Axis Sally, paroled after serving six years and two months. The FBI's cast history notes, "Neither Brundidge nor the witness testified at trial because of the taint of perjury. Nor was Brundidge prosecuted for subornation of perjury."

Afterward, resisting efforts at deportation, Toguri moved to Chicago, Illinois, where her father had opened the Japanese-import retail store J. Toguri Mercantile before the war. Never reunited with her husband, she divorced him in 1980; he died in 1996.

Presidential pardon

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. A subsequent Morley Safer report on the television news program 60 Minutes prompted Toguri's exoneration by President Ford on January 19, 1977.

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".

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

See also

• Lord Haw Haw
• Hanoi Hannah

References

• Federal Bureau of Invesitgation: FBI History — Famous Cases: Iva Toguri d'Aquino and "Tokyo Rose"
• Ask Yahoo! (Feb. 21, 2002): "Who was Tokyo Rose?" (unbylined)
• "Orphan Ann" Home Page

External links

• Mug shots of D'Aquino
• Old Time Radio Music Series: Tokyo Rose (radio recording)
• Eyewitness to History: "Tokyo Rose broadcasts to American troops in the Pacific - August 14, 1944"