Washington – Iva Toguri, the American woman branded “Tokyo Rose” during World War II who was imprisoned for making treasonous radio broadcasts and exonerated decades later with a presidential pardon, died Sept. 26 at her home in Chicago. She was 90. No cause of death was reported.
Although nearly a dozen female broadcasters were given the moniker during World War II, Toguri became most tarred with the name, which along with Hideki Tojo came to personify Axis infamy in the Pacific.
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 notorious instruments in the propaganda war.
Many American sailors and soldiers found them cartoonishly unbelievable, exactly what Toguri said she intended. The Navy Department mockingly cited her for “contributing greatly to the morale” of the armed services.
The name Tokyo Rose was an American invention. On the air, Toguri called herself “Orphan Ann,” a reference both to her favorite radio program as a child and her lonely status as an American trapped in enemy territory. She refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship during the war, and many described her as a victim of her own courage – and naiveté.
She had been forced through circumstance to broadcast propaganda for the Japanese, having landed in her ancestral homeland at precisely the worst moment to care for a sick aunt.
She and other captive Allies decided to turn their ordeal on its head, deliberately making a hash of the propaganda.
To that end, Toguri, who had a gravelly voice and a slight lisp, was exactly wrong for what the enemy wanted: a sultry-voiced villainess to tease the American listeners away from home.
With anti-Japanese fervor still peaking after the war, great media and political pressure was applied to find “Tokyo Rose.”
Other treason trials had commenced for Mildred Gillars, the American known as “Axis Sally” for her pro-Nazi broadcasts from Berlin, and American-born William Joyce, known as “Lord Haw-Haw” for his radio propaganda messages beamed to England from Germany during the war.
Gillars was imprisoned, Joyce hanged.
Toguri’s case seemed different. Reports from Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps indicated she had done nothing treasonable in her broadcasts. But Walter Winchell, the powerful and vitriolic broadcast personality, and the American Legion lobbied hard for a trial. They were relentless and successful in seeking a trial for Toguri.
Toguri was the only one of the Tokyo Roses arrested by U.S. authorities after the Japanese surrender. She was found guilty of treason by a judge who pressured a deadlocked jury to render a verdict.
“I supposed they found someone and got the job done, they were all satisfied,” she later told the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”
She served part of her prison term, lived quietly in Chicago and gradually saw people take up her case for a pardon. After testimony against her was discredited, President Ford made her pardon one of his last acts in office in January 1977.
The charge that stuck against Toguri was having allegedly said in a 1944 broadcast: “Orphans of the Pacific, you are really orphans now. How will you get home now that your ships are sunk?” With the recent American victory in the Leyte Gulf, the broadcast was viewed skeptically even then, but it was used against her in court.
Released after six years in prison, Toguri worked quietly to exonerate herself. By then, her personal life had crumbled. Her husband came to her defense during the trial only to be bullied into signing an agreement never again to enter the United States. Their separation – she declined to leave the United States – led to their reluctant divorce.After leaving prison, she settled in Chicago and worked with her father at a small importing shop to pay off the fine after repeated threats by the Justice Department.
Petitions began circulating for her exoneration, but little was done at the executive level until news reports began to question the testimony that had convicted her.
Kenkichi Oki, a “Zero Hour” colleague who had testified against her, told the Chicago Tribune he “had no choice” but to testify against Toguri because of FBI threats that “Uncle Sam might arrange a trial for us, too.” The jury foreman told reporters he felt pressure from the judge and wished he “had a little more guts to stick with my vote for acquittal.” After she was pardoned, her citizenship was restored. She said she regretted the pardon came about four years after her father’s death.
She described his reaction over the years: “‘You were like a tiger, you never changed your stripes, you stayed American through and through.”‘ Until her death, she lived in welcome anonymity in Chicago, allowing herself such pleasures as quilting and concerts at the Chicago Lyric Opera.
