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Tokyo Rose

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  • Tokyo Rose

    This was mentioned in another thread, figured it might be of interest.

    Originally posted by ArmchairGeneral View Post
    A random fact I learned recently- in addition to pardoning President Nixon, President Ford pardoned another famous person- Tokyo Rose.
    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, however erroneously, 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, among 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.

    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 POWs.

    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.

    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. As well, the American and Australian prisoners-of-war 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, 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".

    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.

    The FBI case-history 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."
    Wikipedia Source
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
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