?Tokyo Rose' Convicted of Treason

• Author: Allen Pusey
• Pages: 72-72

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AP PHOTO

The San Francisco courtroom of Judge Michael Roche was crowded w ith gawkers the morning of Oct. 6,

1949. They awaited the sentencing of Iva D’Aquino, 33, a Japanese-American convicted of trea son the week

before. As a radio propagandist during World War II for Imperial Japan, she was known among American

soldiers and sailors for her distinctively husky voice and excellent command of English as “Tokyo Rose.”

D’Aquino was an American, b orn Iva Ikuko

Toguri in California in 1 916 on the 4th of July.

She graduated from UCL A with a degree in

zoology and had hoped to be come a medical

doctor. Her parents, both Japanese immigr ants,

ran a grocer y store in Los Angeles, and in

December 1941 she was in Japan visit ing her

mother’s sister when Japanese planes attacked

Pearl Harbor.

Precisely because she wa s American, Toguri

found herself quarantined in Tokyo by the

Japanese government. She had traveled not with a

passport but a travel cer tifi cate issued by t he U.S.

State Depart ment. When she tried to return to the

U.S., readmission was denie d. By many accounts,

including those of Allied pr isoners of war, she had

faced immense Japanese pressu re to renounce her

U.S. citizenship but refused t o do so. Thus, abandoned

in wartime Japan w ith little or no familiarity w ith the

language, she began t aking a series of jobs until 1943,

when she was recruited t o be a host on a Radio Tokyo

broadcast known a s The Zero Hour.

Designed as propaganda , it featured popular big-band

music and nostalgic cultu ral references intended to under-

mine the morale of America n troops. English-speaking

female voices portrayed their sit uations as helpless, loved

ones as distant and t he Japanese militar y as unstoppable.

But to U.S. troops, the broadcast s provided both a wel-

come musical respite and a source of hea rty ridicule.

In fact, there wa s no Tokyo Rose. The name was a

generic moniker concocted by A mericans to describe

any of the dozens of female voices they heard du ring the

wartime broadc asts. Toguri’s personal scripts usually

referred to her as Or phan Ann or simply Ann. She

always denied any disloyalt y to the U.S., and by the end

of the war, she had married Port uguese businessman

Felipe D’Aquino and sought return to her

homeland.

However, after an interv iew in which

D’Aquino described being Tokyo Rose, she

was taken into cu stody for more than a year

before mil itary investiga tors concluded she had

done nothing treasonous. She again applied t o

return to the U.S., only to at tract the attention

of radio commentator Walter Winchell, who

began a public campaign to have her cha rged

with treason. In 1 948, she was arrested in

Japan and returned to the U.S. t o face charges.

Racial an imus against Americans of Japanese desc ent

endured long after the war. Toguri’s mother had died

during the family ’s internment in Ari zona. Her 12-week

trial in San Fr ancisco on eight counts of treason crackled

with issues of alleg iance. Witnesses gave confl icting

accounts of her loyalties. Tapes of The Zero Hour were

played to the jury, though none of the voices were identi-

fi e d as belonging to Toguri. Australian Charles C ousens,

a former POW and Zero Hour producer, testifi ed for

D’Aquino, saying he created the broadcast s to be exactly

the kind of farce U.S. troops p erceived them to be.

After four days of delib eration, she was convicted

on a single count of treason. The verdict wa s based

on testimony by two witnes ses, both of whom later

recanted, that a fter the October 1944 Battle of Ley te

Gulf, Toguri had uttered: “Or phans of the Pacifi c , you

really are orpha ns now. How will you get home now

that all your ships are lost?”

D’Aquino was sentenced to 10 years in prison a nd a

$10,000 fi ne. She ser ved six years before being released

to work in her family’s curio shop in Ch icago.

In 1977, with vigorous support fr om veterans’ groups

and Japanese-American s, she was pardoned by President

Gerald Ford. She died in 2006 at the age of 90.

Oct. 6, 1949

72 || ABA JOURNAL OCTOBER 2018

‘Tokyo Rose’ Convicted of Treason

Precedents || By Allen Pusey

Iva D’Aquino