Iva Ikuko Toguri is the woman who was tried as Tokyo Rose. She is a first-generation Japanese-American who happened to be visiting a sick relative in Japan in 1941. When war was declared between Japan and the U.S., Toguri was trapped in Japan and pressured by Japanese military police to renounce her American citizenship. She refused. Instead, she learned Japanese and took two jobs to support herself while she sought a way to return home.
One of her jobs was as a typist for Radio Tokyo. There she met American and Australian prisoners of war who were being forced to broadcast radio propaganda. Toguri scavenged black-market food, medicine, and supplies for these POWs. When Radio Tokyo wanted a female voice for their propaganda shows, the POWs selected Toguri. She was one of many female, English-speaking voices on Radio Tokyo, and she took the radio name of "Orphan Ann." Her POW friends wrote her scripts and tried to sneak in pro-American messages whenever possible.
After the war, several reporters went to Japan to find and interview the infamous Tokyo Rose, offering a large cash payment for an interview. A woman at Radio Tokyo pointed the reporters to Iva Toguri, and Toguri, thinking that she and her new husband, Felipe d'Aquino, could use the money, agreed to be interviewed. She even signed a contract stating that she was the infamous Tokyo Rose. A reporter gave the interview notes to U.S. Army Counter Intelligence, and in 1945, the U.S. arrested and imprisoned Toguri in Japan. She was released in 1946, but was arrested again in 1948, and taken to the U.S. to be tried for treason.
Her trial was considered the most expensive in American history at that time. The U.S. government stacked the deck against Toguri and her meager defense, and the judge later admitted he was prejudiced against her from the start. Toguri was found guilty of only one of the eight treason charges -- "That she did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships." She was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000. Because she was a model prisoner, Toguri was released early in 1956, although she was served with a deportation order which took two years to fight.
In 1976, the TV news show 60 Minutes told the Tokyo Rose story from Toguri's point of view. This led to a full pardon for Toguri from President Gerald Ford in 1977.
Unfortunately, Toguri's husband was never able to join her in the U.S. They reluctantly divorced in 1980, and d'Aquino died in 1996. Iva Toguri currently lives in Chicago where she runs her family's import business.
