Tōkyō Rōzu

About this book

No one knows who invented the name, when it was first used, or even why a Japanese broadcaster should be dubbed 'Rose'--but two of the first American reporters in Occupied Japan, bent on finding "Tokyo Rose" at any cost, elicited the name of one of the women disk-jockeys on the popular Zero Hour program. Iva Toguri d'Aquino, foolishly, unfearingly let herself be styled, "the one and only Tokyo Rose." A UCLA-graduate, she had gone to Japan reluctantly in 1941 on family business. Red tape and dwindling funds prevented her from leaving, and an Australian journalist POW recruited her for the radio program. It's a startling story that Masayo Duus has uncovered almost by accident: Iva waited on her at the Toguri family store in Chicago in 1967, and the plain person didn't fit the sensational image. Iva ubbornly clung to her U.S. citizenship when the other nisei she knew recanted--else she could not have been tried for treason. D'Aquino served six years of a ten-year sentence in federal prison. In the 1970s, Japanese Americans convinced of her innocence began a movement that led to a presidential pardon in 1977.