Salem Press

American Villains offers detailed biographies of 177 of the most infamous assassins, serial killers, frauds, gangsters, murderers, terrorists, thieves, and traitors in American History.

Tokyo Rose
The name “Tokyo Rose” (toh-kee-oh rohz) has been associated with a Japanese American named Ikuko Toguri. Her parents, who came to the United States from Japan, raised her to become an American. As a result, Toguri was ignorant of the Japanese culture and language. She attended the University of California and graduated with a degree in zoology in 1940. Toguri left for Japan on July 5, 1941, with only a certificate of identity from San Pedro, California, reportedly to visit a seriously sick aunt, whom she had never before met. Three months later, she applied for an American passport in order to return to the United States. The U.S. Consulate forwarded her application to the U.S. Department of State for consideration. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States declared war on Japan.

Lacking a U.S. passport, Toguri applied for repatriation to the United States through the Swiss Legation in Japan. Meanwhile, to support herself, she started working as a typist for the Domei News Agency in June, 1942. Radio Tokyo hired her as a part-time English-language typist in August, 1943.

Criminal Career
In late 1943, Toguri was reportedly coerced into working as an announcer for a radio program called Zero Hour. Among the prisoners of warwho produced the program was Charles Hugh Cousens, who had been a radio personality in Sydney before the war. Zero Hour was broadcast from 6:00 p.m. to 7:15 p.m., Tokyo time, six days a week. The purpose of the program was to demoralize American soldiers in the South Pacific region. It was the soldiers listening to the propaganda transmissions who gave Toguri the name Tokyo Rose. She usually addressed the soldiers as “orphans of the Pacific” and identified herself as “orphan Ann (or Annie),” “your favorite enemy Ann,” or “your favorite playmate and enemy Ann.”

In one of her propaganda broadcasts in October, 1944, she told the soldiers that their wives and sweethearts were having romances back in the States, while they were marooned in the South Pacific, all their ships having been sunk by the Japanese Navy. Her voice was heard in a total of 340 programs during her twenty-one months with Zero Hour. After the war and Japan’s surrender in August, 1945, Toguri was arrested by U.S. authorities. She was kept in various prisons before being returned to the United States in September, 1948.

Legal Action and Outcome
Toguri’s trial began in July, 1949, and lasted three months. The jury at the Federal District Court in San Francisco found her guilty of only one out of eight overt acts. The overt act VI was concerned with her propaganda transmission in October, 1944, when she talked about the loss of American ships. On October 6, 1949, U.S. District Judge Michael Roche sentenced Toguri to ten years in prison and fined her $100,000. She was sent to the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. Because of her good behavior in prison, Toguri served only six years and twomonths. She was released on January 28, 1956, and her parole ended in April, 1959. She succeeded in fighting the U.S. government’s efforts to deport her and also in filing for presidential pardon. President Gerald Ford gave her a pardon on January 19, 1977. The seventh person convicted of treason in U.S. history, she was the only one to be pardoned. She settled in Chicago, Illinois, where she died on September 26, 2006, at the age of ninety.

Impact
In its time, the Tokyo Rose trial, which cost $750,000, was the most expensive one in U.S. history. To build the case against Toguri, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had interviewed hundreds of U.S. Army personnel serving in the South Pacific and searched for Japanese documents and recordings of propaganda broadcasts. Witnesses from Japan were identified and brought to the United States. Toguri maintained that she had not betrayed the United States because she was forced to work for Japan. In 1976 she appeared on television’s 60 Minutes and told the Tokyo Rose story from her point of view. She has been the subject of several documentary films. The Tokyo Rose case revealed the problem of interpreting the meaning of “treason.” Toguri’s lack of choice, her circumstances, and the questionable success of her propaganda broadcasts persuaded many people that she should have been given a lighter sentence. Cousens was also arrested after the war; he was tried and acquitted.

- Anh Tran