Iva Toguri D'Aquino, 90, an American woman charged with treason as the "Tokyo Rose" who broadcast World War II Japanese propaganda by means of English-language radio shows, has died in Chicago, hospital officials said on Wednesday.
Born to Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles in 1916, Toguri was stranded in Japan while visiting an aunt in 1941. She refused to renounce her US citizenship and, like thousands of other Japanese-Americans, was considered an enemy alien and denied a food ration card.
Kicked out of her aunt's home for voicing pro-US sentiments, she was monitored by the secret police and struggled to get by with little command of the Japanese language.
Toguri eventually found a job as a typist at Radio Tokyo where she met two prisoners of war -- an American and an Australian -- who had been ordered to write broadcasts to undermine the confidence of US troops in the Pacific Theater.
The broadcasts lured US troops with American songs and then taunted them with false battle reports and stories of infidelity on the homefront and urged the soldiers to surrender. Dubbed Tokyo Rose, the silky-voiced broadcasts became an enduring symbol of infamy.
Toguri joined a dozen other women who hosted the broadcasts in 1943 but did so with the aim of undermining their effectiveness.
A typical broadcast was "so be on your guard, and mind the children don't hear! All set? Ok! Here's the first blow to your morale -- the Boston Pops playing Strike Up the Band."
Her subtle nuances and double entendres escaped the notice of propaganda officials but also the enraged US public.
Her undoing proved to be an offer of US$2,000 -- about eight times the average annual salary at the time -- for an exclusive interview with Cosmopolitan magazine. She was duped into holding a press conference that canceled the exclusivity deal and was labeled a traitor.
An angry US public demanded her arrest and Toguri was held in Japan for a year by US forces.
She was eventually released unconditionally and the intelligence officers who interrogated her found no evidence of treason and later came to her defense.
But the hysteria against Tokyo Rose -- fanned by a film titled Tokyo Rose released in 1946 -- did not die and Toguri was hounded by the press as she tried to return home in 1948.
Toguri was charged with eight vague counts of treason and was convicted on one after a judge bullied the hung jury into reaching a verdict. She was sentenced to 10 years in a federal penitentiary and stripped of her citizenship. Had she renounced it when told to do so by the Japanese secret service, she could have spared herself the wartime isolation and the postwar trial.
Toguri was released four years early in 1956 because of good behavior. She tried to live a quiet life in Chicago but fought to regain her citizenship and for her husband to be allowed to enter the country. Her case was championed by a 60 Minutes documentary in 1969.
D'Aquino was eventually pardoned by former US president Gerald Ford in 1977 for the role she played in undermining the morale of US troops.
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