AVB
Jesus of Cool, I'm bad, I'm nationwide
Iva Toguri D’Aquino was born in Los Angeles on the Fourth of July. She was, among other things, a daughter of immigrants, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and, as she fiercely insisted to those who doubted it, a true and loyal American.
None of that helped her in the late 1940’s, when anti-Japanese sentiment was running strong in this country, and Mrs. D’Aquino was branded a traitor and became known to the world as Tokyo Rose.
There was no “Tokyo Rose,” which was a label servicemen used for the dozen or so women who broadcast propaganda and popular music on Radio Tokyo, to the troops’ annoyance or amusement. Mrs. D’Aquino, who was visiting a relative in Tokyo in 1941 and became stranded there after Dec. 7, was one of them, though she denied ever saying anything disloyal. She was arrested but released in 1946 when the Army and Justice Department concluded they had no case against her. The case was reopened in 1948, in a cold war miscarriage of justice. She was convicted of treason and spent six years in prison.
After her release, Mrs. D’Aquino lived in Chicago, helping to run a family shop on the North Side that sells origami paper, teapots, books and other Japanese goods. George Takei, the Japanese-American actor who has been trying to get the money to film a dramatized account of her life, said she embodied the quality known in Japanese as gaman, or restraint — the tendency “to hold it all in and be strong.” She kept the lowest of profiles, telling her story only rarely, as when she wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford, who pardoned her in 1977.
The facts made the case for a pardon unarguable, but the legend outlived them. As Mr. Takei points out, explaining why he wants to make the movie: To people over 50, Mrs. D’Aquino is still Tokyo Rose, propagandist, traitor and spy. To people under 50, she’s — who?
Mrs. D’Aquino, 90, died Tuesday in Chicago, a free, exonerated, exemplary American for more than five decades, but still imprisoned by a myth.
None of that helped her in the late 1940’s, when anti-Japanese sentiment was running strong in this country, and Mrs. D’Aquino was branded a traitor and became known to the world as Tokyo Rose.
There was no “Tokyo Rose,” which was a label servicemen used for the dozen or so women who broadcast propaganda and popular music on Radio Tokyo, to the troops’ annoyance or amusement. Mrs. D’Aquino, who was visiting a relative in Tokyo in 1941 and became stranded there after Dec. 7, was one of them, though she denied ever saying anything disloyal. She was arrested but released in 1946 when the Army and Justice Department concluded they had no case against her. The case was reopened in 1948, in a cold war miscarriage of justice. She was convicted of treason and spent six years in prison.
After her release, Mrs. D’Aquino lived in Chicago, helping to run a family shop on the North Side that sells origami paper, teapots, books and other Japanese goods. George Takei, the Japanese-American actor who has been trying to get the money to film a dramatized account of her life, said she embodied the quality known in Japanese as gaman, or restraint — the tendency “to hold it all in and be strong.” She kept the lowest of profiles, telling her story only rarely, as when she wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford, who pardoned her in 1977.
The facts made the case for a pardon unarguable, but the legend outlived them. As Mr. Takei points out, explaining why he wants to make the movie: To people over 50, Mrs. D’Aquino is still Tokyo Rose, propagandist, traitor and spy. To people under 50, she’s — who?
Mrs. D’Aquino, 90, died Tuesday in Chicago, a free, exonerated, exemplary American for more than five decades, but still imprisoned by a myth.