November 7, 2012 • 26 mins
During World War II, Allied troops often listened to Japanese propaganda, and they nick-named the English-speaking, female broadcasters "Tokyo Rose." After the war, the hunt to find them was on -- and Iva d'Aquino found herself on trial for treason.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sara Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalk reporting, And so Deblina,
while you were on your maternity league, I know, I
did a few episodes with co hosts, and the very
(00:22):
first one I did was with Jonathan Strickland of tech Stuff,
and when we were trying to figure out a topic,
he threw out the idea of number stations. And I
don't know, have you have you ever heard of number
stations before, not until this, not until this, so I
hadn't either, I think tech Stuff he and Chris actually
did an episode on them. But they are shortwave radio
(00:43):
stations that broadcast a sequence of numbers were sometimes a
sequence of letters or words, interspersed with little clips of music.
And they appeared and people aren't quite sure when they appeared,
but probably sometime not long after World War Two. They
were used for spy communications. Most likely some are still
active today. They're really creepy sounding to Lena, and I
(01:07):
listened to a few before this. They sound like creepy
kids music almost, And maybe I just think this because
I listened to a lot of kids music lately, but
they sort of the automatic the music that comes on
when you have one of those little kids vibrating chairs
or whatever, and then maybe the key would change and
it would get creepy. Yeah, they are kind of like that.
I couldn't find a clip like this to send you.
But some of them even have children reading the numbers,
(01:30):
which adds to the creepiness. But anyway, Jonathan and I
talked about that a little bit. Decided not to do
the episode on that specifically, but I did go out
searching for some of these number stations so to listen
to them, and after listening to some of those broadcasts,
it reminded me of another wartime radio related topic and
(01:51):
a listener suggestion, Tokyo Rose, who was, of course, the
English language voice of Japanese propaganda during World War Two.
There were a number of these radio personalities during the war,
basically English speaking broadcasters who were based in Access Territory,
and they aimed at demoralizing Allied troops with a number
(02:12):
of things, including things to make them homesick, grim or
fabricated battle reports and predictions, and also plenty of pop music.
That was the thing that kept the soldiers listening in
the first place. Yeah, they're kind of a strange combination
of that really, because they needed something for the soldiers
to tune in, and part of that was the homesick
(02:32):
part too. A lot of times the announcers would be
familiar sounding female voices that reminded them of home. But
in most cases, the names of these people, I mean,
there's acts of Sally, there's Lord ha Ha, their sinister Sam.
In most cases the name was just really an allied nickname.
It was not a real person. It was for a
(02:52):
series of these anonymous broadcasters, and in Tokyo Rosa's case,
there were probably actually about twenty or more than twenty
women broadcasting Japanese propaganda in the Pacific, some under real
DJ names like Orphan Anne. Troops imagined that these generic
Tokyo Roses were seductresses, taunting them and making them miss
(03:16):
home at the same time. Sometimes there would be crazy
rumors about who the real Tokyo Rose was. Maybe she
was General Tojo's mistress, maybe she was a hula dancer.
She could have even been Amelia air Hawks. I know,
those were some of the rumors going around. Gotta be Amelia, right,
But most of these generic broadcaster names did have real
(03:38):
people behind them, or at least one individual who would
finally be named, including Access Sally and Lord ha ha h.
For Lord Haha, it's William Joyce, a guy who was
eventually executed for treason. For Access Sally, it's usually a
woman named Mildred Giller's who did end up doing some
prison time for treason, and Tokyo Rose is the same way.
(03:59):
And because day's topic, of course, focuses on her, we're
gonna start with a clip from a Tokyo Rose herself
introducing her own radio program before we kick off our podcast,
reading your number one enemy, your favorite playmates, ready again
(04:24):
on your morale. So the Tokyo Rose you just heard
with the DJ name Orphan Anne is actually our Lady
of the day, the person we're going to talk about.
You might already be able to tell. But she didn't
really fit the mold of the other Tokyo Roses that
we described earlier. For one thing, she had a comic
(04:44):
voice rather than a seductive one, and she delivered these
really funny, over the top kind of blows to morale
rather than the real crushing news or the jobs that
people had come to expect from the other Tokyo roses.
She did just an example of saying that she was
going to deliver a vicious assault on your morale before
(05:05):
going on to say quote, I know what you need
is some jive. It helps you relax, and then playing
I don't want to go to work. It doesn't really
come across as a very vicious assault on your morale.
It's kind of funny. But out of all of the
twenty plus Tokyo roses who are known to have broadcast
two Allied troops in the Pacific, it was this Rose
(05:27):
Orphan and also known as Iva cuco To Guriquino, who
was tried and convicted of treason for her wartime work. Obviously,
she was a scapegoat. She was the face, if not
actually the voice of a wartime enemy, a wartime enemy
who became a much hated one, especially after the war
(05:47):
was over, and she even later told CBS News herself
quote I suppose they found someone and got the job done.
They were all satisfied. It was any meany miney, and
I was mo. How she got to be mo, though,
is truly surprising and involved wartime desperation, unscrupulous journalism, cold
(06:07):
war posturing and a truly truly ill timed vacation. So
we're gonna go into that a little bit, but first
we want to start with giving you a little background
on Iva. She was in the SAY, which was basically
a second generation Japanese immigrant, and she had been born
on the fourth of July in nineteen sixteen in Los Angeles,
and since her parents and her older brother had been
(06:29):
born in Japan, they couldn't become American citizens. However they
were there seemed to be at least a pretty quintessentially
all American household. They lived, for example, in a mostly
white neighborhood rather than a Japanese community. They attended Methodist
church and the kids went to public school. Iva and
her brother both grew up speaking English, and they helped
(06:51):
their father with his store and import business. And I
have a hiked, played tennis, was really popular with her classmates,
and loved swing dancing. So really seems like an American girl,
And according to Women in World History Encyclopedia, I've not
even said later that she never really felt discriminated against
growing up, something that was quite common unfortunately for many
(07:12):
other Japanese Americans. Uh before and after the war, of course,
But in nineteen one, i've A graduated from U c
l A and she started taking some graduate classes. She
was thinking of of going on to med school, but
in the summer of nineteen forty one, so shortly after
her graduation, her sickly Japanese aunt invited her to visit
(07:35):
the home country and care for her for for a time.
Iva didn't have a passport, but that actually wasn't a
problem at the time she got a certificate of identification
from the State Department. She packed her bags with chocolate
and coffee and canned meats because she hated Japanese food.
She didn't even like to eat rice, so she was
preparing for what was clearly going to be a relatively
(07:58):
short summer trip when she left in July too. Of course,
the US and Japan were not yet at war, a
crucial point in this scenario, and they weren't at war
when she applied for her passport at home in September, either,
But as the State Department processed her application, the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor, and suddenly American born Ivo was stuck
(08:21):
in enemy territory. So she soon found her position got
even worse, she could only be evacuated as a citizen
through India, something that cost more than four hundred dollars
and was well beyond her means. After that, she tried
to get the Japanese authorities to detain her as an
American national, which they refused to do since she was
(08:41):
of Japanese descent. But she also refused to renounce her
American citizenship and declare herself Japanese, a route that about
ten thousand other people like her took in Japan, and
this decision made her immensely suspicious to Japanese authorities, who
suspected that she was an America Can spy, and they
would search her aunt's home repeatedly until i'va finally moved out.
(09:05):
So this is her situation in Japan wartime Japan. She's
unable to return to the US. She's unable to be
an official foreign national and be kept in custody as such,
she's unwilling to become a Japanese citizen. Plus she gets
no ration card because she's an enemy alien, so not
(09:25):
a great situation to be and she obviously needs to
find work, and she doesn't even have a great command
of Japanese. She she's taking language classes, but she's not
particularly fluent. Finally, she finds work as a typist at
the Domain News Agency. Um, but just a bad time.
She's not making very much money at all. The food
(09:46):
rationing card problem is pretty major because she's suffering from
nutritional deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies. She's at one point hospitalized with
scurvy and berry berry. And in ninete she gets a
second job, which must have seemed like a real blessing
at the time that Radio Tokyo also a typing job,
(10:08):
and Radio Tokyo is an interesting place for her to
wind up because there were several Allied prisoner of war
broadcaster space there. And so she did what she could
for her fellow Americans, these these POWs and other Allied POWs,
you know, helping them with food when when she could
get it, helping get them some clothes, just doing her
(10:30):
best for her for her fellow allies. This action ultimately
earned her the trust of a guy named Charles H. Cousins,
who was an Australian broadcaster who had been captured in
Singapore and forced a broadcast propaganda in Japan. And just
a side note here, according to The Washington Post, he
made a deal with his captors where he would read um,
(10:53):
he'd read the script of propaganda messages, but he also
convinced them to allow him to read pod w names
because he thought it would serve their purposes. Still, these
are the guys we've captured, but it would also help
the Allies, help their families know who was who wasn't
dead They were, they were just in custody. And Cousins,
(11:14):
along with American pow Major Wallance Ince and Filipino pow
Lieutenant Norman Reis, had gotten permission to start a new
propaganda show, which was called Zero Hour, though their plan
here was actually to subvert the Japanese message, basically to
make the program a joke, but one that the Japanese
censors weren't quite in on, and they chose Iva with
(11:37):
this purpose in mind. Cousins later said, quote, with the
idea that I had in mind of making a complete
burlesque of the program, her voice was just what I wanted. Rough,
I hope I can say this without offense. A voice
that I have described as a jin fog voice. It
was rough, almost masculine, anything but a femininely seductive voice
(11:58):
it was a comedy voice that I needed for this
particular job. So let's take another listen to her. Thank you,
thank you, thank you. That's all. Thanks until then, Number one,
my g I always to be good right now. So
(12:23):
even if you exclude the true subversive intent of Zero Hour,
it's important to note Iva's role was that of the DJ.
She introduced pop songs, joking that she was the g
I s number one enemy. It's all very lighthearted sort
of stuff, and I really like her voice, by the way,
It's interesting sounding. But the program was considered successful enough
(12:46):
by the Japanese too. I mean they weren't picking up
that this whole thing seemed a little bit subversive. Um,
it was successful enough that they wouldn't let her leave
the job, even though she attempted to do that several times.
By April, she converted to Roman Catholicism and married one
of her Radio Tokyo co workers, a guy named Philippe
(13:06):
de Quino, who was a half Japanese half Portuguese worker
at the same place and and had Portuguese citizenship too,
And both of them eventually did leave their jobs at
Radio Tokyo when it became when they're clear pro Allied
sympathies just became a little bit too controversial for them
(13:26):
to keep on working in propaganda officially. And just a
few months after their marriage, the war was over. And
really Ivan her husband probably could have just slipped back
quietly into their pre war lives at this point, except
that Iva was contacted by two journalists, a guy named
(13:46):
Harry Brundage and a guy named Clark Lee, and she
was overly welcoming to them, in part because she was happy.
She greeted the the Americans as as her friends and
her fellow countryman. She saw these guys as American. She
could talk to you. Finally, it was a good time.
She wanted to share her story. She wanted to talk
(14:09):
about her wartime work. She freely admitted that she was
a Tokyo Rose. But the reporters didn't publish her story
as this patriotic tale of subversion, like we made zero
Hour and it was really to thwart the Japanese message.
They published it as a confession, the confession of Tokyo Rose.
(14:30):
They didn't pay her the two thousand dollars that they
promised for the scoop. That was another motive for her
talking to them clearly after all this wartime deprivation, and
she had no idea that one thing, the story would
be manipulated that way, but also that it might get
her in some serious trouble. And it wasn't long before
the FBI was in Tokyo to investigate her, and she
(14:51):
wound up imprisoned for a year. During that investigation, FBI
listened to recordings of her program. They also interviewed hundreds
of gi as who had heard her show, and examined
Japanese documents, and ultimately they decided there was no case here.
She had just been a DJ reading bits written by
major cousins. After her release from prison, though she got
(15:13):
pregnant When she and her husband began petitioning to return
to the States because they really wanted their child to
be born at home. Brendage, who was angry over losing
his original scoop here, started to write about her again,
as did Walter Winchell, a media personality, and the two
of them they stirred up some outrage here. Veterans groups
(15:34):
like the American Legion were quick to id Iva as
the Tokyo Rose, not just a Tokyo Rose. She was
basically to them a compilation of every anti American voice
they had heard during the war, and they petitioned the
Justice Department for her prosecution. So Iva and Philippe's child
ended up being still born, but by that point she
(15:56):
was going to be returning to the United States regardless
even though the earlier investigation had shown that there was
nothing to charge her with. The prosecution would look good
to the administration during an election year, especially because President
Truman was criticized at this point for being too soft
on communism, too soft on anything that was un American.
(16:18):
Jedre Hoover was in favor of prosecuting her, so it
seemed like a good move politically to to go after
this woman. But while the FBI had already interviewed hundreds
of servicemen and most of them had said, if anything,
her program was morale boosting. They liked it. It It was funny,
it was nice to hear a familiar voice. The Justice
(16:38):
Department put out a press release asking for others to
come forward, anybody who could identify her voice as as
that of when they had heard in the Pacific. They
also sent Brundage. And this is really surprising to me,
since it seems like he would have a lot of
interests involved in the story by this point, which he did. Uh.
(16:58):
They sent him to Japan in to find some other witnesses,
people who had seen her broadcasting. One of his witnesses
he finds ends up committing perjury. He's responsible for it.
So clearly he was not a good chance, a good
choice to send to Japan after all. But finally, in
September nine, she was indicted on several counts of treason
(17:22):
and escorted by the military back to the United States.
So what is the seven years after she left on
this ill fated trip, she finally is coming home, but
to be met with FBI agents when she arrives. Right
in The trial which started in July ninety nine, went
on at the same time as the alder His case,
which I think you guys discussed while I was gone.
(17:45):
Ben and I discussed it during the McCarthy ism episode,
and um, I was Debilina and I were just chatting
before this. You always see the alger His trial mentioned
in the lead up to McCarthyism. I have never seen
this one mentioned. I mean, it's not about spies and communism,
but it's clearly in the same vein So for Iva's case,
(18:08):
nineteen witnesses from Japan were basically put up in style
and they testified to seeing her broadcast. Ironically, many of
these who testified against her were in to say who
had renounced their citizenship during the war, unlike her right
and Iva was defended by Wayne Collins, supported by colleagues
like Cousins, and had evidence that she had indeed helped
(18:31):
American POWs during the war. Still, she was convicted on
one count for supposedly saying, quote, orphans of the Pacific,
you're really orphans? Now, how will you get home now
that your ships are sunk? Yet this had aired right
after an Allied victory, So there's the possibility that maybe
this was a joke at the false nature of propaganda programs,
(18:52):
if she said it at all, if she really said it.
But ultimately she was convicted as if she had said it,
And according to the FBI, she was only the seventh
person convicted of treason in US history. And this really
gets crazier when you hear what the jury form and
to say. He later admitted that they had wanted to
find her not guilty. They had deliberated for a very
(19:13):
very long time. They wanted to find her not guilty,
but they felt that it countered the judge's instructions and
his comments about how this trial had been really expensive
and they needed to figure something out. It had cost
half a million dollars for the government. So the jury
had come to the conclusion, all right, we kind of
want to find her not guilty, but we don't want
to disobey the judge. That's always a bad thing if
(19:35):
the jury is thinking that, and decided that they would
find her guilty on the most minor of the trees
and charges uh and hoped that that would mean she
would get off her time served already and if she
had already been in jail for about two years at
this point. Instead, though, the judge sentenced her to ten
years prison time and at ten tho dollar fine, which
(19:57):
horrified the jury. She ultimately s seven years of that
time in West Virginia before she was finally released in
nineteen fifty six. When she was released, though the government
threatened her with deportation, she successfully argued that this was
an impossibility, a legal impossibility, because she could not be
(20:18):
deported if she was a US citizen. How could she
be convicted of treason? If she was not a US
citizen and it didn't work out, so they agreed, Okay,
you can stay in the US. But instead they just
treated her as a stateless person, basically forbidding her to
travel outside of the US, something that made her married
life impossible since they had also banned her husband from
(20:40):
entering the country. So although she and her husband didn't
ever divorce, they also weren't ever able to see each
other again, which is maybe the saddest part of this
already really sad story. UM. Finally, she moved to Chicago,
which is where her father had settled and built up
his import business US. He was pretty well off by
(21:01):
this point. She was ultimately pardoned by Gerald Ford in
nineteen seventy seven. UM. One of the reasons why it
took so long for that pardon is she didn't really
have the support of the Japanese American community for quite
some time. UM. People really saw her as a as
a disgrace, not looking at the intricacies of her story
(21:21):
and how she had really been kind of a model
American in a in a enemy country during wartime UM.
But by the second generation. But by the time it
got to the folks who were looking for reparations for
a Japanese in tournament. Her case took hold of people
again and and folks wanted some sort of justice for her.
(21:42):
According to her Washington Post o bit and this was
a part that kind of brought tears to my eyes.
She was regretful that her pardon came shortly after her
father's death, and she said that he had always told her, quote,
you were like a tiger. You never changed your stripes.
You stayed American through and so this is something that's
really sad to hear, since he and the rest of
(22:04):
her family had been forcibly moved to an Arizona and
tournament camp during the war, so they had also suffered. Yeah,
that they were also patriotic, and and that was something
she didn't know too during her time in Japan. You know,
when she when she would not accept Japanese citizenship, she
didn't realize that her family had been deported by that point. Um.
(22:27):
So she died in two thousand and six at the
age of ninety after many years of running the business successfully.
Her a bit very awesome mentioned things like she liked
attending the Chicago Lyric Opera, she liked quilting, she kept
a pretty low profile life, as as one would expect
from so many bad experiences with these With these interviews,
(22:49):
her biographer Messiah Dust said that her case was quote
one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in American
legal history. And um one thing, I mean there there's
so many sad points, especially at the at the end here,
But one thing that really got to me. I realized
that the clips, the clips that we've actually played are
re enactments, and they're from very shortly after the war,
(23:12):
and you can see video of her of her doing them.
You know, she's in the studio, she's got the microphone,
there's a guy putting an LP on the turntable when
she cues in the song. Because of course, there aren't
really records of the broadcast. I think there is one
record of a zero hour broadcast, but most of those
(23:34):
FBI files had been destroyed when they decided first go
around that she there was no case against her, she
couldn't be prosecuted. So these were re enactments. She had
done these thinking this was a totally okay thing to do. Otherwise,
why would you re enact your your time as Tokyo
Rose or or or than Anne. She thought it was
gonna be okay and it wasn't. No not to be okay.
(23:59):
Listener mail time, So Tablina, I mean, I think this
one is is really probably for you, but it's a
very cute email. It's from listener Zara from Quebec, and
she wrote to fay Hi, I started listening to both
of your podcast she wrote to mom Stuff too. By
the way, started listening to both of your podcasts back
(24:20):
in on the recommendation from my husband, who was a
truck driver at the time. I gave birth to a
baby boy last year in September, and during the pregnancy
I finished listening to all the podcasts from Mom Stuff.
I finished History Stuff a while before. Well, wouldn't you
guess when he's restless in the car, I can put
on either of your podcast and he calms down long
(24:41):
enough to reach home. She listens to a few other
house Stuff Works podcasts, to which while she enjoys them,
it sounds like they don't have quite the same effect
on the baby, So she wrote, during the last year,
I listened to you in the car, at home and
at work. Thanks for all the interesting podcasts and I
hope we'll hear you for a long while yet, so
(25:01):
a very fun note. She has had some baby tips
for Dablina. You know, Sharon chairing the info. I appreciate that.
I don't think I can use the podcast thing. No,
just mom talking. It's just mom talking, and it doesn't
work on her. My talking to her in the car
doesn't calm her restlessness while we're driving. So I don't know.
(25:22):
Maybe christ and Conger would should have a different voice,
because if if you got tired of talking and your
voice did help, you could just pop in a podcast
and she would just think you were talking to her.
If only that worked. Oh wow, well, I'm glad it
does work for somebody. This is another thing you can add,
calming babies, scaring bears, all sorts of interesting things that
(25:46):
are voices do for the world. If you know of
any other uses, or maybe you just have some parenting
tips for me that you'd like to pass along a long,
I welcome them. You can write to us. We're at
History Podcast at Discovery dot com, or you can look
a stuff on Twitter. We're also on Facebook, and we
also have something that's somewhat tied to this really fascinating
(26:08):
and tragic subject. That we talked about today. It's did
the United States put its own citizens in concentration cancer
during World War Two? I think you know from the
podcast the answer is yes, But of course it goes
into a lot more detail than that, so you can
search for that one on our homepage at www dot
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(26:32):
thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sara Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalk reporting, And so Deblina,
while you were on your maternity league, I know, I
did a few episodes with co hosts, and the very
(00:22):
first one I did was with Jonathan Strickland of tech Stuff,
and when we were trying to figure out a topic,
he threw out the idea of number stations. And I
don't know, have you have you ever heard of number
stations before, not until this, not until this, so I
hadn't either, I think tech Stuff he and Chris actually
did an episode on them. But they are shortwave radio
(00:43):
stations that broadcast a sequence of numbers were sometimes a
sequence of letters or words, interspersed with little clips of music.
And they appeared and people aren't quite sure when they appeared,
but probably sometime not long after World War Two. They
were used for spy communications. Most likely some are still
active today. They're really creepy sounding to Lena, and I
(01:07):
listened to a few before this. They sound like creepy
kids music almost, And maybe I just think this because
I listened to a lot of kids music lately, but
they sort of the automatic the music that comes on
when you have one of those little kids vibrating chairs
or whatever, and then maybe the key would change and
it would get creepy. Yeah, they are kind of like that.
I couldn't find a clip like this to send you.
But some of them even have children reading the numbers,
(01:30):
which adds to the creepiness. But anyway, Jonathan and I
talked about that a little bit. Decided not to do
the episode on that specifically, but I did go out
searching for some of these number stations so to listen
to them, and after listening to some of those broadcasts,
it reminded me of another wartime radio related topic and
(01:51):
a listener suggestion, Tokyo Rose, who was, of course, the
English language voice of Japanese propaganda during World War Two.
There were a number of these radio personalities during the war,
basically English speaking broadcasters who were based in Access Territory,
and they aimed at demoralizing Allied troops with a number
(02:12):
of things, including things to make them homesick, grim or
fabricated battle reports and predictions, and also plenty of pop music.
That was the thing that kept the soldiers listening in
the first place. Yeah, they're kind of a strange combination
of that really, because they needed something for the soldiers
to tune in, and part of that was the homesick
(02:32):
part too. A lot of times the announcers would be
familiar sounding female voices that reminded them of home. But
in most cases, the names of these people, I mean,
there's acts of Sally, there's Lord ha Ha, their sinister Sam.
In most cases the name was just really an allied nickname.
It was not a real person. It was for a
(02:52):
series of these anonymous broadcasters, and in Tokyo Rosa's case,
there were probably actually about twenty or more than twenty
women broadcasting Japanese propaganda in the Pacific, some under real
DJ names like Orphan Anne. Troops imagined that these generic
Tokyo Roses were seductresses, taunting them and making them miss
(03:16):
home at the same time. Sometimes there would be crazy
rumors about who the real Tokyo Rose was. Maybe she
was General Tojo's mistress, maybe she was a hula dancer.
She could have even been Amelia air Hawks. I know,
those were some of the rumors going around. Gotta be Amelia, right,
But most of these generic broadcaster names did have real
(03:38):
people behind them, or at least one individual who would
finally be named, including Access Sally and Lord ha ha h.
For Lord Haha, it's William Joyce, a guy who was
eventually executed for treason. For Access Sally, it's usually a
woman named Mildred Giller's who did end up doing some
prison time for treason, and Tokyo Rose is the same way.
(03:59):
And because day's topic, of course, focuses on her, we're
gonna start with a clip from a Tokyo Rose herself
introducing her own radio program before we kick off our podcast,
reading your number one enemy, your favorite playmates, ready again
(04:24):
on your morale. So the Tokyo Rose you just heard
with the DJ name Orphan Anne is actually our Lady
of the day, the person we're going to talk about.
You might already be able to tell. But she didn't
really fit the mold of the other Tokyo Roses that
we described earlier. For one thing, she had a comic
(04:44):
voice rather than a seductive one, and she delivered these
really funny, over the top kind of blows to morale
rather than the real crushing news or the jobs that
people had come to expect from the other Tokyo roses.
She did just an example of saying that she was
going to deliver a vicious assault on your morale before
(05:05):
going on to say quote, I know what you need
is some jive. It helps you relax, and then playing
I don't want to go to work. It doesn't really
come across as a very vicious assault on your morale.
It's kind of funny. But out of all of the
twenty plus Tokyo roses who are known to have broadcast
two Allied troops in the Pacific, it was this Rose
(05:27):
Orphan and also known as Iva cuco To Guriquino, who
was tried and convicted of treason for her wartime work. Obviously,
she was a scapegoat. She was the face, if not
actually the voice of a wartime enemy, a wartime enemy
who became a much hated one, especially after the war
(05:47):
was over, and she even later told CBS News herself
quote I suppose they found someone and got the job done.
They were all satisfied. It was any meany miney, and
I was mo. How she got to be mo, though,
is truly surprising and involved wartime desperation, unscrupulous journalism, cold
(06:07):
war posturing and a truly truly ill timed vacation. So
we're gonna go into that a little bit, but first
we want to start with giving you a little background
on Iva. She was in the SAY, which was basically
a second generation Japanese immigrant, and she had been born
on the fourth of July in nineteen sixteen in Los Angeles,
and since her parents and her older brother had been
(06:29):
born in Japan, they couldn't become American citizens. However they
were there seemed to be at least a pretty quintessentially
all American household. They lived, for example, in a mostly
white neighborhood rather than a Japanese community. They attended Methodist
church and the kids went to public school. Iva and
her brother both grew up speaking English, and they helped
(06:51):
their father with his store and import business. And I
have a hiked, played tennis, was really popular with her classmates,
and loved swing dancing. So really seems like an American girl,
And according to Women in World History Encyclopedia, I've not
even said later that she never really felt discriminated against
growing up, something that was quite common unfortunately for many
(07:12):
other Japanese Americans. Uh before and after the war, of course,
But in nineteen one, i've A graduated from U c
l A and she started taking some graduate classes. She
was thinking of of going on to med school, but
in the summer of nineteen forty one, so shortly after
her graduation, her sickly Japanese aunt invited her to visit
(07:35):
the home country and care for her for for a time.
Iva didn't have a passport, but that actually wasn't a
problem at the time she got a certificate of identification
from the State Department. She packed her bags with chocolate
and coffee and canned meats because she hated Japanese food.
She didn't even like to eat rice, so she was
preparing for what was clearly going to be a relatively
(07:58):
short summer trip when she left in July too. Of course,
the US and Japan were not yet at war, a
crucial point in this scenario, and they weren't at war
when she applied for her passport at home in September, either,
But as the State Department processed her application, the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor, and suddenly American born Ivo was stuck
(08:21):
in enemy territory. So she soon found her position got
even worse, she could only be evacuated as a citizen
through India, something that cost more than four hundred dollars
and was well beyond her means. After that, she tried
to get the Japanese authorities to detain her as an
American national, which they refused to do since she was
(08:41):
of Japanese descent. But she also refused to renounce her
American citizenship and declare herself Japanese, a route that about
ten thousand other people like her took in Japan, and
this decision made her immensely suspicious to Japanese authorities, who
suspected that she was an America Can spy, and they
would search her aunt's home repeatedly until i'va finally moved out.
(09:05):
So this is her situation in Japan wartime Japan. She's
unable to return to the US. She's unable to be
an official foreign national and be kept in custody as such,
she's unwilling to become a Japanese citizen. Plus she gets
no ration card because she's an enemy alien, so not
(09:25):
a great situation to be and she obviously needs to
find work, and she doesn't even have a great command
of Japanese. She she's taking language classes, but she's not
particularly fluent. Finally, she finds work as a typist at
the Domain News Agency. Um, but just a bad time.
She's not making very much money at all. The food
(09:46):
rationing card problem is pretty major because she's suffering from
nutritional deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies. She's at one point hospitalized with
scurvy and berry berry. And in ninete she gets a
second job, which must have seemed like a real blessing
at the time that Radio Tokyo also a typing job,
(10:08):
and Radio Tokyo is an interesting place for her to
wind up because there were several Allied prisoner of war
broadcaster space there. And so she did what she could
for her fellow Americans, these these POWs and other Allied POWs,
you know, helping them with food when when she could
get it, helping get them some clothes, just doing her
(10:30):
best for her for her fellow allies. This action ultimately
earned her the trust of a guy named Charles H. Cousins,
who was an Australian broadcaster who had been captured in
Singapore and forced a broadcast propaganda in Japan. And just
a side note here, according to The Washington Post, he
made a deal with his captors where he would read um,
(10:53):
he'd read the script of propaganda messages, but he also
convinced them to allow him to read pod w names
because he thought it would serve their purposes. Still, these
are the guys we've captured, but it would also help
the Allies, help their families know who was who wasn't
dead They were, they were just in custody. And Cousins,
(11:14):
along with American pow Major Wallance Ince and Filipino pow
Lieutenant Norman Reis, had gotten permission to start a new
propaganda show, which was called Zero Hour, though their plan
here was actually to subvert the Japanese message, basically to
make the program a joke, but one that the Japanese
censors weren't quite in on, and they chose Iva with
(11:37):
this purpose in mind. Cousins later said, quote, with the
idea that I had in mind of making a complete
burlesque of the program, her voice was just what I wanted. Rough,
I hope I can say this without offense. A voice
that I have described as a jin fog voice. It
was rough, almost masculine, anything but a femininely seductive voice
(11:58):
it was a comedy voice that I needed for this
particular job. So let's take another listen to her. Thank you,
thank you, thank you. That's all. Thanks until then, Number one,
my g I always to be good right now. So
(12:23):
even if you exclude the true subversive intent of Zero Hour,
it's important to note Iva's role was that of the DJ.
She introduced pop songs, joking that she was the g
I s number one enemy. It's all very lighthearted sort
of stuff, and I really like her voice, by the way,
It's interesting sounding. But the program was considered successful enough
(12:46):
by the Japanese too. I mean they weren't picking up
that this whole thing seemed a little bit subversive. Um,
it was successful enough that they wouldn't let her leave
the job, even though she attempted to do that several times.
By April, she converted to Roman Catholicism and married one
of her Radio Tokyo co workers, a guy named Philippe
(13:06):
de Quino, who was a half Japanese half Portuguese worker
at the same place and and had Portuguese citizenship too,
And both of them eventually did leave their jobs at
Radio Tokyo when it became when they're clear pro Allied
sympathies just became a little bit too controversial for them
(13:26):
to keep on working in propaganda officially. And just a
few months after their marriage, the war was over. And
really Ivan her husband probably could have just slipped back
quietly into their pre war lives at this point, except
that Iva was contacted by two journalists, a guy named
(13:46):
Harry Brundage and a guy named Clark Lee, and she
was overly welcoming to them, in part because she was happy.
She greeted the the Americans as as her friends and
her fellow countryman. She saw these guys as American. She
could talk to you. Finally, it was a good time.
She wanted to share her story. She wanted to talk
(14:09):
about her wartime work. She freely admitted that she was
a Tokyo Rose. But the reporters didn't publish her story
as this patriotic tale of subversion, like we made zero
Hour and it was really to thwart the Japanese message.
They published it as a confession, the confession of Tokyo Rose.
(14:30):
They didn't pay her the two thousand dollars that they
promised for the scoop. That was another motive for her
talking to them clearly after all this wartime deprivation, and
she had no idea that one thing, the story would
be manipulated that way, but also that it might get
her in some serious trouble. And it wasn't long before
the FBI was in Tokyo to investigate her, and she
(14:51):
wound up imprisoned for a year. During that investigation, FBI
listened to recordings of her program. They also interviewed hundreds
of gi as who had heard her show, and examined
Japanese documents, and ultimately they decided there was no case here.
She had just been a DJ reading bits written by
major cousins. After her release from prison, though she got
(15:13):
pregnant When she and her husband began petitioning to return
to the States because they really wanted their child to
be born at home. Brendage, who was angry over losing
his original scoop here, started to write about her again,
as did Walter Winchell, a media personality, and the two
of them they stirred up some outrage here. Veterans groups
(15:34):
like the American Legion were quick to id Iva as
the Tokyo Rose, not just a Tokyo Rose. She was
basically to them a compilation of every anti American voice
they had heard during the war, and they petitioned the
Justice Department for her prosecution. So Iva and Philippe's child
ended up being still born, but by that point she
(15:56):
was going to be returning to the United States regardless
even though the earlier investigation had shown that there was
nothing to charge her with. The prosecution would look good
to the administration during an election year, especially because President
Truman was criticized at this point for being too soft
on communism, too soft on anything that was un American.
(16:18):
Jedre Hoover was in favor of prosecuting her, so it
seemed like a good move politically to to go after
this woman. But while the FBI had already interviewed hundreds
of servicemen and most of them had said, if anything,
her program was morale boosting. They liked it. It It was funny,
it was nice to hear a familiar voice. The Justice
(16:38):
Department put out a press release asking for others to
come forward, anybody who could identify her voice as as
that of when they had heard in the Pacific. They
also sent Brundage. And this is really surprising to me,
since it seems like he would have a lot of
interests involved in the story by this point, which he did. Uh.
(16:58):
They sent him to Japan in to find some other witnesses,
people who had seen her broadcasting. One of his witnesses
he finds ends up committing perjury. He's responsible for it.
So clearly he was not a good chance, a good
choice to send to Japan after all. But finally, in
September nine, she was indicted on several counts of treason
(17:22):
and escorted by the military back to the United States.
So what is the seven years after she left on
this ill fated trip, she finally is coming home, but
to be met with FBI agents when she arrives. Right
in The trial which started in July ninety nine, went
on at the same time as the alder His case,
which I think you guys discussed while I was gone.
(17:45):
Ben and I discussed it during the McCarthy ism episode,
and um, I was Debilina and I were just chatting
before this. You always see the alger His trial mentioned
in the lead up to McCarthyism. I have never seen
this one mentioned. I mean, it's not about spies and communism,
but it's clearly in the same vein So for Iva's case,
(18:08):
nineteen witnesses from Japan were basically put up in style
and they testified to seeing her broadcast. Ironically, many of
these who testified against her were in to say who
had renounced their citizenship during the war, unlike her right
and Iva was defended by Wayne Collins, supported by colleagues
like Cousins, and had evidence that she had indeed helped
(18:31):
American POWs during the war. Still, she was convicted on
one count for supposedly saying, quote, orphans of the Pacific,
you're really orphans? Now, how will you get home now
that your ships are sunk? Yet this had aired right
after an Allied victory, So there's the possibility that maybe
this was a joke at the false nature of propaganda programs,
(18:52):
if she said it at all, if she really said it.
But ultimately she was convicted as if she had said it,
And according to the FBI, she was only the seventh
person convicted of treason in US history. And this really
gets crazier when you hear what the jury form and
to say. He later admitted that they had wanted to
find her not guilty. They had deliberated for a very
(19:13):
very long time. They wanted to find her not guilty,
but they felt that it countered the judge's instructions and
his comments about how this trial had been really expensive
and they needed to figure something out. It had cost
half a million dollars for the government. So the jury
had come to the conclusion, all right, we kind of
want to find her not guilty, but we don't want
to disobey the judge. That's always a bad thing if
(19:35):
the jury is thinking that, and decided that they would
find her guilty on the most minor of the trees
and charges uh and hoped that that would mean she
would get off her time served already and if she
had already been in jail for about two years at
this point. Instead, though, the judge sentenced her to ten
years prison time and at ten tho dollar fine, which
(19:57):
horrified the jury. She ultimately s seven years of that
time in West Virginia before she was finally released in
nineteen fifty six. When she was released, though the government
threatened her with deportation, she successfully argued that this was
an impossibility, a legal impossibility, because she could not be
(20:18):
deported if she was a US citizen. How could she
be convicted of treason? If she was not a US
citizen and it didn't work out, so they agreed, Okay,
you can stay in the US. But instead they just
treated her as a stateless person, basically forbidding her to
travel outside of the US, something that made her married
life impossible since they had also banned her husband from
(20:40):
entering the country. So although she and her husband didn't
ever divorce, they also weren't ever able to see each
other again, which is maybe the saddest part of this
already really sad story. UM. Finally, she moved to Chicago,
which is where her father had settled and built up
his import business US. He was pretty well off by
(21:01):
this point. She was ultimately pardoned by Gerald Ford in
nineteen seventy seven. UM. One of the reasons why it
took so long for that pardon is she didn't really
have the support of the Japanese American community for quite
some time. UM. People really saw her as a as
a disgrace, not looking at the intricacies of her story
(21:21):
and how she had really been kind of a model
American in a in a enemy country during wartime UM.
But by the second generation. But by the time it
got to the folks who were looking for reparations for
a Japanese in tournament. Her case took hold of people
again and and folks wanted some sort of justice for her.
(21:42):
According to her Washington Post o bit and this was
a part that kind of brought tears to my eyes.
She was regretful that her pardon came shortly after her
father's death, and she said that he had always told her, quote,
you were like a tiger. You never changed your stripes.
You stayed American through and so this is something that's
really sad to hear, since he and the rest of
(22:04):
her family had been forcibly moved to an Arizona and
tournament camp during the war, so they had also suffered. Yeah,
that they were also patriotic, and and that was something
she didn't know too during her time in Japan. You know,
when she when she would not accept Japanese citizenship, she
didn't realize that her family had been deported by that point. Um.
(22:27):
So she died in two thousand and six at the
age of ninety after many years of running the business successfully.
Her a bit very awesome mentioned things like she liked
attending the Chicago Lyric Opera, she liked quilting, she kept
a pretty low profile life, as as one would expect
from so many bad experiences with these With these interviews,
(22:49):
her biographer Messiah Dust said that her case was quote
one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in American
legal history. And um one thing, I mean there there's
so many sad points, especially at the at the end here,
But one thing that really got to me. I realized
that the clips, the clips that we've actually played are
re enactments, and they're from very shortly after the war,
(23:12):
and you can see video of her of her doing them.
You know, she's in the studio, she's got the microphone,
there's a guy putting an LP on the turntable when
she cues in the song. Because of course, there aren't
really records of the broadcast. I think there is one
record of a zero hour broadcast, but most of those
(23:34):
FBI files had been destroyed when they decided first go
around that she there was no case against her, she
couldn't be prosecuted. So these were re enactments. She had
done these thinking this was a totally okay thing to do. Otherwise,
why would you re enact your your time as Tokyo
Rose or or or than Anne. She thought it was
gonna be okay and it wasn't. No not to be okay.
(23:59):
Listener mail time, So Tablina, I mean, I think this
one is is really probably for you, but it's a
very cute email. It's from listener Zara from Quebec, and
she wrote to fay Hi, I started listening to both
of your podcast she wrote to mom Stuff too. By
the way, started listening to both of your podcasts back
(24:20):
in on the recommendation from my husband, who was a
truck driver at the time. I gave birth to a
baby boy last year in September, and during the pregnancy
I finished listening to all the podcasts from Mom Stuff.
I finished History Stuff a while before. Well, wouldn't you
guess when he's restless in the car, I can put
on either of your podcast and he calms down long
(24:41):
enough to reach home. She listens to a few other
house Stuff Works podcasts, to which while she enjoys them,
it sounds like they don't have quite the same effect
on the baby, So she wrote, during the last year,
I listened to you in the car, at home and
at work. Thanks for all the interesting podcasts and I
hope we'll hear you for a long while yet, so
(25:01):
a very fun note. She has had some baby tips
for Dablina. You know, Sharon chairing the info. I appreciate that.
I don't think I can use the podcast thing. No,
just mom talking. It's just mom talking, and it doesn't
work on her. My talking to her in the car
doesn't calm her restlessness while we're driving. So I don't know.
(25:22):
Maybe christ and Conger would should have a different voice,
because if if you got tired of talking and your
voice did help, you could just pop in a podcast
and she would just think you were talking to her.
If only that worked. Oh wow, well, I'm glad it
does work for somebody. This is another thing you can add,
calming babies, scaring bears, all sorts of interesting things that
(25:46):
are voices do for the world. If you know of
any other uses, or maybe you just have some parenting
tips for me that you'd like to pass along a long,
I welcome them. You can write to us. We're at
History Podcast at Discovery dot com, or you can look
a stuff on Twitter. We're also on Facebook, and we
also have something that's somewhat tied to this really fascinating
(26:08):
and tragic subject. That we talked about today. It's did
the United States put its own citizens in concentration cancer
during World War Two? I think you know from the
podcast the answer is yes, But of course it goes
into a lot more detail than that, so you can
search for that one on our homepage at www dot
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(26:32):
thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot
com
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