The Trial of Tokyo Rose: Part Two

In 1949, Iva Toguri D'Aquino's treason trial began. The defendant was accused of collaborating with the Japanese during World War II by working as the legendary propaganda radio host "Tokyo Rose." Iva was confident that a trial would reveal the truth and exonerate her. But what would happen when it became clear that the prosecution wasn't interested in playing by the rules...or following the law?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Listener Discretion Advised, Hello, History on Trial listeners. This is
the second part of a two episode series on the
case of Iva Toguri da Kino. In today's episode will
cover the trial and its aftermath. If you haven't listened

(00:22):
to part one yet, I strongly recommend starting there to
hear the full story. A brief reminder of what we
covered in the last episode. Iva Taguri was the American
born and raised daughter of two Japanese immigrants. In the
summer of nineteen forty one, the then twenty five year

(00:43):
old Iva traveled to Japan to visit her sick aunt.
Five months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the
United States declared war on Japan. Iva tried desperately to
get home, but was stymied by multiple obstacles, including a
lack of money and obstruction by the State Department, who

(01:04):
questioned her citizenship status. Despite Iva having lived her whole
life in southern California. Stuck abroad, Iva took on part
time work, including a job as a typist at the
Japanese Broadcasting Corporation or NHK. At NHK, she met several

(01:24):
Allied prisoners of war who had been forced to work
on a Japanese propaganda radio program called Zero Hour. The
men were trying to secretly sabotage Zero Hour by filling
it with music and fun banter. Eventually, the POWs asked
Iva to join the program as an announcer, both because

(01:45):
they knew she would support their sabotage agenda and also
because she had an unappealing voice which would make for
entertaining broadcasts. Iva agreed and began working on the program
in late nineteen forty three. When her Japanese military bosses
assumed more control of the program and changed its tone,
Iva tried to quit, but was told she could not.

(02:09):
Conditions in wartime Japan were extremely difficult, and Iva lived
in near starvation. One bright spot of this dark period
was her marriage to Felipe Daquino, a man who she
had met at one of her jobs and who shared
her pro American stance. In the meantime, Iva's family in
America was incarcerated, along with approximately one hundred thousand other

(02:33):
Japanese Americans in camps established by the federal government. The
terrible conditions at the Camps killed her mother Fumi. After
the war's end, reporters identified Iva as one of the
English speaking female broadcasters who had become legendary to American
gis in the Pacific under the collective nickname Tokyo Rose.

(02:57):
Iva's role as a Tokyo Rose sparked an investigation by
the U. S Military and the Department of Justice into
whether she had committed treason. Iva was arrested and held
in prison for a year without access to a lawyer. Ultimately,
both the military and the DOJ concluded that there was
no evidence of treason and released her. However, when Iva

(03:22):
and Felipe tried to return to America in nineteen forty seven,
the press started a crusade against her and called for
her to be prosecuted. Succumbing to public and political pressure,
the Department of Justice reopened the case against Iva and
arrested her in September nineteen forty eight. Iva was brought
to San Francisco and charged with eight overt acts of treason.

(03:46):
Despite these extremely difficult circumstances, Iva was optimistic. A prominent
civil rights attorney, Wayne Collins, agreed to take her case
for free, and she was able to reunite with her
family in America. Iva believed that the trial would establish
her innocence. She believed that the justice system would operate fairly,

(04:10):
but as she would soon learn, the prosecution wasn't interested
in fairness or even in following the rules. Welcome to
History on Trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward this week
the United States vi Iva Toguri Taquino. Treason is the

(04:34):
only crime explicitly defined in the Constitution. When defining the crime,
the Constitution's framers were very careful with their words. In England,
treason law had frequently been abused by the government to
persecute political enemies, and the new American government wanted to
prevent the same abuses from occurring in the United States. However,

(04:56):
they also wanted to make it clear that betraying the
government was a crime. The phrasing they settled on, as
recorded an Article three, Section three, Clause one is quote.
Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying
war against them, or in adhering to their enemies giving

(05:17):
them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of
treason in less on the testimony of two witnesses to
the same overt act or on confession in open court.
The grand jury charged Iva with eight acts of treason
with quote treasonable intent and for the purpose of, and

(05:39):
with the intent in her to adhere and give aid
and comfort to the Imperial Japanese government. The charges all
regarded specific allegations, not just that Iva was a radio broadcaster,
but that she had done specific actions while in this role,
including making certain statements such as one regarding the loss

(06:01):
of American ships. Though the acts themselves were specific, the
details ended there. The charges did not have exact dates
for the acts, simply giving date ranges instead. Once the
charges were brought, Iva's lawyer, Wayne Collins, got busy. He
added two more lawyers, Theodore Tamba and George Olshausen, to

(06:23):
the defense team. Like Collins, Tamba and Olshausen agreed to
work for free. On March first, nineteen forty nine, the
defense petitioned the government that forty three witnesses living abroad
be subpoenaed and brought at government expense to testify in
the trial. The government refused to issue the subpoenas, claiming

(06:44):
that it could not issue subpoenas for residents of foreign countries.
This may have applied to some of the witnesses, but
many of the subpoenas the defense had requested were four
American citizens only temporarily residing in Japan. In an earlier
treat trial for Mildred Gillers, an American radio broadcaster for
the Nazis, the government had agreed to pay to bring

(07:07):
defense witnesses from Germany, but in Iva's case they refused. However,
the government did agree to provide limited funds for a
defense lawyer to travel to Japan and collect depositions. The
funds allocated were so limited that they did not cover
a translator. June to Guri, Iva's father agreed to cover

(07:28):
this cost, as he would many of the trial costs,
eventually having to take out loans to cover the expenses.
In late March, defense attorney Theodore Tamba traveled to Japan
to seek out witnesses. Once there, he quickly ran into obstacles.
When the defense had submitted their request for forty three subpoenas,

(07:51):
the Justice Department had immediately sent the witness list over
to the military headquarters in Tokyo, which had then dispatched
an FBIA to speak to all of these witnesses first,
when Tamba, his translator, and No Story, a representative of
the Attorney General's Office who was there to perform costs
examinations of the witnesses, tried to speak to witnesses. They

(08:15):
found that many were too frightened to speak. Tomba later said, quote,
they appeared to mister Story and to me to be
genuinely frightened of our troops and occupied Japan. A number
of them had been led to believe that if they
testified against Missus Daquino, they could avoid being charged and

(08:36):
put on trial for their own admitted treasonable utterances and conduct.
Tamba and his translator struggled to get through to these
witnesses and ended up having to stay in Japan for
an additional month, at further cost to June Tagouri. This
resulted in a delay of the trial. The prosecution, on
the other hand, had no shortage of resources. They made

(09:00):
for nineteen witnesses to travel from Japan. The government offered
witnesses ten dollars a day, or around three thousand, three
hundred yen, more than the monthly salary of the average
Japanese university graduate at the time. Several of these witnesses
saved enough during the trial that they were able to
start businesses upon their return to Japan. Despite the wealth

(09:24):
of witnesses, time, and money, the prosecutors still had concerns, namely,
they did not believe that they had a compelling case.
Frank J. Hennessy, the United States Attorney for the Northern
District of California, was originally the only prosecutor assigned to
the case. After Hennessy reviewed the case, however, he recommended

(09:47):
to Attorney General Tom Clark that the charges be dropped
for lack of evidence. The Justice Department, instead of following
Hennessy's recommendation, assigned him a partner, Tom de Wolfe, an
Assistant Attorney General who specialized in trees and cases. But,
like Hennessy, d wolf had concerns. He had run the

(10:08):
grand jury that charged Iva back in October and privately
admitted shortly after that he had pressured the jurors to indict.
He wrote to a colleague about how he had promised
that other American broadcasters would be tried for treason despite
there being no plan to do so. If the above
action had not been taken by me, De wolf wrote,

(10:30):
I believe the grand jury would have returned a no
true bill against Missus Daquino. In other words, they wouldn't
have charged her. D Wolfe's doubts about the case were
long standing. In May nineteen forty eight, he had written
a strongly worded memo to a colleague in which he
concluded that quote there is no evidence upon which a

(10:54):
reasonable mind might fairly conclude guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Despite their concerns, Hennessy and a wolf continued with the
prosecution under orders from Attorney General Tom Clark. The prosecution
team was rounded out by James Knapp and John Hogan.
On July fifth, nineteen forty nine, at ten am, Judge

(11:16):
Michael Roche, chief Judge of the United States District Court
of Northern California, began the proceedings for jury selection. Iva
sat beside her lawyers, pale and drawn. She had endured
the traumatic stillbirth of her first child only eighteen months earlier,
and now suffered from recurring dysentery. Her shoulder length black

(11:38):
hair was held back by a headband, and she wore
a modest plaid suit that she had owned for years.
She would wear the suit every day of the trial.
Jury selection went quickly. The defense team tried to screen
jurors for prejudiced attitudes towards Japanese Americans. The prosecution team,
on the other hand, screened uors by race using their

(12:02):
peremptory challenges, challenges that do not require an explanation on
every non white juror. The practice of being able to
remove jurors of certain races using peremptory challenges was only
stopped by a nineteen eighty six Supreme Court case bats
In v. Kentucky, though it is often hard to prove
that challenges were racially motivated. In the end, Iva's jury

(12:26):
was entirely white and consisted of six men and six women.
Tom de Wolfe delivered the opening statement for the prosecution
the next day. He told jurors that Iva had stayed
in Japan voluntarily and that she had participated in the
broadcasts enthusiastically despite knowing that they were quote nefarious and propagandistic.

(12:50):
He said that Iva had made certain statements designed to
ruin American morale. Quote she told American troops that their
wives and sweetheart arts were unfaithful, and also that quote
the Japanese would never give up, so there was no
reason for Americans to stay there and be killed. De

(13:11):
Wolf said she did this all with malicious intent. In
his May nineteen forty eight memo, de Wolf had thought otherwise,
writing there is no proof available that when subject committed
said acts, she intended to portray the United States, but
that belief wouldn't stop him now. After using his first

(13:31):
witness to establish that Iva had signed autographs as Tokyo
Rose after the war, d Wolf called Shiitsugu Tsunaishi to
the stand. Sunaishi was the Japanese Imperial Army officer in
charge of the propaganda program at NHK. He testified that
the purpose of Zero Hour, the program IVA had announced
for was quote, to make Allied troops homesick and tired

(13:56):
or disgusted with the war. He also claimed that quote
absolutely no threatening or violent language was used to compel
prisoners of war to work on the broadcast. On cross examination,
Wayne Collins got Sunaishi to concede several points that supported
the defense. First, he asked Sunaishi if any other Japanese

(14:19):
propaganda stations broadcasting to the Pacific used English speaking female broadcasters.
Sunaishi said that there were thirteen such stations. The fact
that the defense would use to great effect later in
their case. Next, Collins pressed Sunaishi on the actual propaganda
content of Zero Hour. Sunaishi admitted that the program had

(14:41):
focused on entertainment. His strategy had been to rope in
American listeners with an appealing program, and then, once the
Japanese began winning the war, to introduce more propagandistic content.
But unfortunately, Sunaieshi, continued quote, the opportunity did not present

(15:02):
itself to do the real, true propaganda program that I wanted.
Here was Iva's Boss's boss, the lead army official on
the radio propaganda broadcasts, admitting himself that Iva's program had
not contained propaganda. Collins also tried to pull holes in
Sunniieshi's claim that POWs were not forced to work on

(15:25):
the programs by bringing up the story of George Williams.
Williams was a British civilian who had been held at
Bunka Camp, the prison where POWs who worked at NHK
were kept. When Williams had refused to participate in broadcasts,
Sunniihi ordered guards to take him away. Suoniihi then allowed
the POWs to believe that Williams had been killed for

(15:48):
his refusal In reality, Williams had been transported to a
different pow camp, where he lived for the rest of
the war, but the imagined threat struck fear into the
hearts of the POWs. They understood that their choice was
to participate in the broadcasts or to die. This was
important information for the jury to understand the culture of

(16:10):
fear that Ivo was steeped in during her time at NHK,
but unfortunately they did not get to hear the full story.
Tom de Wolf had objected to the testimony, and Judge
Roche had agreed with him that it was irrelevant. Another
thing the jurors did not get to hear, though they
may have deduced it for themselves, was about Sunaishi's ulterior motives.

(16:33):
On July seventh, the day before he testified, an article
had appeared about Sunaishi in the San Francisco Chronicle. In it,
a former Bunka Camp inmate, Mark Streeter, had accused Sunaishi
of being quote one of the worst war criminals. Streeter,
who alleged that Suneishi had beaten him at Bunka Camp,

(16:54):
was shocked to learn that the government was using Sunaishi
as a court witness and not instead prosecuting him for
the abuses he perpetrated at Lunka Camp. Suniishi then was
clearly motivated to protect himself and deny using any coercion
with NHK staff or prisoners of war. In fact, he
would later admit to a reporter that he had lied

(17:17):
to Australian officials who were investigating another POW's involvement in
broadcasts in order to protect himself and his superiors from prosecution.
Sunaishi was not the only witness whose testimony was affected
by fear of prosecution. Kenkichi Oki and George Hideo Mitsushio,

(17:37):
Iva's supervisors on Zero Hour, were also testifying. Oki and Mitsushio,
like Iva, were nise American born children of Japanese parents.
Both men had traveled to Japan before the war. They
had both become Japanese citizens, but had not at this
point renounced their American citizenship. As directors of Z Zero Hour,

(18:01):
they were just as vulnerable as Iva, if not more so,
to charges of treason. The government was relying on Oki
and Mitsushio to serve as witnesses for each of the
eight acts of treason Iva was charged with. The Constitution
stipulates that quote, no person shall be convicted of treason
unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same

(18:24):
overt act. Oki and Mitsushio were to be those two witnesses.
Their testimony was highly specific, even using the exact language
of the indictments. In their answers when describing Iva's alleged acts,
Their memory of the crimes was detailed. Both men recited

(18:44):
the same quote that they claimed Iva had broadcast, quote,
now you fellows have lost all your ships. You really
are orphans of the Pacific. How do you think you
will ever get home? But when Collins pressed Oki for
any other details of the day, when he claimed that
Iva had made this statement, Oki could not recall any

(19:06):
not what breakfast he ate, not what he wore, not
the weather. He could only remember, in exact order the
twenty four treasonous words that Ivo was supposed to have
said that day. Oki also admitted on cross that he
was not testifying voluntarily and had been brought to San
Francisco forcibly on the orders of the U. S. Army.

(19:28):
Mitsushio and OKI's testimony as a whole seemed suspect. At
the lunch recess, David say Yizo Hyuga, a prosecution witness,
came up to the defense lawyers and told them that
he could prove that Mitsushiu and OKI's testimony was false,
but the defense never got a chance to question Hyuga.

(19:50):
After the prosecution learned he had been talking to the defense,
they sent him back to Japan, and he never testified
at all. In nineteen seventy six, nearly thirty years after
the trial, Ronald Yates published a bombshell report in the
Chicago Tribune. Yates had interviewed prosecution witnesses living in Japan,

(20:13):
including Kenkichi Oki and George Mitsushio. These witnesses all alleged
that they were coerced to testify and a lie on
the stand under threat of prosecution. The post war sentiment
against Japanese and against Americans of Japanese ancestry was tremendous,
remembered one witness. We were told that if we didn't cooperate,

(20:36):
Uncle Sam might arrange a trial for US too. Cooperation
in this case meant lying on the stand. One of
the men told Yates quote Iva never made a treasonable
broadcast in her life, threatening witnesses. Shocking as it may be,

(20:56):
was not the only taint on the prosecution's witnesses. There
was also the question of bribery. Remember Clark Lee, the
reporter who interviewed Iva in August nineteen forty five. In
his May nineteen forty eight memo, de Wolf had called
Lee and Harry Brundage's interview with Iva quote questionable and

(21:18):
of doubtful propriety. But now he was relying on Lee's
testimony as part of his case. Lee's testimony itself was
also questionable and doubtful. He claimed that Iva had told
him that she had broadcast the words orphans of the Pacific.
You really are orphans? Now, how are you going to

(21:40):
get home? Now that all of your ships are sunk?
This was very similar to the quote that Mitsushiu and
Oki had used, But this phrasing appeared nowhere in his
original notes on the interview with Iva. So that's not great,
But I promised you for bribery. That little issue came
out on cross examination when Wayne Collins asked Lee about

(22:04):
Hiromo Yagi, a witness who had testified at the grand jury. Now,
mister Lee, Collins asked, isn't it a fact that you
and mister Brundage requested to me to go to the
Saint Francis Hotel on October twenty fifth, nineteen forty eight,
because you wish to ascertain from me whether or not

(22:26):
I knew that Harry Brundage had gone to Japan in
nineteen forty eight and advised Yagi to come before the
grand jury and testify falsely in this case. De Wolf
immediately objected, shouting, you know that's nonsense. Judge Roche shut

(22:47):
the line of questioning down, but the seed was planted,
and the truth or most of it, came out in
the testimony of the next witness, FBI agent Fred Tillman.
On cross Collins asked Tillman if he had told defense
lawyer Theodore Tomba that Hiromu Yagi had confessed that he

(23:10):
had been bribed to lie to the grand jury. De
Wolf objected again, but after Collins argued that the jury
needed to know about a possible obstruction of justice, Judge
Roche allowed the testimony. Tillman admitted that the answer to Collins'
question was yes. A witness at the grand jury which

(23:33):
had indicted Iva and sparked these trial proceedings, had indeed
been bribed to lie Roche did not allow Tillman to
tell the whole story, but it is a simple and
sordid one. Two months after the grand jury indicted at Iva,
Assistant Attorney General Alexander Campbell sent a memo to Attorney

(23:56):
General Tom Clark. The memo revealed that Hiromu yah, who
had told the Grand jury that he had personally seen
Iva make a broadcast where she taunted Americans, had been
bribed to lie on the stand by reporter Harry Brundage.
When Brundage had gone to Japan in nineteen forty eight

(24:16):
to pursue the Tokyo Rose story, he had tried to
convince at least two witnesses to lie on the stand
by plying them with gifts and promises of a free
trip to America. One of these witnesses had refused, but
Yagi had gone along with the plan. Yagi's testimony had
rung false to FBI agent Tillman, so he had immediately

(24:39):
begun to look into the matter. After an investigation in
Japan and a further interrogation of Yagi, the truth came out,
despite the Justice Department knowing full well that the grandeurors
had heard perjured testimony, and that Harry Brundage had suborned
the perjury. The Department decided to proceed with Iva's case

(25:04):
and also not to pursue a case against Brundage. There
were two reasons not to go after Brundage, according to
Assistant Attorney General Campbell, First, he believed that jurors would
not convict Brundage, a white man, on the testimony of
two Japanese men. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, as Campbell

(25:27):
wrote in his memo to Attorney General Clark, quote, we
believe that instituting prosecution against Brundage prior to the completion
of litigation would completely destroy any chance of a conviction.
In Iva's case, the Attorney General's office chose a chance
at conviction over telling the truth. So far, nearly all

(25:53):
the prosecution witnesses testimony was corrupted in some way, although
of course the jury did not know the full extent
of the problem. Fortunately for the prosecution, their next witnesses
would not have the same credibility issues, though their testimony
did have other problems. These witnesses were the Pacific gis

(26:15):
who had heard Tokyo Rose broadcast propaganda statements. These servicemen
testified to hearing a woman who they said used Ivas
alias Orphan Anne, talk about troop movements, taunt them with
allegations of their wives and girlfriends infidelity in their absence,
and try to make them homesick by talking about steak

(26:38):
and ice cream. Many of these memories, as Collins was
able to reveal on cross examination, were vague and amorphous.
The servicemen could not remember specific dates or times, and
often it seemed likely that they were remembering rumors about
Tokyo Rose broadcasts, not actual broadcasts themselves. However, some of

(27:01):
the testimony was emotionally compelling. Marshall Hoot, a Chief Bosun's mate,
testified about hearing a broadcast that he then made a
note of in a letter home to his wife. Judge
Roche allowed Hoot to read the entirety of the emotional letter,
where he talked about how much he missed his wife
and how painful the war was. The letter brought some

(27:24):
jury members to tears. Suddenly, Tokyo Rose's crimes seemed very real. However,
the details of those alleged crimes did not always line up.
For example, Marshall Hoot was sure he had heard Tokyo
Rose discussing infidelity while he listened at dinner between six

(27:45):
and seven o'clock. That was indeed when Zero Hour aired,
but in Tokyo in the Gilbert Islands, where Hoot had
been at the time, the time was three hours earlier,
so Zero Hour aired at three o'clock there not six.
Many other gis testimony had similar time zone issues. Other

(28:08):
men's statements contradicted earlier statements they had given the FBI,
although neither the defense attorneys nor the jurors knew this.
For the final piece of their case, the prosecution introduced
recordings and scripts of Iva's broadcasts during the war. American
monitors had recorded all of the Zero Hour broadcasts. While

(28:33):
she was in Sugamo prison. Iva had been told that
there were three hundred and forty recordings. However, the prosecution
now only introduced six recordings. None of these recordings contained
statements that corroborated the overt acts. For example, none of
them referenced the loss of ships. Instead, the recordings were

(28:56):
surprisingly trivial and light. Hello you fighting orphans in the Pacific?
How's tricks? This is Annie back in the air reception? Okay,
well it better be because this is all request night,
and I've got a pretty nice program for my favorite
little family, The Wandering Boneheads of the Pacific Islands, went

(29:16):
one broadcast. Her announcements were interspersed with music, and some
jurors could be observed tapping their fingers or feet to
the beat. Before the broadcast introduced one song, she jokingly
warned listeners, it's dangerous enemy propaganda, so beware. As de
Wolf himself had said in his May memo quote, the

(29:38):
scripts of her programs seemed totally innocuous and might be
said to have little, if any entertainment value. On this
somewhat anti climactic note, on August twelfth, the prosecution rested.
Though many of their witnesses had had credibility issues. Some
of these credibility issues were unknown to the jury, and

(30:00):
the testimony of the servicemen, while somewhat vague, had been
heart wrenching. Could the defense offer a compelling rebuttal. We're
going to take a quick break now. When we return,
we'll find out what Iva's defense team had to say.
On August thirteenth, nineteen forty nine, Theodore Tamba delivered the

(30:23):
defense opening. He kept things simple. The defense would show.
He said that Iva never had treasonous intent, and that
she had broadcast under threat and duress. The defense's first
witness was Charles Cousins, the Australian POW who had worked
with Iva on Zero Hour two years earlier. Cousins himself

(30:46):
had been charged with treason in Australia, but the charges
were quickly dropped and he had resumed his civilian life.
When he heard about Iva's trial, he immediately volunteered to
testify in her defense. Iva was so happy to be
reunited with Cousins, who she had last seen in a
POW hospital as he recovered from a heart attack, that

(31:09):
she broke down crying when she saw him. The defense
team hoped that they could use Cousin's experience to provide
context for the duress Iva might have experienced. They asked
him to talk about what he had seen while in
POW camps. As Cousins began to tell the story of
Japanese guards beating a fellow prisoner to death, the normally

(31:32):
self possessed man broke down into tears. When he regained
his composure, he continued the story, but the prosecution objected.
After an argument out of the jury's hearing, Judge Roche
once again ruled that this sort of background information was
irrelevant and admissible. Further testimony about the broadcasting specific threats

(31:54):
that Cousins had endured, including when Suniishi ordered him to
participate in broadcasts while pointedly displaying his unsheathed sword, were
also objected to by the prosecution, and Judge Roche struck
the testimony. Roche additionally barred Cousins from explaining that Iva
had brought food and medicine to the POW's because she

(32:15):
had heard about the awful conditions at Bunka Camp. All
of this evidence, crucial to explaining the environment Iva lived
and worked in, was not allowed. Cousins was permitted, however,
to talk about his work with Iva at NHK. He
explained that he had coached Iva in order to make

(32:35):
the material as enjoyable as possible, teaching her comedic timing
and rhythm. He had chosen Iva, he explained, because of
her terrible voice, which he believed would make a quote
complete burlesque of any propaganda content. He also testified that
he had explicitly told Iva about the subversive intents of

(32:58):
the program. Cousin's testimony was backed up by the testimony
of two other POWs, Wallace Ince and Norman Reyes. Next,
the defense called their own set of gis. These men
testified that they had enjoyed listening to Zero Hour, although
some also said that they were disappointed that the g rated,

(33:19):
somewhat bland banter of Orphan ann didn't live up to
quote the witty and smutty and entertaining legend of Tokyo Rose.
An intelligence officer testified that he had originally listened to
the program in order to learn about Japanese propaganda, but
Quote did not find propaganda. One officer stationed in Alaska

(33:43):
recalled the Alaskan command telling him and his colleagues that
the orphan An broadcasts were good for troop morale. After
the servicemen's testimony, Yaneko Konzaki took the stand. Kanzaki, a
Nisse born in New Jersey, had met Iva in Japan
during the war. Konzaki had later gotten a job as

(34:04):
an English language announcer for a German radio program. This
program had for quite some time aired right before Zero Hour,
but unlike Zero Hour, German Hour contained explicit propaganda content.
The point of Konzaki's testimony was to establish that there
had been other female English speaking broadcasters who were just

(34:27):
as likely to be Tokyo Rose as Ivo was. Another
Tokyo Rose candidate was Myrtle Lipten. Lipton herself did not
testify at the trial, but her story was recorded through
the deposition of Ken Murayama. Moriyama was a Nise reporter
who had worked for a Japanese news agency in Manila

(34:47):
during the war. While there, Moriyama had written scripts for
Melody Lane, an English language Japanese propaganda radio program hosted
by Myrtle Lipten. Lipton. More Yama testified had a quote,
low pitched, husky voice that appealed to listeners, just the
type of voice that the mythological Tokyo Rose was said

(35:10):
to have, Very different from Iva's harsher tone. Moriyama stated
that Lipton's scripts were quote designed to create a sense
of homesickness among troops in the Southwest Pacific. We had
stories of girls having dates with men at home while
possibly their sweethearts and husbands might be fighting. Buddy Uno,

(35:31):
a pow who had also worked on Lipton's program, said
of the show, quote, it carried a punch. It was sexy,
She had everything in it. She painted horrible pictures of
the jungles dropping bombs and foxholes. Then she described the
good old days back home, saying things like, what a

(35:51):
pity fellows have to die in the jungle without even
knowing what you were fighting for. This kind of content
was exactly what Iva was accused of broadcasting. Could witnesses
have gotten her broadcast mixed up with Lipton's. On the
forty sixth day of the trial, September seventh, Iva herself

(36:13):
took the stand. Reflecting on her decision to take the stand,
Iva told historian Messiah Deuce, if I got on the
witness stand and told only the truth, then the truth
would win. I thought. Collins began by leading Iva through
her early life in America. As she spoke, reporters and

(36:34):
jurors alike listened closely. Did this woman's voice align with
the allegedly seductive, alluring voice of Tokyo Rose. Most did
not think so. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a
hard voice, and The Pacific Citizen described her voice as
harsh and jerky. Personally, I think her voice is charming.

(36:58):
It isn't sultry or smooth. But it has personality and energy.
If you'd like to hear Iva's voice for yourself, you
can hear it in a film she recorded for the
Army in nineteen forty five, which you can find on
the History on Trial, Instagram or online. The direct examination
went smoothly until Collins began questioning Iva about her time

(37:20):
in Japan. The prosecution immediately began objecting that this testimony
was irrelevant, and Judge Roche once again agreed. So the
background about the military and police harassment Iva had faced
and the terrible condition she had heard about from the
POW's was all excluded, and how she had repeatedly tried

(37:43):
to get back to the United States on repatriationships was
all excluded. Without hearing this information, the jury had little
chance of understanding Iva's circumstances when she took the broadcasting job.
Iva was, however, allowed to testify about how she was
not allowed to quit the program when she had tried to.

(38:04):
She said her Army supervisors told her that she was
not permitted to. She also testified that her only reason
for working on the program was to quote stick by
the POW's. She explained how she had consistently resisted helping
the Japanese war effort despite constant pressure by refusing to
buy war bonds or give to the Japanese Red Cross.

(38:28):
Collins then walked Iva through the statements that the prosecution's
witnesses had claimed to have heard her say. Iva denied
making each statement. Then Colins read through the indictment, asking Iva,
did you at any time adhere to our enemies, the
Imperial Japanese Army. Never did you ever do any act

(38:52):
whatsoever with the intention of betraying the United States. Never
did you, at any time whatsoever commit treason against the
United States. Never. By the end of the three and
a half day direct examination, Iva was shaking with exhaustion

(39:13):
and emotion. She had suffered a recurrence of dysenteria month earlier,
causing a brief delay in the trial, and her strength
was low. Now she had to endure a cross examination,
which would last for an additional three days. De Wolf
pushed Iva to specify what kind of duress she had experienced.

(39:34):
You were not forced by physical force, Missus Dequino to
go on the air and broadcast. Were you not forced
just fearful? Iva replied? And you were never jailed by
the Japanese police authorities. No, And of course, you were
never personally assaulted or beaten or whipped or suffered any

(39:54):
physical torture, were you. No, there had never been any
physical thing. This was likely the most damaging part of
the cross examination. For the rest of it, Iva largely
managed to retain her composure, giving simple, straightforward answers. After
the cross examination ended on the morning of September fifteenth,

(40:16):
Wayne Collins asked Iva a final redirect question, missus Daquino,
do you still want to be a citizen of the
United States. It had been seven years since the State
Department had prevented her from returning home on a repatriation ship,
four years since the military had held her in jail
for a year with no warrant and no explanation, a

(40:40):
year since she had been taken into custody again in
Japan and brought to the United States as a prisoner,
and fifty three days since her grueling trial had begun.
But Iva did not waiver. Did she still want to
be a citizen of the United States? Yes, she said.
Days later, on September nineteenth, the defense rested, Closing arguments

(41:04):
would begin the next day. US Attorney Frank J. Hennessy
delivered the first closing argument for the prosecution. Despite having
earlier expressed doubts about the validity of the case, he
now displayed no qualms about condemning Iva. She was neither ordered, threatened,
or coerced a broadcast on the Zero Hour program beamed

(41:26):
at American troops fighting in the South Pacific. She did
not conspire with other prisoners of war to sabotage the
defeatist propaganda aims of the broadcasts, said Hennessy. Attorney George
Olshausen gave the defense closing argument. He reminded jurors that
the government needed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

(41:46):
He then walked through all of the ways in which
the government's case was lacking. He discussed the ulterior motives
of two key prosecution witnesses, Mitsuhio and Oki, saying the
witnesses were perjuring themselves to bring a conviction. He brought
up the alleged bribery of Hiromo Yagi by Harry Brundage.
He pointed out that the testimony of the gis was unreliable,

(42:10):
noting the errors made in time differences and memories Most importantly,
he reminded jurors that none of the broadcast recordings or
scripts that the prosecution produced had contained any treasonous material.
In short, he showed how thin, if not nonexistent, the
evidence really was. To conclude, Olshausen framed Iva in a

(42:33):
new light, not as a trader, but as a patriot.
In effect, he said, she had really been working behind
the enemy lines. I think she served the United States
very well, and all she got for her trouble was
a year in jail. The least and the most we
can do at this time is to acquit her. Assistant

(42:57):
Attorney General Tom de Wolfe delivered the prosecut Hustin's final
closing argument. In his May nineteen forty eight memod. Wolf
had written, quote, the government's case must fail as a
matter of law because the testimony of the government will
disclose that subject did not adhere to the enemy or
possess the requisite disloyal state of mind. Further, he had written,

(43:22):
all those who had known Iva during her time at
NHK quote will testify to facts which show that subject
was pro American, wished to return to the United States,
and tried to do so prior to Pearl Harbor attempted
unsuccessfully to return to the United States in nineteen forty two,
and beamed to American troops only the introduction to innocuous

(43:46):
music recordings. The evidence likewise will show that subject was
a trusted and selected agent of the Allied prisoners of war.
But now de Wolf delivered a scathing denunciation of this
same subject Iva to Gouri. He called her a quote
betrayer of her native land and a betrayer of her

(44:09):
government in time of need. He said she was a
female Benedict Arnold. Her trial, he told jurors should serve
as a warning to others that they cannot, in an
hour of great peril, adhere to the enemy with impunity.

(44:29):
With that, after two and a half months, the trial
concluded on September twenty sixth, Judge Roche instructed the jury.
Roche was exhausted, so tired that he had regularly been
observed nodding off during the defense case, but he pulled
together enough energy to read nearly fifty pages of instruction.

(44:50):
As Roche instructed the jury, the reporters in the back
of the courtroom took an informal poll amongst themselves. The
ten of them, who had watched nearly all of the tree,
voted nine to one that Iva would be acquitted. The
jury was sent to deliberate. The hours ticked by with

(45:10):
no result, and at eleven pm the jurors told Roche
they were going to pause for the night and resume
in the morning. They returned at nine am the next day,
September twenty seventh, and debated all day, periodically coming to
the courtroom to ask for copies of exhibits or transcripts
of testimonies. At ten oh four pm, the whole jury

(45:31):
came into the courtroom and jury foreman John Mann informed
Judge Roche, we cannot reach a unanimous verdict. Judge Roche
was not going to accept that answer. This is an
important case, he told jurors. The trial has been long
and expensive to both the prosecution and the defense. If

(45:52):
you should fail to agree on a verdict, the case
is left open and undecided. Like all cases, it must
be disposed of sometime. He told the jurors to return
the next morning and try again. A decision was not forthcoming.
The jurors spent all of September twenty eighth arguing, only
stopping at eight pm September twenty ninth was much the same,

(46:15):
but around five point thirty the jurors returned to the courtroom.
They wanted clarification on a portion of Roche's instructions. Roche
had said, quote acts of an apparently incriminating nature, when
judged in the light of related events, may turn out
to be acts which were not of aid and comfort
to the enemy. The jury wanted to know what related

(46:38):
events meant in this context. Roche basically refused to answer
the question, telling the jurors that they should not pay
attention to any specific part of the instructions, but instead
consider the instructions as a whole. Then he told the
jury that he was hungry, that it was time for
the dinner break, and that they should pause their deliberations
for the day. But the jury did not want to

(47:00):
have to start again in the morning. They wanted to
be done only thirty minutes later, after nearly four full
days of deliberation, the jury returned to the courtroom with
a verdict. In the case of the United States vi
Iva to Guri ta Quino on the charge of treason.

(47:20):
The defendant had been found guilty. Iva did not react
when she was found guilty of treason. She seemed to
be dazed. She turned to her lawyers and said, I
just can't believe it. The jury had found Iva not

(47:42):
guilty on seven of the eight counts of treason, but
they had found her guilty on the eighth, which charged
her with having broadcast this familiar phrase referenced by Mitsushio
and Oki and Lee quote orphans of the Pacific. You
are really or now how will you get home? Now

(48:02):
that your ships are sunk? The government was happy with
the outcome, with Tom de Wolf saying quote, the United
States feels that the verdict was a just one, but
many other people seemed unhappy with the verdict, including the jurors.
Speaking to the Associated Press, jury foreman John Mann said

(48:23):
that the jury had wanted to free Iva and quote,
if it had been possible under the judge's instructions, we
would have done it. The full picture of the jury
deliberations reveals just how much Judge Roach's actions influenced the verdict.
On the first ballot, the jurors had voted ten to
two to acquit on all charges. However, after further discussion

(48:48):
of whether or not Iva had intended to betray the
United States. The vote shifted to six to six by
the next day, after nearly twenty hours of deliberation. The
jury felt that they could not reach a unanimous verdict. However,
when they shared this position with Judge Roche, he did
not accept it. Instead, he gave them a lecture about

(49:09):
how expensive the trial had been, how it would have
to be decided sometime, and how the jurors ought to
keep working on the problem. This kind of instruction, in
which a judge tells a hung jury that they should
reach a verdict, is not uncommon. It is known as
an Allan charge after the eighteen ninety six Supreme Court
case that allowed for this type of instruction. Since that ruling,

(49:33):
states have come to different conclusions on whether or not
their courts will allow Allen charges, and if they will,
what language judges are allowed to use in issuing the charge.
The specific type of Allan charge that Judge Roche delivered
would likely not be allowed in California today. A nineteen
seventy seven California Supreme Court case People v. Gainer ruled

(49:57):
that it was improper for judges to discuss, among other things,
quote the expense or inconvenience of a retrial, or the
statement that the case must at some point be decided. Gaynor,
as well as numerous other cases across the country, ruled
that expense or inconvenience should be irrelevant to a jury's decision,

(50:19):
which should be based only on the evidence and arguments
presented in court. The idea that a case will inevitably
be decided, another argument Roche used with the jurors, is
prohibited under Gaynor because it is incorrect. The government may
at any point decide not to retry a case that
has ended in a mistrial. In a twenty twenty panel

(50:40):
on Iva's trial, US District Court Judge John Tiger said
the judge Roche's charge would today be considered unconstitutional. Though
Roche's behavior was allowable at the time, it certainly exerted
undue pressure on the jurors. After his charge, the jurors
reluctantly went by to work, though their deliberations assumed a

(51:03):
new tone. Instead of debating the facts of the case,
the discussions became more emotion based. The two jurors who
had originally favored conviction began appealing to the other jurors feelings. Imagine,
they said, being a lonely soldier on a remote Pacific island,

(51:23):
and hearing that your ships had been sunk, it would
be awful. This argument worked on many of the jurors,
who one by one switched their vote to convict. Roche's
final interaction with the jury also seems to have influenced
the verdict. By late evening on September twenty ninth, after
four days of deliberation, the jurors were exhausted. The current

(51:47):
vote was nine to three to convict. The three holdouts
were losing their will to push back they had begun
to feel Foreman John Mann later told reporter Catherine Pinkham
that by acquitting Iva, they would perhaps be seen as
traders themselves. But in a last ditch effort to strengthen

(52:07):
their resolve, Man sent a note to Roche asking for
clarification on the instructions. Roche chose not to explain himself
and simply told the jury to keep working. The holdouts,
Man said, gave up after that and reluctantly agreed to
vote to convict on one charge. Man had trouble living

(52:29):
with the decision and barely slept in the week between
the verdict and the sentencing. On October sixth, Judge Roche
sentenced Iva to ten years in prison and a ten
thousand dollars fine. This was a harsher sentence than most
people had expected. Roche's sentence may have been influenced by

(52:51):
his own feelings about the case. Reporter Catherine Pinkham, who
covered the trial, said that after the trial, Roche told
her that the emotional letter read aloud by one Gi
Marshall Hoot had convinced him that Iva was guilty. He
made other comments to Pinkham throughout the trial that indicated

(53:11):
that he thought Iva going to Japan in nineteen forty
one was suspicious. Five weeks later, on November fifteenth, Iva
boarded a train in Oakland, bound for the Federal Reformatory
for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. Iva was a model prisoner,
working in the prison infirmary and eventually training as a

(53:31):
laboratory assistant. Her lawyers filed constant appeals on her behalf,
but all were rejected. At the time of her sentencing,
most people expected that she would serve only three or
four years in prison. She served more than six. When
her early release was considered, a wave of negative press
condemned the idea of letting her out of prison. When

(53:54):
Iva was finally released on January twenty eighth, nineteen fifty
six of reporters showed up at the prison gates and
bombarded her with questions. When asked where she was going next,
Iva said, I really don't know. I'm going out into
the darkness. When asked if she maintained her innocence, Iva said,

(54:16):
the trial and the feelings then are past. I hate
to open up wounds. Unfortunately, she would have no choice
but to open those wounds because her battle was not
yet over. On March thirteenth, after Iva had settled into
her father, June's house in Chicago, the United States Immigration

(54:37):
and Naturalization Service announced that Iva had to voluntarily leave
the country within thirty days or else be subject to deportation.
After her conviction, Iva had lost her American citizenship. Now
the government was declaring her an undesirable person and trying
to deport her. Iva vowed to fight the decision. This

(55:00):
is my country, she said in a press conference. I
was born here, I belong here, am going to stay.
Wayne Collins once again stood by her side, even moving
Iva into his San Francisco home so that they could
fight the case more efficiently. It would be more than
two years before the matter was resolved. In July nineteen

(55:22):
fifty eight, the I n S canceled the deportation order,
saying that they had nowhere to deport her to since
she held no other citizenship. Additionally, a recent Supreme Court
ruling about convictions, citizenship and deportation had been interpreted to
mean that Iva was not deportable. However, I have a
citizenship was not restored. She was declared a stateless person.

(55:46):
This meant that she could not get a passport, which
had one major consequence. She could not see Felipe, her husband. Felippe,
a Portuguese citizen living in Japan, had come to America
to testify at her trial. Upon his arrival, the government
had forced him to sign a document stating that he

(56:08):
would not set foot on American soil again in exchange
for being allowed to testify. Without a passport, Iva could
not visit him in Japan. Felipe and Iva would never
see each other again. For years, Iva lived in relative
anonymity in Chicago, working as a clerk in her father's store,

(56:30):
but every time a news article about Tokyo Rose cropped up,
she would be inundated with hate mail and threatening phone calls.
In nineteen sixty nine, TV journalist Bill Curtis, who is
now the announcer on NPR's Weightwait Don't Tell Me, befriended
Iva and convinced her to tell her story one more time.

(56:51):
Curtis's resulting program was sympathetic and thoughtful, but it did
not have a big enough reach to change Iva's national reputation. However,
in the mid nineteen seventies, public opinion began to change.
During Iva's trial, Japanese American community organizations had distanced themselves

(57:16):
from her, afraid of being accused of supporting a traitor,
but his anti Japanese sentiment cooled somewhat in the intervening decades.
The Japanese American Citizens League, or JACL, took a new
look at her case. In nineteen seventy four, the JACL
sent a formal letter of apology to the Tagouri family

(57:39):
and promised to help advocate for Iva's exoneration. In September
nineteen seventy five, the JACL published a booklet entitled Iva
Taguri Daikino, Victim of a Legend, which told Iva's story.
The booklet declared that Iva was quote a victim of
a World War II fantasy, a powerful and persistent legend

(58:03):
that continues to plague her today some thirty years later.
Six months later, in March nineteen seventy six, Ronald Yeates
published his bombshell exposee of the prosecution's witnesses in the
Chicago Tribune. His article revealed that many of these witnesses,
including George Mitsushio and Kinkicheoki, had been pressured by the

(58:26):
government until lying on the stand. Since Iva's release from prison,
her lawyers had petitioned for Iva to receive a presidential pardon. Now,
momentum for the pardon grew. The California State Assembly and
State Senate passed resolutions supporting her pardon. Veterans associations supported

(58:47):
the movement, and the press, who had spent years condemning Iva,
now took up her cause. On the morning of January nineteenth,
nineteen seventy seven, the day before he was due to
leave office, President Gerald Ford signed the necessary documentation. The
Justice Department announced that Iva had received a full and

(59:09):
unconditional pardon. As a result, she could once again be
a United States citizen. Iva was delighted. Unfortunately, the pardon
came too late for some of her closest supporters to
celebrate alongside her. Her beloved father, June, had died in
nineteen seventy two at age ninety. He had left his

(59:32):
daughter a final gift, though she had begged him not to.
He had stipulated in his will that his estate be
used to pay the remains of the ten thousand dollars
fine that Roche had sentenced Iva to pay. A year later,
her lawyer, Theodore Tamba, died of a heart attack age
seventy two, and a year after that, Wayne Collins died

(59:55):
suddenly on a flight age seventy four. His son, Wayne
Collins Junior, who had first met Iva as a child
while she lived in his home during her deportation fight,
took over her case. Reflecting on her ordeal to historian
Messiah Duce in the late seventies, Iva was remarkably gracious.

(01:00:18):
I have no regret, she said, and I don't hate
anyone for what happened. Personally, I have a hard time
being so generous. I try to stay reasonably objective while
researching these cases, but I hope you'll understand why I
had a hard time maintaining distance while learning about Iva's story,

(01:00:39):
at times while reading about the constant persecution that Iva endured,
seeing again and again the way that the government abused
its power, twisted evidence, and subverted justice, all in a
misguided attempt to satisfy public pressure. I was overwhelmed by
rage and grief. At every step of the way. There

(01:01:02):
were people who knew that what was happening was wrong.
The military investigators who held Iva without charge or access
to a lawyer in nineteen forty six found no evidence
against her. The lead FBI agent in Iva's investigation, Frederick Tillman,
discovered that Harry Brundage bribed a witness. The prosecutors, Frank

(01:01:26):
Hennessy and Tom de Wolf, both believed that there was
not enough evidence to bring the case to trial. Multiple
witnesses chose to lie out of fear. At many points.
As this unjust campaign against Iva continued, any number of
people could have stepped up and tried to stop it,

(01:01:49):
but none of them did. I don't want to portray
Iva as a perfect person. She, like all people, was complicated.
She was naive, naive about her role at NHK, naive
about the way others might view her work, or how
that work might impact people naive about the potential downsides

(01:02:10):
of press attention. But it's hard to compare the sin
of naivete to the sin of pursuing a prosecution based
on perjured and coerced testimony. Ivo was pardoned, yes, but
a pardon is not an exoneration. The government has never

(01:02:30):
said that Iva's case was a miscarriage of justice. They
have never declared her innocent, though no evidence has ever
been found to show that she was guilty. The FBI,
whose investigation of Ivo was instrumental in her prosecution, maintains
a web page about her case which makes no mention

(01:02:52):
of the coercet testimony and describes her as quote voluntarily
staying in Japan during the war. As many of those
who knew Iva personally remarked, one of the grimmest ironies
of the case is how faithfully Iva loved the United States.
One of her NHK colleagues, who had testified against her,

(01:03:15):
told Ronald Yates quote, it was that flare for patriotism
that proved to be her downfall. As Wayne Collins put it,
it can truly be said that the United States government
abandoned and betrayed her rights, but she did not abandon
the United States. Fortunately, another group of patriots did eventually

(01:03:42):
recognize Iva's service. In January two thousand and six, the
American Veterans Center's World War II Veterans Committee presented eighty
nine year old Iva with its Edward J. Hurlihy Citizenship Award.
Ronald Yates, the Chicago Tribune reporter who had done so

(01:04:02):
much to clear Iva's name, accompanied her to receive the award.
Iva told Yates that this day, where her steadfast support
for the United States was finally recognized, was the most
memorable day of her life. Two months later, on September
twenty sixth, two thousand and six, Iva Toguri Daquino passed away,

(01:04:27):
aged ninety. Though Iva acknowledged the damage caused by her trial,
telling Messiah Deuce quote, my life has been very lonely.
They robbed me of the most important part of it.
She tried to focus on the future, not the past.
You can either sit in a room and feel sorry

(01:04:49):
for yourself, or you can go outside and look ahead.
I've tried to look ahead, she said. Her attitude is
a beautiful and admirable one. But her story also reminds
us of the importance of looking back and learning about
the past. Stories like Iva's, as heartbreaking as they are,

(01:05:13):
are crucial components of American history, and we should not
forget them. Thank you for listening to History on Trial.
My main sources for this episode were Messiah Duce's book
Tokyo Rose Orphan of the Pacific and Yasuhide Kawashima's book
The Tokyo Rose Case. Treason on Trial Special Thanks to

(01:05:35):
the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library for providing me with
a copy of Tom de Wolf's May nineteen forty eight memo,
and to Dion and Hugo Hagen for Japanese language assistance.
For a full bibliography, as well as a transcript of
this episode with citations, please visit our website History on
Trial podcast dot com. T is written and hosted by

(01:06:02):
me Mira Hayward. The show is edited and produced by
Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Trevor Young and executive producers
Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward. Learn
more about the show at History on Trial podcast dot
com and follow us on Instagram. At History on Trial

(01:06:23):
and on Twitter at Underscore History on Trial. Find more
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