Iva Toguri D'Aquino

Toguri was born in Los Angeles, and was a daughter of Japanese immigrants. In 1940, she registered to vote as a Republican. On July 5, 1941, Toguri sailed for Japan from the San Pedro, Los Angeles, area, to visit an ailing relative. The U.S. State Department issued her a Certificate of Identification; she did not have a passport. In August, Toguri applied to the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan for a passport, stating she wished to return to her home in the U.S. Her request was forwarded to the State Department, but following the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), the State Department refused to certify her citizenship in 1942. ==The Zero Hour==

Toguri was pressured to renounce her United States citizenship by the Japanese central government with the beginning of American involvement in the Pacific War, like other Americans in Japanese territory. She refused to do so, and was subsequently declared an enemy alien and was refused a war ration card. and worked with assistants U.S. Army Captain Wallace Ince and Philippine Army Lieutenant Normando Ildefonso "Norman" Reyes. under the stage names "Ann" (for "Announcer") and later "Orphan Annie", ==Postwar arrest and trial==

Arrest After Japan's surrender (August 15, 1945), reporters Harry T. Brundidge of Cosmopolitan Magazine and Clark Lee of Hearst's International News Service (INS) offered $2,000 (the equivalent of a year's wages in Occupied Japan) for an exclusive interview with "Tokyo Rose". Toguri was in need of money and was still trying to get home, so she accepted the offer, but instead found herself arrested on September 5, 1945, in Yokohama. The case history at the FBI's website states, "The FBI's investigation of [D'Aquino's] activities had covered a period of some five years. During the course of that investigation, the FBI had interviewed hundreds of former members of the U.S. Armed Forces who had served in the South Pacific during World War II, unearthed forgotten Japanese documents, and turned up recordings of [D'Aquino's] broadcasts." Investigating with the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps, they "conducted an extensive investigation to determine whether [D'Aquino] had committed crimes against the U.S. By the following October, authorities decided that the evidence then known did not merit prosecution, and she was released". She requested to return to the United States in order to have her child born on American soil, D'Aquino was defended by a team of attorneys led by Wayne Mortimer Collins, a prominent advocate of Japanese-American rights. Collins enlisted the help of Theodore Tamba, who became one of D'Aquino's closest friends, a relationship which continued until his death in 1973. On September 29, 1949, the jury found D'Aquino guilty on a single charge: Count VI, which stated, "That on a day during October, 1944, the exact date being to the Grand Jurors unknown, said defendant, at Tokyo, Japan, in a broadcasting studio of The Broadcasting Corporation of Japan, did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships." She was fined $10,000, given a 10-year prison sentence, and stripped of her citizenship, with Toguri's attorney Collins lambasting the verdict as "Guilty without evidence". She was sent to the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. She was paroled after serving six years and two months, released January 28, 1956, and moved to Chicago. ==Presidential pardon==

The case against D'Aquino was fraught with legal difficulties. Grand jurors had been skeptical of the government's case. Tom DeWolfe, the Special Assistant Attorney General, was "a veteran of radio treason prosecutions" who complained that "it was necessary for me to practically make a fourth of July speech in order to obtain [an] indictment", leading him to urge the Department of Justice to further investigate and so "shore up" the case in Japan. The further work, however, "created new problems for DeWolfe", and soon after D'Aquino was indicted, government witness Hiromu Yagi "admitted that his grand jury testimony was perjured". The FBI's case history notes, "Neither Brundidge [the Cosmopolitan Magazine reporter who tried to sell his transcript of the interview with D'Aquino] nor the [suborned] witness [Hiromu Yagi] testified at trial because of the taint of perjury. Nor was Brundidge prosecuted for subornation of perjury." This was followed up by a Morley Safer report on the television news program 60 Minutes. US President Gerald Ford granted a full and unconditional pardon to Iva Toguri D'Aquino in 1977 based on these and earlier issues with the indictment, ==Later life==

Toguri eventually settled in Chicago where she worked in her family's Japanese marketplace, J. Toguri Merchantile. The store was in operation for 65 years and closed in 2013. In 1980, she reluctantly divorced Felipe, after he was repeatedly denied admission into the United States. On January 15, 2006, the World War II Veterans Committee awarded Toguri its annual Edward J. Herlihy Citizenship Award, citing "her indomitable spirit, love of country, and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans". According to one biographer, Toguri found it the most memorable day of her life. ==Legacy==

Iva Toguri has been the subject of two movies and five documentaries: • 1946: Tokyo Rose, film; directed by Lew Landers. Lotus Long played a heavily fictionalized "Tokyo Rose", described on the film's posters as a "seductive Jap traitress"; Byron Barr played the G.I. protagonist who kidnaps the Japanese announcer. Blake Edwards appeared in a supporting part. The film espoused the general public's view of "Tokyo Rose" at the time of Toguri's arrest. The film's character was not referred to by her actual name, but Long was made to look like Toguri. • 1969: The Story of "Tokyo Rose", CBS-TV and WGN radio documentary written and produced by Bill Kurtis. • 1976: Tokyo Rose, CBS-TV documentary segment on 60 Minutes by Morley Safer. • 1995: Tokyo Rose: Victim of Propaganda, A&E Biography documentary hosted by Jack Perkins and featuring Toguri, Wayne Collins, Jr., Gerald Ford (archive footage), Bill Kurtis, and others. • In 2004, actor George Takei announced that he was working on a film titled Tokyo Rose, American Patriot about Toguri's activities during the war. • 2008: Frank Darabont was slated to direct a new film Tokyo Rose with Darkwoods Productions, which had been planned since 2003. • On July 20, 2009, History Detectives (Season 7, Episode 705) aired a 20-minute segment entitled Tokyo Rose Recording researched by Gwendolyn Wright tracing the recording of live coverage of Iva Toguri's September 25, 1948, arrival in San Francisco under military escort for trial. The investigation of the origins of this recording documents the involvement of self-serving reporter Harry T. Brundidge and his part in the fraudulent case against her. ==See also==