The Tokyo Rose Case Treason On Trial

"Iva Ikuku Toguri (1916-2006) was an American citizen, born on the 4th of July. Her parents, first-generation Japanese Americans, embraced their new nation and raised Iva to think, talk, and act like a patriotic American. But, despite her allegiance to the United States, she was forced to spend most of her adult life denying that she was a traitor or that she was World War II's infamous Tokyo Rose. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Iva was nursing an ailing aunt in Japan. Prevented from returning to home, she was hounded by the Japanese authorities to renounce her American citizenship, which she refused to do. Pressured to find employment, she joined Radio Tokyo, where she emceed brief music segments on the 'The Zero Hour' during the war's last two years. But she was never called 'Tokyo Rose' by anyone and was but one among a dozen or so English-speaking females heard on Japanese airwaves. After the war, she was tried and convicted for treason, despite the lack of evidence and a reluctant jury, then stripped of her citizenship and sent to prison. When Iva died in 2006, obituaries continued to identify her as the traitorous Tokyo Rose, even though she had received a presidential pardon and had had her citizenship restored several decades earlier. Kafkaesque in the telling, her story provides a harsh reminder that the law does not always render justice"--Page [4] of cover.