WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90
In spite of Iva’s commitment to her American citizenship and the help she offered Allied POWs while employed by Radio Tokyo, Toguri was to be only person ever tried or sent to prison for Japanese WWII broadcasts. Her trial, based wholly upon perjured evidence that U.S. authorities fabricated by threatening two NHK workers, was the most expensive trial in American history up until that time. All of this for being an entirely mythical non-existent figure, for neither she nor anyone else had ever broadcast for the Japanese under the name “Tokyo Rose”, although tales of such a “Tokyo Rose” that arose from the imaginations of Allied soldiers in the Pacific resulted in Iva Toguri paying the price as a scapegoat
In my 8th grade American History book she was a mere blurb in the massive chapter devoted to WW2. I didn’t know until they had her obituary on the news that she had been pardoned by President Ford and that she had done the broadcasts under duress or that she was a scapegoat.
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