Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

9

Who Is Tokyo Rose?

San Francisco, California

July 6, 1949

The courtroom was a marble masterpiece. It covered the walls, the floor, and the round columns that stretched the length of its preposterously tall ceiling. Plump cherubim stared down from the tops of those columns and a gaudy mosaic behind the judge’s desk faced enormous, gilded doors.

Under dim lights that did little to brighten the solemn and austere setting, the only empty seat belonged to Thomas DeWolfe, the tall, balding special prosecutor. As he began his opening statement, he could feel the eyes of the judge, jurors, lawyers, and all 110 spectators boring into him. He could also feel the eyes of the defendant, a plain-faced, simply dressed, thirty-three-year-old woman on trial for treason against the United States of America.

DeWolfe’s voice was strong and confident and echoed off the marble, giving it a larger-than-life feel. “We will show,” he said, “that in one broadcast after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the defendant told American troops: ‘Now, you boys really have lost all your ships. You really are orphans now. How do you think you will ever get home?’ ”

DeWolfe spoke slowly and methodically, in keeping with his personality. The middle-aged lawyer’s style was as modest as the room he worked in was ornate. DeWolfe rarely took time away from work, and on the rare occasions he did take a vacation, he preferred to be alone. His work was his life, and his trial skills were second to none. What Thomas DeWolfe lacked in charisma he more than made up for with clarity and credibility.

“We will show that the defendant told American troops that their wives and sweethearts were unfaithful,” he continued. “That they were out with shipyard workers with wallets bulging with money. That she told them to lay down their arms. And that the Japanese would never give up and had the will to win.”

DeWolfe paused to look at the defendant. Her tan plaid suit was old and out of style. Her face was pale and expressionless. He wondered if the jury would ever believe that the petite woman before them was the infamous Tokyo Rose. She didn’t look much like the woman whose seductive voice had been broadcast by Radio Tokyo all across the Pacific, hypnotizing the minds of Allied troops with Japanese propaganda, making them homesick, telling them that defeat was inevitable, and sometimes driving them to desertion or suicide.

“We will show that she talked about the mosquitoes and the jungles, and when she heard some troops were short of food, she told them they should go home where they could get steak and French-fried potatoes.”

With every new accusation, DeWolfe’s tone became sharper, giving the impression of increasingly greater disgust and outrage. He never raised his voice; that was not his style. But he wanted—he needed—the jury to hate this woman. They had to see her as a California-born Benedict Arnold who verbally tortured and tormented America’s brave sons and husbands who were off fighting for their freedom. He needed them to see that words could be just as savage and destructive as guns and bombs.

Only then would they convict Iva Toguri.

Only then would they convict a woman who Thomas DeWolfe knew was innocent.

New York Times, February 14, 1943

The men often tune in on Radio Tokyo to hear the cultured, accentless English of a woman announcer they have nicknamed Tokyo Rose. Tokyo Rose pours it on so thick that the little company of Americans in a submarine far from shore who hear her usually get a lot of humor out of her broadcasts.

Tokyo, Japan

August 25, 1943

The English-born major was tall and, despite the hunger that had left him ill and emaciated, still remarkably handsome. He had been the Edward R. Murrow of Australian radio before the war began, but he’d been captured in Singapore after volunteering to leave the broadcast booth in favor of combat.

After a Japanese officer inferred that he could choose between being executed or working for Radio Tokyo, Major Charles Cousens agreed to write the script for an evening show called Zero Hour.

That didn’t mean, however, that he would write it the way they wanted. Even with his life on the line, Cousens was not about to be a pawn for the enemy. He tried his best to keep the program free of propaganda while undermining the Japanese war effort by using the English-language show to entertain Allied troops.

So far, it was working. The two POW hosts of Cousens’s Zero Hour—an American named Wallace “Ted” Ince and a Filipino named Norman Reyes—read the “news” they were given by the Japanese so fast that it couldn’t be understood. They repeated inside jokes that the Japanese didn’t understand and that brought laughter rather than fear to Allied listeners. They filled most of the program with lively music—peppy marches and fun, popular songs—while telling their Japanese overseers that the music would demoralize Allied soldiers by making them homesick. Inexperienced in American media, unable to understand the subtleties of the English language, and willing to defer to Cousens’s talent for attracting an audience, the Japanese staff at Radio Tokyo did not interfere much with Zero Hour’s programming.

As Cousens sat in the POW’s small common room at Radio Tokyo putting the finishing touches on that evening’s script, he heard a friendly, upbeat voice from the doorway.

“Hey, boys,” the stranger said. “How ya doin’?”

The smiling woman at the door appeared to be Japanese, although her accent was definitely American. She was short and wore glasses and looked almost as malnourished as the POWs, yet her voice exhibited an energy that was missing among the Americans. She was looking at them like they were the first friendly faces she’d seen in years.

“My name’s Iva,” she said, shaking Cousens’s hand, and then the hands of the two show hosts.

Cousens introduced himself but was careful not to say too much in the presence of a Japanese stranger. His caution, however, did nothing to slow the conversation, because the newcomer was more than happy to do all the talking.

“I was born in Los Angeles and I only ended up here by accident. See, my mother asked me to go to Tokyo to visit my aunt Shizuko, who was sick. But I hated it here right away. I tried to find a way home to L.A., but the government kept asking me for more and more paperwork and then they took forever to approve it. Once Pearl Harbor happened it was too late—and so here I am.”

Cousens and his two hosts stared at her blankly. It was as though she’d kept all of this information bottled up inside her and it was now all spilling out. They offered little encouragement, no nonverbal feedback like smiles or nods of the head, but Iva kept talking anyway. She told them about the life she missed in America, the postgraduate classes she’d taken at the University of California, Los Angeles, and how she passed the time watching college football and horse racing at Santa Anita. But now, she explained, her life in Japan was completely different.

“One time the secret police knocked on my door at three in the morning. Scared me half to death! They told me how I would be so much safer if I dropped my American citizenship. See, my parents were born in Japan, and so I’m entitled to be a citizen here as well. But, honestly, I’d rather be interned as an enemy here than be a subject of the emperor. That’s exactly what I told them.”

Iva explained that she’d moved into a boardinghouse so that her aunt would not be subjected to the suspicions and harassment that came with sheltering an American citizen. Since she refused to renounce her American citizenship, the Japanese had also taken away her ration card, forcing her to share the meager provisions of other boarders. Needing a job to survive on her own, she’d found work two days ago as an English-language typist at Radio Tokyo.

Then, as quickly as she’d arrived to spill out her life story, she was walking back out the door.

“You look hungry,” she said to Cousens. Then she smiled and whispered, “Tomorrow I will bring you some apples.”

Tokyo

Three months later: October 25, 1943

“This week it’s apples, eggs, some flour, and a bushel of vegetables!”

Every weekend, Iva walked more than ten miles to buy and barter for food and medicine at farms in the countryside. She was particularly proud of the haul she’d just acquired.

“Any medicine?” asked Cousens. Iva’s pro-American attitude and willingness to smuggle things into Radio Tokyo had eventually won Cousens’s trust. He regularly took some of the provisions back to Camp Bunka, where he lived with twenty-six other POWs, many of them sick and starving.

“Some quinine and aspirin,” she said. “And a few vitamin pills.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Iva. And I don’t just mean that as an expression.”

Cousens had spent the last few months admiring Iva’s willingness to risk her own safety to smuggle food and supplies for others. Over time he had grown to trust her enough to explain to her their ongoing scheme to sabotage the Japanese propaganda.

“Why not share the plan with her?” he’d said to his skeptical cohosts at the time. “She’s one of us.”

Tokyo

November 12, 1943

“You have to bring in another announcer for a new ‘homesicky’ segment,” George Mitsushio told Charles Cousens.

Mitsushio was a fat thirty-six-year-old who’d been born in San Francisco but had chafed at the discrimination he’d encountered. In the 1930s he had immigrated to Japan and, after Pearl Harbor, chose his adopted country over the United States. He had officially become a Japanese national seven months earlier.

Given the circumstances, Mitsushio was, at least according to American law, a traitor for having served the Japanese government in various attempts at propaganda for seventeen months before renouncing his American citizenship. He was also, at least nominally, Charles Cousens’s boss, although he generally let the Aussie do anything he wanted when it came to Zero Hour.

“This is an Imperial Order,” Mitsushio persisted. “It has got to be done.” Slicing his hand across his throat, he added, “If not, it is my neck as well as yours.”

“All right,” said Cousens, who was already formulating a plan. “We’ll see what we can do.”

As soon as Mitsushio left, Zero Hour announcer Ted Ince turned on Cousens. “What the hell do you mean, ‘we’?” Ince said. “I want no part of this!”

“Hold your horses,” Cousens calmly assured him. “This is our chance to make a complete joke of Zero Hour.” Cousens knew the Japanese wanted a segment that would make Americans miss all the things they loved most about America. He knew he’d have to come up with something that would sound authentic to the Japanese while making American troops laugh. The idea he was about to let Ince in on had come to him a few nights earlier.

“How?” Ince asked.

Cousens smiled. “Sex.” Other radio shows at the time used a sultry woman to make the troops miss their wives and girlfriends back home. Cousens planned to do the same, but with a very different result. “We’ll use a woman.”

He knew it could not just be any woman; it had to be someone with exactly the right kind of voice. The Japanese would mistake her banter for flirting, but the Americans would clearly recognize it as over-the-top comedy.

“Who?” asked Ince.

“The only woman we can trust,” said Cousens, who was enjoying the little resistance effort he’d been waging behind enemy lines. “Iva.”

Tokyo

November 13, 1943

“This is crazy!”

Iva had just performed the first script Cousens had written for her. She knew there were at least six other women who broadcasted to Allied troops in English over Japanese radio stations, but she didn’t own a radio so she’d never actually heard their shows.

“I can’t do this! I’m no good at it,” she said.

“You are exactly what we want,” Cousens promised. “We’re not looking for an experienced announcer and we don’t want a sweet, gentle voice. We want a Yankee voice with a certain personality to it—a little touch of a WAC officer and a lot of cheer.”

Iva still looked dubious. “I’ll coach you to read the scripts the way I want them,” Cousens said, “so don’t worry.”

Iva liked the idea of being needed by the handsome, charming Aussie, even if it was only in a professional sense. She may have had serious doubts about her own broadcasting talent, but she had no doubts about the coaching abilities of Major Charles Cousens.

“How long will you stay with the show?” she asked.

“Until we’ve defeated Japan,” he told her. He had no desire to leave so long as the show was accomplishing his purposes, but it was kind of a moot point anyway. The Japanese weren’t letting him go anywhere until the war was over.

That was good enough for Iva. She smiled and nodded.

“Me too.”

New York Times Trivia Quiz, December 19, 1943

Question: Who is Tokyo Rose?

Answer: Tokyo Rose delivers Japanese propaganda broadcasts—in cultured English accents—directed to American fighting men in the Pacific. The men are amused by Japan’s exaggeration of American losses.

Tokyo

April 21, 1944

“Greetings, everybody!” Iva said into her radio microphone. “This is Ann back at the microphone and presiding over Radio Tokyo’s special program for listeners in Australia and the South Pacific.”

Cousens had chosen the name “Ann” as Iva’s radio alter ego because it was an abbreviation for announcer.

“How’s my orphan family? Have you been good boys?”

There were other female disc jockeys, Cousens had explained to Iva, who might have asked this question in a sultry, sexy way. But he wanted her to sound jolly, like a happy sister or an old friend. He’d coached her through every word.

“All right, then, we’ll have some music. A tango to start with. ‘I Kiss Your Hand, Madam.’ ”

As the record played, Iva sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She thought of her old life in California—a life full of friends and movies and dancing. She desperately wished she was back there, but she was also happy to have found a way to serve a purpose in the war. The thought that she might be helping the Allies in some small way made her get out of bed each morning with a smile.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Iva said as the tango faded. “Any latecomers listening? Well, you’re sharing Radio Tokyo’s regular program for Australia and the South Pacific. Dangerous enemy propaganda, so beware! Our next propagandist is Arthur Fiedler with the Boston Pops Orchestra playing Ketèlbey’s ‘In a Persian Market.’ ”

After a few more songs, interspersed with some brief chatter scripted by Cousens, Iva’s twenty minutes on Zero Hour were up. She turned the microphone over to Ted Ince and headed out the door, singing the UCLA football fight song, Gershwin’s “Strike Up the Band,” in her head. At her request, Cousens had made it a regular on the program, knowing that any homesickness it might induce would be trumped by the song’s timely and inspiring lyrics.

There is work to be done, to be done.

There’s a war to be won, to be won.

Come, you son of a, son of a gun.

Take your stand. Fall in line. Yea a bow.

Come along. Let’s go. Hey, leader. Strike up the band!

Iva Toguri smiled. When the war is won, she thought, maybe I’ll make a career of this radio stuff.

Time, April 10, 1944

No one knows for sure who Tokyo Rose really is. [Listeners] are inclined to think she is a Japanese, born on the island of Maui, Hawaii, and educated there. Her voice is cultured, with a touch of Boston.

Tokyo

March 19, 1945

“Will you marry me, Iva?”

Iva liked Felipe d’Aquino, a bony, kindhearted twenty-five-year-old Portuguese-Japanese pacifist known as “Phil” to his friends. They had bonded at work over their shared opposition to the Japanese war effort. In a city with few American-sympathizers, Iva did not have a lot of people with whom to celebrate her little victories over Radio Tokyo.

“Yes!” responded Iva, feigning some of the excitement she’d seen from newly engaged girls in movies by wrapping her arms around Phil. He deserved that much at least.

He is kind and loyal and in love with me, Iva told herself. He will make a very good husband.

Okinawa, Japan

August 30, 1945

Clark Lee was one of the most famous war correspondents in America. Six feet tall, with smooth dark hair and tanned skin, the thirty-eight-year-old had just been through an exciting four years. Trapped on Corregidor with MacArthur, he had escaped on the last submarine off the besieged island, then published a book titled They Call It Pacific, covering the European Theater. Lee returned to the Pacific in time to hear the Japanese emperor’s surrender statement live on Radio Tokyo. Tomorrow morning, he and a small group of reporters were scheduled to fly to the Japanese mainland. Now that combat had ended, General MacArthur was planning to touch down at the Atsugi Naval Air Facility, forty miles from Tokyo. It would be a historic day.

As Lee relaxed on a stone wall by an ancient Japanese burial tomb, he looked at his old friend and fellow reporter, Harry Brundidge. Short and balding, Brundidge was twenty years past his prime—which had come with a series of stories he’d written about organized crime in St. Louis. Since then, alcohol and aging had taken their toll and Brundidge looked every bit of his forty-eight years. He was still as brash and daring as ever; he just wasn’t as good.

“Want to make a deal?” Brundidge asked Lee.

“What kind of deal?” Lee liked Brundidge, but he wasn’t about to follow him blindly.

“Well, we’ve both lived in Japan,” he replied. “So we know something about the Japanese people that others don’t: when Hirohito told them to quit, they quit. I’m willing to bet that, despite our orders to stay out of Tokyo until the Allied occupation force gets there, it’s perfectly safe. I say we make a break for the capital the minute we land.”

Lee nodded. The military was concerned about guerrilla attacks so reporters had been ordered to stay out of Tokyo until they were given a green light that it was safe. But Lee loved the big scoop and knew they only came to those willing to take a few risks.

“Suppose I agree,” Lee said. “What’s our story when we get there? Seems like everyone already knows the war is over.”

Brundidge smiled. “Tokyo Rose. The whole world wants to know who she is. Our Japanese friends will help us find her.”

Lee was intrigued. The mystery of Tokyo Rose was one of the hottest stories around. If they found her and got her to talk, then Brundidge and Lee could write the first articles about her—Brundidge for Cosmopolitan and Lee for the International News Service. It was a potentially career-making scoop.

Lee pictured the large-type, front-page headline and then shook Brundidge’s meaty palm. “I’m in.”

Tokyo

August 31, 1945

Iva was ecstatic.

Leslie Nakashima, a Japanese newsman, had just called and asked if she’d be willing to tell two American reporters about her experience as Tokyo Rose in exchange for two thousand dollars. Iva replied she’d never heard of “Tokyo Rose,” but Nakashima explained that it was simply the name Allied soldiers had given to English-language radio hosts in the Pacific and Iva certainly qualified.

Between needing the money and wanting Americans to know how her and Cousens had foiled Japanese propaganda efforts with Zero Hour, her answer came fast.

“Tell me where and when to meet them.”

Tokyo

Morning, September 1, 1945

Iva Toguri walked into room 312 of the Imperial Hotel with Leslie Nakashima and her husband, Phil d’Aquino, without a care in the world. The war was over, the Allies had won, and now she was about to make seven times more money in a single morning than she’d made during her entire time in Tokyo.

Casting her eyes on a short man pouring a glass of bourbon, and then on his taller, fitter colleague, Iva was happy to finally have a chance to talk about her small role in helping the American war effort. She knew these men would help bring that part of the story back to the United States.

“Good morning,” said the taller man. “I’m Clark Lee from the International News Service and this is Harry Brundidge from Cosmopolitan magazine.”

Iva shook hands with the men and they all sat down. Brundidge got right to the point. “So, you are Tokyo Rose?”

Iva detected a little hostility in his voice. “Mr. Brundidge,” she replied politely, “there are five or six girls to whom that name should apply. I am just one of them.”

“You worked at Radio Tokyo,” Brundidge replied. “You announced introductions to records. You were a sort of disc jockey, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Iva.

Lee turned to Nakashima. “You told us that you went to Radio Tokyo and someone there gave you her name?”

Nakashima nodded. Iva had no idea Nakashima had been paid $250 by Lee and Brundidge for identifying “Tokyo Rose.”

“Then she will do!” said Lee, grinning. “Now, let’s get to her story.”

With that, Clark Lee unpacked his typewriter, and Harry Brundidge, for reasons that Iva did not yet fully understand, locked the hotel room’s door.

Tokyo

Afternoon, September 1, 1945

After everyone had left his hotel room, Clark Lee fed a blank piece of paper into his typewriter and stared at it. The interview that had just concluded had not gone according to plan. For starters, he’d expected someone who looked, or at least sounded, like a femme fatale. This Iva woman didn’t fit the bill. More important, Iva had denied broadcasting any propaganda: Nothing about unfaithful wives, the horrors of warfare, or the fictitious sinking of American ships.

Nevertheless, and despite her protests that she was just one of many hosts, Iva had eventually agreed to sign a paper saying she was “the one and original Tokyo Rose.” That should have been good enough, but now, as Lee stared at the blank white paper in his typewriter, he was starting to have second thoughts.

Part of Lee’s hesitation was that he had personally heard a broadcast by a woman whom the troops had called “Tokyo Rose” in 1942—a year before Iva said she’d began working at Radio Tokyo. That got his mind running. How many Tokyo Roses were out there? And which of them had actually broadcast propaganda?

Clark Lee stared for a while longer. He knew that if Iva hadn’t committed treason against her country, then he had no scoop. On the other hand, she had signed the statement.

Finally, he made up his mind and his fingers began pecking away at the keys.

TRAITOR’S PAY: TOKYO ROSE GOT 100 YEN A MONTH . . . $6.60.

In an exclusive interview with this correspondent . . .

Tokyo

October 17, 1945

As Iva finished washing her hair, she heard a knock on the door. Another reporter, she thought to herself.

After the publication of Clark Lee’s article—which, to Iva’s shock and horror, had portrayed her as a traitor to her country—the media had gone into a feeding frenzy. Interviews had been followed by a press conference, which was followed by intensive questioning by investigators from the Eighth Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. Through it all, Iva had answered every question asked of her. She knew that she had nothing to hide and was convinced that no one would believe her to be a traitor once they’d heard the full story about her time on the radio.

Iva opened the door, her dark hair still wet. Three officers and a master sergeant from the Army Counter Intelligence Corps stood on her front porch.

Iva Toguri was under arrest.

Tokyo

July 4, 1946

It was her birthday, but after spending the last eight months in prison, Iva Toguri was not in a celebratory mood. Showering at Tokyo’s Sugamo prison, where many Japanese war criminals were also being held, Iva felt sad and alone. She missed her husband, whom she was only allowed to see for twenty minutes a month. She missed Charles Cousens, who had been sent back to Australia, where he told military authorities that Iva was innocent of any wrongdoing. She missed her father and siblings, whom she’d not seen in five years. And, most of all, she grieved for her mother, who, unbeknownst to Iva until now, had died three years earlier in a Japanese-American internment camp.

As Iva emerged from the shower stall, she stopped suddenly and screamed. She had been through a lot of surreal experiences in recent years, but this was the most bizarre of all. Peering through a window and into the foggy bathroom like they were viewing a circus act were sixteen well-dressed men.

She did not know it, but they were all United States congressmen.

Tokyo

October 25, 1946

Amid the popping of reporters’ flashbulbs and the shouting of questions, Iva Toguri ran through the lobby of Sugamo prison and into the arms of her smiling husband. After a year behind bars, Iva was being unconditionally released by the United States military due to lack of evidence.

She took the bouquet of flowers that Phil had brought for her and smiled. It was a new beginning, a chance to put this nightmare behind her and return to her life in California.

Or so she thought.

Tokyo

January 5, 1948

Iva had cried for so long that her eyes had run dry. It was hard not to think of everything that had brought her to this point and wonder if it all would have been different had she not been so naïve.

It had now been over a year since the U.S. State Department told her that she was in a line of ten thousand second-generation Americans stranded in Japan waiting for approval to return to America. Now she wondered if that was just another lie.

Cynicism did not suit Iva well, but she’d come a long way since she’d accepted that interview with Clark Lee and Harry Brundidge three years earlier. She knew that if she’d been less naïve back then, she would probably be back at home in Los Angeles right now nursing her and Phil’s first child.

Instead, she lay in her bed in Tokyo, her husband holding her tight as her body shook and heaved uncontrollably.

Their baby had died that morning.

Washington, D.C.

May 25, 1948

Thomas DeWolfe sat at his small desk, dictating a memo to the unluckiest secretary at the Department of Justice. She was the only assistant in the building still working this late at night and DeWolfe was, as usual, the only attorney.

DeWolfe knew his bosses, especially Attorney General Tom Clark, did not want to hear what this memo had to say: Iva Toguri was innocent.

That same conclusion had been reached almost two years earlier by lots of others, including the Counter Intelligence Corps’s legal section, its intelligence division, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, and the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Theron L. Caudle.

After Toguri was released, the American press had gone crazy. Walter Winchell, the most powerful gossip columnist in America, waged a personal crusade against her. Furious that Iva was trying to return to the United States, Winchell labeled her a traitor in his syndicated columns, which were read by seven million Americans, as well as on his Sunday night radio broadcasts, heard by twenty million listeners. He wanted the government to re-arrest Iva and prosecute her for treason. At the very least, he wanted to make sure that Iva never set foot on American soil—unless, of course, it was in handcuffs.

“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea!” he began every radio show. It was great entertainment, delivered with the panache of the vaudevillian he once was. The information that followed it, however, like the “news” in his columns, was usually wrong.

According to Winchell, the lawyers at the Justice Department who were blocking Iva Toguri’s re-arrest and prosecution were “emperor-lovers and friends of the Zaibatsu.” He also told his audience that Clark Lee had turned the original typewritten copy of Toguri’s eighteen-page confession over to FBI agents. In it, according to Winchell, she had named two witnesses against her, both of whom were available to testify if she was brought to trial.

Thomas DeWolfe knew that almost everything in Winchell’s reporting on Iva was wrong: there were no “emperor-lovers” in the Justice Department; Iva’s “confession” was nothing more than Clark Lee’s notes from his interview—where she had unequivocally denied any wrongdoing; and the “two witnesses against her” were Charles Cousens and Ted Ince. DeWolfe knew these two men would actually confirm Iva’s innocence if they were called to testify. Cousens, in fact, had written to the Justice Department saying as much.

The career federal prosecutor understood Washington well enough to know that a memo from him concluding that Iva Toguri should not be re-arrested would win him few friends in the Truman administration. But DeWolfe also knew that it was his job to tell his bosses the facts. It was their job to decide whether to listen to them.

“There is insufficient evidence to make out a prima facie case,” he dictated to his tired secretary. “Don’t forget that facie is f-a-c-i-e, and that last sentence should be in all capital letters.”

“Thank you, Mr. DeWolfe.” Debbie had worked with him for a dozen years and not once had she ever called him “Tom.”

“The government witnesses, almost to a man, will testify to facts which show that the subject was pro-American, wished to return to the United States and tried to do so prior to Pearl Harbor, attempted, again, unsuccessfully to return to the United States in 1942, and beamed to American troops only the introduction to innocuous musical recordings.”

DeWolfe had no doubt that other female disc jockeys, other “Tokyo Roses,” had broadcast propaganda that was far from innocuous. Nor did he doubt why the American government was not interested in prosecuting any of them: The press had not appointed itself as judge, jury, and executioner of those women; Clark Lee and Harry Brundidge had not labeled those women as “Tokyo Rose”; and Walter Winchell had not publicly directed his wrath and vitriol toward those women.

DeWolfe continued dictating: “The government’s evidence likewise will show that subject was a trusted and selected agent of the Allied prisoners of war, who selected her as the one they could trust not to sabotage their efforts against the success of the Japanese propaganda machine.”

When it was complete, DeWolfe’s memo totaled approximately 2,500 words. Not one of them indicated that he had any doubt about Iva Toguri’s innocence.

Washington, D.C.

August 16, 1948

The presidential election was only months away. President Truman, feeling pressure from the public over Tokyo Rose—pressure that was fueled almost daily by Walter Winchell—and sick of being labeled by the media as “soft on communism” and “soft on spies,” ordered Attorney General Tom Clark to make a case against Iva Toguri.

Clark ordered that Toguri be arrested in Japan and brought to California to stand trial for treason. He appointed Thomas DeWolfe, the government’s best trial attorney, especially when it came to cases involving treason, as her prosecutor.

San Francisco

One year later: August 12, 1949

Thomas DeWolfe was having trouble sleeping. In fact, he hadn’t slept well from the moment he gave his opening statement in United States v. Iva Toguri to the day he questioned the last of his forty-six witnesses—a period of five weeks.

He tried to pass the insomnia off as simple nervousness about the trial, but deep down he suspected it was something else: an uneasy conscience. DeWolfe knew he was a compartmentalizer, and he comforted himself in the belief that the decision to prosecute an innocent woman was not his to make. His only job was to follow orders and to give the Department of Justice his absolute best effort.

In the past five weeks, that best effort had included ensuring an all-white jury through peremptory strikes of African and Asian Americans during jury selection. It had also included calling to the witness stand American GIs who remembered hearing a female disc jockey broadcasting Japanese propaganda, even though these witnesses had trouble remembering key details—like the dates of broadcasts, times of day, and the sounds of the voices they heard—that would help distinguish Iva from other announcers.

Despite those weaknesses in his case, DeWolfe’s direct examination of two men from Radio Tokyo had gone exceedingly well. George Mitsushio, the American who’d renounced his citizenship, and his sidekick Kenkichi Oki had perjured themselves after being solicited by none other than Harry Brundidge, whom the Department of Justice had sent to Japan as an agent of the government to find and interview witnesses for the prosecution.

DeWolfe knew that, four years after Brundidge had first interviewed Iva, he was still more interested in making a name for himself than in finding the truth. The yellow-journalist-turned-government-investigator had threatened former American citizens like Mitsushio and Oki with treason charges if they didn’t testify against Iva.

As DeWolfe lay in bed, staring at the ceiling for the fifth straight hour, he tried to quell his uneasiness with the idea of putting witnesses on the stand who were very likely lying. Not your job, Thomas, he said to himself. These are the witnesses your bosses want you to call. It’s not your job to question their decisions.

It’s your job to win.

San Francisco

August 14–17, 1949

The day before Charles Cousens was scheduled to testify, Iva Toguri ran into his arms and cried tears of joy.

Part of the reason Iva was so happy to see Cousens was that she knew he could rebut all the lies told by Mitsushio and Oki. The other part was that she had simply missed him. His confidence and determination, his talent for writing and comedy, and his interest in coaching and leading Iva in a secret mission against the Japanese had been important to her during the war.

Several days later, on Cousens’s third day of testimony in Iva’s defense, she had something else to smile about. DeWolfe had asked him, “Did any other Japanese bring you food besides the defendant?”

Cousens did not miss a beat. “The defendant was not Japanese,” he replied. “She was an American.”

San Francisco

September 7–15, 1949

On the forty-sixth day of what had become the most expensive prosecution in American history, Iva Toguri raised her right hand and, with an American flag standing behind her, took the witness stand and swore to tell the truth.

As she looked out at her husband, father, and siblings in the row behind the defense table, she knew they were worried about the decision she’d made to testify. But she didn’t share their fears. Iva understood what was at stake in this trial, but she was sure that if she took the stand and was honest, then the truth would prevail. This is America, she told herself. The system works.

Over four days of direct examination Toguri described her entire life, from her childhood in California through her broadcasts at Radio Tokyo and her interview with Clark Lee and Harry Brundidge. At the end, her attorney, Wayne Collins, finally asked her, “Did you do anything whatsoever with intent to undermine or lower American or Allied military morale?”

“Never,” she replied.

“Did you do anything with intent to create nostalgia in the mind of Americans or Allied armed forces?”

“Never.”

“Did you do any act whatsoever with the intention of betraying the United States?”

“Never.”

“Did you at any time whatsoever commit treason against the United States?”

There it was, the word that had haunted her since Clark Lee’s “Traitor’s Pay” article; the word that had been flung around recklessly by Walter Winchell and Harry Brundidge for the past two years: traitor.

Iva’s anger and outrage were boiling inside her, but she kept her emotions in check, offering only the slightest glimpse of them by the forcefulness with which she replied to Collins’s last question.

“Never.”

San Francisco

September 29, 1949

Rising to her feet as the judge and jurors entered the courtroom, Iva stared down at her tan plaid skirt, the same unflattering, out-of-style one she’d ironed in her jail cell every night and worn to her trial every day.

“Has the jury arrived at a verdict?” asked Michael Roche, the seventy-two-year-old federal judge who had issued jury instructions that were extremely detrimental to the defense. Roche had told the jurors that they were not to consider Iva’s giving of food and medicine when judging her intentions. They were also forbidden to consider her refusal, even in the face of constant intimidation from the secret police, to renounce her American citizenship.

It was 6:04 P.M. on the fourth day of jury deliberations and it seemed that another full day and night was about to pass with no resolution in sight. No one in the courtroom expected that a verdict had been reached.

The judge didn’t expect it. He had recently suggested to the jurors that they take a break for dinner.

The spectators didn’t expect it. If a verdict had been likely at this hour, there would have been more than forty people in the largely empty courtroom.

The press didn’t expect it. Only ten journalists were milling around the courtroom at this late hour.

And Iva certainly didn’t expect it—though by this point she had pretty much lost all faith in her ability to predict events. She once thought that after the jurors heard the defense witnesses and her own testimony, an acquittal would come quickly. But her confidence had been shaken by the four days of jury deliberations. “If they go more than a day,” her attorney had told her, “it’s not a good sign.”

In response to Judge Roche’s question of whether the jury had reached a verdict, John Mann, the pleasant bookkeeper acting as jury foreman, replied, “We have, Your Honor.”

The court clerk took the verdict form from Mann. He passed it to the judge, who read it in silence, before returning it to the clerk, who broke the silence with a single word.

“Guilty.”

EPILOGUE

Chicago, Illinois

Forty years later: January 13, 1989

The Toguri Mercantile shop on North Clark Street was closed for the evening. Iva sat at her small desk in the back room, reviewing the day’s receipts and filling out quarterly tax forms. For more than three decades, she had worked at the store her father founded. Now, at seventy-three years old, she was the store’s owner, manager, accountant, and primary salesperson.

Most of the store’s customers had no idea that the petite shopkeeper had once been convicted of treason. Or that she had lost her American citizenship upon her conviction, had served more than six years in federal prison, and had then barely escaped deportation when her enemies tried to expel her from the country as an “undesirable alien” after her release. They certainly did not know that the government had destroyed her marriage by barring her husband from entering the country.

These customers also did not know that John Mann, the jury foreman, had quickly come to regret the verdict he and two other holdouts had begrudgingly been persuaded by the other nine jurors to approve. They could not have known that Thomas DeWolfe, who had been instrumental in taking six years of Iva’s life, had taken his own just three years earlier.

And they had no idea that the owner of the Toguri Mercantile shop had received a full, unconditional pardon from the president of the United States in 1977. In doing so, Gerald Ford had finally returned to Iva Toguri the one thing she had so defiantly clung to for so many years: her American citizenship.

As Iva closed the account books, marking the end of another fourteen-hour workday, she glanced at the photograph on her desk of a distinguished-looking man with a confident, charming smile.

And after all these years, she was still comforted by Charles Cousens.

Seventeen years later: January 16, 2006

Iva had tried to keep her emotions bottled up inside her during the trial. But now, at a solemn ceremony in downtown Chicago, the eighty-nine-year-old saw no reason to hold them back any longer.

“Throughout an ordeal that has lasted decades,” declared a broad-shouldered, aging World War II veteran, who was more than a head taller than the ceremony’s guest of honor, “Iva Toguri has endured her fate with dignity, courage, and a deep faith in God and in the essential fairness of the American system.”

As Iva wiped tears from her face, the veteran continued: “For her indomitable spirit, her love of country, and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans, the World War II Veterans Committee proudly bestows the 2005 Edward J. Herlihy Citizenship Award on Iva Toguri.”

During the same time that Iva was trying to cheer up American soldiers and sailors in the Pacific, Edward Herlihy had become so famous announcing newsreels that he had been called “The Voice of World War II.” After being the object of a media witch hunt, it was one of life’s great ironies that Iva was now about to accept an award named after an American journalist.

As the veteran draped the medal around her neck, Iva thought of how much her reputation had changed in sixty years, but how little her patriotism and idealism had. She had regrets but no bitterness. She still loved America, despite what its press and government had done to her.

Facing the standing crowd and its thunderous applause, she thought back to the first time she’d seen the malnourished Charles Cousens. She thought of the first lines she’d spoken into a microphone at Radio Tokyo. And, finally, she thought of her father’s first words to her when she’d returned to California to stand trial for treason.

“I’m proud of you, girl. You didn’t change your stripes.”