Over a year ago, Iva Toguri D’Aquino passed away. She was better known to some as ‘Tokyo Rose.’ But Tokyo Rose was really several women who broadcasted propaganda for the Empire of the Sun during World War II:
Tokyo Rose was a mythical figure. The persona, its origin murky, had been bestowed by American servicemen collectively on a dozen or so women who, seductive but sinister, broadcast for Radio Tokyo, telling soldiers, sailors and marines in the Pacific that their cause was lost and that their sweethearts back home were betraying them
Still, D’Aquino was in fact an American who was stranded in Japan, after Pearl Harbor. Although Japan applied pressure to all the stranded American citizens to renounce their citizenship, D’Aquino steadfastly refused. The story gets murky after that and one is left to wonder about what really went on. I hope someone in a screenwriting program somewhere in USC-West, UCLA, or McGoverngrad takes note. According to the previously linked NYTimes article:
But the identity of Tokyo Rose became attached to Mrs. D’Aquino, a native of Southern California and the only woman broadcasting for Radio Tokyo known to be an American citizen. She emerged as an infamous figure in a rare treason trial.
Convicted in 1949 by a federal jury in San Francisco on one of eight vaguely worded counts, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. She served 6 years and 2 months, then lived quietly in Chicago, running a family gift shop. On Jan. 19, 1977, she was pardoned, without comment, by President Gerald R. Ford on his last full day in office, restoring her citizenship.
What do you think? Was it “McCarthyism” (as the liberal media calls it… though I prefer “Communism”)? Was it racism? Was she a traitor? How many different scenarios could we come up with that use all the same facts?
Are you saying here that McCarthyism was Communism, Admiral? Going for the classic Manchurian Candidate approach, eh?
As for Tokyo Rose: the facts seem to fit the description of treason; she could have sat in the Japanese prison, but she did make the broadcasts.
It is one of my new political campaigns to re-brand every so-called right-wing excess as left-wing, yes.
Ah, yes! Though the issue of property ownership is problematical here.