On September 8, 1945, the 29-year-old Toguri Ikuko was arrested. As for the arrestees, some said it was the Japanese authorities, some said it was the U.S. authorities in Japan, and whoever it was, for the same reason: Toguri Ikuko admitted that she was the "Tokyo Rose."
Fast forward to the beginning, On July 4, 1916, American Independence Day, as the child of the first generation of immigrants, Toguri Ikuko was born in Los Angeles, California, USA. He graduated from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in zoology and ideally became a doctor.
In 1941, Toguri returned to Japan to visit her aunt on behalf of her mother. On December 7 of that year, japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War broke out.
Because of the war, Japan imposed a "rationing system" on its own citizens, and Toguri Ikuko did not receive rations because she did not want to give up her American citizenship, and after a difficult year, Toguri Ikuko found a job:
Worked as a typist at Radio Tokyo.
Because of the attention of English, he eventually became a broadcaster for the station.
Radio Tokyo has 24 channels for broadcasting abroad, the most important of which is english. Japan wanted to use the radio to launch a psychological offensive to dismantle its opponents, and at this time, Japan's biggest rival was clearly the United States.
Japan's "Strategic Radio" began a program called "Zero Point" in November 1943. A sweet-voiced female announcer who calls herself "Orphan Ann" claims to be the "dearest enemy" of the U.S. military, and she is Ikuko Toguri.
In addition to broadcasting wartime news, the show will broadcast some American pop music and country folk songs late at night, taking the opportunity to arouse the homesickness of American soldiers stationed in the Pacific, thus breaking their morale.
Unexpectedly, Toguri's broadcast made almost every American soldier who had heard the broadcast fall madly in love with the show.
American soldiers began to give this group of Japanese female announcers, represented by Toguri Ikuko, a romantic name: Tokyo Rose.
Toguri Ikuko
Many American soldiers even said that calling Tokyo to see Tokyo Rose was their wish at the time.
After the end of World War II, Toguri Ikuko was interviewed by reporters and signed the interview transcript, proving that I am "Tokyo Rose".
After the interview, Toguri Ikuko was once popular in the American media, but was soon arrested for "treason", and there was the opening scene.
Toguri Ikuko was arrested
Toguri Ikuko was imprisoned
On October 25, 1946, Toguri Ikuko, who had been imprisoned in Japan for a year, was released and soon applied to return to the United States.
Because after World War II, anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States was very serious, and Toguri Ikuko was eventually arrested and extradited to the United States because of her status as "Tokyo Rose".
Despite her lawyers' defense, Toguri was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the San Francisco District Court on October 7, 1949, for treason.
Serving a 6-year and 2-month sentence for good performance, Toguri was released in 1955.
Ikuko Toguri and her defense lawyer, Collins
After her release from prison, Toguri received an official deportation order ordering her to leave the United States. Although the expulsion order was later dismissed, he became a stateless person.
At the insistence of her lawyers, in 1977, Toguri finally received a presidential pardon and reinstated her American citizenship, at the age of 61.
Later, Toguri Ikuko was sympathetic to American public opinion, and people began to feel that she had soothed the hearts of American soldiers with a sweet voice in the war, and the image seemed to change from "traitor" to "patriotic hero".
In her later years, Toguri, who ran a gift shop in Chicago, died quietly in 2006 at the age of 90.
Toguri Ikuko in her later years