Today in 1945, Iva Toguri, better known as Tokyo Rose, was arrested in Yokohama under suspicion of being a traitor to America.
This is really one of those sad stories of history. It turned out ok in the end, but for much longer than it should have been, things were not ok.
Toguri was born in America to Japanese immigrants. Shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she traveled to Japan to care for her sick aunt. She didn't have a passport, but applied for a Certificate of Identification and was granted one. Shortly after arriving, the Pearl Harbor attack happened. Later that year she applied to the US Consulate in Japan to get a passport to return home, but this was denied as the State Department refused to certify her citizenship.
The Japanese government pressured her to renounce her US citizenship, but she refused, so she was declared an enemy of the State and they refused to issue her a war ration card. Her parents in America weren't able to help her, as they had been sent to an internment camp in Arizona. So in order to survive she was forced to get a job as a typist first for a news agency and then for a radio station. Despite her bleak situation, she often spent a portion of her salary on food to smuggle into POW camps.
At the radio station it was typical for POWs to be forced to broadcast propaganda. The station recognized that she spoke English and so they recruited her to host one of these propaganda programs called The Zero Hour. She refused to broadcast any anti-American propaganda and instead along with her assistants designed scripts to make a farce out of the broadcasts. Luckily, the officials in charge of her didn't realize what she was doing, either because their English wasn't good enough or they simply think her capable of it and so didn't watch closely. She used American slang, played American music, and used heavy sarcasm whenever talking about official announcements from the government. Although she never used the name herself, Allied forces took to referring to her as "Tokyo Rose".
After Japan's surrender, she was arrested and accused of treason, but she was released after a year when no evidence of treason could be found. Later that year she requested to return to the US. But there the story takes another dark turn.
An influential gossip columnist made a stink, insisted she was a traitor, and demanded the US arrest her again. She was re-arrested and taken to San Francisco for trial. She was found guilty and given a 10-year prison sentence. She was paroled after serving six years for good behavior.
Flash forward to 1976, some 20 years after she was released from prison. An investigation by a Chicago Tribune reporter discovered that two of the witnesses at her trial had lied, that they had been coached by the FBI for over two months to give their damning testimony and had been threatened with treason themselves if they didn't coöperate. With this discovery, she was issued a full, unconditional pardon by President Ford, and her American citizenship was restored.
She lived in Chicago until her death in 2006. I understand from friends who knew her that she was a sweet and incredibly nice woman and that she ran a small shop which was popular in the area. It's nice that she refused to be bitter by her experience. I'm not sure most of us would be able to do that.
Today is taian 大安, one of the rokuyō, the Buddhist horoscope. This is the luckiest day of the week, good for everything. So go out and spend your luck wisely!
(Read more about the rokuyō here)
On the old calendar, today would have been the tenth day of the eighth month. It is kokumono sunawachi minoru, Rice Ripens, (禾乃登), the third microseason of Shosho (処暑). The rice is starting to grow heavy on the stalks now. It won't be long before harvest time.
Here's a haiku from Bashō:
石山の石より白し秋の風
ishiyama no ishi yori shiroshi aki no kaze
on this mountain
whiter than the stones:
the wind of autumn
Traditionally the autumn wind was said to be white. The mountain here (ishiyama, "Stone Mountain") was quite famous as being the place where Murasaki Shikibu started writing "The Tale of Genji" some 600 or so years before.
Have a good day, everyone!