By Ralf Seiffe
In the last several days, the newspapers reported that Iva Toguri D’Aquino, 90, has died in Chicago. In 1949, Mrs. D’Aquino was convicted of treason for allegedly giving aid and comfort to the Japanese as the infamous “Tokyo Rose” during World War II. She was later pardoned by Gerald Ford when supporters raised enough evidence that she was coerced into becoming the radio propagandist. But, whether she was or wasn’t the voice heard all over the Pacific, the incident shows that the United States once took such antics seriously.
No one ever appeared on the Japanese radio service under the name of Tokyo Rose and there is lots of substantiation that the moniker was the invention of American GIs. Miss Toguri, who was a U.S. citizen born in Los Angeles, did appear on NHK radio as “Orphan Ann” and billed herself as “Your Number One Enemy in the South Pacific.” Despite the fact that she was herself essentially a POW, that she clandestinely supported captured American prisoners and that she cheered the appearance of general Doolittle’s raiders, Toguri was arrested and charged with eight counts of treason. After the most expensive federal trial until that time, she was convicted of a single count of “speaking into a microphone about loss of ships.”
Orphan Ann’s purpose, along with the other women who broadcasted to our soldiers, was to destroy their morale and their will to fight. Using scraps of information that was true but often out of context, they attempted to create doubt in our servicemen’s minds about their commanders, the progress of the war and even the fidelity of wives and girlfriends back home. The idea was to broadcast familiar music and in a familiar format--Orphan Ann’s program was called “Zero Hour”-–work in comments that would create worries for our guys and diminish their fighting potential. This was done by using small scraps of the truth, information out of context, lies and all the other tricks of accomplished propagandists.
There isn’t much evidence that the cast of women that became known, collectively, as Tokyo Rose achieved their desired effect. One wonders, however, if the effort would have been more successful if the target audience had been the U.S. public rather than our servicemen. What seed of doubt could a Lindbergh or another American First-er plant in the American psyche to help them forget Pearl Harbor?
We may now have the answer. In the past few day, the newspapers have also reported that a consensus of the national intelligence community has formed, finding that the U.S. involvement in Iraq has had the effect of creating more terrorists. It turns out this information was leaked and perhaps so far out of context as to be misleading.
The classified report from which this information was purloined was produced during the early part of the year and, presumably, has been floating around Washington since then. That the very inflammatory, but deceptive part that found its way to the pages of The New York Times only now says much more about the leaker than it accurately portrays about the intelligence estimate.
One would think it dangerous and foolish for the Democrats to leak such selective parts of the report. If it was in their possession, wouldn’t they have known the rest of the Estimate could become public and undercut their credibility? That’s exactly what happened when the President unexpectedly announced he would declassify all of the report’s findings.
During the time between the leak appearing in Sunday’s paper and the posting of the rest of the National Intelligence Estimate’s findings a day later, something curious happened. Several anti-war politicians leaped up with the tiny bit of the report in hand to speak into the microphones and report potential American losses. Their purpose was to destroy American’s will to fight, just the thing that convicted the woman once believed to be Tokyo Rose.
The enemy no longer needs an unwilling Iva Toguri D’Aquino to undermine the morale of Americans as we begin to realize we face our own world war. With this incident, some public officials reveal themselves as volunteers to fill her job. Whether they are any more effective now than “Tokyo Rose” was then will be decided in November.
