The Woman Convicted of Being Tokyo Rose Has Died

The woman convicted of being Tokyo Rose, the Japanese propagandist with the seductive voice, died today. Iva Toguri D’Aquino was actually an American citizen, and she was convicted of treason in 1949. Tokyo Rose was the name given to the several women during World War II who broadcast disheartening messages to US servicemen, telling them they were doomed to fighting for a lost cause and that, in the meantime, their wives and girlfriends were cheating on them back home.

Eventually D’Aquino became targeted as the face of Tokyo Rose and was convicted in 1949 on charges of treason on the basis of being found guilty on just one of eight unusually vague charges. All the time she was in jail D’Aquino denied ever betraying the United States, and most legal scholars consider her conviction to far more damaging to America than anything she made have actually done as Tokyo Rose. The conviction, in fact, is though to be brought on by the still simmering racial suspicion of Japanese-Americans. In many ways, D’Aquino’s experience serves as a forerunner of what some Muslims in America are undergoing today.

Such was the aspersion cast upon her conviction that she eventually received a full Presidential pardon from Gerald Ford on his last day in office. Treason is actually the only crime that is specifically defined within the US Constitution, which lists it, in part, as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Considering the fact that the administration of Ronald Reagan was sending weapons to Iran just a few scant years after they had taken American hostages yet no one was convicted of treason, perhaps it is time to more sharply define exactly what constitutes this crime.