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!
It is really a sad story. However, luckily she was proved innocent after 20 years.
Here I also have such a miserable story. I doubt what time the remale role will be proved innocent.
An American teacher was found dead all of sudden in his rent room in China on Sep. 7, 2015. The Chinese police ruled of murder or suicide and the preliminary judgement was he might die of a heart attack due to lack of autopsy. However, his American family refused to come to China and deal with his funeral.
(The reason is rather ridiculous…but it is so true. ) They claimed that Chinese government was not in good terms with American government, so they were afraid that they would also have the life risks if going to China. And the American consulate in China adviced them not to go to China since they wouldn't be able to help American citizens in case of any accident in China.
More miserably, his Chinese training school also refused to deal with his funeral without his American family's arrival in China.
At this time our poor female character need to come on the stage! She was nobody but the deceased's Chinese wife. In fact, it had only been 14 months since they registered for marriage in China. God knows only the whole 15 months after her American husband came to China, his life came to an end so suddenly! As a result, his American family demanded that his Chinese wife deal with his funeral lonely in China but refusing to offer any financial aid. Another cruel truth is his Chinese wife wasn't allowed to get American visa. It is all due to the horrible ignorance on the visa law. She had mistakenly applied to American tourist visa, instead of American immigrant/marriage visa twice, and she was denied twice during the marriage. Now her American husband had been dead, which meant that she lost the chance of applying for American visa forever. She was from the low,poor grass-root class in China. As is known to all, getting American visa is just the privilege of the wealthy class from all the Third World countries. US is just their dream! Now all her lifelong dreams collapsed all of sudden. A bolt from the blue!
She only had one wish: her American husband must have a decent funeral. If possible, she even would rather to give up the title of his Chinese wife and not be involved in it. Pray let him bid farewell to this world decently and honourably! He had suffered a lot when he was alive. He deserved being treated respectedly and solemnly since he was one of the best English teachers and he devoted his life to teaching English in China. His Chinese wife was just his first Chinese student. They met each other via internet.
She told him that he still had the chance to give full play to his talent--teaching English in Chinese university! But he was reluctant to leave his kids any more and maybe he also didn't believe her completely. For her part, it had been ok enough to have the chance to accompany him online. God knows that she worshipped him! She worshipped such a knowledgeable American scholar. What's more, she especially loved the western knight culture and always tried to get rid of the male-dominated Chinese culture. Marrying such a white western scholar was just her childhood dream.At first he had a decent and well-paid job and a family of 4 children, he was a registered pharmacist in US. He even owned his own drug store, being a boss later. Unfortunately his drugstore was spotted by the drug traffickers soon. He had a death threat. If he refused to sell drugs for them, they would kill his kids. He asked for help from the police, nobody would offer help to him. He had no other choice but surrender, which proved to be a domino effect with bad events. 2 years later he was arrested in prison and his pharmacist licence was suspended for good. After he was released from the prison, his wife divorced him and he was jobless. Just at the very moment, fate let him and his future Chinese wife meet each other online. He told her that he was more heartbroken for being not a pharmacist than being divorced. He was also not young any more, and he could only be engaged in some low blue-collar jobs such as being a worker in a restaurant or gas station. She couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He was such a friendly and kind American! God, he was innocent and wronged! He also mentioned that in prison, reading the Tao Te Ching--a book about Chinese Taoism (which has been introduced by @raj808 in his Hive blogs) became his biggest comfort--a kind of philosophy of enantidromia!
5 years passed. He finally saved an amount of money to fly to China and visit her. Oh, you see, no matter in which country, even in the most developed country such as US, people in the low society all live a not-easy life. Going abroad is just a dream for them, not to mention such a closed country--China. When he got his Chinese tourist visa smoothly, he was excited like a child.
It took the whole 5 years for her to wait for him from online to offline. When she finally met him in the Beijing international airport, her heart beat so fast that it nearly jumped out of her breast. They had a happy time for 5 days in China. They climbed the Great Wall and visited the Ming Tombs(imperial mausoleums of the Ming Dynasty)
in Beijing together. She also led him to visit her hometown and her parents. It was just the first time for her father to see the foreigners in reality. (Her mother once saw some African people during the era of Chairman Mao). All in all, his appearance was definitely a rare scene in the Chinese countryside.
Then in the second year, he flied to China again and taught English in a training school. Her original intention was he taught English in Chinese university. But if this trainning school would like to accept him, ok, they just accepted it! Moreover, it was the famous New-oriental training school (which is a famous English training organization similar to Alibaba in China--but both belong to the private institutions). Who knows it just took another domino effect？The training school failed to offer him Chinese work visa, they had to go to HK for getting his marriage visa for 2 years. Whereas, if in the public school such evil and cool kind of behavior couldn't happen. The public school would shoulder the responsibility and take the initiative to pay the death insurance for foreigner teachers/experts, etc. More despicably, his Chinese school unexpectedly told his American family that he taught English illegally in China due to lack of work visa, so there was not any compensation. It was Sheer nonsense! The public Chinese school was absolutely not like this! She never dreamt that this private Chinese school could be so treacherous!
All in all, the final result was his poor Chinese wife had to cremate his remains lonely without any support in material and spirit from China and US, and mailed most of his ash to US quietly. His American family blamed all faults on her. His son even cursed her as a greedy evil Chinese woman only for money and American visa. It is just her who cheated his father to China and made him die in China miserably! She just got nothing and he had down with China and her forever...
God knows when she can be proved innocent! Maybe 20 years later or maybe never...Who knows？