SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post

Jimbuna · 09-06-11, 05:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Torplexed

According to John Toland's book, The Rising Sun Iva supported herself in Japan as a typist with the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation. At the behest of an American Army captain--an ex-radio commentator who had been 'persuaded' to return to his old trade for the Japanese--she agreed to make 15 minute daily broadcasts to Allied soldiers. In her capacity as disk jockey she met and became friends with other American POW's who were also broadcasting propaganda for the Japanese. (They were subsequently pardoned after the war because they had been forced to do it under "immediate threat of death or bodily harm.")

During her trial Iva's lawyers put the blame on the Army captain who had taught her the broadcasting business. They were informed that the captain was not under the jurisdiction of the court at which point the jury refused to charge her. When the prosecution assured the jury that the captain would also be brought to justice, Iva was indicted.

The captain was never tried. He was later promoted to major. Unfortunately, Toland doesn't give a name.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Highbury

I may be wrong here but I thought it was an Australian, Maj. Charles Cousens that wrote her scripts, not an American Captain.

Quote:

Soon after the capitulation on 15 February, A.I.F. headquarters in Malaya inadvertently revealed to the Japanese that Cousens had been a radio announcer. He refused to broadcast on their behalf while in Changi prison. Taken alone from a prison-camp in Burma, he was shipped at the end of July to Japan. There, under threat and fear of torture and death (as he would always claim), he wrote propaganda scripts, 'coached' English-speaking Japanese announcers and made short-wave broadcasts over Radio Tokyo. He maintained that the broadcasts were of minimal use to the Japanese, and that he had frequently sabotaged them by subtle ridicule and by inserting information useful to the Allies. Cousens also worked on a propaganda programme, 'Zero Hour', and chose as its main presenter an American woman of Japanese parentage—Iva Toguri (later d'Aquino), the misnamed 'Tokyo Rose'—who tried to help him undermine the broadcasts.

SOURCE

Thanks guys....it's all relatively new to me