Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

As soon as Mitsushio left, Zero Hour announcer Ted Ince turned on Cousens. “What the hell do you mean, ‘we’?” Ince said. “I want no part of this!”

“Hold your horses,” Cousens calmly assured him. “This is our chance to make a complete joke of Zero Hour .” Cousens knew the Japanese wanted a segment that would make Americans miss all the things they loved most about America. He knew he’d have to come up with something that would sound authentic to the Japanese while making American troops laugh. The idea he was about to let Ince in on had come to him a few nights earlier.

“How?” Ince asked.

Cousens smiled. “Sex.” Other radio shows at the time used a sultry woman to make the troops miss their wives and girlfriends back home. Cousens planned to do the same, but with a very different result. “We’ll use a woman.”

He knew it could not just be any woman; it had to be someone with exactly the right kind of voice. The Japanese would mistake her banter for flirting, but the Americans would clearly recognize it as over-the-top comedy.

“Who?” asked Ince.

“The only woman we can trust,” said Cousens, who was enjoying the little resistance effort he’d been waging behind enemy lines. “Iva.”

Tokyo

November 13, 1943

“This is crazy!”

Iva had just performed the first script Cousens had written for her. She knew there were at least six other women who broadcasted to Allied troops in English over Japanese radio stations, but she didn’t own a radio so she’d never actually heard their shows.

“I can’t do this! I’m no good at it,” she said.

“You are exactly what we want,” Cousens promised. “We’re not looking for an experienced announcer and we don’t want a sweet, gentle voice. We want a Yankee voice with a certain personality to it—a little touch of a WAC officer and a lot of cheer.”

Iva still looked dubious. “I’ll coach you to read the scripts the way I want them,” Cousens said, “so don’t worry.”

Iva liked the idea of being needed by the handsome, charming Aussie, even if it was only in a professional sense. She may have had serious doubts about her own broadcasting talent, but she had no doubts about the coaching abilities of Major Charles Cousens.

“How long will you stay with the show?” she asked.

“Until we’ve defeated Japan,” he told her. He had no desire to leave so long as the show was accomplishing his purposes, but it was kind of a moot point anyway. The Japanese weren’t letting him go anywhere until the war was over.

That was good enough for Iva. She smiled and nodded.

“Me too.”

New York Times Trivia Quiz, December 19, 1943

Question: Who is Tokyo Rose?

Answer: Tokyo Rose delivers Japanese propaganda broadcasts—in cultured English accents—directed to American fighting men in the Pacific. The men are amused by Japan’s exaggeration of American losses.

Tokyo

April 21, 1944

“Greetings, everybody!” Iva said into her radio microphone. “This is Ann back at the microphone and presiding over Radio Tokyo’s special program for listeners in Australia and the South Pacific.”

Cousens had chosen the name “Ann” as Iva’s radio alter ego because it was an abbreviation for announcer .

“How’s my orphan family? Have you been good boys?”

There were other female disc jockeys, Cousens had explained to Iva, who might have asked this question in a sultry, sexy way. But he wanted her to sound jolly, like a happy sister or an old friend. He’d coached her through every word.

“All right, then, we’ll have some music. A tango to start with. ‘I Kiss Your Hand, Madam.’ ”

As the record played, Iva sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She thought of her old life in California—a life full of friends and movies and dancing. She desperately wished she was back there, but she was also happy to have found a way to serve a purpose in the war. The thought that she might be helping the Allies in some small way made her get out of bed each morning with a smile.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Iva said as the tango faded. “Any latecomers listening? Well, you’re sharing Radio Tokyo’s regular program for Australia and the South Pacific. Dangerous enemy propaganda, so beware! Our next propagandist is Arthur Fiedler with the Boston Pops Orchestra playing Ketèlbey’s ‘In a Persian Market.’ ”

After a few more songs, interspersed with some brief chatter scripted by Cousens, Iva’s twenty minutes on Zero Hour were up. She turned the microphone over to Ted Ince and headed out the door, singing the UCLA football fight song, Gershwin’s “Strike Up the Band,” in her head. At her request, Cousens had made it a regular on the program, knowing that any homesickness it might induce would be trumped by the song’s timely and inspiring lyrics.

There is work to be done, to be done.

There’s a war to be won, to be won.

Come, you son of a, son of a gun.

Take your stand. Fall in line. Yea a bow.

Come along. Let’s go. Hey, leader. Strike up the band!

Iva Toguri smiled. When the war is won , she thought, maybe I’ll make a career of this radio stuff .

Time , April 10, 1944

No one knows for sure who Tokyo Rose really is. [ Listeners ] are inclined to think she is a Japanese, born on the island of Maui, Hawaii, and educated there. Her voice is cultured, with a touch of Boston.

Tokyo

March 19, 1945

“Will you marry me, Iva?”

Iva liked Felipe d’Aquino, a bony, kindhearted twenty-five-year-old Portuguese-Japanese pacifist known as “Phil” to his friends. They had bonded at work over their shared opposition to the Japanese war effort. In a city with few American-sympathizers, Iva did not have a lot of people with whom to celebrate her little victories over Radio Tokyo.

“Yes!” responded Iva, feigning some of the excitement she’d seen from newly engaged girls in movies by wrapping her arms around Phil. He deserved that much at least.

He is kind and loyal and in love with me , Iva told herself. He will make a very good husband .

Okinawa, Japan

August 30, 1945

Clark Lee was one of the most famous war correspondents in America. Six feet tall, with smooth dark hair and tanned skin, the thirty-eight-year-old had just been through an exciting four years. Trapped on Corregidor with MacArthur, he had escaped on the last submarine off the besieged island, then published a book titled They Call It Pacific , covering the European Theater. Lee returned to the Pacific in time to hear the Japanese emperor’s surrender statement live on Radio Tokyo. Tomorrow morning, he and a small group of reporters were scheduled to fly to the Japanese mainland. Now that combat had ended, General MacArthur was planning to touch down at the Atsugi Naval Air Facility, forty miles from Tokyo. It would be a historic day.

As Lee relaxed on a stone wall by an ancient Japanese burial tomb, he looked at his old friend and fellow reporter, Harry Brundidge. Short and balding, Brundidge was twenty years past his prime—which had come with a series of stories he’d written about organized crime in St. Louis. Since then, alcohol and aging had taken their toll and Brundidge looked every bit of his forty-eight years. He was still as brash and daring as ever; he just wasn’t as good.

“Want to make a deal?” Brundidge asked Lee.

“What kind of deal?” Lee liked Brundidge, but he wasn’t about to follow him blindly.

“Well, we’ve both lived in Japan,” he replied. “So we know something about the Japanese people that others don’t: when Hirohito told them to quit, they quit. I’m willing to bet that, despite our orders to stay out of Tokyo until the Allied occupation force gets there, it’s perfectly safe. I say we make a break for the capital the minute we land.”