{"id":30226,"date":"2013-05-17T13:22:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T17:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=30226"},"modified":"2013-05-17T13:27:11","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T17:27:11","slug":"wit-life-234-tokyo-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/17\/wit-life-234-tokyo-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #234: Tokyo Rose"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a> is <\/strong><\/em>a periodic series written<\/strong><\/em> by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-<\/strong><\/em>03). She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es s<\/strong><\/em>ome of the interesting<\/strong><\/em> tidb<\/strong><\/em>its and t<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>ends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Last night I had the chance to see the p<\/span><\/span><\/span>lay Iva: The Myth of Toky<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>o Rose<\/a> at Asia Society.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Prior to seeing the performance I<\/span> had hea<\/span>r<\/span>d <\/span>of Tokyo Rose, but was not aware<\/span> of what the story behind this name was.\u00a0 <\/span>It was actually created by Allied forces in the South Pacific <\/span> during WWII to describe English speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda, <\/span><\/span>which was intended <\/span> to disrupt the morale of the Allied force listeners.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/h1>\n

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The play\u2019s protagonist is Iva Toguri D\u2019Aquino, a Japanese-American who later married a Filipino.\u00a0 <\/span>She had the misfortune of going to Japan to take care of a sick relative in 1941, and being stuck there once war broke out.\u00a0 <\/span>When the Japanese government asked her to renounce her American citizenship and she refused, she was forced to work at Radio Tokyo as an announcer.\u00a0 <\/span>The program was The Zero Hour, which<\/span> consist<\/span>ed <\/span>of propaganda-tinged skits and slanted news reports<\/span>,<\/span> as well as popular American musi<\/span>c.<\/span><\/h1>\n

Iva was made into a scapegoat when she was wrongly identified as the original Tokyo Rose.\u00a0 <\/span>Post-war she was detained in Japan\u2019s Sugamo Prison for a year and investigated by the U.S. military, but eventually released due to lack of evidence.\u00a0 <\/span>When she attempted to return home, her case was reopened by the FBI amidst much media pressure.\u00a0 <\/span>After her 1949 trial she was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to 10 years in prison (of which she served over six years).\u00a0 In 1974, <\/span>journalists found that key witnesses claimed they were forced to lie during testimony<\/span>, and that Iva\u2019s broadcasts had been innocuous.\u00a0 <\/span>She was pardoned by President Ford in 1977.<\/span><\/p>\n

The production of this play was part of Asia’s Society’s commemoration of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month<\/a>, which began in 1977 as a 10 day period and was later extended.\u00a0 You can find a variety of events associated with this celebration, including a festival being held by the Coalition of Asian\/Pacific Americans in Chinatown tomorrow afternoon<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Last night I had the chance to see the play Iva: The Myth of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-7Rw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30226"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30243,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30226\/revisions\/30243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}