The name of the Rose was Iva Toguri D'Aquino, or so the story goes.
Mrs. D’Aquino died Wednesday in
Chicago where she had lived a quiet life since she was pardoned of the crime of treason she had been convicted of by a very emotional and largely patrio-paranoid
America in 1949.
The evidence that she was the radio voice known to us as the propagandist Tokyo Rose was not conclusive, but public need for someone to punish was great enough that a case against her was patched together and she was convicted. Strangely, had she been willing to renounce her American citizenship, she might have gone free, but she did not.
None the less, by 1977 the railroading of Tokyo Rose seemed more like a lynching and Gerald Ford, the last decent Republican to occupy the White House, pardoned her.
A sad little story, but it’s enlightening to see how we have changed as a country; as a culture and as a civilization. The facts were hard to come by in her case. She had been stranded in Japan where she had been visiting an ailing family member when the war broke out and not speaking Japanese, she was lucky to get a job at a radio station. The nature of her employment was never completely established, but we did not make her stand naked in a meat locker for days, we did not beat her or waterboard her, or send her to Uzbeckistan to have cattle prods inserted in her orifices. She did not disappear into George Bush’s Gulag never to be seen again.
She was allowed to confront her accusers, she was allowed to know the charges against her, she was allowed council. The transcripts of her trial were available so that in subsequent years, they could be re-examined. There were perhaps transgressions, and excesses, but there was due process and the rule of law.
In the 1940’s it seemed obvious who the good guys were. It’s not that way any more.
4 comments:
So true.
Too many people -- people that I talk to -- justify the imprisonment of people without access to council on the grounds of "fear".
Since when does due-process only apply to the shop-lifter or other non-violent criminal?
The measure of society is how it conducts itself under stress. We're failing the test.
It's as if the law only protects people already pre-determined to be innocent. Otherwise, if we think you're guilty, the Constitution doesn't apply. That's the twisted logic at play these days.
It's true - it's all about fear. "The terrorists want to kill you and your family" says Bush and although that may be true there's less chance of than than there is of me being eaten by a shark or hit by lightning and a whole lot less of a chance as me being killed by some dimwit 20 something in an SUV talking on the phone.
Eveything about the Bush takeover is so pathetic, but this is truly what we deserve with our "healing process" and our swooning over two buildings in New York. Where is the country that stood up to Hitler and Hirohito?
They're lying down and begging Bush to do to them what he wants.
You're so right. The accused "Tokoyo Rose" was not denied any of the rights that American culture and tradition demanded. Man, what a different country we live in today. So sad.
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