Iva Toguri D'Aquino, 90; 'Tokyo Rose' in WWII

Born to Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles on Independence Day in 1916, Iva Ikuko Toguri led a comfortable, middle-class life as a child. Her father was a small-business owner who tried to assimilate, and his daughter grew up speaking no Japanese.

She attended a Methodist church, played tennis and piano and enjoyed hiking and swing music. During her school years, she "was a popular student and was considered a loyal American," the FBI Web site said.

She cared for her mother, who was disabled by diabetes, and hoped to pursue a career in medicine. She graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1941 with a zoology degree.

When an aunt in Japan became gravely ill, she was asked by the family to visit Japan and care for her. Mrs. D'Aquino did not have time to apply for a passport, but the U.S. State Department gave her a certificate of identification that allowed her to travel.

Arriving in Japan in July 1941, she was at a loss: She neither spoke the language nor could stomach the food. She was said to have "detested rice" and to have packed a supply of chocolate, coffee and canned meat to avoid eating the local cuisine, according to the World War II Veterans Committee publication "World War II Chronicles."

Trapped in Japan

After the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that December, she could not leave Japan. In the face of pressure by the Japanese government, she refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship. Japanese authorities labeled her, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans in Japan at the time, an enemy alien and denied her a food-ration card.

The authorities declined to place her with other foreign nationals, as she had requested, and instead, she found herself under constant surveillance and harassment by the Kempeitai, or military police.

She also was without help from her aunt and uncle, who threw her out of their home when she began voicing pro-American sentiments. She found clerical jobs at the Danish Embassy and taught piano. She endured hospital stays for malnutrition, beriberi and gastrointestinal disorders. She borrowed money from friends, including a sympathetic Portuguese national named Filipe d'Aquino, whom she married in 1945.

She became a typist at Radio Tokyo and soon went to work in an office with, among others, Australian broadcaster Charles H. Cousens, who had been captured in Singapore and forced into duty reading the most revolting propaganda on a program called "Zero Hour." In exchange for following the Japanese-approved script, Cousens arranged to read the names of prisoners of war, which he hoped would be of help to Allied families.

Meanwhile, Mrs. D'Aquino brought food and clothing to the starving Allied broadcasters. When radio authorities insisted on a woman's presence on the radio, Cousens recommended Mrs. D'Aquino, whom he came to admire after realizing that she was not a secret agent of the Kempeitai.

After she went on air in November 1943, she and Cousens tried to make a farce of the broadcasts. Hiring Mrs. D'Aquino, with her "gin fog voice," was ideal, Cousens later said. "In view of my idea of making the program a complete burlesque, it was just what I wanted," he added.

Propaganda officials, who were largely incompetent, had little feel for their nuance and double entendres.