Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan to the United States on 15 August 1945 as Soviet armies invaded his puppet state in Manchuria. After the Second World War ended, the US hunted down a broadcaster who had betrayed her country.
Between 1941 and 1945 a succession of honey-voiced women broadcast in English on Radio Tokyo, serenading the American soldiers who were pushing the Imperial Japanese Army back across the Pacific.
Radio Tokyo would pump out propaganda and misinformation on behalf of the Japanese Empire, including exaggerated claims about US casualties and erroneous claims about the sinking of American aircraft carriers, submarines and battleships.
The Americans dubbed all the female broadcasters “Tokyo Rose” but when the war ended in August 1945 only one woman was arrested and punished for her role on the radio.
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, 29, had been a presenter a programme called the Zero Hour and referred to herself as Orphan Annie, but it was the Tokyo Rose nickname which stuck.
But how had this Los Angeles-born zoology graduate ended up being accused of pumping out propaganda for a country which committed horrific war crimes across Asia?
As Toguri later explained, it was all due to a sick aunt.
She claimed she was nominated by her family to travel back to Japan from California in July 1941 to take care of the ailing relative.
Five months later Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and suddenly the land of her parents was at war with the country she had…
