Andre
Frattino and Kate Kasenow (ill.). Tokyo Rose--Zero Hour: A Japanese American Woman’s Persecution and
Ultimate Redemption After World War II. Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2022. 128 pp. US $16.99. ISBN: 978-4-8053-1695-5.
Those
of us who grew up in the 1940s certainly heard about Tokyo Rose but had no idea
who Iva Yoguri was, let alone were we aware of the injustices she endured from
both the Japanese and U.S. authorities, an unfair judge, a manipulated jury,
and shameful reporters the likes of Walter Winchell, Harry Brundidge, and Clark
Lee.
Iva
Yoguri was a Nisei (born of Japanese immigrant parents and educated in the
U.S.) who fulfilled her family’s wishes and visited a sick aunt in Tokyo in
mid-1941. Her passage back to Los Angeles was thwarted when war against Japan
was declared by the U.S. on Dec. 8, 1941. By November 1943, she was coerced to
join Radio Tokyo as an announcer of Japanese propaganda, using the name,
“Orphan Ann.” During her broadcasting stint, Iva found subtle ways to change
her messages from what the Japanese intended.
After
Japan’s surrender, Iva was accused of being a traitor, suffered through a
stacked courtroom that sent her to prison for ten years. After serving more
than six years, she was released. In 1977, President Gerald Ford granted Iva
Yoguri a full and unconditional pardon, and in 2006, she was honored by The
World War II Veterans Committee for “her indomitable spirit, love of country,
and the example of courage she has given her fellow Americans.”
This
is an important story that, like other travesties of injustice and inhumanity,
needs to be told (or retold). Fortunately, comics, comix, and graphic novels,
in recent decades, have unearthed some of them, such as the sending of
Japanese-Americans to concentration camps in February 1942; the brutalization
of Native-Americans, and the sad history of African Americans. There are many
other injustices or controversial events, both historical or contemporary,
deserving to be treated by graphic novels (e.g., the circus-like, 1930s trial
of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping/death of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s
child; the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, etc.)
This
type of investigative cartooning requires much research and a yeoman effort to
get the emotional and cultural modes correct. Andre Frattino was very much
aware of these needs--pulling information from “recorded testimonies, personal
interviews, and documented statements” and including in his seven-person team,
three of what he called “sensitivity” readers. The team provided a few extras
to aid in contextual, historical, and linguistic understanding, such as an
epilogue, timeline, quotes from actual broadcasts by “Orphan Ann,” and a small
bibliography. Letterer Janice Chiang shared her own experience of “straddling
two worlds and two cultures,” as Iva Yoguri did, in the Foreword, bringing in
issues of assimilation, racism, and xenophobia, while Frattino’s Preface
prepared readers to enter the visual story with background.
The
publisher, Tuttle, has a long and proud history of bringing awareness to East
Asia. Its founder, Charles E. Tuttle, served on the staff of General Douglas
MacArthur in 1945, charged with reviving the Japanese publishing industry. He
founded the company in 1950, and since then, Tuttle Publishing has brought out
more than 6,000 titles, including James Michener’s classic, Hokusai’s
Sketches.
Tokyo
Rose… is an eye-opening volume, written and
drawn simply, but meticulously and authoritatively, making it a book that needs
to be read by all who exited an educational system that favored only the
America is flawless refrain.
Posts
