# Axis Sally vs. Tokyo Rose **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 16, 2003, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937 "2003-07-16T18:12:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/1 "2003-07-16T18:12:21Z")
We often have heard of Tokyo Rose but almost never hear of Axis Sally. Oddly enough, it appears that Axis Sally was probably far more of a willing collaborator with Nazi Germany than Tokyo Rose was with Japan. But it’s never Axis Sally who gets mentioned. Why is that? ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/2 "2003-07-17T04:15:57Z")
My guess would be that Axis Sally was an embarrassment, being an American-born person who was working for the Enemy, and people preferred to forget that an American Girl could do something so heinous. > **[Women's History](https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-history-4133260)** > > Learn about the half of history missing from many history books with biographies, articles, timelines and other resources on the women—famous and lesser-known—who have shaped our world. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/3 "2003-07-17T04:29:01Z")
Maybe, but Tokyo Rose was an American-born person working for the Enemy too. Maybe it was because she had Japanese parents, though, and wasn’t seen as the “all American Girl”. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/4 "2003-07-17T05:27:03Z")
I think Tokyo Rose had a greater influence in pop culture of the era. It’s interesting to note that she is even more notorious an Axis broadcaster than the great American poet Ezra Pound. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/5 "2003-07-17T15:47:20Z")
It’s also interesting to note that of all of them, she probably was the closest to innocent of any actual treason. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/6 "2003-07-17T16:07:06Z")
IIRC, “Tokyo Rose” was also pardoned. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/7 "2003-07-17T17:06:12Z")
From the [Staff Report](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmtokyorose.html) on Tokyo Rose: > [@](#): > > It was only when the press raised an uproar over her attempt to return to the U.S. in 1948 that Toguri was put on trial. Her former bosses at Radio Tokyo, fearing for their own skins, caved in to government pressure and gave perjured or otherwise distorted testimony that was instrumental in her conviction. She was fined $100,000 and given a 10 year prison sentence, of which she served more than six years. The case was later reopened and she was granted a full pardon by Gerald Ford as his last presidential act in 1977. Today she’s a shopkeeper in Chicago, where you can visit her store. Just don’t look for a sign saying, “Home of Tokyo Rose.” ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/8 "2003-07-17T17:39:09Z")
The Staff Report neglects some juicy details. The “Tokyo Rose” trial is not exactly a shinning moment for America, consisting as it did mostly of the U.S. knowingly arranging perjured testimony by threatening the lives and livihoods of people in U.S. occupied controlled Japan, shipping them to the U.S., and then spending hours every day having them memorize the stories they were to tell on the stand (stories that, it turned out, were fabrications). During the trial, judge excluded virtually every possible line of argument that could have been used in her defense, and the jury foreman was, after the trial, quoted as saying that if it had been possible, under the judge’s instructions, to acquit her, they would have. It gets worse though. The only reason Toguri was ever accused of being “the” Tokyo Rose in the first place is that American reporters tracked her down and offered her 2,000 dollars (a huge sum in Japan at the time) to say that she was the “original” Tokyo Rose. When she first met with them she told them (correctly) that she was just one of many girls the Japanese employed on broadcast radio, but if the name Tokyo Rose applied to them, then it applied to her too, and she would take the money. Stupid and greedy indeed, but she had no idea, at the time, that Tokyo Rose was thought to be a traitor. When she returned to the states she found Walter Winchell, himself a radio star in the U.S., condeming her and demanding that she be arrested and tried for treason. The Truman administration, frightened about its election prospects, decided that it couldn’t appear too soft on traiters and decided to indict, even though its own internal reports concluded that there were no legitimate grounds to do so. In contrast the the Tokyo Roses who mostly broadcast entainment and even read secretly comforting messages written by Australian POWs, Axis Sally was the real deal: ranting on and on about the Jews and all Roosavelt’s “kike boyfriends.” Of course, IMHO treason as a separate crime is a neanderthal throwback to a sort of grunting tribal nationalism, but that’s neither here nor there. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/9 "2003-07-17T17:41:14Z")
“Traiters, precious, what’s traiters?” -Gollum ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/10 "2003-07-17T21:45:52Z")
And yet even though Axis Sally was the real deal and Ms. Toguri was just a patsy, we never hear about Axis Sally. I still wonder why. ---
**Author:** ![Blackeyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f6c823/32.png) [@Blackeyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackeyes)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2003, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/axis-sally-vs-tokyo-rose/188937/11 "2003-07-20T22:03:03Z")
Axis Sally used to teach piano in Illionois for nigh on to thirty years after the war ended. :eek: “But MOM! She really _is_ a nazi!”