INSIGHT STRAIGHT
Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose

By Jim Tuck

     In the annals of radio-treason, the names Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose have the same symbiotic ring as “ham ’n eggs” or “Mutt and Jeff.” In reality, there was a world of difference between the two. One was an authentic (and very nasty) traitor while the other was a victim who acted under coercion. Of interest is that neither woman ever used the names by which they became infamous; the appellations were the inventions of GIs who listened to their broadcasts. “Axis Sally” billed herself as “Midge at the Mike” and “Tokyo Rose” as “Orphan Annie.”
     Axis Sally was born in 1900 in Portland, Maine as Mildred Elizabeth Sisk. Her parents divorced and she took the surname of her stepfather, a dentist named Robert Gillars. After graduating from Hunter College in New York, she combined the occupations of salesgirl, waitress, clerk, cashier and bit player in musical comedies. She took trips to Europe in 1929 and 1933. Unable to make it in the theater, she moved to Germany in 1935, working as an instructor at Berlitz and then at Radio Berlin. Her wartime broadcasts began on December 11, 1941 and lasted until May 6, 1945.
     Gillars’s broadcasts were particularly distinguished for their cruelty. She was somehow able to obtain specific identities and would torment GI Joe Jones, shivering in a foxhole, about how his girl back home was having a high old time with his school classmate, Charlie Smith, who had succeeded in avoiding military service. Captured after the war, it came out at her trial that she had attempted to worm information out of captured GIs by posing as a Red Cross representative. Two other ex-POWS testified that she threatened them when they scoffed at her attempt to feed them Nazi propaganda. Convicted of treason, Gillars received a 10-30 year sentence, of which she served 13.
     By contrast, we have the poign-ant story of a Japanese-American woman named Iva Toguri. She was born in Los Angeles in 1916, ironically on the 4th of July. Educated at UCLA, she had the misfortune to be trapped in Japan by war’s outbreak when she was visiting a sick aunt. Compelled to work as a typist at Radio Tokyo, she was one of twenty women chosen to do the “Tokyo Rose” broadcasts. She had been recommended by an Australian POW, Major Charles Cousens, a Sydney celebrity in civilian life. Cousens, in a subtle effort to sabotage the broadcasts, chose Iva deliberately because she had neither broadcast experience nor a compelling voice. Not arrested till 1949, Toguri was convicted on the testimony of two Japanese-Americans, who were later found to have lied under oath. Sentenced to ten years, she served six. In later years, several writers and investigative reporters put forth the view that Toguri’s conviction was a miscarriage of justice. In 1977 she was granted a full pardon by President Gerald Ford.