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.
Gillarss 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 wars 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 Toguris conviction was a miscarriage of
justice. In 1977 she was granted a full pardon by President Gerald Ford.