Tokyo Rose was a generic name given by Allied troops in the Pacific War to several English-speaking female broadcasters from Japan. Intended to undermine the morale of Allied listeners, Tokyo Rose often delivered news scripts in a playful, sexy, tongue-in-cheek fashion. Many apocryphal stories circulated that she could accurately name units and individual servicemen, but none of these stories were ever substantiated.
The most famous Tokyo Rose, Iva Toguri was a native to Los Angeles who was stranded in Japan when the war broke out. After the war, Toguri was convicted by the Allies of being one of the war’s most notorious enemy propagandists and served 11 years in prison. Later evidence, however, showed that she actually was not a Japanese sympathizer and had tried to indicate disbelief and irony in her English-language broadcasts from Imperial Japan. Twenty years after her release from prison Toguri received an official presidential pardon for her role in the war.