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On July 5, 1941, Toguri sailed for Japan from Los Angeles' San Pedro area, to visit an ailing relative and to possibly study medicine. The U.S. State Department issued her a Certificate of Identification; she did not have a passport. In September, Toguri applied to the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan for a passport, stating she wished to return to her home in the U.S. Her request was forwarded to the State Department, but the answer had not returned by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) and she was stranded in Japan.
With the beginning of American involvement in the Pacific War, Toguri, like a number of other Americans in Japanese territory, was pressured by the Japanese central government under Hideki Tojo to renounce her United States citizenship. She refused to do so. Toguri was subsequently declared an enemy alien and was refused a war ration card.[1] "A tiger does not change its stripes" is a quote attributed to her.[1] To support herself, she found work as a typist at a Japanese news agency and eventually worked in a similar capacity for Radio Tokyo.
In November 1943, Allied prisoners of war forced to broadcast propaganda selected her to host portions of the one-hour radio show The Zero Hour. Her producer was an Australian Army officer, Major Charles Cousens, who had pre-war broadcast experience and had been captured at the fall of Singapore. Cousens had been tortured and coerced to work on radio broadcasts,[1] as had his assistants, U.S. Army Captain Wallace Ince and a Philippine Army Lieutenant, Normando Ildefonso "Norman" Reyes. Toguri had previously risked her life smuggling food into the nearby Prisoner of War (POW) camp where Cousens and Ince were held, gaining the inmates' trust.[1] After she indicated her refusal to broadcast anti-American propaganda, Toguri was assured by Major Cousens and Captain Ince that they would not write scripts having her say anything against the United States.[1] Toguri would then host a total of 340 broadcasts of The Zero Hour.[1]
Under the stage names "Ann" (for "Announcer") and later "Orphan Anne"[1] and possibly "Your Favorite Enemy, Anne", reportedly in reference to the comic strip character Little Orphan Annie, Toguri performed in comedy sketches and introduced recorded music, but never participated in any actual newscasts, with on-air speaking time of generally about 20 minutes. True to the word of the two prisoners of war that Toguri worked under, no anti-Allies propaganda was found in her broadcasts.[1] Though earning only 150 yen, or about $7, per month, she used some of her earnings to feed POWs[2] smuggling food in as she did before.
Toguri aimed most of her comments toward her fellow Americans ("my fellow orphans"), using American slang and playing American music. In one of the few surviving recordings of her show, she refers to herself as "your 'Number One' enemy." In contemporary American slang (especially that used by US Marines and Naval forces in the Pacific), she was telling them that she was their "best enemy" (in other words, their friend), while the Japanese thought that it meant that she was their greatest enemy.
At no time did Toguri call herself "Tokyo Rose" during the war, and in fact there was no evidence that any other broadcaster had done so. The name was a catch-all used by Allied forces for all of the women who were heard on Japanese propaganda radio.
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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."
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