Advice for Tokyo Rose
February, 1943—Tokyo, Japanese Empire.
Iva D’Aquino—an expatriate American national—is hired
by Kenchiki Oki, on behalf of the Japanese Ministry of
Propaganda, to serve as the radio figure “Tokyo Rose.”
Forgive me, please. Remind me of your name?
Ah, Iva. Yes, of course. Konichiwa.
I am Mr. Oki—the producer
Of Radio Tokyo’s “Zero Hour” show.
You’ve heard the broadcasts by our prior Roses.
But I suspect that you’ll surpass them all!
To serve the Emperor is now your mission—
We soon shall see great plans come to fruition!
You’re very lucky, Iva! What a boon!
Ten million people soon will hear your voice!
I don’t imply it’s wealth or fame you crave—
I’m sure you’re just a patriot—like me—
Who longs to see Japan at last prevail.
But fame means greatness! When this War is won,
As a celebrity you may go far—
Perhaps our newest motion picture star!
Of course, this all depends upon our side
Prevailing in the War against the foe:
Americans. So shallow. Yet like them
We yen for yen and value our prestige.
Oho! I see your resume reveals
That you yourself are an American!
May I then share a confidence? Me too!
I’m Californian! Schooled at N.Y.U.!
Ha! Two Americans! Well, who’s to say
A Yankee’s barred from rooting for Japan?
We simply turn our backs on what we were.
Their culture is not one which has endured
For countless centuries such as Japan’s.
Their failure will come soon. Then you and I
Will be great heroes—lauded by a crowd
Which worships us! How loved we’ll be! How proud!
But first we have to win. Back to the script.
You’re here to entertain and to instruct.
Their troops are starved for music. Play their tunes,
But in between the boogie-woogie songs
You must dispirit them and sap their drive.
Their frightened thoughts will lead to their demise.
You’ll chide them thus: “How sad that you are losing
Due to the futile course that you are choosing!”
Remind them of Pearl Harbor, how they failed
To shield their own destroyers from our bombs.
They must be made ashamed of their own past—
But spice it sexy with sweet propaganda.
Refer to them as “little orphan Yankees”
Who drift the South Pacific parentless—
Or call them “boneheads” who should not be here.
Then play the music that they want to hear.
Pretend that you are privy to great secrets—
Though all you really do is read a script.
We fan a blaze. Who cares where it might end
So long as we rest comfortably at home?
I sense we’re not so different, you and I.
I have a second secret I must share:
I lose no sleep because of what we do.
The fact is, my convictions are quite few.
It’s not so much that I am for Japan
But that the masses listen to our words!
What influence we have! Too bad the Rose
Who was your predecessor disagreed.
She said harsh things. She could not see the truth:
We influencers are a special breed—
Essential to the mind-craft of all wars.
How impolite she was to call us “whores.”
Poet’s Note
“Tokyo Rose” as a character name was not actually used by the “Zero Hour” broadcasts—it is the name given by Allied troops in the South Pacific during World War II to several female English-speaking radio broadcasters of Japanese propaganda. The programs were broadcast in the South Pacific and North America to demoralize Allied forces abroad and their families at home by emphasizing troops’ wartime difficulties and military losses. “Tokyo Rose” became an important symbol of Japanese villainy and American cartoons, movies and propaganda videos between 1945 and 1960 portrayed her as sexualized, manipulative and deadly to American interests in the South Pacific. The San Francisco Chronicle described Tokyo Rose as the “Mata Hari of radio.”
One of the “Roses” was a U.S. citizen, Iva Toguri D’Aquino, and it was to her that the nickname stuck. When she sought to return to the U.S. after the war, she was prosecuted for treason. She claimed she had acted under duress and was an entertainer rather than a propagandist. Nonetheless, she was found guilty of one count of treason and sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000. Later evidence that witnesses against her—including her supervisor, Kenkichi Oki—had perjured themselves resulted in her being subsequently pardoned by President Gerald Ford. She died in 2006.
Kenkichi Oki, the producer of the Japanese propaganda show “Zero Hour” was born in Sacramento, California in 1913, graduated from New York University and, in 1939, went to Japan on what he later testified was family business. A year later, he became a Japanese citizen and went to work for the international department of NHK, the Japanese broadcasting agency. After the war, Oki left Radio Tokyo but remained in Japan. He worked for The Japan Times before he founded Standard Advertising, where he made a fortune as an advertising executive serving such clients as Seiko and Nissan Motors. He died in 1972.
Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals. He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel Bleeding Stone. He lives in Bradenton, Florida.
This is spooky as it is eloquent. Thank God we don’t see this these days 🙂 Thanks Brian.
Regrettably, we do. Our “Roses” and “Lords Haw-Haw” don’t need to move to an enemy country to spread their treasonous venom—they are right here— Candaces, Tuckers, Kristofs. They are far more dangerous than their WW2-time predecessors.
I was being sarcastic. And yes, you are correct.
You were subtle, Golan, but I saw the sarcasm behind the observation.
Thank you, Michael. You are spot-on. I wrote this poem in a fit of anger at Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens for betraying realty to feather their nests and enjoy being big fish, all on Qatar’s dime. But the timing of publication came out well because we now have the New York Times to also condemn “as whores” for last week’s outrageous dog-rape libel against Israel. They truly don’t care what blaze they set so long as they can smugly sit back and enjoy the conflagration. Bastards.
Thank you very much, Golan. “Spooky, I take it, in the sense that nothing has changed in 80 years. Influencers don’t really believe in much (except themselves) nor do they care how much damage they cause — so long as they can enjoy being celebrities. I came very close to writing a poem about Leni Riefenstahl. I still might.
Another fascinating concept, Tokyo Brian, and so realistically shared that if you claimed you’d actually been there through all of this I’d have trouble not believing you! Your ‘authenticity’ is, as always, remarkable.
Thank you for the generous comment, Mark! I was not there, I promise. I’m not scholarly enough to offer authenticity, but I always hope for just enough credibility to allow for the suspension of disbelief. Because this poem really is not about Tokyo Rose. It’s about Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and some others whose blithely-delivered, conscienceless falsehoods are starting to get me rather riled. As for “Tokyo Brian”… I’m not sure that’s my favorite moniker. I think I’d prefer “Florida Brian.” Or if you really want to make me blush, “Bard Brian.” Thanks again, Bard Mark!
There was a counterpart to Tokyo Rose in the European theater of operations. The allied soldiers called her “Axis Sally,” and she provided the same things that the Japanese female broadcasters did: popular music, some news, propaganda, and the sound of a female voice to lonely young men.
Our female traitors are right here, and some of them sit in Congress, as well as some that take part in subtly pro-Hamas and pro-Iranian broadcasts on mainstream media. In a healthy society, they would be rounded up and garotted. Lord Haw-Haw was hanged, and Ezra Pound spent years in a psycho-ward.
Thanks for this poem, Brian. I like the use of a rhyming couplet to end each stanza. It softens the blank verse, and rounds out each section with a touch of form. I notice that your rhyming couplets end feminine in the first and fifth stanzas, while the bulk of the lines end masculine throughout. This is just enough of a variation to avoid monotony in a long poem.
Thank you very much indeed, Joe, for your insights and kind words about the poem. Yes, Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally and Lord Haw-Haw (Ezra Pound, too) show just how little has changed in 80 years. Except that influencers — including those who I would regard as treasonous (such as the ones you have mentioned) — now have far more reach and are capable of far more damage. Allied soldiers knew that they were on the receiving end of propagandistic BS. Now, in an age where you have to research deeply in order to get at the truth on almost any issue, people just lazily rely on these horrible propagandists without any critical thinking and without it ever occuring to them that these influencers may have a destructive agenda.
I’m astonished at the way treason has become fully accepted into American society. People can scream “Death to America” and people applaud and there are no consequences. Members of Congress can assert support for America’s enemies — again without consequence. Communism is fully embraced by elites and the worst kind of lawlessness is supported by large swathes of society. It’s incomprehensible to me. Even tar and feathers was better.
Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
–Sir John Harington, 1618.
The name, Tokyo Rose, is one which has stuck with me over time as what is now called an influencer. Broadcasting music American soldiers loved in the Pacific Theater and then making them homesick for friends and family was an impetus along with other for Radio Free Europe, which broadcast from Munich, West Germany, where I was stationed during the Cold War. Your nimble wit and creative image production make this another one of your triumphs. The historical details remain intact through your poem along with the thoughts of Mr. Oki that give it a fantasy dimension and feeling which is amplified with the factual Poet’s Note that shows precisely all that was involved in this powerful propaganda ploy.
Thank you very much, Roy! I’d be very interested to hear more about the radio broadcasts you and others in the service listened to during the Cold War. As for the fantasy dimension concerning Mr. Oki’s words… well, of course, I’m just a poet writing a fictitious account of a historical meeting which has no transcript and which may never even have occurred. That’s the great thing about poetry — it exists in a dimension beyond reality in which even historical events may be properly fictionalized. My point is to use a historic corollary to get at the current media — especially podcast hosts — who happily and smugly lie through their teeth for ratings. They are only the latest iteration in a long line of treasonous intentional miscommunicators. Rarely is it innocent. They are all promulgators of blood libels for profit. The character Iago comes to mind.
Very funny Brian: love the bit where they discover they are both Americans – and that line “I’m Californian! Schooled at N.Y.U.!” Hey – wasn’t that where a well-known professor who frequently posts on this site was? We have the same problem in Cambridge, England – the best minds can be so corrupted! LOL!
I suppose you mean me, James. Most institutions of higher learning in the United States are thoroughly infected with left-liberal Wokeism of every conceivable variety, and this includes both administration and faculty, not to mention trustees and big donors. The only exceptions are tough-minded individuals who don’t really care what their colleagues think, or who have a big reputation beyond the walls of the school. They are pariahs, and have zero influence on college policy.
It can’t change at this point, since the leftist control is now solid, entrenched, and massively supported by new protocols for hiring and promotion; cultural alliances outside of academia in NGOs, mass media, and publishing; and the sheer inertia of a long-standing bureaucratic establishment.
The only thing that can destroy this Leviathan is a revolution such as occurred in the Soviet Union, with the overthrow of Communism. When that happened, the Russians swept the universities clean of all Marxist and other left-wing garbage.
Ha ha!!! Of course I meant you, Joe – but naturally, your best mind has not been corrupted – thankfully!
Joe, one of the reasons I’ve always been so impressed with your outspokenness is my awareness that you very much go against the current and probably pay a significant price to do so. Thank you for being one of those “tough-minded individuals” who has a real backbone and the ability and willingness to speak out plainly.
I look forward to the day when Academia is purged of the woke mind virus. I hope it’s not too late for it to happen peacefully. People finally see what has been going on unchecked for too long. But if it takes an antiwoke revolution, so be it. The alternative of allowing this to keep going as-is is neither viable nor acceptable.
Brian, take heart. Smaller campuses have banished the woke mind for a long time. UCLA and NYU are too big and too bureaucratically oriented and too globally ambitious to reap the benefits. As an observer who has worked with college admissions to place high school students where they receive the education promised by intellectual traditions of Western civilization, I see two things that are vital. The first is dedicated, self-sacrificing leadership, especially by college presidents who give up any idea of a larger role in the world. They’ve given us the newly founded and re-founded Hillsdale, Thomas Aquinas, Christendom, Benedictine, Texas Christian, Franciscan, Dallas, and Ave Maria, to name only the ones of which I have personal experience. The other thing necessary is a sense of collegium, in which faculty, staff, and even trustees form a community with students as persons, to insure educational success for most of them when natural pressures of the student time of life overwhelm them. This is when woke institutions and their employees cater to victim identity instead–and may offer woke revolutionary fantasy as a destructive solution.
The work is hard and does go on undercover in enemy territory. I live outside, where there are boundless opportunities, mostly invisible to co-opted advisors such as you write about intelligently in the poem. But even your fictional Oki met an unexpected explosion!
Tbank you for this, Margaret. You have indeed given those of us who worry about Academia some hope. Here in nearby Sarasota, New College of Florida — a formerly woke institution — has followed the example of the independent insitutions you have mentioned. To a large degree this has been due to good governorship by Ron DeSantis who had the president ousted and overhauled the Board of Trustees, replacing its progressives with conservatives. I hope the big universities follow suit.
Thanks for letting me know about New College. Great to hear good things of this school that was still new and classical when my brother and I considered attending. What the Governor has done is a necessary and valuable re-founding–that shows how very difficult matters are when public institutions are involved.
More good news on the academic front comes with trade school and apprenticeship programs. You may remember Charlie Kirk advised students to go straight to work without college (though he himself did think of Hillsdale College, and had some discussions with President Larry Arnn). No higher education at all can be sad and limiting in a lifelong way for young persons who have modest intellectual gifts–so one exciting opportunity is a modified college program in tandem with work leading to certification or licensing in a trade. I know one young man involved in such at present. A great thing about it is that the work is paid, and the individual can start a self-supporting life at work, while using precious time to better develop the mind.
Thank you very much indeed, James! When I did some cursory historical research for this poem I was astonished to find out that Oki was from Sacramento and lived in the U.S. most of his life, until just before World War II. Since this poem went up I also did more checking on Tokyo Rose. I now have to include a YouTube of her now describing her background:
https://youtu.be/dn6hwkHWX6I?si=9jBpyA0o-LvGZrut
She was born and raised in Los Angeles! She went to U.C.L.A.!!! (My own alma mater. What on Earth takes a California girl (and guy) and turns them into traitors! Well, maybe the answer is in the question. But it just goes to show that surprisingly little has changed through the years!
Yes, the best minds are easily corrupted. I long for the old days when “the best lacked all conviction” and it was simply the idiots who displayed “passionate intensity.” Now there seems to be little difference.
This is how I like to learn about history, thank you Brian. Great job on the poetry, as always. This is a very enjoyable piece of art.
Thank you so much, Yael! I love doing the research for my poems. I don’t know nearly enough history so when I get the germ of an idea that’s when the research starts and I decide if it’s a subject worth poeticizing. Thank you for referring to it as art. I sometimes forget that we are indeed artists who work with words.
What makes the poem so powerful is that Oki never feels like a caricature bad-guy; he’s charming, intelligent, ambitious, morally hollow, and therefore…believable. The piece works not only as historical dramatic monologue, but as a commentary on propaganda, celebrity, influence, and the frightening ease it can be weaponized. The ending lands with brutal precision. This feels less like a history poem and more like a mirror held up to today.
Thank you so much, Michael! Yes, that’s the idea — I know really nothing at all about Oki’s personality. But I could imagine someone who goes into the entertainment industry (which is what Zero Hour really was — just a radio show) and then ends up in advertising was probably someone who was pretty good at schmoozing and whose conscience (like most Hollywood celebrities) really did not trouble him much so long as he got the success he was seeking.
You are exactly on point concerning the commentary on propaganda, celebrity, influence, et al. I have a particular loathing for the celebrities who constantly bash Trump, who lionize our enemies, who embrace the idea of terror as just another way to pursue social justice, and who simply act as unthinking avatars and shills for the Democrat party. I’m at the point where I won’t watch anything that has been produced in the last 10 years. Disney and Netflix have long been cast out, but a bunch of others are treading water.
Honestly, Brian, I can’t wait until I see a poem about Hanoi Jane.
Great idea, Kip. Jane Fonda is ripe for a skewering. That poetry idea is now in my queue. Stay tuned! And thank you!
Unfortunately, I don’t believe the ‘Crazed Triplets’, (Tuk-tuk, Snarleson, and Candy) would see themselves as you so clearly portrayed them in your poem, Brian. And neither would the unthinking Leftists and their servile minions who keep spawning and spewing all that clap-trap. Thank you for your “Advices’ skillful craftsmanship.
Thank you so much, Laura. That’s very true. I’ve heard it said very crudely but accurately (forgive me for quoting verbatim.) “Assholes rarely recognize that they are assholes.” Rarely do they look in the mirror and have an epiphany that the problem is them. As for those who are deliberate malefactors… well, they’re in a different category altogether. Exposing them just makes them gloat. Despite what leftists and atheists may think, evil does indeed exist. It grooves on its own malice.
Brian, your poetry never fails to impress me. The effort you put into your work pays off and this poem shines. It is disturbingly contemporary in its portrayal of cold-blooded and dangerous manipulation. In an age of lies the truth matters more than ever, and the most unsettling aspect of this poem is not the propaganda itself, but the casual amorality (I think evil may be a better term) behind it – that willingness to mess with minds simply because one can. The line, “We fan a blaze. Who cares where it might end / So long as we rest comfortably at home,” feels like a stark warning for all those who despair at the world they no longer recognize – we ignore this warning at our peril. Brian, thank you for educating me, entertaining me, and (most importantly) helping me see with a clear eye exactly what is going on today and why.
Thank you so much for these kind words, Susan. And I’m sorry to be getting to your comment late. You have understood precisely what I was aiming for and you zeroed in on the very lines which chilled me to the bone, even as I was writing them. Because they are the absolute truth about the liars who now run our media. They lie through their teeth for their own agenda or ideology. They fan a blaze and they don’t give a darn who gets burned. Or assassinated. So long as they can rest comfortably at home, enjoy their daiquaries and groove on how utterly benevolent they are for nudging the world into the direction that suits their egos. I think you mentioned “Screwtape” recently. The character is exactly apposite as these schmucks serve their father below.