Amelia earhart: Who was she? By
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| A mid July 1937 newspaper page reporting
that Amelia Earhart had been give up for dead TOKYO ROSE
Another strange facet of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance was the rumor that arose during WWII regarding “Tokyo Rose.” “Tokyo Rose” was the pseudonym of a series of women who made numerous radio broadcasts in the Pacific Theater of Operations during WWII. The broadcasts were designed to disseminate misinformation and demoralize allied troops in the Pacific area. By 1944, the rumor had surfaced that none other than the missing aviatrix Amelia Earhart was the voice behind the broadcasts. George Palmer Putnam, who had been commissioned a major in the Army Intelligence Corps in 1942, was serving on a bomber base in the Burma area. Thus, when the government decided to send him to monitor the Tokyo Rose broadcasts, it was an easy matter. Putnam was sent to a Marine Corps radio station in a Japanese occupied area of China, ostensibly so that he would be as close as possible to the transmission source of the Tokyo Rose broadcasts. His mission was to listen to several Tokyo Rose broadcasts to determine if in fact the voice was that of his former wife, Amelia Earhart. After listening to a single broadcast, for less than a minute, GP exclaimed, “I’ll stake my life that that is not Amelia’s voice. It sounds to me as if the woman might have lived in New York, and of course, she had been fiendishly well coached, but Amelia—never!” A new perspective regarding G. P. Putnam’s trip to China arose just before this author completed LEGERDEMAIN As mentioned earlier in this book, I had occasion to meet with Amelia Earhart researcher Ron Bright, and among the subjects discussed was Putnam’s trip to China. Ron surprised me a little by mentioning to me that his research showed that the only source for the account of GP’s trip was Muriel Earhart Morrisey. Thus, he told me, he doubted the provenance of the report and felt that it may never have happened. Could this well-known anecdote be a fiction? That is up to the reader, although, with no solid evidence discrediting the account of GP’s trip, this writer sees no reason not to continue to give credence to it. Another odd aspect of GP’s foray behind the lines in China is that it wasn’t really necessary to go to such a dangerous area to listen to the radio broadcasts. In short, Putnam could have listened to them almost anywhere in the Asian theatre of operations. A complicating factor in the Tokyo Rose matter was that more than one voice had appeared over radio as Tokyo Rose. As a result, it is impossible to say how many different women lent their voices to the effort. In the summer of 1949, the U.S. decided that a Japanese-American named Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino was Tokyo Rose, and they put her on trial in San Francisco. Despite the fact that the defense produced evidence that up to fifteen different women were involved in the broadcasts, the court found D’Aquino guilty on one of the eight counts. She was sentenced to ten years and was released six years later, with time off for good behavior. Another strange aspect to the Tokyo Rose mystery is that many of the eyewitnesses on Saipan who reported seeing Earhart after her capture said that residents of the island habitually referred to the woman captive as “Tokyo Rosa.” When questioned by Joe Gervais in the 1960s, one Antonio M. Cepada mentioned this fact. “Why do you call her that?” Gervais queried. “Everyone on Saipan referred to her as Tokyo Rosa. In 1937, Tokyo Rosa meant American spy lady.” “You mean Tokyo Rose on the Japanese radio during the war? That Tokyo Rose?” Gervais asked in surprise. “Not that one”, Cepada said, shaking his head. “Tokyo Rosa in 1937 meant American spy girl. That’s all. Nothing else.” 
GP Putnam and his son David shortly After their induction in 1942 Recent research on this author’s part has turned up the repeated assertion in numerous quarters that the name of Tokyo Rose was never actually heard on any of the broadcasts and was a nickname applied to those broadcasts by American GIs. As a postscript to the affair, Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino was later given a presidential pardon by Gerald Ford in the 1970s. There is currently a movement on to ask the congress to refund to Ms. D’Aquino the $10,000 fine she originally paid the government and award her a congressional pardon. One can only hope that Ms. D'Aquino, will receive the long overdue justice she deserves while she is still alive. It’s possible that the name for the Tokyo rose affair may have had its genesis in the prewar years in the south pacific, from the slang “Tokyo Rosa” reported by Earhart witnesses. Perhaps GIs who invaded some of the islands picked up that local slang and applied it later to the Japanese radio broadcasts. Ultimately, the whole affair could be discarded if it were not for a couple of troubling issues. The first is that there are indications that U.S. Army G-2 (intelligence) seriously thought in 1944 that Amelia Earhart was behind the so-called Tokyo Rose broadcasts. And as we have seen, the government took the rumors seriously enough to apparently send G.P. into a combat zone to investigate them. Second, it seems quite eerie that both the phrase “Tokyo Rose” and “Tokyo Rosa”, would have the single common denominator of Amelia Earhart. Is there some further significant aspect to the Tokyo Rose affair, which has yet to be identified, much less plumbed? Download 10.38 Mb. Share with your friends:
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