Customer Reviews

The Hunt for Tokyo Rose

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Six months ago I was traveling along the coast of Washington, when I woke up to the terrible TV scenes of fire and death and collapsing buildings. I wrote my first thoughts in my diary: "As events unfold, I worry of our response. Will internal security become Gestapo like? Will we isolate ourselves? What about our civil rights or the rights of dark guys with beards and robes?" To know what could happen, we only needed to look back to the internment of Japanese-Americans or the case of "Tokyo Rose" (Iva Toguri).

If you are interested in World War II history or the excesses of patriotism, this is a book you should read and keep in your library. Mr. Howe has done a through job gathering the events and as a bonus describes the world of living in an enemy's country. I also value the picture Howe paints of life as a POW in Japan. It's nice that he has humanized some of the Japanese military, even to the point of letting us see that there were good and bad on both sides. Consider, for example, the support Iva received from the fighting GI's and compare it to the pettiness of the (mostly) non-combatant government agents.

Howe's writing style could have been more readable and there were a few errors of fact. (p. 244 Doolittle's first raid was in 1942 and not two years later.) These did not detract excessively.

Our challenge today as Americans is to avoid another case of "Tokyo Rose".

I had expected that the author would reveal a lot of what Tokyo Rose actually broadcast and, especially, the effect it had or was expected to have on our troops in the Pacific War. Plus, obviously, some followup on how she was eventually arrested in the U.S., etc. This text is a very good historical and legal account about Tokyo Rose (the one chosen for this book), her biography, her time in Japan, how she got involved, how she was arrested in the U.S. and so on, but the narrative is so detailed that it becomes boring and tends to lose the general reader's interest. On the other hand, if you are interested in Tokyo Rose's life and personal problems, and demand a lot of very detailed and specific biographical and prosecutorial information, this is the book for you. Sorry, not what I was looking for...

From the Forward by Ramsey Clark to the end of the book one can not help but be startled by the very liberal bias of the writing. It reads like a "do you still beat your wife?" question. Howe uses his literary pulpit to preach a liberal sermon. This is the fourth book he published in the first six months of 1993 -- seems like a rush to judgement. While his conclusions may be correct, his poorly concealed radical disposition destroys the credibility of his arguments. A big disappointment.