FACTS:

In 1949, Iva Toguri, a second-generation Japanese-American from Los Angeles, was convicted of treason for broadcasting Japanese propaganda via shortwave radio as "Tokyo Rose" during world war II.

To this day, "Tokyo Rose" evokes for many an Anna May Wong doing a dragon lady. Still more don't even know that Tokyo Rose was an American.

And a loyal one - stranded in Japan at the outbreak of thee war, she resisted the pressure to abandon her U.S. citizenship; it was her unusual frankness with her convictions that endeared her to the group of POWs assigned to propaganda broadcasting at Radio Tokyo.

Promoted from her survival job as a typist to an announcer, Toguri and the POWs did their best to twist the program into upbeat humor. She never used the name "Tokyo Rose" on the air. The recordings presented as evidences at her trial included frequent mix-ups with other programs coming from other Japan-occupied territories. Above all, she never wrote the scripts herself.

The American government needed a justification for executive order 9066 or 1942, the internment of Japanese-Americans - that there were indeed traitors among them. And "traitor" was the word the government wanted heard in the mounting paranoia and anxiety against Communism.

In fact, the legendary radio siren Tokyo Rose existed only in the wet dreams of armed men in the South Pacific.