In the early 1980’s, I worked for my stepdad, a real estate developer and attorney, as a property manager on one of his residential housing projects. It was a good gig as it afforded a place to live with enough flexibility to continue my college education. Being a newlywed, and basically poor, having a full-time job plus a free roof over my head was hard to beat. Stepdad Jerry, aka BJL, wrote me a check every two weeks which I deposited in my checking account. Despite the modest wage, I was feeling pretty flush. What I didn’t have was a credit card.
In those days having a credit card was still somewhat of a
novelty and a great credit score was required to get one—nothing like the
present where I receive multiple offers daily. So even though I was working
full time, didn’t have a big mortgage, or consumer debt, I was turned down when
I applied at my local credit union. Having just returned from living in Japan
for six years during which time I showed virtually no credit history in the
U.S., was the likely disqualifier. Perhaps the higher-ups at the bank thought
I had been homeless for the last six years, or worse, in jail. In any event, I
was deemed too high a risk to get the coveted plastic. Given that I needed to
buy various maintenance items for the housing project, Jerry gave me one of his
cards and said to sign his name when needed. While not exactly legit, it seemed
harmless and if I paid him back before the card statement arrived, he didn’t
seem to care if I used it for personal items.
Backing up for a moment, Stepdad, was a bit of a misnomer since he had married mom in the same year my wife and I had married, and he hadn't moved into the homestead until I had left the nest. Still, he had been in the picture since I was a boy, and he had been a good father figure. I think mom would have raised an eyebrow or two if she had known that our “quality time” often consisted of shooting pool, tooling around in his Corvette Stingray, blasting trees and sometimes an unlucky duck with his 10-gauge shotgun (yes, a 10- gauge) and drinking beer at a local ski area. A pretty cool stepdad and polar opposite of my biological dad.
My "biological dad," a term that no one from my
generation would have understood beyond the obvious, now lived in Chicago, so my
bride and I would make an occasional trip down to Chi Town to see dad and stepmom.
Another stepparent I never lived with.
I had the very good fortune to marry a wonderful Japanese woman who is also the
world’s greatest shopper. Well, let me amend that to say she is the world's greatest window shopper. Therefore, it was only natural for us to check out the near northside
of Chicago known for numerous Japanese stores plus we knew a Japanese couple who lived in the area willing to act as tour guides.
During one trip, Kayoko-San, the better half of the above stated couple, took us out for a tour in the neighborhood near Clark and Belmont streets about six blocks
down from Wrigley Field. I'd read that the original “Little Tokyo” had been
closer to Clark and Division, but the Japanese influence had waned after the
Sandburg Village urban development project of the 60’s. In any event, there were
still Japanese shops in the corridor between West Addison and Belmont and it
was time to check them out.
As we followed our guide down Clark Street, we turned the corner onto Belmont and stepped into a two-story brick building with the sign, J. Toguri Mercantile Co. Oriental Gift Shop, in large block letters. The name didn’t mean anything in particular to me as we passed beneath it. Inside the dimly lit shop were tea sets, dishes, ornamental swords, incense and various other Japanese gifts and crafts. The shop reminded me of the Ben Franklin store in my old neighborhood. What we would have called a “Five and Dime.” In other words, wooden floors, a bit musty, lots of interesting novelties, and a certain smell of history and goods sitting on the shelf too long. I browsed the isles with interest but found nothing I couldn’t live without. Conversely, my wife, the great shopper, had already bagged a teacup set and a pair of iron scissors used in Ikebana—the art of Japanese flower arranging. We browsed a bit more and then our guide, looking antsy, asked if we were going to buy something. I looked around and noticed that we were the only people in the shop other than the clerk, an older Japanese woman in kimono standing behind the checkout counter. My dear wife wanted to check out other Ikebana supplies, so I drifted to the rear of the shop to buy time. K-San followed me back and again applied the pressure to get rolling.
“Well, are you going to buy something?” I looked at her and smiled,
shrugged, then looked towards my wife who was busily checking out items on a
shelf. It was then that our friend mumbled,
“They say the woman behind
the counter is Tokyo Rose.” I looked at our friend then looked back at the
woman behind the counter. I’d heard the name from newsreels and World War II
movies about the English-speaking Japanese woman who had done propaganda
broadcasts for Imperial Japan. The sultry-voiced orator who was known for
phrases like, “Hey Joe, wouldn’t you rather be back home with your best girl?” She was from Chicago?
I looked a little closer. She wore a dark brown kimono, and her
hair was pulled up in a bob. She was perhaps in her early 70’s. Maybe a little
taller than most Japanese women? Our helpful friend, acting as if we had a bus to catch,
was giving me the look, so I walked over to where dear wife was checking out flower arranging accessories on a lower shelf. She looked up and sensed that we were on the
clock. Selected items in hand we headed to the counter. “Rose,” neither greeted
us nor smiled. She simply rang up the items and said, “$37.50.” A somewhat
bland encounter for my growing expectation of meeting a famous figure from
history, and a convicted war criminal no less.
Time to fork over payment. I had enough cash in my l wallet, but
for some reason, I thought it would be a great idea to pull out BJ's plastic
to show I was a high roller. Mistake one.
Rose took my card and placed it in the manual card imprinter. (These were used before electronic readers and imprinted the cardholder’s information onto a three-sheeted receipt). I signed the slip and handed it back. Rose, still holding my card, turned it over and compared the signatures. The back of the card read, “BJ Loftsgaarden,” Jerry's Signature.
“It doesn’t look the same,” she said. Eyeing me and the two
signatures. Now, I dare anyone to forge “BJ Loftsgaarden,” without significant
practice. Especially when my own surname has only four letters. Rose, still
holding up the card like it was a piece of evidence at trial, looked at me
apparently waiting for an explanation. I shrugged, and smiled, offering no
explanation. Mistake two.
A strained silence ensued in our now expanding military tribunal. It
felt very awkward to be under scrutiny by a famous figure from the greatest
event of the Twentieth Century. It was as if Douglas MacArthur had just caught
me shoplifting. She clearly thought I was trying to pull a fast one. All made
worse by the stupid grin I couldn’t seem to get off my face. It was then that our
friend came to the rescue.
“His father is a famous lawyer in Minnesota,” as if to say the
crime of forgery could be forgiven because stepdad was a big-shot lawyer and thus
good for $37.50. Rose frowned and stuffed the Merchants Copy in the cash
drawer. Whew. We grabbed our goods
and headed out the door before she changed her mind and called Chicago’s finest.
Of course, she was right to check the signature on the card, especially in the
pre-online days, but that didn’t detract from the overall weirdness of the
encounter. An historical figure who now seemed to be a joyless shopkeeper. Was
it true? Was she Tokyo Rose, or was it just a nasty rumor or urban legend? Time to do a
bit of research.
It was true. Tokyo Rose had been our cashier at the shop her
family owned on the northside of Chicago. Iva Toguri was born in California in
1916. It appears she grew up like any other American kid of the times and knew
little of Japan, beyond the heritage of her parents. A visit to Japan just
prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor stranded her in Japan and left her without
a country or means of support. She was told to convert to Japanese citizenship
by the Imperial Army Kenpeitai secret police. Iva steadfastly held on to her
American citizenship despite pressure, and eventually found a position as a
typist at the Japan Broadcasting Company (NHK) to support herself. She was
later recruited at NHK by an Australian POW who produced an English-Language
radio program called, The Zero Hour.
The Zero Hour consisted of playing popular American music of the
day and propaganda news reports aimed at GI’s serving in the Pacific Theater.
According to the show's Producer Williamson, Iva was his choice to headline the
broadcast specifically because of her baritone, sultry voice. He later
explained his reasoning.
“I wanted the show to be burlesque and so comical that no one
would mistake it for actual propaganda.”
There were other women who
were pressed into broadcasting service as well, but Iva became synonymous with
the fictional persona of Tokyo Rose—a nickname coined by GI’s and one that was
never used during broadcasts. Instead, Iva went by the on-air name of “Orphan
Ann.” A combination, I suppose, of Orphan Annie—a popular comic strip at the
time, and Orphan, which was a
euphemism for American soldiers supposedly “orphaned” in the Pacific by the
Empire of Japan. Iva was so good at the broadcasts that her Japanese superiors
wouldn’t let her quit even when it was clear that Japan would lose the war.
I listened to archived broadcasts and I would have to say that she
was pretty darn good at her job, if her job was to tease Americans. Further
readings suggested that few troops found it demoralizing and most found it
comical and somewhat comforting.
Bud Nakasone, a former professor of mine and author of the book Nisei Soldier, a collection of stories
about Japanese Americans in World War II, wrote that an innocent Iva was
railroaded by an overzealous press and a racist post-war public.
I will admit that seven years in prison for war crimes seems awfully harsh for
the final verdict of one count of treason for a broadcast that supposedly gave
away military secrets. Hard to gauge post-war sentiment by today’s standards,
but I began to wonder about what made many so rabid about a seemingly harmless loyal
American who had been pressed into propaganda service by the Empire of Japan.
My theory is that beyond the sensationalism of an over-egger
media, it was the taunting nature of the broadcasts that drove the desire for retribution. Whether she wrote the
scripts or not, the essence was to stick her tongue out and mock the GI’s. Or
in her case, verbally show a little leg and tell the troops that they were
fools for going to war and wouldn’t they really be better off Stateside with
their best girl on their arm? Maybe there is something in us that wants revenge
when we are taunted. Don’t we love it when the cocky boxer gets knocked out in
the end? Or when a trash-talking football player gets blasted on the next play?
Perhaps it was the on-air statement that eventually sent her to prison
regarding the Battle of the Coral Sea, “Now that all your ships are sunk, how
will you get home orphan? Amazing!”
Back home and reflecting on my brush with 20th Century
history, I decided it was probably not a good idea to use someone else’s credit
card even with their approval. A short time later, I received a pre-approved
application for an American Express Card in one of those mailings targeting
college students. I applied and received my first credit card, thus ending my
alternate persona as B.J. Loftsgaarden. Time to straighten up and fly right, as
they used to say. Thankfully, my little credit card fraud on the streets of
Chicago wasn't scrutinized by the International Court of Justice. What I am
sure of is that I’m in serious trouble if Axis Sally ever gets wind of my credit score!
