Tokyo Rose - Zero Hour (A Graphic Novel)
A Japanese American Woman's Persecution and Ultimate Redemption after World War II
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
**2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year: Silver Award Winner in Graphic Novels & Comics Category**
**Recommended by The New York Public Library as one of its 50 best comics for adults**
**A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection**
Traitor or hero? Discover the truth behind the legendary Tokyo Rose.
Tokyo Rose: Zero Hour tells the true story of Iva Toguri, a Japanese American woman who was visiting her relatives in Tokyo shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Trapped in Japan, Iva refused to renounce her American citizenship. But she was forced to take a job with Radio Tokyo to host "Zero Hour," a propaganda broadcast aimed at demoralizing American troops—in the role of the infamous Tokyo Rose, "The Siren of the Pacific."
The dramatic events recounted in this story include:
Iva's arrest by the Americans, who eventually found that her actions were blameless Her emotional return to the United States and the racially-motivated public outcry that led to her re-arrest and prosecution for treason The dishonest actions of prosecutors who coerced witnesses into providing false evidence against her The six years she spent in prison, and her eventual pardon by President Ford in 1977
Written by Andre Frattino and illustrated by Kate Kasenow, Tokyo Rose: Zero Hour has an introduction explaining the "Tokyo Rose" phenomenon and the devastating effects of World War II on Asian-American communities that continue to reverberate. In a world rife with misinformation and racial prejudice, the story of Tokyo Rose has never been more relevant.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A firecracker of a subject helps propel this graphic biography of Iva Toguri D'Aquino and her incredible double life as "Tokyo Rose" past a certain lack of visual polish. The story opens at D'Aquino's 1949 treason trial, with reporters and rubberneckers scrambling for a glimpse of the Japanese American woman accused of producing anti-American propaganda for Japan. Flash back to 1941, when young Iva is sent to Tokyo to help care for relatives, only to be trapped there when Japan declares war on the U.S. Refusing to renounce her American citizenship, Iva has her passport revoked and is drafted into work for the "thought police" at Radio Tokyo. There, she secretly helps POWs and teams up with other forced conscripts, including her future husband Felipe, to produce an irreverent version of Radio Tokyo's propaganda broadcasts that relays secret messages of hope to Allied troops. Back in the U.S., however: her parents are among the thousands of Japanese Americans interned in detention camps, and the U.S. doesn't believe she acted as a double agent. Frattino's script, though sometimes overly wordy, captures Iva's saucy, rat-a-tat dialogue as heard in her broadcasts, and Kasenow's scratchy black-and-white drawings of Iva express the same attitude, but other characters often seem hurriedly sketched in. Still, this is a well-researched history of an unjustly maligned woman and a crackling espionage adventure story, to boot.
