Iva Toguri D'Aquino - Post-prison Life

Post-prison Life

After her parole, resisting efforts at deportation, Iva moved to Chicago, where her father had opened the J. Toguri Mercantile Company Japanese-import retail store during the war, following the release of the Toguri family from internment at the Gila River War Relocation Center in September 1943. She lived and worked at the store on Belmont Avenue in the Lakeview neighborhood until her death in 2006, her former notoriety all but forgotten.

Following the trial, Iva's husband, who had been arrested and put on parole immediately upon his arrival in the U.S. to be a witness for the defense, was required by law to return to Japan. Operatives of the FBI and INS boarded his ship as it was leaving Hawaii and coerced him into signing a document that barred him from returning to the U.S. He and Iva would never see one another again, as he was precluded from entering the country and she could never leave it for fear of not being allowed to return. Although they remained technically married but effectively separated by decree, until 1980, when Iva resumed her maiden name. Toguri never reunited with or again saw her husband and, after 30 years of forced separation, they divorced in 1980 so that he could get on with his life without her. He died in 1996, nearly half a century after the trial that separated them.