Tokyo Rose - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Tokyo Rose has been the subject of song, movies and documentaries:

• 1945: Tokyo Woes, propaganda cartoon directed by Bob Clampett. The cartoon's titular character (voiced by an uncredited Sara Berner) is portrayed as an overly enthusiastic, buck-toothed Japanese woman speaking on a propaganda broadcast with a loud voice and an American accent.
• 1946: Tokyo Rose, film; directed by Lew Landers. Lotus Long played a heavily fictionalized "Tokyo Rose", described on the film's posters as a "seductive jap traitress"; Byron Barr played the G.I. protagonist, set to kidnap the Japanese announcer. Blake Edwards appeared in a supporting part.
• 1958: Run Silent, Run Deep (Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster); depiction of Tokyo Rose broadcast relating ships and sailors lost at sea; statement that broadcast information was gained from trash jettisoned by submarines.
• 1969: The Story of "Tokyo Rose", CBS-TV and WGN radio documentary written and produced by Bill Kurtis.
• 1976: Tokyo Rose, CBS-TV documentary segment on 60 Minutes by Morley Safer, produced by Imrel Harvath.
• 1985: Canadian rock band Idle Eyes had a #1 hit in their homeland with the song "Tokyo Rose" from their self-titled debut album. The song's narrator addresses his lover, saying she "tells a story like Tokyo Rose".
• 1987: American heavy metal band Shok Paris released the song Tokyo Rose on their 1987 album Steel and Starlight. It's about a lonely GI who fell in love with the propaganda broadcaster during the war, and remembers her voice many years later.
• 1995: Tokyo Rose: Victim of Propaganda, A&E Biography documentary, hosted by Peter Graves, available on VHS (AAE-14023).
• 2008: Tokyo Rose, film; in development with Darkwoods Productions, the only entity granted life story rights by Iva Toguri, Frank Darabont to direct. Christopher Hampton is the screenwriter for Tokyo Rose.

In 2004, actor George Takei announced he was working on a film entitled Tokyo Rose, American Patriot, about Toguri's activities during the war.