JANUARY 19 — 1977 Ford pardons Tokyo Rose; INVENTION/PATENT: 1883 Edison 1st electric lighting system employing overhead wires, 2010 Big Jake becomes world’s tallest horse; 1929 Eastland, TX horney toad Ol’ Rip passes away
JANUARY 19
1977 – Ford pardons Tokyo Rose.
A young woman from Los Angeles California named Iva Toguri D’Aquino hosted a Japanese propaganda radio program aimed at US troops during WWII. After college in 1940, she went back to Japan to help her sick aunt and to study medicine. She left without a passport and only had her ID. The Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and she was stuck there. As WWII raged on, Japan unsuccessfully tried to force Tuguri to renounce her US citizenship, and without her passport she couldn’t go back to America. She didn’t want to swear allegiance to the Japanese emperor, and so became an enemy alien.
She got a job as a typist writing scripts for Radio Tokyo and was asked to host an English speaking show called Zero Hour. The goal of Zero Hour was to demoralize GIs in the South Pacific, exaggerating number of dead troops but otherwise be somewhat entertaining with her pretty, feminine, American voice. The troops called her and others like her in similar broadcasts Tokyo Roes. Tuguri would sneak in medicine and food to American POWs. After the war ended, a manhunt went out to these Tokyo Roses, and Tuguri was captured by the US Army and investigated for treason for broadcasting enemy propaganda. She spent a year in Japan, then re-arrested and sent as a prisoner to America.
She was put to trial as a traitor and was sentenced 10 years in prison by an anti-Japanese judge who relied on false testimony. She served six, getting off early for good behavior. She would spend the next 20 years with her family in Chicago as a stateless citizen. She fought for a pardon several times over the years and in 1977 an episode of 60 Minutes aired, revealing Toguri’s true story and highlighting her ongoing fight for justice. Apparently President Gerald Ford saw that episode and pardoned Tokyo Rose on January 19, 1977.
1883 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.
1825 – The tin can is patented by Timothy Dagggett and his father-in-law Ezra. Prior to this Thomas had published a map of the area of conflict in the War of 1812.
1938 – Alfred Mosher Butts makes the layout for the board game Scrabble! Scrabble was actually a real word that meant to scratch furiously! If that’s not enough for you, just remember there’s also Super Scrabble@! Incidentally, if you’re looking for a word that ends in Q and is legal, there’s the word umiaq, u-m-i-a-q, and tranq. Pretty sure those are legit. As far as I know there are no legal words that end in the letter X.
1990 – D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for smoking crack. I’d say this can only happen in America but it happens in Canada too. Barry was elected four times for mayor of Washington DC, twice after his arrest for smoking crack in a hotel. He was also in trouble for failure to file tax returns and pay taxes, traffic violations, racial remarks against Asians, but out of these the crack problem was the funniest. Wikipedia says about his 4 time election that he was a popular and influential figure in the local political scene. I love that about Wiki. Instead of calling it the thousands of constituents who are on the city’s payroll, Wiki calls it influential. Riiight.