Tokyo Rose

"Tokyo Rose" was the nickname given to Japanese female propaganda broadcasters by allied servicemen during the second global unpleasantness. The broadcasts were in generally excellent English, and appealed to Allied troops to give up their hopeless and unnecessary war against the mighty and invincible empire of Japan. You know, standard propaganda stuff.

In spite of the single name, it's pretty much sure that there were multiple Roses, as the voice was not the same each time. To the best of our knowledge nobody has done voice-analysis to ascertain how many Roses there were, and it is probable that adequate recordings do not exist.

Tokyo Rose was actually pretty popular with Allied servicemen. Either out of the comedy value of obvious propaganda, or because it was a female voice to people that might not have heard another for quite some time. Probably both.

A minor but insolvable mystery of the war is that nobody has uncovered the identity of most of the broadcasters. A Japanese-American woman residing in Japan during the war was imprisoned for being one, but was pardoned owing to the unreliability of her accusers and the lack of proof that she had said anything treasonous. Famously vanished aviator Amelia Earhart was a major candidate during the war, but her husband listened to some recordings and denied they sounded anything like her.

In the European theater, the Axis employed two American women as broadcasters who were both given the nickname "Axis Sally" by American troops. Rita Zucca broadcast from Rome and used the on-air name "Sally," while Mildred Gillars broadcast from Berlin and usually called herself "Midge." Both served prison terms for treason after the war.

The Germans also employed a male version, "Lord Haw-Haw," the host of a regular program entitled Germany Calling. Though the program had several hosts, the name "Lord Haw-Haw" eventually became associated with a single individual: Englishman William Joyce, who held the job beginning in 1940. He had a nasal drawl and so his opening line sounded like "This is Jairmany calling". Joyce was captured in Germany in 1945 and put on trial for treason in Britain, after some legal debate over whether an American citizen (as came out during the trial) could be cherged with betraying the Crown. The ruling was that since he'd got a British passport (he'd lied about his citizenship to get it), he was supposed to have loyalty to the King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He was convicted and hanged in 1946. Incidentally enough, he was the last person imprisoned in the Tower of London.

American Robert Henry Best was a Lord Haw-Haw wanabee who also worked for the Germans. He had the dubious distinction of being taken off the air by the Germans in 1942 because his antisemitic propaganda became too strident!

"Tokyo Rose" or "Axis Sally" recordings are occasionally featured in war movies to establish atmosphere. Unfortunately, this is sufficiently obscure these days that it almost qualifies as a Genius Bonus.

Jane Fonda, who made propaganda broadcasts for the North Vietnamese during a visit to Hanoi in 1972, acquired the nickname "Hanoi Jane" as a reference to this.

Note that the Axis powers were not the only users of this trope: A recent search of the BBC archives turned up a series of concerts recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1944 for broadcast to Germany, all hosted by a German speaking woman known only as "Ilsa". Sadly, Ilsa's identity has been lost to time.

During both the Persian Gulf wars, stories circulated in the American media about a broadcaster nicknamed "Baghdad Betty" whose research was a little shaky ("Remember boys, back home in America movie stars are seducing your wife. Burt Reynolds is seducing your wife. Bart Simpson is seducing your wife.")

In fiction

 * In the 1943 film We Dive at Dawn, a "Haw-Haw" broadcast reports the sinking of the starring submarine HMS Sea Tiger (In fact, it pretended to go down to throw the Germans off). The British Admiralty buy the story and the British press report the vessel as lost.

Film

 * 1958's "Run silent, Run deep" for Tokyo Rose. A recording in the style is also heard in 2006's "Flags of our Fathers", but the nickname used is "Orphan Ann", another less-common name used.

Television

 * Tokyo Rose is mentioned by Colonel Potter in M.A.S.H., and with this being the Korean War, they have their own version, "Seoul City Sue", though she is rarely heard from.
 * Tour of Duty briefly featured a Vietnamese equivalent, with one GI asking another why he listened to that stuff. He replied that the propaganda was annoying, but that the music they played was actually pretty good.

Tabletop Games

 * During Games' Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 "Eye of Terror" event, a mini-campaign featured the Third Stage Expansion of the Tau, who were clear on the other side of the galaxy from the main action. During the event, one gamer started posting a series of "broadcasts" by a Human collaborator named "Sa'cea Sally". During the post-event articles in White Dwarf'' Magazine, these messages were codified into actual events during the expansion.

Video Games

 * The Battlefield series: Battlefield Vietnam featured broadcasts from a Tokyo Rose-esque character before certain stages. Some of them were rather pretty, actually -- "Your helicopters will fall like broken butterflies, GIs."
 * This was actually the real life Hanoi Hannah, who was the equivalent of Tokyo Rose for The Vietnam War.
 * She also appears in Conflict: Vietnam.
 * In Fallout 3, there's a Chinese Propaganda radio station that broadcasts in Arlington Cemetery out of an old cannery that echoes this trope.
 * Home Front During the Crazy Survivalist level two of the survivalist are talking about the resistance fugitives (you) and mention Tokyo Rose by name.