Brent Bateman

This is the expanded 2nd Edition of Rex Gunn's account of the tragic story of Iva Toguri, wrongly tried and convicted of treason against the American people for her supposed role as the legendary "Tokyo Rose" during WWII. Iva, California born and raised and intensely proud of it, was trapped in Japan by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At Radio Tokyo she conspired with Allied POW broadcasters to sabotage Japanese propaganda, and sacrificed greatly to aid the POWs with food, medicine, and Allied news. Although investigated and released by the U.S. Army, post-war America was hungry to seek out and punish wartime traitors, and Iva was brought to San Francisco to stand trial. Rex Gunn had served as war correspondent during the War in the Pacific and covered Iva's 1949 trial as an AP radio editor. He was intimately connected to her story, especially within the larger context of the war itself, and wrote from that privileged perspective.

Rex Gunn was there! First with the Radar Signal Corps in Honolulu on that fateful Sunday morning, December 7th, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. He later experienced much of WWII in the Pacific from the privileged view of an on-the-scene correspondent for the 7th Army Air Corps BRIEF MAGAZINE. After the war he became radio editor for the Associated Press in San Francisco, and covered the 1949 trial of Iva Toguri, wrongly charged with treason for her supposed role as the legendary Tokyo Rose. He was intimately connected with her tragic story, and kept in touch with her until his death in 1999. Somewhere in between he completed a 26-year academic career, including a professorship in English Literature at Stanford University. Throughout, Rex continued to research the events that encompassed the War in the Pacific, and also wrote SUDDENLY ... ON A SUNDAY MORNING and BOMBS FOR WAR ... AND PEACE.