January 19
1960 US and Japan signed a Mutual Security and Cooperation Treaty. Kishi Nobusuke, Japanese prime minister (1957-60), and U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter signed the treaty in Washington, D.C. Notes which accompany the treaty exclude the Ryuku and Bonin Islands from the agreement.
1968 First visit to Japan by an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (Enterprise).
1969 Riot police evicted leftist students from Tokyo University buildings.
1977 President Gerald R. Ford, as one of his last acts in office, pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino. D'Aquino, an American citizen from Los Angeles, was in Japan when war broke out and worked for the Japanese broadcasting agency. Her broadcast name was "Orphan Ann," but she was labelled "Tokyo Rose" by the American press and in 1949 she was convicted of treason. She spent six years in prison. Materials concerning the pardon are collected at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. EarthStation1 has pictures of Ms. D'Aquino and downloadable sound files of her broadcasts during World War II. The site also offers video from the Sixty Minutes segment which helped focus attention on the unfair treatment meted out to Ms. D'Aquino.
1987 The U.S. dollar sank to 150 Japanese yen.
1998 In Japan, an independent agency (Teikoku Databank) reported that corporate bankruptcies reached an all-time high in 1997. The liabilities of the 16,365 bankrupt corporations totaled ¥14 trillion. Corporate bankruptcies were up more than 12% since 1996.
Voices from Asian History
The U.S. Office of War Information, August 1945
"There is no 'Tokyo Rose'; the name is strictly a GI invention. The name has been applied to at least two lilting Japanese voices on the Japanese radio. ... Government monitors listening in 24 hours a day have never heard the words 'Tokyo Rose' over a Japanese-controlled Far Eastern radio."
The Teaching about Japan website is edited by Clayton Dube.
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© 2001 UCLA Center for East Asian Studies