This series consists of reports, memorandums, clippings, correspondence, statements, scripts, transcripts, notes, legal documents, lists, inventories, maps, receipts, logs, and other records. The materials relate to the treason investigations of Iva Toguri d'Aquino (a.k.a. Tokyo Rose), John David Provoo, and Wallace Ellwell Ince, who were accused of voluntarily making propaganda radio broadcasts for Japan during World War II. Ince was never charged. The files of all three investigations describe their work at the Broadcasting Corporation of Japan (a.k.a. Radio Tokyo); include Japanese records created during the time they worked on the broadcasts, and records created during U.S. Army investigations of their actions; and detail Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) efforts to locate scripts, transcripts, or recordings of their broadcasts, and to locate and interview witnesses who saw or heard their broadcasts.
The files about d'Aquino include records relating to her arrest, her return to the U.S., her arraignment, the course of events at her trial, her unsuccessful appeals of her conviction, and the government's aborted attempt to denaturalize and deport her. There are also records relating to broadcaster Walter Winchell's interest in the case; allegations that a government witness lied before the Grand Jury that indicted d'Aquino; tensions between d'Aquino's lawyer and FBI agents; and FBI surveillance of groups opposed to the government's attempt to denaturalize and deport d'Aquino, including the Committee on Political Trials, and groups that met at the California Labor School. Included in the records is a war - time letter speculating that the then unidentified woman known as Tokyo Rose might be missing aviator Amelia Earhart.
Most of the records relating to John David Provoo were created during his second treason trial. The series includes records relating to FBI efforts to locate and interview U.S. soldiers who were imprisoned with Provoo, who claimed that he mistreated them and collaborated with the Japanese; the reversal of his treason conviction from his first trial; and the course of events during his second trial, culminating in the dismissal of the charges because he did not obtain a speedy trial. The series includes psychiatric evaluations of Provoo, an internal FBI document stating that the FBI possessed derogatory information about one of Provoo's lawyers, records relating to Provoo's post - trial employment, and records relating to his subsequent conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
