Tokyo Rose was never
a traitor by choice unlike Cindy Sheehan, Ramsey Clark and others of their ilk. She was visiting relatives in Japan when the war broke out and pressed into service. Even then, she refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship or cooperate with her captors, making minimal efforts to go along only reluctantly when she learned that Earl Warren and FDR had put her family in America into detention camps.
I don't agree with much of what Ford did, but he definitely made the right decision in pardoning her.
"Tokyo Rose was never a traitor by choice unlike Cindy Sheehan, Ramsey Clark and others of their ilk. She was visiting relatives in Japan when the war broke out and pressed into service." I believe that this is closer to the truth than any other commentary that has been offered here. I've never been one to excuse someone who trashes their own country, but when the knife is at your throat, who knows. Thanks for setting the record straight - or as straight as it can be set.