Abstract:
This study seeks to understand how the media constructed the images of Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Seoul City Sue, and Hanoi Hannah, and to shed more light on why they are remembered more than their male counterparts. In exploring how the American media covered them, it was found that it essentially constructed the images that defined these women’s legacies. As such, the current study explores how the press covered them. In doing so, the study analyzes four primary research inquiries. First, the study seeks to analyze how American newspapers and magazines portrayed each woman to American readers. Secondly, this study considers how the American mass media’s portrayal of these women evolved over time from the mid 1940s through the present. Third, the study explores how press coverage of male radio propagandists differed from the five female propagandists. The fourth inquiry considered in this study consists of ways in which the American mass media responded to these five female propagandists either directly or indirectly through print, radio, and visual media. Lastly the study analyzes how each of these women have been kept alive in popular culture over the ensuing decades since their last broadcasts. For the most part, the print media covered these women out of fascination and aversion. Fascination came from the novelty of having women acting as high profile agents of enemy propaganda organizations in a time when women were mostly homemakers and caretakers. Aversion came from the potential power they had over U.S. servicemen and the fact that they were viewed as traitors to the U.S. Furthermore, they were femme fatales, radio sirens whose main mission was to demoralize servicemen and hamper the Allied mission to defeat the Axis Powers.
