Dean Lipton’s Obituary

San Francisco Chronicle, April 25, 1992. Written by Stephen Schwartz

A funeral will be held Monday for Dean Lipton, a beloved figure in San Francisco’s literary and journalistic communities, who played a key role in the legal fight to vindicate “Tokyo Rose.”

Mr. Lipton died Thursday at Kaiser Hospital at age 73. He had suffered severe medical problems for years following an operation after which he successfully sued for malpractice. He underwent an intestinal operation just before his death.

Mr. Lipton was born in Detroit. He left home at 14 and began working in journalism. During the Depression, he traveled the country in boxcars and lived in hobo jungles.

He moved to San Francisco in the late 1930s and became involved in the Townsend Old Age Pension movement, the Socialist Party, and other radical groups. He served in the Army during World War II and afterward earned a bachelor’s degree from Woodbury College, a business school in Los Angeles.

Mr. Lipton worked for decades as a freelance writer, concentrating on Argosy, Coronet, and other popular magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. His books include “Faces of Crime and Genius” and “Malpractice: Autobiography of a Victim.” Recently, he published a novel, “Blue Grass Frontier,” and two short works, “The Massacre That Never Happened” and “Schlesinger and the Cherokees.”

In the late 1950s, he became involved in the legal struggle to clear the name of Iva Toguri d’Aquino, a Japanese American woman who, stranded in Japan during World War II, was compelled to serve as a broadcaster on Japanese radio.

After the war, Toguri was returned to the United States and tried and convicted for treason as the notorious but — as Mr. Lipton and a legal team headed by civil liberties attorney Wayne Collins proved — basically imaginary Tokyo Rose.

Tokyo Rose was a nickname given by U.S. military personnel in the Pacific to a number of female Japanese broadcasters.

Toguri served eight years of a 10-year prison sentence. Thanks in large part to Mr. Lipton’s articles, the first of which appeared in an obscure San Francisco journal, Nexus, she was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1977.

“Dean Lipton was the first journalist to write a single favorable word about Mrs. Toguri’s case during the oppressive 1950s, when the lack of public and media concern for her plight was overwhelming. My father greatly appreciated his efforts,” said Wayne Collins Jr., a Berkeley attorney.

Mr. Lipton underwent a routine ear operation in 1967 that resulted in the disfigurement of his face and a series of painful restorative procedures. He sued Kaiser Hospital for malpractice and received $400,000 in 1973.

He also ran the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop for nearly 30 years.

“Dean was a wonderful person whose mind explored all imaginary vistas,” said Tisa Walden, a close friend and publisher of his last works through her Deep Forest Press, based in San Francisco. “He was an irreplaceable friend to poets and writers of all kinds.”

“Dean helped me as an artist and as a friend in ways I will never forget,” said Rebecca Long, a New York feminist filmmaker.

He is survived by his daughters, Linda Ferry and Judith Price, both of Salt Lake City, and numerous grandchildren. His survivors have requested memorial donations to shelters for the homeless.

The funeral will be at 2 p.m. Monday at Halsted N. Gray-Carew & English Inc., 1123 Sutter Street. A viewing will be held before the service.

CITATION. Schwartz, Stephen. “Dean Lipton — Helped Clear ‘Tokyo Rose’.” THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, FINAL ed., sec. NEWS, 25 Apr. 1992, p. A19.