Word: provoo
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...court, the prosecution produced witness after witness to back up its charges that Provoo (rhymes with "no boo") had committed a long series of "overt acts" against his fellow prisoners after the fall of the Philippines. As they told their stories, the grim old names-Corregidor, the Malinta Tunnel, the Death March of Bataan-evoked bitter, half-forgotten memories of the painful days of U.S. humiliation and defeat...
...Boss of Corregidor." The witnesses, most of them fellow prisoners of Provoo, pictured him swaggering about the prison cave on Corregidor with a riding crop, toadying to the Japanese and terrorizing his fellow prisoners. As soon as the Japanese arrived, one witness testified. Provoo "made a deep bow" (the witness demonstrated it stiffly in court) and. in fluent Japanese, offered them his services. Thereafter, according to the witnesses' stories, Provoo worked for the Japanese as a combination of bully boy, informer and mess sergeant. He served them tea, provided them with liquor, whipped up three-layer cakes even...
...Provoo, said the witnesses, extorted cameras and other valuables from his fellow prisoners to pass them on to the Japanese, once knocked down a G.I. and stripped him of his boots because a Japanese officer said he wanted them. One retired U.S. colonel testified indignantly that Sergeant Provoo had yelled at him and other prisoners marching in a column: "All right, you guys, get over to this side...
...Provoo tried, said other witnesses, to be even more Japanese than the Japanese themselves. They claimed that Provoo often said he hoped the Japanese would win the war and that he called Emperor Hirohito "the essence of divinity." Corporal Robert Brown testified that Provoo hit him in the face because he did not know how to cook tempura (Japanese fried fish or shrimps) and declared that "all American women on Corregidor should be turned over to the Japanese for immoral purposes." Once, said Brown, he followed Provoo to the top of a hill where Provoo, clad in a shroud...
Sunken Treasure. The most serious testimony against Provoo so far: that 1) he caused the death of a U.S. captain "who gave me some lip" by complaining to the Japanese, who executed him; 2) he tried to get a U.S. colonel to turn U.S. codes over to the Japanese; 3) he beat up a U.S. sergeant in a vain effort to get information about a hoard of $7,500,000 in silver which the U.S. Army had dumped into the sea rather than let it fall into Japanese hands...