Word: provoo
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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When John David Provoo was six years old, he fell from the second-story porch of his home near San Francisco and fractured his skull on a concrete courtyard. The injury may or may not have permanently affected his brain, but for most of his life he has acted like an exceedingly odd duck. When he was eleven, he became a devotee of Buddhism; later, a Buddhist priest taught young Provoo to read, write and speak Japanese. In 1940 he went to Japan to learn more about Buddhism, lived in a Buddhist monastery near Tokyo. Back...
...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...