Word: provoo
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Star witness in the seventh week of the treason trial of former Sergeant John David Provoo (TIME, Nov. 24) was 69-year-old General Jonathan M. Wainwright, called as witness for the defense. To the lawyer who was forced to shout his questions, Wainwright apologized and explained that he was nearly deaf as a result of shell bursts during the siege of Corregidor. After testifying that he had not known Provoo, nor had he received reports that the man had given aid & comfort to the enemy, the general gave the Manhattan jury a moving, 90-minute account of the defense...
...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...
...oddest aspects of the Provoo case is that in 1946, after he was liberated, the U.S. Army investigated him for eight months, found no proof that he had collaborated with the enemy, and discharged him honorably. After six weeks, he re-enlisted for a three-year hitch. In 1949, he was indicted. Provoo's defense will be chiefly that he was "driven to irrationality" by imprisonment, and that he acted under duress...
...witness after bitter witness testified against him, Provoo sat in court, writhing at the accusations. He was heard frequently to mutter curses under his breath-or possibly one of those wild Buddhist chants...