Word: traitorous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week in the Federal District Court in Los Angeles, a U.S. citizen was sentenced to die as a traitor to the U.S. In all U.S. history, only a handful of traitors have heard that sentence. None has actually been executed as a traitor...
...traitor was a bespectacled, wiry, 27-year-old Nisei named Tomoya Kawakita, better known to hundreds of G.I. prisoners as "The Meatball." The son of a California grocer, Kawakita was caught on a visit to Japan by World War II. He threw in his lot with the Japanese. As an interpreter in the prison camp at Oeyama, he taunted G.I. prisoners in their own ball-park English, took savage delight in tormenting them...
...pronouncing sentence, Federal District Judge William C. Mathes declared grimly: "His life, if spared, would not be worth living. The only worthwhile use for the life of a traitor is to serve as an example to those of weak moral fiber who might hereafter be tempted to commit treason against the U.S." Unless a higher court reverses the verdict or the President intervenes, he will die in the San Quentin gas chamber...
Hurrying home, Wang put his best troops, under trusted General Wu Hua-wen, on a line defending the capital's most vital points-the main airfield, the railroad station and the commercial district, all outside the old city wall. Suddenly, on the fourth day of battle, Wu turned traitor, led some 8,000 of his men over into the Communist lines. Tsinan's outer defenses collapsed...
...rounded up Tomaya Kawakita, 26, a California-born Nisei back in the U.S. to study at the University of Southern California. Last week, after almost three months of testimony and eight wrangling days of jury deliberation, "The Meatball" listened stolidly in a federal court as he was pronounced a traitor to his country. The penalty: five years to death...