Journal of Contemporary
History
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Treacherous Allies: The Cold War in East Asia and American Postwar
Anxiety
Barak Kushner
Journal of Contemporary History 2010 45: 812
DOI: 10.1177/0022009410375256
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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ! 2010 The Author. Vol. 45(4), 812–843. ISSN 0022-0094.
DOI: 10.1177/0022009410375256
Barak Kushner
Treacherous Allies: The Cold War in East
Asia and American Postwar Anxiety
Abstract
The postwar US federal government spent a decade, initiated two federal treason
trials, and dispensed over one million dollars in legal pursuit of John Provoo for
his crimes in the Philippines as a POW and as a propaganda agent for the
Japanese. In a strange perversion of justice the US attorney even invited to the
federal court Provoo’s former captors – Japanese propagandists, military officials and POW guards – to establish his guilt. Why was the US government so
keen to pursue and charge a lone second world war POW with treason? What
dread did Provoo strike in the hearts of US officials? This article examines how
Provoo embodied wartime and postwar American panic concerning East Asia,
just as the situation in the region dramatically spiraled out of American control.
Keywords: Japan–USA, prisoners of war, propaganda
When the Japanese imperial army entered Malinta tunnel on Corregidor
Island in Manila Bay in early May 1942, American GIs found themselves face
to face for the first time with the enemy advancing into the fortress they had
called home for several months.1 A strong defensive posture had seemed possible
This research was assisted in part by grants from the Freeman Foundation and from the Abe
Fellowship Program, administered by the Social Science Research Council and the American
Council of Learned Societies in co-operation with and with funds provided by the Japan
Foundation Center for Global Partnership. I would like to also thank John Swenson-Wright,
Michael Baskett, and Stephen Large for their efforts in helping to craft this piece, and for the
constructive comments offered by this journal’s anonymous reviewers.
1 Corregidor, an amoeba-shaped island with eastern-oriented tail, stood as a fortified base a few
miles off Manila Bay. As it was believed to be virtually impregnable, Corregidor’s designers developed a flawed system that forced the fortress to rely on an internal power plant to keep food
refrigerated in the tropical climate and consumed energy to power guns. More importantly, and to
its ultimate detriment, a life-saving ventilation system that pumped air through the Malinta Tunnel
required electricity. US soldiers and Filipino laborers during the 1920 s and 1930 s bored into the
mountain, creating a long passage called the Malinta Tunnel from east to west, almost three
football fields long, criss-crossed with huge lateral tunnels from which a bombproof battle could
be waged to secure the port of Manila and hold out against a powerful adversary. Following the
fall of the Bataan Peninsula, the island had become the focus of relentless Japanese bombing
attacks, where US soldiers left behind as a last defense said they felt as if they were ‘living in the
center of a bull’s eye’, as quoted in Louis Morton, The War in the Pacific: The Fall of the
Philippines (Washington, DC, 1953), 495.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
813
at first, but within a short time life began literally to grow dim, with ‘dust, dirt,
flies and vermin everywhere’.2 Promised reserves and supplies never arrived. The
four months before the US surrender, replete with half rations, had sapped the
energy and morale of most, including many soldiers who were shell-shocked
after intense Japanese bombardments.3 Malaria, dengue fever, scurvy, beriberi,
and frequent amoebic dysentery decimated the troops.4
In the midst of this unexpected defeat a young US sergeant, John David Provoo,
exhibited behavior that shocked his fellow soldiers.5 When the Japanese arrived,
Provoo, a Caucasian, donned a white kimono, strode up to the Japanese soldiers,
introduced himself and welcomed the imperial officers. Witnesses at the scene
claimed that ‘Sergeant Provoo made a deep bow as the Japanese entered the
tunnel. He spoke in Japanese that he was a Buddhist priest, that he can speak
the Japanese language, and would like to be of service to them.’6
American POWs captured with Provoo claimed that his actions went beyond
collusion and crossed into treason. Not only did Provoo offer support to the
Japanese, but fellow American GIs asserted that Provoo’s intervention also led
directly to the execution of a US captain.7 Further compounding the
Americans’ belief that Provoo was in cahoots with the Japanese, a few weeks
after this murder the Japanese military shipped Provoo to Tokyo, where he
broadcast English-language radio propaganda aimed at Allied soldiers in the
South Pacific. Most of Provoo’s fellow POWs in the Philippines assumed that
he was living the high life of a traitor in Tokyo, but in fact Provoo passed the
entire war as a POW of the Japanese. Upon his release in August 1945 he was
re-imprisoned and arrested, this time by the Americans.
2 Louis Morton, Fall of the Philippines, op. cit., 542.
3 The number of soldiers retreating into defensive positions proved far greater than early estimates,
so officers immediately cut rations in half by January 1942: Louis Morton, Fall of the Philippines, op.
cit., 257: as the Army concluded, ‘So serious was the shortage of food after the first few weeks on
Bataan that the search for food assumed more importance than the presence of the enemy at the front.’
4 In April 1942 approximately 78,000 US troops surrendered to the Japanese, and thousands
were later forced to march through heat and mud on the infamous ‘Bataan Death March’ to a
POW camp some 100 miles away.
5 Provoo’s name also shows up in contemporary discussions about second world war traitors,
demonstrating the enduring myth surrounding his actions and in the memoirs of those who served
directly with him. (Japanese names are written last name first.) For a representative look at the
contemporary see: http://corregidor.org/chs_blakesley/provoo.htm (accessed 13 August 2009);
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f¼33&t¼140858 (accessed 1 February 2009). For
memoirs, see Frank Fujita, Foo, A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun: The Secret
Prison Diary of Frank ‘Foo’ Fujita (Denton, TX, 1993); Robert Morris Brown with Donald
Permenter, ‘I Solemnly Swear’: The Story of a GI Named Brown (New York 1957). Provoo is
mentioned in Japanese memoirs, most prominently in Ikeda Norizane, Hi no maru awâ (Tokyo
1979).
6 New York Times, 30 October 1952.
7 RG 331, Allied Operational and Occupational Headquarters, SCAP, Legal Section, Law
Division, Misc. Classified, 1945–52, Box 1434, Folder: Provoo, John, D. Sgt., Affidavit of
Richard M. Sakakida, Apprehension Division, War Crimes Branch, Manila, Jan. 30, 1947.
National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
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The US federal government spent the decade following the close of the
second world war (1945–55) initiating two federal treason trials, and dispensing over one million dollars in legal pursuit of Provoo for his crimes, both in the
Philippines as a POW and as a propaganda agent for the Japanese.
Demonstrating the extreme lengths to which the US government went in proving Provoo’s guilt, in a strange pursuit of justice the US attorney even invited to
a federal court the very same people who had forced Provoo into his original
predicament – the Japanese propagandists who managed him, imperial military
officers whose policies called for hiring Provoo and the Japanese POW guards
who managed his wartime activities. Some of America’s bestselling newspapers
and magazines, including the New York Times, Time, Life, Newsweek, and
Cosmopolitan tirelessly reported on Provoo’s public trials and his fate developed into a legal odyssey that influenced future interpretations of American
treason law.8
This article examines Provoo, his alleged crimes and participation with imperial Japanese propaganda, and the legal furor behind his two postwar treason
trials. I aver that the reason the US government was keen to unleash vast sums
of money, employ an arsenal of investigators in both the USA and Japan, and
spend ten years pursuing a lone second world war POW for treason pivoted on
American fears of East Asia that continued from pre-war to postwar. The fear
initially was oriented toward Japan, but then shifted toward the perceived
communist threat in East Asia in the early years of the Cold War. Provoo’s
wartime behavior was, if not reprehensible or cowardly, arguably at least in
contravention of the military code of conduct. But he was never court-martialed; Provoo was tried in a civilian court. The legal labyrinth he faced postwar
did not so much center on questions of jurisprudence but reflected America’s
own concepts of national identity and postwar anxiety toward East Asia.
These two incidents – the murder on Corregidor and the propaganda broadcasts – struck at the core of American belief about itself. Provoo embodied
wartime and postwar American panic concerning East Asia, just as the situation in the region dramatically spiraled out of American control in the initial
months of the second world war. The reality of Provoo’s professed belief in
Buddhism and alleged homosexuality were less relevant than the fact that these
issues represented his denial of mainstream Christian culture (not just religion)
and ‘normative’ heterosexual values that dominated the American political and
social scene during the second world war and the early 1950s. Together, the
albatross of charges against Provoo – Japanese propagandist, homosexual and
Buddhist – became ‘reasons’ that helped explain to Americans how one US
soldier could be a traitor to American core values of God and country.
Clark Lee’s article in the September 1950 issue of Cosmopolitan mirrored the
very political and social biases that Provoo faced in early Cold War America.
8 See the articles ‘Trial for Treason’, Newsweek, 10 November 1952, 31–2; ‘A Tale of Treachery
on Corregidor’, Life, 24 November 1952, 28–9; ‘Case of the Buddhist Sergeant’, Time,
24 November 1952, 22; ‘Million Dollar Loss’, Time, 6 September 1954.
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Lee wrote that Provoo, ‘the American ex-Sergeant may have had some indication of Japan’s war plans’.9 With little proof, Lee’s article insinuated that
Provoo’s supposed pre-war lavish lifestyle was impossible for a mere bank
clerk, and that money had come from Japan to support his expensive habits.
Such notions struck a chord with the American public, even though Lee’s
reports were baseless. This was not Lee’s first venture into such journalistic
territory; he had also reported the mythical story of Tokyo Rose, whose fate
was to represent America’s other great fear – fifth-column second-generation
Japanese Americans who supposedly pledged allegiance to Imperial Japan.10
Provoo embodied the very fears that wartime Hollywood had created in the
cinema. The 1942 film Black Dragons depicted a spy ring where a dastardly
nazi plastic surgeon transformed Japanese secret agents into American (white)
businessmen. To the American public a story like Provoo’s no longer seemed so
far-fetched.11
My research aims to unravel the myth from the event of Provoo. I sculpt this
research along the lines of what the historian of China, Paul Cohen, labels a
history in three keys, because such a methodology helps us to understand the
competing narratives concerning Provoo’s actions, and why various segments
of the American public reacted as they did. There is the event of Provoo, actual
acts he committed in broadcasting propaganda for the Japanese enemy. No one
denies this, and yet the story behind how Provoo arrived in such a situation –
what happened in Japan – must be accurately charted to understand charges of
his complicity. There is the myth of Provoo – the image and stories retained and
recounted by his fellow POWs that Provoo was complicit in his treason with
the Japanese and that his behavior was responsible for the death of an
American captain. As Cohen relates, the ‘event represent[s] a particular reading
of the past’, while the myth ‘represent[s] an impressing of the past into the
service of a particular reading of the present’.12 And there is the experience of
Provoo – how he is remembered by those peripherally connected to the story.13
9 Clark Lee, ‘The Case of a Coward’, Cosmopolitan, September 1950, 70–1, 134–9.
10 Masayo Duus documents the wartime myth surrounding these female propaganda broadcasts
and demonstrates that ‘Tokyo Rose’ was a composite figure, in Tokyo Rose, Orphan of the Pacific
(New York 1979).
11 Films of this genre did not stop with only one release. The 1945 movie Betrayal from the East
is a spy story where American authorities match wits with a spy ring inside the Japanese community in California, just before the Pearl Harbor attack. The 1944 film Samurai focused on the
training of a Japanese orphan brought up in America who betrays the USA and assists in the
Japanese invasion of California. Blood on the Sun, a 1945 Academy-award-winning film starring
James Cagney, offered conspiracy enthusiasts yet another cinematic adventure involving Japanese
plans for world domination and secret agents. Christina Klein’s work Cold War Orientalism: Asia
in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, CA, 2003), details how these themes continued after the war, but slowly turned the Asian menace into a softer, cuddlier version that
required American assistance.
12 Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys – The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth
(New York 1997), xii.
13 Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys, op. cit., xiii.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
These three historical keys at times mutually reinforce one another and at times
are contradictory, but that is not unusual for such a complex historical case.
Provoo’s name continues to show up on former POW message boards and in war
memoirs long after his own death and even the death of those directly involved.14
(See Figures 1 and 2 of the arrest photos of Provoo on the following page.)
Why the United States government lavished so much money and time on
pursuing Provoo while similar cases of propagandists for the Axis languished,
such as Ezra Pound’s, suggests America’s wartime attitudes toward East Asia
had not dissipated all that much in the early years of the Cold War.15 The prewar fear of Japanese, and those related such as Japanese Americans, as sneaky
spies,
justified the poor performance of colonial defence in Asia, and in the USA created the extraordinary miscarriage of justice when over 100,000 Japanese Americans were interned in 1942.
This panic assumed that the audacious and devastating attack on Pearl Harbor could only
have been co-ordinated by a vast clandestine network of Japanese spies.16
Given the fear the US public already held of Japan before the war, Provoo’s
open declaration of being a sympathetic Buddhist only fueled the fire surrounding suspicions of his own wartime allegiance. As Naoko Shibusawa has illuminated, America reshaped a frightful wartime Japan after the war into a national
geisha, portraying Japan as a woman in political subservience to her male
client, the USA.17 But this transformation took time to complete, and in the
interim the government pursued its case with Provoo.
Historically, Provoo’s case demands attention because it symbolizes postwar
America’s early Cold War anxiety about the future of East Asia. While the
United States had eventually been militarily successful against Japan, after
1945 East Asia looked anything but stable. The Marshall mission had failed
to draw Chiang Kai Shek’s Chinese Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s
Communists any closer to reconciliation. The ultimate ‘loss of China’, with
Mao’s proclamation of a communist China on 1 October 1949, confirmed US
leaders’ worst fears of a Red-dominated Asia. Numerous riots and a plodding
economy in Japan, along with seeming social support for communist aims,
shook American confidence. Japan regained its sovereignty after signing the
14 See the list in footnote 5 above.
15 The arrest of Ezra Pound, famous expatriate American poet who broadcast anti-American and
antisemitic diatribes on radio, drew public attention to the fact that traitors were not always
marginal figures. Unlike Provoo, who was captured, Pound chose to go to fascist Italy and actively
searched out supporters to listen to his propaganda for Mussolini. To the dismay of many who
awaited the trial, Pound was found mentally unfit to stand trial and spent a little over a decade
afterward at a Washington DC asylum, housed at public expense: Robert Wernick, ‘The Strange
and Inscrutable Case of Ezra Pound’, Smithsonian 26(9) (December 1995). Also see Julien D.
Cornell, The Trial of Ezra Pound: A Documented Account of the Treason Case (New York 1966).
16 Max Everest-Phillips, ‘The Pre-War Fear of Japanese Espionage: Its Impact and Legacy’,
Journal of Contemporary History 42(2) (April 2007), 243–65, at 249.
17 Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge,
MA, 2006), 4–5.
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FIGURES 1 AND 2
Military Police mug shots of Provoo taken at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.
Source: RG 65, Records of the FBI, Classification 61, Treason. Box 19, Folder 61, 11342 – EBF, 1
of 1. National Archives II, College Park Maryland, USA.
San Francisco treaty, implemented in April 1952, but by the early 1950s US
ambassador to Japan, John Allison, sponsored a State Department analysis of
Japanese sympathies for communism, as it was considered such a grave issue.18
As historians Michael Hunt and Steven Levine explain, the 1950s demonstrated the clear limits of US power in Asia and the future difficulties that
revolutionaries there, such as Vietnam, China, and the Philippines, as well as
Taiwan’s strategy to reclaim the Chinese mainland, would pose for successive
American administrations.19 This American feeling of unease was manifest in
popular culture as well. Films that dealt with the American POW experience
during the Korean War were distinct from related second world war films in
that they ‘reflected a crisis of national confidence during the early Cold War’.20
High-profile American cases of treason – Alger Hiss, Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg – hinged on the ideological appeal of communism, but Provoo
was supposedly a disloyal military prisoner of war. Provoo challenged
18 John Swenson-Wright, Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance Policy Toward
Japan, 1945–1960 (Stanford, CA, 2005), 159.
19 Michael Hunt and Steven Levine, ‘The Revolutionary Challenge to Early US Cold War Policy
in Asia’, in Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye (eds), The Great Powers in East Asia: 1953–1960
(New York 1990), 20–1.
20 Charles S. Young, ‘Missing Action: POW films, Brainwashing and the Korean War, 1954–
1968’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 18(1) (March 1998), 50.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
assumptions about loyalty in the US military in East Asia. This issue of allegiance grew to be a hotly contested issue during the Korean War (1950–3),
when the US military created a special deprogramming center in Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania to process the several thousand American POWs returned in
Operation Little Switch and Big Switch at the tail end of the Korean War.
The Secretary of the Army created a special board on ‘Prisoner of War
Collaboration’ to adjudicate their worthiness to re-enter mainstream
American society and to investigate whether they had committed any crimes.21
Provoo’s personality and background, like his treason trials and his life after
the war, remain shrouded, with numerous unanswered questions. Even members of his family found Provoo distant and sometimes diffident. The aloofness
and mystery that characterized Provoo also characterized his treason cases. At
first blush, he seemed genuinely intrigued with Buddhism and thus Japan, but
he did not remain in country long, and that sojourn might just have been one of
many, as evidenced by his early peripatetic career choices.
From the outset it appeared that John David Provoo was a patriotic
American. Unlike the marginal US elements that imperial Japanese propaganda
frequently targeted, he was part of the mainstream. He was born in San
Francisco, California, in 1917, graduated from high school, and worked for
a radio station, a Federal Reserve Bank, and various other jobs. He came from
a family of six, including three other brothers, of whom he was the second
eldest. His father was a contract painter. During his youth he became deeply
interested in Buddhism and in 1940, on his own initiative, he traveled to Japan
to study Nichiren Buddhism. After only seven months, however, he grew disillusioned, returned to America and got married. Unlike many at the time who
were motivated to find the answers to life’s compelling questions in East Asia,
such as Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, and others who turned to China, Provoo
was not. In May 1941 he enlisted in the United States Army and was immediately dispatched to the Philippines.22
Provoo had not been a soldier long before the war with Japan began, but it is
fairly clear from the outset that, while he did make a few friends, they paled in
number in comparison with his detractors. This factor certainly influenced later
interpretations of his actions as a POW. Provoo applied for a position as a
21 ‘Misconduct in the Prison Camp: A Survey of the Law and an Analysis of the Korean Cases’,
Columbia Law Review 56(5) (May 1956), 737. The Times (London) on 30 April 1953 reported on
the Valley Forge Camp and the problem of returned Americans and the shock that they would have
chosen communist countries over the US. Susan L Carruthers, ‘‘‘The Manchurian Candidate’’
(1962) and the Cold War Brainwashing Scare’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and
Television 18(1) (March 1998), 91, fn 44, details that the US government cleared 565 cases concerning POW collaboration in Korea, found 57 soldiers guilty, and court-martialed 10.
22 New York Times, 28 October 1952. In one deposition completed at Fort Meade, Maryland,
on 15 August 1949, Provoo wrote that after first arriving in Japan he became disillusioned. People
became more and more unfriendly, he admitted, and eventually he returned to the States in January
1941. RG 21, Entry 24-M-57, Box 663, Folder ‘Government Exhibits’. National Archives MidAtlantic Region, located in Philadelphia, PA.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
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Japanese linguist with the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) in the Philippines,
but was denied because officers suspected him of homosexual behavior.23 The
fact that he was interested in Japan and spoke some Japanese seems to have
fallen on deaf ears, and hindsight makes one wonder whether, if the military
had gone to better lengths to mold his skills more, the later tragedy would have
been avoided. Nonetheless, his performance met the minimum standards for
advancement, and the army promoted Provoo to corporal in January 1942 and
sergeant by March. What seemed to irritate others specifically was
Provoo’s interest in things ‘oriental’ and his ability to speak Japanese, a
tongue the other soldiers did not understand and considered the language of
the enemy. It is at this early moment that the event of Provoo quickly merges
with the myth of Provoo. No one seemed to know him, yet most despised him.
Testimony in the postwar treason trials continually centered on his Japanese
linguistic capability, implying that Provoo instructed the Japanese to kill the US
captain.
Subsequent investigations that the State Department and FBI conducted concerning Provoo’s background demonstrate that, even though he was continually labeled ‘fluent’ in the Japanese language, he had really only lived in Japan
for slightly more than half a year. Such testimony and evidence reflects this
early merging of emotion and facts about Provoo, circumstantial supposition
about his allegiance, thus helping to create the early postwar myth of Provoo
even before the charges of treason. Fluency in Japanese is impossible with such
little training, and reveals continued American bureaucratic ignorance, even
after the war began, of Asian languages and methods of acquisition.
Other troubling testimony concerned the people supposedly present at the
time of US Captain Burton Thomson’s execution, the man Provoo was supposedly responsible for murdering. Decorated Japanese-American soldier and
intelligence officer Richard Sakakida testified, and he would have no reason to
misrepresent what happened, though perhaps he had been grossly misinformed, that he had heard that Provoo attended Thomson’s execution. But
Sakakida incorrectly reported that a fellow POW, Alton Halbrook, had
driven the truck for the Japanese soldiers taking Thomson away.24
Alton Halbrook’s own affidavit records that he was only familiar with the
murder of Captain Thomson through hearsay, mostly from fellow POW
Everett R. Waldrum. Halbrook reported that Waldrum drove the truck.
Halbrook had heard through the rumor mill on Corregidor that Thomson
23 At Provoo’s first trial, Sakakida testified that he had been the one who had interviewed Provoo
in Manila as a potential interpreter for the Army’s counter intelligence corps, but later rejected him.
Sakakida declared that during the interview Provoo implied that Japan had been forced into the
second world war. For that, Sakakida explained, Provoo was not selected to join the CIC.
24 RG 331 (SCAP) Box 1635, Folder 3, Legal Division, Prosecution Division, USA versus Japan
War Criminals, case files, 1945–49. Vol. II of Exhibits to Record of Trial in the case of United
States vs. S. Fujita et 4, case docket no. 326. Testimony of Richard Sakakida, taken in Manila
January 30, 1947. Located in National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
did not know why he was being taken away, but suspected it concerned the
incident with Provoo.25
As veterinarian, Thomson controlled the maintenance of safe meat for the
soldiers. At one point after the US surrender, fellow POWs saw Thomson and
Provoo arguing, ostensibly over Thomson’s refusal to allow Provoo to take
food away from US soldiers and offer it to the Japanese officers in charge. In his
testimony Everett R. Waldrum stated that he was the only American present at
Thomson’s execution. And Waldrum cleared the ambiguity, explaining that he
had driven the truck with Thomson and the Japanese soldiers to Kinnley
Airfield where they executed Thomson.26 Provoo was not in the truck nor at
the site of the execution.
Provoo may have had a role in relaying displeasure with Captain Thomson’s
obstinacy to the Japanese. However, it was also highly likely, given the feelings
toward Provoo and rumors about his predilections toward other men, that
hearsay provided much of the fodder that bolstered charges he was responsible
for Thomson’s death, even though the defense never dwelled on this point
during its rebuttals.
A crucial element to the myth surrounding Provoo centered on his actions as
a propaganda broadcaster for the Japanese, a most unusual fact, given that
he was not Japanese American or even East Asian. The Japanese found
Provoo valuable because the imperial military and government had devised
a plan to use Allied POWs to broadcast English-language propaganda
toward the North American continent and to the Allies fighting in the
South Pacific. By the second world war the Japanese media grew enamored
of employing radio propaganda as a vehicle for sapping enemy morale and
creating racial division abroad.27 Even though they overestimated its appeal,
Japan Broadcasting Agency reports detailed that the nazi radio broadcaster
25 RG 331 (SCAP) Box 1635, Folder 3, Legal Division, Prosecution Division, USA versus Japan
War Criminals, case files, 1945–49. Vol. II of Exhibits to Record of Trial in the case of United
States vs. S. Fujita et 4, case docket no. 326. Affidavit testimony of Alton Halbrook in Dallas,
Texas, on April 18, 1947. Located in National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
26 RG 331 (SCAP) Box 1635, Folder 3, Legal Division, Prosecution Division, USA versus Japan
War Criminals, case files, 1945–49. Vol. II of Exhibits to Record of Trial in the case of United
States vs. S. Fujita et 4, case docket no. 326, Testimony of Everett R. Waldrum, conducted at Sul
Ross College, Alpine, Texas, August 21, 1947. Located in National Archives II, College Park,
Maryland.
27 Kitayama Setsurô (ed.), Taiheiyô sensô hôsô senden shiryô (Tokyo 1997), 7. The Japanese
had two specific goals concerning radio broadcasts toward the enemy. A 15 December 1941 plan,
‘General Propaganda policy concerning the Greater East Asia War’, stipulated that the overall plan
for propaganda toward the enemy called ‘for the Imperial General Headquarters’ bulletins to
accurately report battle conditions, and to continually and enthusiastically report on our military’s
strength and superiority in battle tactics, while pointing out the enemy’s weak points in strategy. At
the same time this propaganda will benefit our successful prosecution of the war and cause the
enemy public to lose heart in its will to wage war.’ Radio’s secondary goal centered on ‘damage
control’ by supposedly providing an accurate picture of western losses in the Allies’ battles against
Japan.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
821
in English known as ‘Lord Haw Haw’ was listened to by large numbers of
British.28 The Japanese leadership exaggerated the effectiveness of such
broadcasts, but they continued to assume that foreign-language radio propaganda produced tangible results.29 The Japanese army determined that the
use of Caucasian POWs offered excellent propaganda value, to demonstrate
to the colonies of Korea and Taiwan that the white race was not all-powerful.30 Japan maintained a specific racial policy toward Allied POWs and
intended to use white POWs for labor, as part of the larger propaganda
plan to show the world that the ‘colored races’ could be militarily victorious
and modern.31 Japanese propagandists believed photos of a Japanese soldier
in charge of white POWs spoke volumes about Japan’s superiority and
military might.
In contrast to static photographs, the Japanese military saw radio as active
propaganda. Propaganda on the airwaves required fluent native speakers in the
target language to broadcast radio shows capable of mobilizing local audiences.
Japanese propaganda agencies realized that radio propaganda should not be
confined to the domestic audience, but should also reach out to the enemy and
occupied areas in a variety of foreign languages.32 Two years before the outbreak of war with the United States, Japanese radio propagandist Namikawa
Ryô wrote that radio propaganda reflected a nation’s special characteristics. ‘For
the Germans it’s live broadcasts, British the news, drama or speeches, with the
French it is light music or comedy, the Italians opera, American Jazz, and the
28 M.A. Doherty, Nazi Wireless Propaganda: Lord Haw-Haw and British Public Opinion in the
Second World War (Edinburgh 2000), preface. Lord Haw-Haw, whose real name was William
Joyce, was hanged as a traitor to Britain in 1946, even though he was not a British citizen. He was
actually an American citizen who later became a naturalized German. Joyce went over to the nazi
side ‘to display his talents for vituperation and his obsessive anti-Semitism on a world stage’. His
broadcasts were well known in Japan and considered effective propaganda.
29 Kan Masao, Rajio ni yoru senden bôryakusen (Tokyo 1943).
30 Nagai Hitoshi, ‘Ajia taiheiyô sensôki no horyo seisaku, rikugun chûô to kokusai jôyaku’,
Kikan sensô sekinin kenkyû, 1995 (aki), 32. The Ministry of the Army’s Intelligence Bureau
decided on this POW policy on 27 January 1942. The Prisoner of War Information Bureau, created
under the aegis of the Ministry of the Army, published a monthly pamphlet called Furyo geppô, or
Prisoner of War Monthly Bulletin. Even though information concerning POW activities in Japan
was ordered to be destroyed upon surrender, some of the bulletins were recently discovered. For
reprints of the bulletins see Utsumi Aiko and Nagai Hitoshi (eds), Tôkyô saiban shiryô – furyo
jôhôkyoku kankei bunsho (Tokyo 1999).
31 Barak Kushner, The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda (Honolulu, HI, 2005).
32 Nishioka Kaori, Hôdôsensen kara mita ‘Nichû sensô (Tokyo 1999), 228–9. To oppose the
Chinese nationalists’ use of radio as a propaganda tool, the Japanese military drafted former
Niigata radio station manager Asano Kazuo and sent him to be the head of radio in Shanghai
in January 1938. The Japanese government also established radio stations in Suzhou and
Hangzhou. The problem was that outside city limits, not only did most Chinese houses not have
radio, but there was no electricity. Consequently, the Japanese military set up central listening
stations where people could gather and listen. At the same time, the military tried to avoid broadcasting dull news and instead concentrated on ‘public peace and pacification’, music and related
items.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
Japanese . . . ah, Japan is a problem.’33 Namikawa noted that in the international
arena Japan had not managed to establish a national identity on radio. Noted
propaganda theorist Koyama Eizô voiced similar opinions on the importance of
radio in constructing a national identity. Koyama focused on radio propaganda
as the nation’s first line of defense. Many Japanese propagandists considered
radio broadcasts the key to success in the ‘thought war’, as the Japanese labeled
their fight against Western imperial domination of Asia, as an ideal method for
countering the enemy’s lies and breaking the enemy’s will to fight.34 To succeed,
he noted, Japan had immediately to strengthen its international propaganda
efforts, which Koyama felt were the first line of defense in diplomacy.35
The logical extension of Namikawa and Koyama’s plans, as well as that of a
third well-respected government consultant on propaganda, Yoneyama Keizô,
led to plans to coerce Allied POWs to broadcast English-language Japanesesponsored propaganda toward the enemy audience.36
Japanese foreign-language radio propaganda was well established before
Provoo arrived as a POW broadcaster.37 One of the earliest programs Allied
POWs staffed was Zero Hour, established in the spring of 1942. Wartime
Japanese sources asserted that US soldiers ‘ardently listened’ to Zero Hour
because most of the POW broadcasters were good speakers.38 Zero Hour
33 Namikawa Ryô, ‘Kakoku no taigai senden hôsô’, Hôsô, May 1939, 27. Namikawa wrote
numerous articles on wartime propaganda broadcasting. In Namikawa Ryô, ‘Tekikoku senden
hôsô no tokushoku’, Hôsô, December 1942, 9–13, he explained recent British propaganda policy
shifts and noted that before 1941 Britain enthusiastically oriented many of its foreign broadcasts
toward the USA in order to get the USA to enter the war. See his personal memoir on wartime
Japanese broadcasting, Mô hitotsu no taiheiyô sensô (Tokyo 1984). While radio grew in importance over the years, so did journals relating to radio and broadcasting. Takeyama Akiko identifies
Hôsô and similar magazines as the primary avenues for the speeches of government and military
officials recorded in print. Takeyama Akiko (ed.), Hôsô kankei zasshi mokuji sôran, vol. 2
(Ôzorasha 1992), 7–8. Takeyama explains that Hôsô was an improvement over previous broadcast
magazines as a journal for industry specialists and general interest. It went beyond merely translating foreign broadcasts or printing domestic ones, but enriched its research and investigative
areas. Once the war with China exploded in 1937 the magazine took on a changed appearance,
printing articles about the China incident, national mobilization and radio propaganda. For more
on Japanese wartime broadcasting in English, see Jane Robbins, ‘Presenting Japan: The Role of
Overseas Broadcasting by Japan during the Manchurian Incident, 1931–37’, Japan Forum 13(1)
(2001), 41–54; and Gordon Daniels, ‘Japanese Domestic Radio and Cinema Propaganda, 1937–
1945: An Overview’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2(2) (1982), 115–32.
34 Koyama Eizô, ‘Kokka senden to hôsô’, Hôsô, May 1941, 11.
35 Koyama Eizô, ‘Kokka senden to hôsô’, op. cit., 16.
36 Yoneyama Keizô, ‘Senji hôsô senden’, Hôsô, February 1942, 5. The Japanese government
hired Yoneyama as a wartime theoretician to delve into the intricacies of propaganda theory and
practice.
37 Matsuzawa Chie, ‘Tôsho ni arawareta senji hôsô no hankyô’, Hôsô, September 1942, 73–8;
No Author, ‘Daitôasen to tôa hôsôjin no katsudô’, Hôsô, May 1942, 63–76; Fukuda Toshiyuki,
Sugata naki senpei – Nitchû rajio senshi (Tokyo 1993).
38 Sawada Shinnojô, Sugata naki tatakai (Tokyo 1944), 134. Japanese analyses of wartime radio
went so far as to claim that Japanese returning from America in the summer of 1942 said that
everyone abroad believed the Japanese government’s news announcements. Also see statements on
page 127.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
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helped fill a specific propaganda need that Japanese propagandists continually
faced – a drastic shortage of trained English linguists who also had broadcasting ability. To rectify this deficit, Colonel Nishi Yoshiaki, a senior officer in the
Army General Staff Office, proposed utilizing POWs for propaganda
broadcasts.39
Even before ‘Tokyo Rose’ began broadcasting in English, the Japanese
military had shipped an Australian named Charles Cousens, taken as a
POW in Singapore in February 1942, to Tokyo to transmit radio propaganda
for the Japanese.40 At first Cousens stayed alone at the decaying, yet still
stately, Dai-ichi hotel in Tokyo, but by October 1942 two more POWs,
Captain Wallace Ince, an American, and Norman Reyes, a Filipino, joined
Cousens to broadcast for the Zero Hour show. All three lived at the same
hotel and were chaperoned daily to the station. Zero Hour started in April
1942 and ran until about June 1944. The Japanese Imperial Army General
Staff Office had a hand in the creation of Zero Hour, a propaganda show
designed to drive a wedge between the US government and the American
public. A secondary goal centered on creating rancor within the minority
community in America.41 The Japanese government strongly supported the
military’s efforts in radio propaganda and on 17 November 1942 passed
a Cabinet decision calling for redoubled efforts at radio propaganda aimed
abroad.42
Japanese military and civilian propaganda agents established a special camp in
Tokyo for producing POW radio broadcasts – the Surugadai Technical Institute,
colloquially called the Bunka Camp (Culture Camp). (See Figures 3 and 4 on next
page.) Here POWs were forced to work on English-language propaganda radio
broadcasts. Bunka Camp officially opened on 3 November 1943, celebrated with
a large ceremony.43 The recently expanded radio crew now included Lieutenant
39 Masayo Duus, Tokyo Rose, op. cit., 69. Duus asserts that Japan was wholly unprepared to
wage psychological warfare because the country faced a tremendous shortage of trained linguists in
English.
40 For more on Cousens, see Ivan Chapman, Tokyo Calling: The Charles Cousens Case (Sydney
1990). Cousens had been a popular pre-war radio broadcaster in Australia. Originally English, he
emigrated to Australia to make his fortune. See also Duus, Tokyo Rose, op. cit., 71. In 1946, after
the war, the Australian government charged Cousens with treason, though it eventually dropped
the charges.
41 Kitayama Setsurô, Rajio Tôkyô, vol. 2, Daitôa e no michi (Tokyo 1988) 308–9.
42 Kitayama Setsurô, Rajio Tôkyô, vol. 2, Daitôa e no michi, op. cit., 243.
43 Norizane Ikeda, ‘Bunka Camp Story: Secret War of the Japanese Army’ (1964), unpublished
manuscript in author’s possession, 84. I would like to thank Ikeda’s daughter for allowing me to
use the manuscript. Numerous high dignitaries attended the opening ceremonies. Bunka Camp’s
opening ceremonies took place during the same week that the Japanese government’s political
international showpiece gathering, the Greater East Asia Conference, was held. The goal of liberating Asia from the yoke of Western racism and imperialism became the keynote of the event.
Invited dignitaries included Indian independence activist Chandra Bose, Philippine president Jose
Laurel, Chinese puppet government leader in Nanjing Wang Jing-Wei, Burmese head of state
Ba Maw, and others.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
Edwin Kalbfleish, Ensign George Henshaw, and the Japanese-speaking sergeant
taken prisoner in the Philippines the year before, John David Provoo.
In December 1943 Provoo became the master of ceremonies for the new
English-language Japanese radio propaganda show, Hi no maru awâ (Rising
Sun Hour).44 Rising Sun Hour stood apart from previous Japanese radio propaganda because it was Japan’s second major effort at a POW broadcast, but it
specifically targeted Allied forces in the Pacific.45 In 1946 and again in 1949,
the FBI’s extensive investigation into the charges of treason against Provoo
dwelled on the fact that he had served as the master of ceremonies for this
program, although Ikeda Norizane,46 one of the Japanese civilians in charge,
was the one who actually selected Provoo to head the propaganda broadcast.47
Provoo did not volunteer.
Provoo’s involvement with Japanese propaganda radio broadcasts demonstrates the difficulty Japanese officials faced when looking for native English
speakers. Luckily for the imperial propagandists, Provoo arrived at the POW
camp precisely at the time when Japanese military policies called for redoubled
efforts in using prisoners of war for radio propaganda. Other Allied POWs
were also involved with the production of radio propaganda, but rumors concerning Provoo’s behavior in the Malinta Tunnel, his Japanese ability, and
suspicions about his homosexuality meant that no other Americans were
charged with treason for similar activities at Bunka Camp. Another POW,
Mark Streeter, was very vocal in his anti-American attitudes and known in
Bunka Camp for his diatribes about Roosevelt, but after the war the US authorities never pursued a case against him.48 The Australian government initially
charged Charles Cousens but later dropped the case, and the only other treason
cases involved Japanese Americans, or civilians.
The process through which Provoo became a broadcaster for the Japanese
speaks about being in the wrong place at the right time. Lt. Col Tsuneishi
Shigetsugu of the Japanese Army General Staff Office picked the original
POW candidates that he wanted interviewed at the Omori POW camp, and
he instructed Ikeda to choose a dozen or so appropriately experienced ones to
44 ‘Hi no maru’ is what the Japanese flag is called. The title of the show was later changed to
Humanity Calls, which was considered more neutral and in line with the policy of breaking Allied
soldiers’ will to fight.
45 Kitayama Setsurô, Rajio Tôkyô, vol. 2, Daitôa e no michi, op. cit., 310.
46 After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1931, Ikeda studied Christian theology
for three years at Oxford University. In May 1941 he traveled to Melbourne, Australia to work for
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and found himself outside of Japan at the outbreak of war.
Norizane Ikeda, ‘Bunka Camp Story’, op. cit., 11. On page 18, Ikeda says he was in England
for four years, 1932–6.
47 According to Ikeda Norizane, Hi no maru awâ, op. cit., 16, the program Hi no maru awâ
transmitted from December 1943 to 14 August 1945.
48 Ikeda Norizane, Hi no maru awâ, op. cit., 70.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
825
FIGURES 3 AND 4
Outside and inside view of the Bunka Camp facilities, where Provoo broadcast Japanese wartime propaganda.
Source: RG 65, Records of the FBI, Classification 61, Treason. Box 19, Folder 61, 11342 – EBF, 1
of 1. National Archives II, College Park, Maryland, USA.
help with the broadcasts.49 Ikeda traveled to the camp, a small, reclaimed
island in the middle of Tokyo Bay, to interview the 50 or so prisoners.50 In
his memoirs he specifically recalled meeting Provoo for the first time. Provoo
told Ikeda that he became interested in Nichiren Buddhism as a youth and that
he had stayed in Japan for a couple of months to study at the head temple at
Minobu Mountain, 80 miles west of Tokyo. Ikeda was surprised that Provoo
‘could also speak Japanese fairly well for a foreigner’, though we must remember that Ikeda probably had serious reservations that any foreigner could learn
Japanese and that Provoo had only lived in Japan for about seven months.51
The situation was pregnant with irony. Ikeda was amazed not only to meet
Provoo, a non-Japanese believer in Nichiren Buddhism, but Ikeda was a
Christian who had studied Western religion at Oxford University. Here they
both were on opposite sides of an interview desk, a Buddhist POW and a
Christian Japanese propagandist.52
49 See Tsuneishi Shigetsugu, Shinrisakusen no kaisô (Tokyo 1977). Tsuneishi’s book differs from
Ikeda’s on several points, and he spent most of the time defending himself from charges that he
forced Allied POWs to broadcast. For a contrasting view of Tsuneishi and more of what happened
in the background with Allied POWs in Japanese broadcasting propaganda efforts, see Barak
Kushner and Sato Masaharu, ‘‘‘Negro Propaganda Operations’’: Japan’s Short-wave Radio
Broadcasts for World War II Black Americans’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
19(1) (1999), 5–26.
50 During the US occupation the Omori camp became a holding ground for Japanese war criminals. Several decades later it was transformed into a resort island, renamed Peace Island, and is
now a popular destination for gambling on speedboat racing.
51 Ikeda, Bunka Camp, op. cit., 72–3; Ikeda, Hi no maru awâ, op. cit., 70. Ikeda says that
Provoo could speak some Japanese.
52 The Japanese plan to gather native English speakers with broadcasting talent did not operate
smoothly, and at times appeared quite haphazard. Another US POW, Frank Fujita, wrote that the
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
Postwar, the FBI obsessively interrogated Ikeda concerning why he chose
Provoo as head of the Rising Sun Hour broadcast, implying that Provoo’s
pro-Japanese stance had impressed Japanese propaganda workers. Ikeda
responded that aside from complete coincidence, Provoo proved an able broadcaster, but his ability to speak a little Japanese made it much easier for Ikeda to
attend to other duties at the same time and not always play the role of translator between the broadcast technicians and the POWs. Provoo’s Japanese
language ability is significant because, like his sexual orientation, it set him
apart from what was perceived to be a mainstream American soldier. The fact
that he could speak a little of an ‘oriental language’ caused many US soldiers to
view Provoo as pro-Japanese, and since he was not an intelligence officer,
fellow soldiers viewed Provoo’s interest in the enemy’s language as treasonous.
Every source on Provoo labels his Japanese ability as ‘fluent’, including court
testimony, newspaper articles and postwar secondary research, but in all likelihood he could verbalize some Japanese, perhaps enough to get by. However,
in pre-war Japan any foreigner who could speak even a few words would have
stood out or been labeled as ‘fluent’.53
Provoo’s language skills and amity with the Japanese were two strikes against
him in the eyes of fellow Bunka Camp prisoners of war. Rumors about
Provoo’s links to the murder of Captain Thomson back in the Philippines
and questions concerning his sexual orientation made him the pariah of all
the POWs at Bunka Camp.54 Similar to his experience in the Philippines,
most men at Bunka Camp, with the exception of a few, shunned Provoo.
The Provoo case, a blend of myth and event, exemplifies the indecisive and often
conflicting nature of American policies concerning postwar Japan and East Asia.
American soldiers occupied Japan while China slid into civil war and Korea
divided its loyalties between the two superpowers – the Soviet Union and the
United States. Immediately following Japan’s surrender in August 1945, fellow
Bunka Camp POWs placed Provoo and several other POWs in detention for
supposed collaboration with the enemy. It is difficult to discount their suspicions
of Provoo, but we should also remember that many of these experiences were
colored by internal rumors that had followed Provoo: his own behavior in the
Philippines and his attitude toward the Japanese. In the immediate postwar period,
many Americans were looking for answers to why they had been caught off guard
Japanese transferred him to Bunka Camp even though he was an artist and had no experience in
broadcasting: Frank Fujita, Foo, op. cit., 182–202.
53 Few foreigners historically learned Japanese, and many Japanese themselves remain convinced
that only they can learn the language. When a non-Japanese manages to learn a few phrases, it is
often cause for exaggerated fawning. Roy Andrew Miller discusses this fully in Japan’s Modern
Myth: The Language and Beyond (New York 1982).
54 Ikeda, Hi no maru awâ, op. cit., 79. Fujita mentioned that one of the original Bunka Camp
prisoners was caught having sex with one of the newcomers, but he does not mention Provoo by
name: Foo, op. cit., 238.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
827
by the Japanese in the opening moments of the war. Blame was in ample supply to
pin on a few out-of-place, yet seemingly guilty individuals like Provoo.
In September 1945 the American military police formally arrested
Provoo along with a few fellow Bunka Camp propagandists, but never filed
any formal charges.55 However, even though his fellow Americans in both the
Philippines and Bunka Camp vilified his existence, the initial postwar US investigation of Provoo proved inconclusive, even after seven months of detention in
Sugamo Prison and constant US military Counter Intelligence Corps interrogations. After having been a captive of the Japanese and then the Americans,
the American military released Provoo with an honorable discharge on 4 April
1946. Upon his release, Provoo returned to the United States and soon
re-enlisted in the army, on 5 September 1946.
Official Allied Command policy concerning POWs who had become enmeshed
in wartime Japanese propaganda faced a labyrinth of dilemmas: should the US
government charge the former prisoners under civilian or military law, or should
they be set free and their actions considered the result of duress? The federal
prosecution’s steps toward indicting Provoo as a civilian traitor proved laborious. The US government’s strategy to convict Provoo of treason focused on his
supposed relations with the Japanese in the Philippines and his motivations while
a POW broadcasting Japanese propaganda. On top of this, prosecutors later also
focused on his sexual orientation. How the US government dealt with these
issues, and the mounting conflicting evidence, proves how strongly US authorities wished to obtain a conviction for their own postwar propaganda purposes.
By the spring of 1949 Provoo’s military status was coming to a close.
For close to three years he had re-enlisted, he had been in and out of hospitals
for a variety of real and imagined illnesses, and he never managed to gain a
permanent position on any base; as a soldier he held been held in a sort of
administrative limbo. In April of that year the FBI came to question him yet
again, while he recuperated at the army hospital at Fort Meade in Maryland.
Suddenly, in June 1949, without warning, the army summarily discharged
Provoo and transported him to Fort Jay, an army post in New York City
Harbor. The army commanded him to relinquish his military rank, instantaneously making him a civilian, and the FBI arrested him on the spot under civil
law, quickly dragging him off to a federal grand jury. A secret memo from
the War Department concerning a meeting of higher military officials and
the Department of Justice revealed that US officials conspired to allow the
Department of Justice ‘the opportunity of taking Provoo into custody at the
time of his discharge’. Provoo’s supposed homosexuality served as the basis
55 Asahi Shinbun (Tokyo edition), 15 September 1945. Mark Streeter, an anti-Roosevelt Mormon
from Utah, and Cousens are cited in the article, but Provoo is not specifically mentioned. See also
Judge Thomsen’s response to Provoo’s Writ of Habeas Corpus, which stated that Provoo was
arrested pursuant to an 11 September 1945 command from General MacArthur’s GHQ concerning
‘Apprehension and Detention of Certain Individuals’. Petition of John David Provoo for a Writ of
Habeas Corpus, United States v. John David Provoo, Civ. A. No. 8025, Crim. A. No. 2306, United
States District Court for the District of Maryland, 17 F.R.D. 183, opinion by Judge Thomsen.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
for his discharge, since sodomy was illegal in the military, and the previous FBI
investigations were used as pretext to release him directly to federal agents.56
Following his sudden handover to civilian authorities in 1949, Provoo
asserted that as a soldier and POW, civil courts did not have judicial authority
over him. If he were charged, he argued, he should at least be judged by a
military tribunal.57 This was a crucial point because, during the time of his
supposedly treasonous actions, Provoo was a soldier, a POW. No official paid
him any heed.
In its zeal to indict Provoo for treason, the US government chose to rely on
the testimony of individuals perhaps least able to neutrally judge his behavior,
his former Japanese captors: Ikeda Norizane, Tsuneishi Shigetsugu, Fujimura
Nobuo, Morino Masayoshi, and others.58 In September 1949 Allied Command
headquarters in Tokyo requested that Ikeda and Fujimura meet with FBI agent
Frederick Tillman.59 Tillman asked these two, among others, to journey at US
government expense to New York City for Provoo’s Grand Jury hearing as
prosecution witnesses. Since Japan had not yet regained its sovereignty under
occupation law, Japanese were forbidden to travel abroad unless US military or
56 RG 276, United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, Case Files, Case #23083–23084,
United States v. John D. Provoo. Forms filed in petition to Court of Appeals, 2nd District,
United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, Case Files, Case #23083–23084, Box 6984, folder
23084. United States v. John D. Provoo. Located in New York Federal Archives Depository,
Manhattan, New York City.
57 RG 21, Entry 24-M-57, Box 663, Folder ‘Defendant’s Exhibits’, March 1, 1951. A Petition
for Writ of Habeas Corpus from petitioner John D. Provoo to Honorable District Court of US,
Southern District of New York, in New York City. Located in National Archives Mid-Atlantic
Region, Philadelphia, PA. Provoo wrote that he was being illegally detained at the Federal
Detention Center in New York City. In the writ he asserted three points: first, he was not imprisoned due to any judgment of the courts; secondly, he was illegally confined, since he was not a
civilian and his discharge from the military was illegal; and thirdly, he was not ‘found’ in the
Southern District but forcefully placed there against his will.
58 The military and the US government not only employed civilian Japanese who had worked on
wartime propaganda campaigns, but also brought in former Japanese military officers to testify
against US military officers at postwar US court martial trials: Richard F. Newcomb. Abandon
Ship!: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Navy’s Greatest Sea Disaster (New York 2001). On
3 December 1945, the US Navy opened court martial proceedings against Captain Charles Butler
McVay, commander of the cruiser Indianapolis, for failing to take appropriate measures that
would have supposedly saved his ship. The US government called Lieutenant Commander
Hashimoto Mochitsura, the commander of the Japanese submarine that torpedoed the
Indianapolis, as a witness. Even though McVay was found guilty, two months later the military
court dismissed the sentence and restored Captain McVay to full duty. I am indebted to my student
Daniel Gerbatch for pointing this out.
59 Stanley I. Kutler, The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War (New York
1982), 6. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initially assigned Special Agent Frederick Tillman to investigate ‘Tokyo Rose’ and POW propaganda. Masayo Duus says some of the Japanese witnesses
were also questioned at the Tokyo Rose trial. She feels this move demonstrated how coercively the
USA acted in postwar treason trials. Japanese witnesses would have found it difficult to refuse, in
light of the fact that Japan was still an occupied country and America the more powerful victor.
This power relationship, Duus postulates, probably had an adverse effect on the truth of the
Japanese witnesses’ testimony.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
829
diplomatic authorities granted special permission.60 All the witnesses first flew
to Washington DC, where the FBI interviewed them again. In contrast with
Provoo, who had been in captivity in some form or another since 1942, the
Japanese witnesses had a pleasant time, which they spent sightseeing around
Washington DC and New York City. Ikeda even included tourist pictures in
one of his books.
On the flight to America, FBI authorities instructed the Japanese witnesses
not to speak with another witness, Fujita Seitarô, who was imprisoned at the
time, but whom US officials also sent to New York to testify against Provoo.
Ikeda wrote that during the flight he could not resist talking with Fujita, so he
bided his time, shifted seats and spoke to him when no one was listening.
During their conversation Ikeda broached the topic of why Fujita was in jail.
Fujita replied that he had been in charge of the Allied POWs on Corregidor
Island in 1942. After the war, US officials prosecuted Fujita and four other
Japanese soldiers for the murder of Captain Burton Thomson, the soldier with
whom Provoo had been seen arguing in the spring of 1942.61
Even though a Japanese soldier had been convicted of the murder of Captain
Thomson, the case against Provoo continued. In November 1949 a federal
grand jury formally charged Provoo with treason, that he ‘did unlawfully,
willfully, and knowingly and with intent [act] to betray the United
States . . . .’62 But the treason trial would not start for another three years.
Even though the US government indicted Provoo, it did not quickly bring the
case to trial but opened a new series of investigations against him from 1949–52,
on top of those the FBI had already conducted. One of the major pivots in an
American treason trial, as opposed to a court martial, is the thorny issue of
proving the defendant’s intent to commit treason. The second world war and
the subsequent trials of traitors who had produced propaganda for the enemy
‘muddied the jurisprudence of the treason clause’, because it never became legally clear whether propaganda activities for the enemy, especially under duress,
could be considered seditious behavior.63 Postwar, the Department of Justice
realized a treason case necessitated more than just damning evidence, but that
‘the accused’s acts must be accompanied by an intention to betray’.64
The prosecution’s attempt to convict Provoo, not merely indict, thus
revolved on detailing his motivations behind Captain Thomson’s murder and
60 Ikeda, Hi no maru awâ, op. cit., 157. Everyone got health checkups, and during this time the
US authorities discovered Buddy Uno had TB, and denied him permission to travel to the
USA: 158.
61 Ikeda, Hi no maru awâ, op. cit., 179–80. For data on Fujita, see Sugamo Hômuiinkai (ed.),
Senpan saiban no jissô (Tokyo 1981 [1952]), 249. Fujita Seitarô, defendant #778 in the Yokohama
war crimes trials, was charged with a crime committed abroad while part of the Imperial Japanese
Army in the Philippines.
62 The District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York filed the initial
indictment on 17 November 1949.
63 John Roland, ‘Comment on Hurst’s Law of Treason’, UWLA Law Review 757 (2002), 34.
64 Kutler, The American Inquisition, op. cit., 22.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
his intentions while broadcasting Japanese propaganda. Had Provoo joined the
Japanese voluntarily, as the government argued, or was he a confused, psychologically distraught and sexually misguided soldier placed in a horrible set of
circumstances, as the defense countered? The story fed public appetite for mystery and intrigue, serving as a postwar version of the American espionage films
eagerly consumed pre-war, but the core of the trial revolved around serious
precedent-setting legal questions.
From the start, in its bid to establish that Provoo was a traitor, the US
government focused on Provoo’s state of mind and placed blame squarely on
his shoulders for having acquiesced to the demands of his Japanese captors.
Regardless of Provoo’s intentions, it is amazing that the court declared Provoo
legally competent to stand trial in the first place. He never suffered a complete
psychological breakdown, but the decade of deprivation he faced from 1941–51
must have exerted tremendous strain. As an Allied soldier on Corregidor, he
became a POW of the Japanese for over three years under spartan conditions.
After the war, the US military detained him in one form or another for another
eight years, some of it in virtual solitary confinement while awaiting the first
federal trial. At various times lawyers detailed his psychological imbalances.
Aside from his experiences as a POW, several physicians seemed to aver that
his belief in Buddhist precepts signified psychological distress. One psychological
profile of Provoo stated, ‘[w]hile at Fort Meade, Provoo received religious
instruction and instruction in Scholastic Philosophy from Chaplain Hayes,
who testified that he [Provoo] was singularly lacking in an understanding in
Western morality.’65
There is compelling scholarship that early Cold War America viewed
Buddhism as a weak religion, a set of beliefs that could not be fully trusted.
Seth Jacobs argues that in postwar America a
reflexive association of ‘Buddhism’ with ‘passivity’ received an extended showcase in the
pages of the United States’ newspaper of record when the Times covered the trial of accused
traitor John David Provoo – a highly publicized event that concluded less than a year before
Diem’s [Ngo Dinh] installation as South Vietnam’s premier.66
In the public mind Provoo was thus doubly linked with not being a true
American and a traitor to his country – he had affiliated himself with the
65 RG 21, Entry 24-M-57, Box 663, Folder ‘No. 23076 Criminal Action United States of
America vs. John David Provoo 37, p.10.’ Located in National Archives Mid-Atlantic Region,
Philadelphia, PA.
66 Seth Jacobs, ‘‘‘Our System Demands the Supreme Being’’: The U.S. Religious Revival and the
‘‘Diem Experiment’’, 1954–55’, Diplomatic History 25(4) (Fall 2001), 605. On page 606, Jacobs
mistakenly assumes the media coverage of the time to be reasonably accurate. The media were
wrong on several counts, most pointedly when they claimed that Provoo was unmarried, a confusing fact that does not really seem to have come out in the trial. In my own search of the archives,
it remains unclear when Provoo actually divorced, but the fact was he had been previously married.
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already treacherously viewed Japanese and he was a professed Buddhist. Nick
Cullather extends this understanding when he points out that
Americans in the 1950s customarily read Cold War scenarios in religious terms. Church and
synagogue attendance soared nationwide, a revival Jacobs calls the Third Great Awakening.
Religious books and films dominated popular culture, while mass-circulation religious newspapers and magazines, such as Commentary, America, and Christian Century, treated
national issues from a denominational perspective.67
Aside from the inherent psychological bias against a white American
who professed a belief in Buddhism, psychologists did agree on the psychological impact years of captivity had on soldiers. A US Army study found
that, for prisoners taken on Corregidor island, where Provoo surrendered, conditions once the Japanese took over remained horrible. ‘Since the
Japanese culture recognized suicide as the honorable recourse in defeat they
held those who surrendered in special contempt.’68 The report added that
‘overt homosexuality and masturbation were common’.69 The article concluded that most POWs had difficulty after repatriation and that the ‘unusually high incidence in the group of survivors of those with psychopathic
personality may indicate that in the original group psychopathy was
common’.70
The US proceedings had some of the trappings of a show trial, while in Japan
the event barely registered a response from the domestic media. Postwar
Japanese did not want to focus on their wartime treatment of American
POWs, even as their former military and government officials were testifying
at Provoo’s trial. The decade-old evidence from 1945, presented in part by his
former Japanese captors, raises serious doubts surrounding the charges because
the US government had delayed so long before even opening the trial. As the
trial transcript and later FBI reports revealed, the choice to re-open the case
against Provoo had deep political significance as a signal to the nation and to
67 Nick Cullather’s book review of Seth Jacobs, ‘Here’s the Beef: Religion, Culture, and Ngo
Dinh Diem’, Diplomatic History 30(3) (June 2006), 553.
68 Major Stewart Wolf and Lt. Col. Herbert S. Ripley, ‘Reactions Among Allied Prisoners of
War Subjected to Three Years of Imprisonment and Torture by the Japanese’, The American
Journal of Psychiatry, September 1947, 183–4. The article noted that those prisoners transferred
from the Philippines to Japan suffered even more during transport. For a representative work of
Japanese scholarship on the treatment of wartime Allied POWs and discussions of the policies that
brought about such behavior, see Utsumi Aiko, Nihon no horyo seisaku (Tokyo 2005).
69 Wolf and Ripley, ‘Reactions among Allied Prisoners’, op. cit., 185.
70 Wolf and Ripley, ‘Reactions among Allied Prisoners’, op. cit., 192. A similar study published
in the same journal in October 1952 asserted identical findings. The article, ‘Survival Factors in
American Prisoners of War of the Japanese’, noted (242) that hostility within groups of survivors
while in captivity was not uncommon. Even more of a problem was that (243) ‘homosexual
practices became a subject of group knowledge and discussion and almost reached a level where
internal official measures needed to be applied’.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
America’s opponents that disloyalty wherever and in whatever form would not
be tolerated.
Opening arguments for Provoo’s treason trial proceeded during the waning
months of 1952, when news that American POWs were suspected of collaborating with Chinese propaganda campaigns shocked both military leaders and
the public at large. Military leaders and the public felt emasculated in the
propaganda war against the communists on the Korean peninsula and
Provoo’s trial commenced in the midst of this anxious period, when the
nation faced an East Asia that now appeared invincible enough to ‘turn’ supposedly incorruptible and tough American GIs. In the Korea War behavior
unbecoming of a POW, and actions such as broadcasting propaganda for the
enemy, were believed to be so rampant that a US military committee assembled
to study the war and POWs. The armed forces’ report concluded that morale
and training had broken down to such a degree, with deleterious effects on the
American public, that ‘the Korean story must never be permitted to happen
again’.71
The debacle of almost two dozen American POWs choosing the Chinese
communist way of life in preference to that of the United States prompted
the US military to develop a code of conduct for POWs, in the belief that
such guidelines would help avoid future scandals.72 In comparison with the
second world war, when being a POW symbolized bravery in the face of
adversity, a few years later during the Korean War, being a POW now
‘became a source of shame and anxiety’.73
As American soldiers repatriated from North Korean and Chinese POW camps
during the Korean War, US officials worried that such soldiers had been brainwashed by the communists to serve as ‘Manchurian Candidates’, or sleeper
spies to be later activated.74 If someone like Provoo could appear during the
second world war and become a supporter of the Japanese, statesmen assumed,
there was no telling what havoc golden-tongued communist propaganda agents
could cause.
71 Eugene Kinkead, In Every War But One (New York 1959), 23. Suspect American POW
activities began in the summer of 1950 and continued through the summer of 1953. See the critique
of the damage this view caused in postwar America: H.H. Wubben, ‘American Prisoners of War in
Korea: A Second Look at the ‘‘Something New in History Theme’’’, American Quarterly 22(1)
(Spring 1970), 6.
72 George S. Prugh, Jr, ‘The Code of Conduct for the Armed Forces’, Columbia Law Review
56(5) (May 1956), 687.
73 Susan L. Carruthers, ‘‘‘Not Just Washed but Dry-Cleaned’’: Korea and the ‘‘Brainwashing’’
Scare of the 1950s’, in Gary D. Rawnsley (ed.), Cold-War Propaganda in the 1950s (New York
1999), 58.
74 Rosemary Foot, ‘The Eisenhower Administration’s Fear of Empowering the Chinese’, Political
Science Quarterly 111(3) (Autumn 1996), 507. Mark R. Jacobson, ‘‘‘Minds then Hearts’’: US
Political and Psychological Warfare during the Korean War’, PhD dissertation, Ohio State
University (2005), 66: ‘In order to expose and counter Soviet propaganda during the Korean
War, the Army launched programs during the Korean War to study the specific Communist indoctrination techniques known popularly as ‘‘brainwashing’’. . ..’
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In fact, the term ‘brainwashing’ became part of the public lexicon when a
small number of American POWs refused repatriation after the Korean War.
The limited war on the Korean peninsula that US Secretary of State Dean
Acheson and others anguished about had turned international, and there was
no room for traitors or those that supported a communist East Asia. Americans
began to ask if there was something wrong with their supposedly superior way
of life, that US soldiers would choose the enemy, and Provoo arrived on the
legal stage precisely at this juncture in 1952.75
As Ron Robin observed in his analysis of how the USA shaped its own fears
of communism and East Asia, ‘American society of the 1950s was increasingly
fascinated by the threat of a foreign presence within the American body politic.’76 Provoo fitted perfectly into such a landscape of anxiety. Rumor of some
amorphous enemy lurking both within and without American borders transfixed the US public in the immediate aftermath of the second world war.
Robin’s work suggests that ‘a variety of public opinion leaders participated
in the transformation of assumptions, fears, and selective information into a
plausible, widely accepted construction of the enemy.’77 In the construction of
the case against Provoo, representative of such intense American fears of fifth
columnists, the rise of communism in East Asia was linked in the public mind
with a white American who defied easy categorization.
US anxiety about East Asia had as much to do with a fear of communism
and brainwashing of POWs as a fear of homosexuals in general. Most remember Joseph McCarthy’s famous February 1950 oration concerning the innumerable supposed communists in the State Department. Fewer recall Deputy
Undersecretary John Peurifoy’s announcement that 91 homosexuals had been
discovered and were considered security risks. David Johnson has labeled this
forgotten period the ‘lavender scare’, and in his estimation, ‘[w]hether comparing their social habits, psyches, or morals, cold warriors saw parallels between
Communists and homosexuals.’78 Provoo merged the image of traitor perfectly
in both ways – he had colluded with an Asian enemy and he was a suspected
homosexual. In the fevered pitch of public anxiety it no longer mattered that he
had worked with the Japanese; a POW who turned was bad enough. In the
early 1950s homosexual became synonymous with being a communist, and
thus a traitor, and this belief engulfed all other fears.
The American derision of Buddhist beliefs as a set of false beliefs compounded
the fact that prosecutors tried to link Provoo’s religious beliefs to his
75 Adam J. Zweiback, ‘The 21 ‘‘Turncoat GIs’’: Nonrepatriations and the Political Culture of the
Korean War’, The Historian, December 1998, 355.
76 Ron Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the MilitaryIndustrial Complex (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 168.
77 Robin, Making of the Cold War Enemy, op. cit., 4.
78 David K. Johnson, ‘The Lavender Scare: Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Civil Service, 1945–
1975’, PhD thesis submitted to Northwestern University History Dept. (2000), 38.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
homosexuality.79 Provoo’s religious ideals were called into question, as was his
pre-war interest in Japan, but further damning to Provoo was his supposed
homosexuality – an issue the prosecution continually harped on in open court.
Provoo’s study in pre-war Japan linked his fate to the American fear of
Japanese espionage, but Provoo’s alleged homosexuality further enflamed official anxiety about his crimes. As Robert Dean describes America after the
second world war, ‘Heroism in war occupied a central place in the imagination
of manhood for the men in the high-level national security bureaucracy’,
including the military.80 Provoo’s wartime actions were far from valorous
and stood as the antithesis of America’s heroic hopes – a white man who
had worked for the wartime Japanese empire propaganda machine. At the
same time, Provoo’s story seemed all too real and damaging. Provoo’s behavior
tainted the aura that grew up around heroes such as John F. Kennedy and his
PT 109 wartime feats; Provoo was a stain on this very idea of heroism.
It did not matter to the prosecution that Provoo was not drafted but voluntarily enlisted. The compelling evidence, although mostly hearsay, the tenuous
connections with East Asia, the alleged homosexuality, all placed the Provoo
trial into a category of its own. In the public psyche and to the military, anxious
about recent Korean War POW misbehavior, Provoo represented the acme of
America gone wrong – wartime Japan supporter, homosexual, and ultimately
a traitor.
Provoo’s first treason trial began on 27 October 1952 and lasted until
11 February 1953, in New York City, in the District Court for the Southern
District of New York under Judge Gregory F. Noonan. The trial almost coincided with the arrival of Eisenhower’s administration to power. Government
prosecutor Moses L. Kove, who also served as counsel at the Nuremberg war
crimes trials in Germany, described Provoo as a ‘traitor sympathetic to the
Japanese cause’, while the defense painted him as a soft-spoken individual
whose traumatic experiences as a prisoner of war drove him to a psychotic
break and irrationality.81 The government claimed it planned to call over 100
witnesses, 20 of whom were expressly traveling from Japan. Testimony focused
more on Provoo’s homosexuality, the fact that few liked him, and the widespread belief that he was a traitor. There was truly little concrete evidence
linking him to Thomson’s murder other than hearsay and supposition, as the
original affidavits attest. His actions when the Japanese entered Malinta Tunnel
in 1942, and the fact that he supposedly bowed and offered his services, the
prosecution attested, indicated ‘where his allegiance lay’.82 The defense countered that, in fact, Provoo had been interested in Buddhism from the age of 11,
79 Seth Jacobs, ‘‘Our System Demands’’, op. cit., 606–7.
80 Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy
(Amherst, MA, 2001), 38. Although Dean was speaking of Kennedy and Johnson, he is discussing
an early 1950s mindset.
81 New York Times, 29 October 1952.
82 New York Times, 29 October 1952.
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Kushner: Treacherous Allies
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and that his services as an interpreter stemmed from the uneasy situation that
developed after the massive US surrender in the Philippines. The defense also
assured jurors that Provoo played no role in the murder of Captain
Thomson.83
The first treason trial centered on character assassination, instead of proving
that Provoo intentionally aimed to assist the Japanese. Richard Sakakida, the
Army CIC officer who wrote an affidavit after the war charging Provoo with
treason, appeared at the trial to testify in person. The defense, however, poked
substantial holes in Sakakida’s logic, asking why, if Sakakida considered
Provoo a traitor, had he waited until January 1946 to write a report about
Provoo’s actions.84 Witnesses leveled a litany of charges against Provoo during
the proceedings, representing American postwar distaste for communists,
POWs, and homosexuals, who were now all lumped together as traitors in
the court of public opinion. There were few direct references to the plight of
Korean War POWs and little overt mention of communism in the record of the
trial itself, but the subtext of fear within the strategy of the first trial was
nonetheless palpable.
The prosecution took pains to pair suspicion concerning Provoo’s sexual
preferences with his ‘treasonous actions’. Dr Wilfred F. Helmback, former
army surgeon, testified that, as a prisoner on Corregidor, Provoo ‘carried himself with a ‘‘curious dignity and walked with floating steps’’’, as if effeminate
equaled traitor.85 Colonel Louis James Bowler testified that a Japanese soldier
referred to Provoo as ‘the master of Malinta tunnel’, and Japanese soldiers
postwar reminisced that they called him ‘Tokyo Johnny’. Corporal Robert
Morris Brown, who later wrote a book about his experiences, provided the
most voluble assault against Provoo.86 Brown alleged that on the day the US
surrendered to Japan at Corregidor, 6 May 1942, Provoo told him, ‘I am the
boss of Corregidor.’ He testified that Provoo shaved his head, wore Buddhist
robes, and ran a mess hall for Japanese officers, where he supplied them with
sake and scotch. Brown also asserted that Provoo had beaten fellow soldiers, to
press them to divulge information about a secret US stockpiled fortune on
Corregidor.87
The prosecution called former Japanese Imperial Army Sergeant Fujita
Seitarô as a witness, even though he was still serving a 30-year sentence at
83 New York Times, 29 October 1952. Murray F. Gottesman, side counsel with Plotkin, had
been defense counsel for several Japanese accused of war crimes, including Sergeant Fujita Seitarô,
the Japanese soldier charged with the actual crime of executing Captain Thomson in the
Philippines.
84 New York Times, 31 October 1952. Sakakida lived a charmed life, as detailed in his exploits
as a spy against Japan in the Philippines. However, in his postwar memoirs he made no mention of
Provoo. For more on Sakakida, see Wayne Kiyosaki and Richard Sakakida, A Spy in Their Midst:
The World War Two Struggle of a Japanese-American Hero (New York 1995).
85 New York Times, 14 January 1953; New York Times, 7 November 1952: testimony of
Colonel Theodore Teague.
86 Brown with Permenter, ‘I solemnly swear’, op. cit.
87 New York Times, 11 November 1952.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
Sugamo Prison for the crime of actually murdering Captain Thomson.88 The
New York Times described Fujita as a ‘precise little Japanese war criminal in a
red necktie’. He testified that he and another Japanese officer shot to death an
American captain after Provoo reported him as ‘uncooperative’.89
In his own war crimes trial, held years earlier in Yokohama, Japan, Fujita
testified that at the time of Thomson’s killing he and his men expected a visit
from Field Marshal Terauchi Hisaichi. Fujita explained that an American had
told him that there was ‘an arrogant officer with anti-Japanese feeling who
wants to know why the U.S. Army should lend its goods to the Japanese Army’.
The Japanese feared that Thomson would cause problems during the Field
Marshal’s visit the following day, he said. In the strict hierarchy of the
Japanese military, Fujita and his colleagues feared losing face in front of
their superiors.90 Fujita says he ignored the American, but reported the incident
anyway. Fujita, interestingly, said that the American who informed him about
the ‘arrogant officer’ used a Filipino interpreter to relay the message. Fujita
related that hours after he made the report, his commander Uda Shôzô ordered
him to shobun, ‘dispose of the problem’.91 Although Fujita admitted that he
and the several other Japanese soldiers were specifically responsible for the
murder of Captain Thomson, the fact that the American who spoke to Fujita
used an interpreter suggests that the snitch might not have been Provoo.
Provoo, after all, was known to speak at least some Japanese and was supposedly seen frequently ‘talking’ with the Japanese. Ikeda also related that Provoo
knew enough Japanese that he could stand in as a quasi-interpreter at Bunka
Camp. Why would Provoo use the skills of an interpreter to rat on Thomson to
Fujita, since he supposedly spoke some Japanese?
The links between Fujita Seitarô’s case and Provoo’s go even deeper, because
the same lawyer defended them on similar charges in two separate jurisdictions.
As a military lawyer, Murray Gottesman defended Fujita in Yokohama; he
later defended Provoo against treason charges in 1952 in New York City.
Gottesman was an able lawyer, who spoke Japanese and used his experience
with Fujita’s case as defense for Provoo. Gottesman noted that the prosecution
in Fujita’s case ‘consisted entirely of statements and affidavits. No witnesses
appeared in person and consequently no cross examination by the defense was
possible.’ More importantly, in Fujita’s defense Gottesman complained that
88 New York Times, 20 November 1952.
89 New York Times, 25 November 1952.
90 Bullying and strict hierarchy were two main factors that led to the brutality in which Imperial
Japanese soldiers were steeped, trained and ultimately inflicted similar discomfort on others. See
Kano Masanao, Heishi de aru koto – dôin to jûgun no seishinshi (Tokyo 2005); Yoshida Yutaka,
Nihon no guntai – heishitachi no kindaishi (Tokyo 2002).
91 RG 331 (SCAP) Box 1635, Folder 3, Legal Division, Prosecution Division, USA versus Japan
War Criminals, case files, 1945–49. Doc. No. 34996. General Headquarters Far East Command
Military Intelligence Section, General Staff. Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. Full
translation of statements pertaining to the execution of an American PW at Corregidor, submitted
by Fujita, Seitaro and Nakagawa, Minoru. April 1, 1948. Located in National Archives II, College
Park, Maryland.
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‘these statements and affidavits were given by the witnesses under the apprehension that they were making statements about Sergeant Provoo, an American
accused of collaboration with the Japanese after the surrender of Corregidor.’92
In a manner consistent with what the evidence would show in Provoo’s case,
Gottesman concluded that ‘[n]one of the affidavits from Americans contained
anything but hearsay in reference to the events that may have caused the execution of Thomson.’93
Under the bizarre circumstances where a convicted murderer, Fujita, who
admitted to killing Captain Thomson, testified that he heard about an unreliable American officer from a pro-Japanese POW, supposedly Provoo, Provoo’s
treason trial began to take on the appearance of a kangaroo court. What reason
was there to believe Fujita in the first place? Provoo’s defense countered that at
his own trial in Yokohama, Fujita had tried to pawn off responsibility for
Thomson’s murder on his fellow Japanese soldiers, but that the review board
had found that ‘Fujita maliciously and malignantly instigated the fatal and
illegal action [the shooting of Captain Thomson] and later voluntarily participated therein.’ Further calling into question Fujita’s reliability, Richard
Sakakida testified against Fujita at his 1948 Yokohama trial, where he labeled
Fujita ‘the most vicious and brutal sergeant on Corregidor’.94
The defense team continued to parade witnesses who chipped away at testimony concerning Provoo’s intent, a factor necessary to prove that he committed treason. General Jonathan M. Wainwright, who was originally
supposed to be a star prosecution witness, ended up testifying for the defense
that in his capacity as leader on Corregidor he had ‘not seen or heard officially
of any act of disloyalty by any American prisoner of war’.95 Two other soldiers
stationed with Provoo on Corregidor testified that he was ‘leery’ of the
Japanese and very much a patriot.96 In a similar vein, a former army doctor
admitted that Provoo risked a beating from the Japanese to help other POWs
with their laundry or to get the sick some extra food.97 On the level of direct
92 RG 331 (SCAP), Box 9974, Judge Advocate Section, War Crimes Division, Records of Trial
Files, 1945–49, folder ‘Fujita,’ Headquarters Eighth Army Judge Advocate Section War Crimes
Defense APO 343. Defense Motion for Reconsideration and for Disapproval or Modification of
the Sentences, In the Case of United States of America vs Seitaro Fujita et 4, case docket no. 326.
Tried before a Military Commission appointed by Commanding General Eighth Army at
Yokohama, Honshu, Japan, 23 September 1948–1 October 1948, p. 12. Located in National
Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
93 RG 331 (SCAP), Box 9974, Judge Advocate Section, War Crimes Division, Records of Trial
Files, 1945–49, folder ‘Fujita,’ Headquarters Eighth Army Judge Advocate Section War Crimes
Defense APO 343. Defense Motion for Reconsideration and for Disapproval or Modification of
the Sentences, In the Case of United States of America vs Seitaro Fujita et 4, case docket no. 326.
Tried before a Military Commission appointed by Commanding General Eighth Army at
Yokohama, Honshu, Japan, 23 September 1948–1 October 1948, p. 15. Located in National
Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
94 New York Times, 26 November 1952.
95 New York Times, 13 December 1952.
96 New York Times, 6 January 1953.
97 New York Times, 7 January 1953.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
testimony about his actions leading to the execution of Captain Thomson, the
defense and prosecution seemed about equal.
In his testimony on the stand, Provoo described the fear he felt while a POW,
and he denied rushing out to meet the Japanese when they arrived. He said that
he offered to help fellow prisoners, but at the outset it was the Japanese soldiers
who viewed him with suspicion when he uttered some Japanese. The Japanese
accused him of being a spy, and for that reason Provoo told them he
was a Buddhist priest and ‘rattled off some scriptures I had memorized’.98
Postwar, Provoo explained that he signed incriminating statements about his
actions at Corregidor under duress. He added that while a prisoner at Fort
Meade he was confined to a small wire cage. ‘I was lined up in front of everyone and they addressed me as Mary [a derogatory term for a homosexual]
and I was called every degrading, rotten and lousy thing that could be said.’
The stress of three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese, followed by
even more time as a prisoner of the United States, had taken its toll on Provoo,
and under cross-examination he broke down in tears. Prosecution lawyers tried
to ascertain whether or not he was a homosexual, and they took pains to
pair suspicion concerning Provoo’s sexual preferences with his ‘treasonous
actions’.99
On 12 February 1953, after deliberating only thirteen and a half hours, the
jury found John David Provoo guilty of betraying the United States of America.
The twelve members found Provoo culpable of offering services to the
Japanese, which in part had led to the death of an American serviceman,
Captain Burton Thomson. The jury also believed that Provoo’s radio propaganda broadcasts constituted treasonable actions. The court handed down a
life sentence and fined Provoo $10,000. Provoo’s defense team quickly
appealed.
In May 1954 the courts rejected the defense team’s initial appeals, but a
subsequent appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in August
1954 overturned Provoo’s sentence.100 The Second Circuit Appeals Court
Judge Swan observed that proper rules of evidence submission had not been
followed and he ruled that the venue of the first trial had been incorrect.101
Given the heated public attention and federal money lavished on the trials, such
judicial independence was striking. The appeals court also noticed that frequent
questioning of Provoo’s ‘homosexualist’ tendencies had prejudiced the jury and
had little to do with the treason charges against him. Neither the military nor
civil courts had ever charged Provoo with sodomy, illegal in both the military
and many states at that time. Given the tenor of the times, and the fact that
homosexuality was being pilloried in both the media and the political world,
Swan’s ruling was strikingly bold. The appeals court deemed such testimony
98 New York Times, 27 January 1953.
99 New York Times, January 30, 1953.
100 See United States of America v. John David Provoo, 124 F. Supp. 185.
101 United States v. John David Provoo, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit,
215 F.2 d 531.
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‘highly inflammatory and prejudicial collateral’.102 A tiny article in the
New York Times explained that evidence of Provoo’s homosexual behavior
had been permitted in testimony with the sole purpose ‘to humiliate and
degrade the defendant and increase the possibility that he would be convicted,
not for the crime charged but for his general unsavory character’.103 The
appeals court also agreed with Provoo that the original venue of the treason
trial, in the Southern District of New York, had been invalid.
While the appeals court made clear it did not appreciate character assassination and innuendo to substantiate the serious charges of treason against
Provoo, ‘the appellate ruling did not bar re-trial; on the contrary, it invited
it’.104 The Second Circuit overturned Provoo’s conviction on 27 August 1954.
Two months later, the Federal District of Maryland, where the army had
housed Provoo at Fort Meade, re-indicted the former POW in a new venue
and the second federal treason trial was soon under way.
On 26 November 1954, more than 12 years after Provoo was first taken as a
POW of the Japanese, his second treason trial began in the District of
Maryland. The second trial dragged on until March 1955, when Provoo petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to the United States District Court for the
District of Maryland. In this petition Provoo protested that the government had
denied his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial and that jurisdictional
problems still marred the government’s case.
In his opinion on the petition, District Court Judge for the Federal District of
Maryland Roszel C. Thomsen laid out the evolution of Provoo’s legal odyssey and
crushed government hopes for further prosecution. Thomsen went even further than
the first appeals court, and his judicial daring ended the Provoo saga. The judge
observed that Provoo had been originally held in prison in Japan by the American
occupation forces for seven months from 1945–6, then at Fort Meade in 1949
under instructions to the commanding general not to try him on the military charges [of
sodomy] and not to release him, so that the FBI investigation begun in 1948 [actually
102 United States v. John David Provoo, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit,
215 F.2 d 531. Opinion delivered by Judge Swan.
103 As quoted in the New York Times, 29 August 1954.
104 Milton Hirsch, ‘Adhering to their Enemies: Of Treason, Terror, and Tribunals’: the essay is
adapted from a prepared address delivered in Boca Raton, Florida, to members of the Florida Bar
Association and reproduced online at http://www.pbrla.com/ww3_adheringtoenemies.html. For
the complete article, see the Florida Defender, 14(3); also personal correspondence with Milton
Hirsch. Hirsch agrees with the first appeal, that Provoo had a powerful argument grounded in 18
U.S.C. 3238, which at that time provided that: ‘The trial of all offenses begun or committed upon
the high seas, or elsewhere out of the jurisdiction of any particular state or district, shall be in the
district where the offender is found, or into which he is first brought.’ Since Provoo was forced to
relocate to New York, he could not be considered to have been legally ‘found’ there. This was a
significant legal point which rendered the venue of the first trial a fiction. Hirsch quotes the appeal,
which explained that: ‘We cannot blind our eyes to the fact that the real purpose in bringing
[Provoo] to New York was to meet the wish of the Department of Justice to have him tried for
treason under the indictment subsequently filed here.’
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
begun in 1945] could be completed; and that he was taken to New York in September 1949,
charged with treason, and held in custody for more than five years before being indicted and
brought to trial in a district having jurisdiction to try the case.105
The Maryland District Court critically analyzed Provoo’s appeal, noting that
‘[t]he offenses charged could not be more serious. But it would be a poor
tribute to Captain Thomson to deny this defendant the rights for which
Captain Thomson gave his life.’106 Judge Thomsen ultimately decreed that
long delays in prosecution and the length of Provoo’s incarceration had deleterious effects on the pursuit of justice, and the judge dismissed the Maryland
indictment against Provoo.
The US military hated him, his former POW comrades despised him, decorated US heroes cursed his name in court, the news media vocally disapproved
and former soldiers still vilify his memory in print, but Provoo appeared on the
verge of avoiding a life in prison.
After more than a decade of pursuing an alleged traitor, the US government
did not lie down quietly. Federal prosecutors appealed to the nation’s highest
court, which delivered its final say on 17 October 1955. The Supreme Court of
the United States upheld Judge Thomsen’s opinion and Provoo walked away a
completely free man, although not entirely vindicated.107 The cacophony of
testimony and conflicting evidence surrounding the Provoo case – the myth of
Provoo – rendered actual judgment of his guilt exceedingly difficult, but the
court’s serious recognition of the right of every defendant, however unsavory,
to a ‘fair and speedy trial’ spoke highly of the American legal system during a
time when many other alleged traitors and communist sympathizers did not
benefit from judges who interpreted the law so strictly.
Provoo’s story did not end so happily, because even though he was
released he carried the stigma of the first treason conviction with him for the
rest of his life. His brother, George, explained to me that this cast a shadow
over his later years.108 The event and myth of Provoo had ended, but for those
involved the experience continued. For all intents and purposes Provoo
remained a convicted traitor, free in the eyes of the law, but a criminal in the
public mind. In its bid to convict a POW who engaged in enemy propaganda
activities under duress, the US government appeared to trample heavily on the
law. In short, officials waited too long to bring Provoo to trial, but more subversively, US military officials and the Department of Justice conspired to
orchestrate a public civilian trial in America’s early Cold War propaganda
campaign against communism in Asia, homosexuals, and perceived threats
against national security.
105 Petition of John David Provoo for a writ of Habeas Corpus. United States District Court for
the District of Maryland, 17 F.R.D. 183.
106 Petition of John David Provoo for a writ of Habeas Corpus. United States District Court for
the District of Maryland, 17 F.R.D. 183.
107 United States v. Provoo, 350 U.S. 857 (195).
108 Phone interview with George Provoo, 18 December 2002.
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After the treason trials, Provoo stayed removed from the media for his
remaining years even though he continued to face legal challenges for homosexual activities.109 Thirteen years after his appeals ended, Provoo admitted
that life after his trials was like ‘towing a shipwreck’.110 Picking up the pieces of
his life, he continued his study of Nichiren Buddhism and moved to Hawaii
because he felt there was a need for Buddhist teachings in English. He preached,
tended to the sick, and lived a simple life. John David Provoo passed away at
the age of 84 on 28 August 2001, and was inurned 8 October at Hawaii
Veterans Cemetery No. 2.
As with similar wartime and immediate postwar cases of treason, the
archival picture of the Provoo story remains incomplete.111 I requested that
FBI interrogation reports be declassified at the National Archives, viewed official court-martial documents, analyzed army field reports for Provoo’s incarceration in Japan, viewed the relevant Japanese files and trial transcripts,
as well as Japanese and American memoirs. The military files of the internal
discussions concerning the decision to prosecute Provoo in a civilian court
rather than a military court remain inconclusive. In addition, the lengthy gap
from Provoo’s arrest to his eventual trials also obfuscates what really occurred
and why.
Regardless of the fact that the paper trail on Provoo’s case abruptly ends, the
trials underscore the history of America’s early Cold War fear of East Asia and
discomfort with disloyalty. These fears first arose regarding the supposed efficacy of wartime Japanese propaganda activities and became intertwined with a
similar fear of Chinese and North Korean propaganda and brainwashing projects in the 1950s. The prosecution of Provoo and ‘Tokyo Rose’, along with
cases linked to Soviet communism, demonstrated that the US authorities
believed such individuals threatened the fabric of postwar US society.
Legally, however, the crimes are much harder to untangle, because betraying
the state requires that ‘the intention identifies the seriousness of the offense and
the culpability of the actor. The act shows that the actor has gone beyond
thoughts to action and thereby protects the sphere of ideas and opinion from
interference by the government’.112
Following the war with Japan, fear of a Communist takeover in East Asia
and the tense atmosphere of the early Cold War propelled the FBI, the attorney
general’s office, and the Department of Justice to advocate what the US Army
originally deemed unwarranted – the prosecution of Provoo. Provoo
109 In 1958, he received three years in a reformatory for a ‘morals charge’ involving an 18-yearold ‘boy’: New York Times, 30 August 1958.
110 Honolulu Star Bulletin, 26 April 1968.
111 This was not only an issue for the US, but occurred in Chinese treason trials as well. Provoo’s
initial action occurred in wartime Philippines; then he was transferred to Tokyo. Conducting
coherent investigations years after the fact in several international jurisdictions and languages
continually stymied the investigation, as did the transfer and subsequent loss of files and evidence
from venue to venue.
112 Herbert L. Packer, ‘Offenses against the State’, Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science, vol. 339, ‘Crime and the American Penal System’ (January 1962), 79.
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Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 4
represented a great public fear in the early 1950s – an American soldier who
‘turned’. America’s vision of a new order in East Asia that had seemed so bright
and stable in 1945 appeared to be on the brink of collapse. The reasons behind
America’s military victory over Japan but subsequent ‘loss of China’ seemed
best explained by alluding to subversive communists, homosexuals, and others
in the government and military who threatened the established order. In 1950s
America Provoo epitomized someone who threatened that order: he provided
succor to an Asian enemy, he was probably a homosexual, and the major
media outlets had found a juicy story that outshined ‘Tokyo Rose’s’ treasonous
behavior.113
The remaining conundrum is why Provoo was charged in a civil court of law
and not by the military. Was there a need for this to be a show trial, rather than
an expedited and quiet case of the military court-martialing its own? While the
Provoo case pivoted, in the same manner as Stanley Kutler details for Tokyo
Rose’s circumstances, on petty bureaucratic interests, personal ambition, and
jurisdictional quarrels, the trials also represented a deep fear of the shifting
winds in East Asia. Provoo was a POW during the entire time of his alleged
crime for supposedly colluding to have Thomson executed and then working as
an announcer for Japanese propaganda. It remains uncertain whether his was a
case of pure opportunism or powered by something more fundamental like
belief, such as with the ‘American Taliban’, the John Walker Lindh case
from late 2001.114
In a manner that few history lessons offer, the peculiar story of Provoo
would end there, were it not for a letter forwarded to me as I researched this
project. This is the experience of Provoo that I mentioned in the introduction.
One rainy morning I opened a letter from Kenneth Thomson (son of Captain
Thomson), who wrote,
When I was twenty months old, the uncontroverted treasonous acts of Provoo deprived me of
a father, deprived my mother of a husband, my aunts and uncles of a sibling, and my grandparents of a child. This one man has caused more pain to one family than you or any court
113 In Tokyo Rose, op. cit., Duus asserts that a media feeding frenzy fed by scoops and reports
mainly dished out by two reporters for the Hearst corporation magazines, Clark Lee and Harry
Brundidge, pushed officials to indict Iva Togura d’Aquino for treason. Clark Lee and Harry
Brundidge also played key roles in investigating, interviewing, and producing stories on
Provoo’s behavior, in a manner similar to how they fanned public emotion in the Tokyo Rose case.
114 The US government was more than aware of the historical difficulty treason cases presented
and changed its tack with the Lindh case. Few Americans have been charged with treason, even
fewer have been convicted, because the charge is also notoriously difficult to assert and prove in
open court. To sustain the charges, at least two witnesses are necessary and the prosecutors must
prove intent. The legal groundwork behind the US government’s decision to seek a conspiracy
charge against Lindh, instead of treason, in part stems from the precedent set by treason trials of
John David Provoo. See Cramer v. United States 325 U.S. 1 (1945), Chandler v. United States 336
U.S. 918 (1949), and Haupt v. United States 330 U.S. 631, 643 (1947), which set new precedents
making the courts weigh the defendant’s intent when considering treason charges.
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could ever imagine. The inconvenience that he had to endure at the hands of our judicial
system was a small price to pay for his treasonous acts.115
Thomson’s grief over losing his father is clearly understandable. The son
remains convinced of Provoo’s guilt, and perhaps that is best for him and his
family. For me, however, after years examining the evidence presented in two
federal courts, the declassified documents accumulated over a decade of investigation, Japanese court documents, and memoirs from both the Japanese
and American sides, too many questions remain unanswered. In my pursuit
of the truth behind the events of Provoo I failed to clarify Provoo’s actions
over half a century ago. Nonetheless, the legacy of the war against wartime
Japanese propaganda and its connection to later US anxieties about American
impotence against East Asian propaganda during the Korean War – the intersection of the myth and the experience surrounding Provoo – continue to be felt
even today in ways almost unimaginable. I conclude that the Provoo case is
actually not a tale of guilt or innocence, but a parable about how nations
attempt to heal their psychological scars long after the physical wounds of
battle have passed.
Barak Kushner
teaches in modern Japanese history in the Department of East Asian
Studies, University of Cambridge. The Thought War: Japanese
Imperial Propaganda, Kushner’s first book, delved into the history
of wartime Japanese efforts to psychologically mobilize the empire.
His second book (almost finished), entitled Slurp!: A Social History
of Ramen, the Japanese Noodle Soup, focuses on food and history.
This article and a recent piece, ‘Pawns of Empire: Postwar Taiwan,
Japan and the Dilemma of War Crimes’, in Japanese Studies, form
the basis for his third book (manuscript in progress), which analyzes
the postwar adjudication of Japanese war crimes in China.
Kushner’s academic articles have appeared in Diplomatic History,
The International History Review, Journal of Popular Culture, and
the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.
115 Letter from Ken Thomson to Milton Hirsch, 8 January 2003; copy forwarded by Hirsch to
author.
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