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Post by okla on Jan 18, 2013 9:11:58 GMT 8
Hey EXO...Thanks for furnishing me with a more complete understanding of the Provoo affair. I couldn't care less about J.D. Provoo's sexual preferences, but if these facts, as quoted by Hollis Blakesley are legit, then John David Provoo, richly, deserved a firing squad. Thanks again for the update. I had never heard how this event finally played out. It certainly didn't play out to the satisfaction of any rational person. What a miscarriage of justice we have in this instance.
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Post by Registrar on Jan 18, 2013 18:42:10 GMT 8
Peter Parsons has asked me to further complete the picture of the traitor Provoo. In doing so, I make the point that just because a so-called superior court may release a man on a legal technicality, that does not injunct us against ostracizing and shunning him, and calling him a traitor. Peter writes:
I did some research on Provoo, a despicable traitor, while in the National Archives looking for other material.
I read the two testimonies of the Japanese soldiers who witnessed him kill a US officer. This evidence (very believable in the amount of detail given) was tossed out of court. He was convicted, but the decision was also tossed out because length of time it took to get to the conviction.
Basically, Provoo, a homosexual, lover of Japanese culture including the Buddhist religion, greeted the invaders on Corregidor in a kimono and spoke Japanese to them.
He told his commanding officer in mess hall one day to take something to a Japanese officer. The officer told Provoo to f**k off. Incensed, Provoo plotted his revenge, eventually killing this officer.
Well, no that's not right. He shot the officer several times but did not actually kill the man. The Japanese officers who were there as witnesses felt they had to kill the poor guy to put him out of his suffering.
The irony in this whole situation is that Sakakida was sent to Tokyo to bring the suspected traitor to Hawaii--I love the image of the two of them handcuffed together. Provoo had been working for Tokyo Rose broadcasts.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
Peter Parsons
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Post by okla on Jan 19, 2013 1:33:18 GMT 8
Hey Guys....I stand corrected. I originally said that Provoo was more of a "snitch" type, but in reality he was the same as a murderer. Evidently he was such a lousy soldier that he failed to kill the American Officer, firing point blank at his victim. I find it most difficult to justify the Courts Martial (or what ever type Court was involved) tossing evidence because of the length of time it took to present same. In my humble, I don't care if it took 50 years to try the case, this piss ant of a man should have been drawn and quartered. Better yet turned loose at a Death March Survivor's Convention for the dispensation of some real "justice".
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2013 9:31:52 GMT 8
If Sakakida was interviewed by Major Ann Bray for an official history of the Counter Intelligence Corps, has that interview ever been declassified? Has anyone sought that report? EXO, I have read the results of the late Major Ann Bray's interview with Sakakida. It appears in Volume 23, covering operations in the SWPA, of the 30-Volume History of the Counter Intelligence Corps. If you've read any of the other versions of Sakakida's story, you've read most of what's in the history. The entire volume is available at the National Archives at College Park, MD. I also have access to a digital copy. It's disappointing that among the "historian's background material" for Bray's history at NARA there are not copies of the interviews and other documents she cites.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2013 9:53:39 GMT 8
I am a little sorry for authors who retell such stories in their books. They parrot the official thesis, assuming it to be correct, safe for them to use, for after all it is the official truth, right? I completely agree. I'm finishing up Duval Edwards' "Spy Catchers of the US Army in the War with Japan," and a major disappointment for me is his inclusion of the Sakakida story. Having read the story several times now, I'm sure the genesis of most, if not all, the published accounts is Major Ann Bray's interview with Sakakida in the mid-50s. There's some irony in that: her 30-volume history was to have been distributed to CIC elements worldwide for corrections and additions. Apparently the project was cancelled by the leadership at Fort Holabird, MD, before that happened. I'd like to think that agents who had participated in Sakakida's debriefing, or those with close knowledge of it, would have brought some healthy skepticism to his claims. Given that he was by then a captain in Air Force OSI, though, I think bureaucratic circling of the wagons would probably have preserved the unquestioned story line.
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Post by Registrar on Jan 28, 2013 16:14:36 GMT 8
Manchu2,
Thankyou for furnishing me with a copy of the History of the Counter Intelligence Corps Volume XXIII, by Maj. Ann Bray, published in October 1959. I have created an extract of the pages concerning Sakakida, and there is now a permalink to the extract contained in the footnotes sections for each of the Parsons and Jurika articles in the Secret Corregidor section of the Corregidor Then and Now Website. You are quite right that it is unfortunate Maj. Bray was not able to go back to the original interviews of Sakakida. These, no doubt, were more like an interrogation than an interview, and had she seen them at the time she was compiling the History, a great many books would not have begun to repeat the bogus legend that Sakakida started to grow, and we would not have had that unfortunate Sakakida-Kiyosaki publication, A Spy in Their Midst. Illustrating how the legend grew out of Maj. Bray's report isn't difficult. Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting later used Bray's unpublished history as the source for their popular history, America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counterintelligence Corps (London: Grafton, 1989), 80-97. This version of Sakakida’s story was read into the Congressional Record by Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) as a memorial tribute on 30 January 1996. Duval A. Edwards also used Bray for his Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the War with Japan (The Unfinished Story of the Counterintelligence Corps) (Gig Harbor, WA: Red Apple Publishing, 1994).
Sakakida also received brief mention in Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), 418; and more extensive treatment in Eric Morris, Corregidor: The End of the Line (New York: Stein and Day, 1981). Hosokawa based his account on a personal letter from Sakakida in the mid-1960s; Morris based his work "almost exclusively," he said, on interviews with the veterans themselves in the late 1970s (p. viii), but it contains numerous errors.
One wonders, then, why the Defence Language Institute Foreign Language Centre got involved in the picture in 1996, but their Command Historian James C. McNaughton essentially did what Maj. Bray had been unable to do - he went back to the original interrogations, and compared them with the stories Sakakida began to put around post-war. (To be fair to Maj. Bray, her job was not to be a spy-catcher, but to write a detailed history of the Counter Intelligence Corps , which appears to me to have been a job the size of the Encyclopedia Americana.) Sakakida just seemed to have the personal good fortune to have slipped through one of the cracks.
Back to McNaughton - his paper is called "The Story of Richard M. Sakakida" and true to the title he gave it, he dissects the story, and finds some very interesting inconsistencies.
I have managed to acquire a copy of his paper, which is not classified, but for now I feel constrained from publishing it for a few reasons. Firstly, it was supplied to me clearly marked as a DRAFT, which as far as I am concerned, means that it does not express what the author thinks of the issue in its entirety. Secondly, it's not difficult for me to imagine why he never signed off his paper, given that in 1996, Sakakida had attained both a high rank and high regard for his post-war service to the U.S. Mr. McNaughton, though a Command Historian, is neither a Chapman Pincher or a Peter Wright, for whilst in government employ, he is not paid to be. But I genuflect to him, because he disassembles key aspects of the Sakakida legend, and warns current historians lest they fall into the very trap that Denny Milligan did in his book "LEST WE FORGET: The Brave & Honorable Guerrillas and Philippine Scouts of WW II" - to assume that there is any such thing such as certainty in the world of Counter Intelligence. It's a shame Milligan didn't have the McNaughton paper, we might have save a lot of time.
McNaughton does conclude that even though Sakakida's captors forced him to use his language skills in the kangaroo trials of American and Filipino prisoners of war, trials that were later judged to be war crimes, he came through intact in body and spirit, his honor intact and his loyalty beyond question.
Well, RHIP, as they say.
I am leaving it to Peter Parsons to eventually bring much of what McNaughton says into the public domain. It will come as no surprise to those who have been reading this thread in its entirety that even McNaughton warns that the stories of Sakakida sending messages to MacArthur, and being instrumental in a mass jail break, and other tales of derring-do cannot be relied on. If you have stayed with me this far, I am sure you don't need a translator to tell you what that means.
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Post by Bob Hudson on Jan 29, 2013 3:02:37 GMT 8
If my memory serves me, it wasn't until months after our forces had routed the Japanese and secured, for the most part, all of Luzon that Sakakida came down out of the hills and reported for duty with no good excuse for why or where he had been. That, in and of itself,lets some air out of his legacy. Parsons can attest to that. Paul and I were with Parsons at the Sakakida seminar in Manila in November of 2011.
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Post by Karl Welteke on Jan 29, 2013 6:14:21 GMT 8
It is said: “One wonders, then, why the Defence Language Institute Foreign Language Centre got involved in the picture in 1996, but their Command Historian James C. McNaughton essentially did what Maj. Bray had been unable to do - he went back to the original interrogations, and compared them with the stories Sakakida began to put around post-war“.
I view there didn’t seem to be any witnesses to Sgt. Sakaidas doings in the service of the Japanese Secret Military Police, the only thing we got are the original interrogations. Peter Parsons couldn’t find them, or rather he was told “Someone doesn’t want them to be seen”. But now we have learned, a US Command Historian has seen them around 1996. Seems to me, whoever would be able to do it, is to seek out Mr. James C. McNaughton and ask him for help to find the interrogations and make them accessable.
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Post by Registrar on Jan 29, 2013 16:21:07 GMT 8
I will mention what I have on the initial interviews of Sakakida by CIC. They were conducted 27 September 1945 and 25 October 1945. I'll more readily identify them when I am in a position to do so of their description, lest someone want to attempt an FOI on them. They are ( or at least they were) in the DLIFLC Historical files.
What is notable is that when the CIC investigator asked Sakakida point-blank on two different occasions if he had passed information to the Allies, Sakakida categorically denied it, even though it would have been to his advantage to admit it.
Subsequent authors have made much of Sakakida’s contact with Horacio Consing in July 1944 and through Consing to Ramsey’s guerrillas. But this was an abortive contact and led to no information being passed. Indeed, Consing was arrested within weeks of his initial contact with Sakakida and later executed.
Lou Jurika and Peter Parsons (and to a much lesser extent, myself) are not the first to have cast stones in Sakakida's direction. There was a symposium at the MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk VA on 22 October 1994 at which Fr. Jaime Neri, a notable Guerilla contemporary, raised questions about Sakakida's claims. Gustavo Ingles, in his "Analysis of Richard Sakakida's Claims to 'Heroic' Activities of World War II" raised the issue again in March 1995, a copy of which found itself in the DLIFLC historical files. He deposed a sworn affidavit on 28 June 1995, and this ended up in the MacArthur Memorial library. He published the issue again in a letter to the Honolulu Advertiser, 24 October 1995. Fr. Neri was responding to the proposal to award a "War Medal" (the Medal of Honor) and attempting to block it. There was pushback from Congressman Akaka (D) and other media placements supporting Sakakida.
For press reports on Neri’s charges, see Robert H. Reid, "Filipino Veterans Seek to Block War Medal for Japanese-American," Associated Press, 8 September 1995; Kirk Spitzer, "Akaka Backs Controversial War 'Hero' Despite Detractors," Honolulu Advertiser (15 Sep 95); Mark Spitzer, "Friend or Foe, Fact or Fiction? Vet's WWII Heroism Challenged," Honolulu Advertiser (24 Sep 95); and Kirk Spitzer, "Spy Never Sought Heroic Role," Honolulu Advertiser (25 Sep 95).
Fortunately, someone within the Powers That Be decided that it would not award the MOH. No doubt, there were some Democrats in Hawaii who were disappointed in this. On the other hand, I am thankful for it, for I would not like to be accused of attempting to bring the MOH into disrepute, when clearly that is not the case.
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Post by Registrar on Jul 31, 2015 8:06:50 GMT 8
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RICHARD SAKAKIDA FILE RELATING TO HIS WWII EXPERIENCE?
LOU JURIKA, has written me and asked me to make a few more postings on his behalf, until he can get the hang of using a forum. This,of course, may be never. - Registrar
(By way of background for those who are not familiar with the existing thread, Richard Sakakida, a U.S. Nisei intelligence agent placed in Manila's Japanese community, was captured by the Japanese on Corregidor. Shortly thereafter he was seen by the U.S. prisoners in Japanese uniform, working closely with the Japanese as a translator. He became involved in working with the Kempei Tai, sharing a flat with one of its commanding officers. He was forced to admit his presence at the execution of numerous civilians by the Japanese. The extent of his wartime involvement with the Japanese was assessed upon his recapture in 1945, during which he entirely failed to raise a number of claims he would make later in his life - claims of his remarkable works against the Japanese, of his messages sent directly to MacArthur's HQ in Australia, of his role in organizing the mass prison break at Muntinlupa. The arrival in Manila of Sakakida's old pre-war buddy, Art Komori, would change all this. Although they hadn't seen each other since before the surrender on Corregidor, and despite Kamori having nothing but Sakakida's own story to go on as to what his friend had been doing since 1942, Komori assured GHQ that Sakakida was loyal and trustworthy. Thereafter, Sakakida went to work again for the U.S., was a witness at the War Trials in Manila, and had a full career and distinguished in U.S. Military Intelligence.
It is my belief that Sakakida, from within U.S. Military Intelligence, engineered the removal from official files of the records of his post-war interrogation, and constructed a legend around himself, a legend so outrageous in its boldness that he was eventually considered for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Sakakida, though, in his ego, did not realize that there were still witnesses alive who could nay-say his claims.)
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