Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo - Paperback

by Nichijo Shaka (Author), John Oliver (Author)

This is the personal saga of John David Provoo. In 1940, the young American Buddhist studying at an ancient monastery in Japan was urged by the U.S. Embassy to return home. In 1941, he enlisted in the US Army in San Francisco, and was soon stationed in the Philippines. Within six months of the outbreak of war, he was captured along with thousands of others on the island fortress of Corregidor, in the mouth of Manila Bay. In the early months after capture, the Japanese used him as an interpreter, a role that created suspicion in the minds of some that he had become a collaborator. After years of privations in POW camps in Taiwan, he was moved to Bunkwa Camp in downtown Tokyo, and forced to make propaganda broadcasts with others, including Iva Toguri, from Radio Tokyo, until the end of the war.In the post war years, he was continually harassed by the FBI throughout a second Army enlistment. In 1949, he was discharged, taken immediately into federal custody and charged with treason for events on Corregidor and taking part in radio programs. His trial was foreshadowed by the conviction of Iva Toguri, cast by the government as the non-existent "Tokyo Rose".This book is his personal narrative of the events that led up to his prosecution and his final return to the training for the Buddhist priesthood.

Author Biography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Oliver earned Bachelor degrees in Political Science and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1969. In the 1970's, he discovered his passion for homebuilding, and has spent most of his life as an artisan building contractor in California and Hawaii. In a chance encounter with Bishop Nichijo Shaka on the rural Big Island in 1983, he found a direct use for his liberal arts education. His collaboration with Rev. Shaka resulted in the biography, "Nichijo", copyrighted in 1986, but never published. In 2014, living in semi-retirement in Sonoma County, California, he finally found the time to complete the thoughtful rewrite that was begun nearly 30 years before. "Nichijo: The Testimony of John Provoo" was released in October of 2014.