John David Provoo John David Provoo ( 1917 – August 28 , 2001 ) was a sergeant in the United States Army . Before World War II , he studied in Japan , but returned to the United States when the war broke out ; convicted of treason for his conduct during World War II but then later having his conviction overturned , he returned to Japan for further religious studies and was ordained as a Buddhist priest . He then moved to Hawaii , where he lived until his death . Childhood . Provoo was born in San Francisco , California in 1917 . He began to practise Buddhism as a teenager , and became a strict adherent ; his brother George recalled in an interview with the " Honolulu Star - Bulletin " how Provoo would stand at the kitchen sink saving ants from drowning , in accordance with the Buddhist principle of the sanctity of life . He also began studying the language around that time , with a Buddhist priest as his teacher . He went on to work in a federal bank in his hometown , and then in 1940 moved to Japan to study in a Buddhist monastery near Tokyo . World War II . With the United States ' entry into World War II , Provoo returned home and enlisted in the United States Army . He was sent to the Philippines , where he worked as a G - 2 clerk at the Army Headquarters in Manila , and was briefly considered as a candidate for the Counter Intelligence Corps due to his Japanese language skills , but ultimately rejected due to his suspected homosexuality and the time he had spent in Japan . He was captured in the Battle of Corregidor in 1942 and made a prisoner of war . According to his fellow prisoners , Provoo used his fluent Japanese to rise to a position of power in the POW camp , abusing his fellow prisoners to gain privileges from the Japanese . Various accounts state that Provoo personally shot an Army captain named Burton C . Thomson , a veterinarian stationed on Corregidor , or reported him to Japanese troops who shot him themselves , though the exact details vary . One stated that Thomson had provoked Provoo by responded to Provoo ' s demand that he bring him some food with a comment to the effect that next time he saw Provoo he would kick him so hard that Provoo could taste his boot ; another gave the reason as Thomson ' s refusal to move American prisoners out of hospital beds to make room for Japanese troops at Provoo ' s demand . One POW also claimed in his memoirs that Provoo was so hated by his fellow prisoners that one had tried to kill him by putting ground glass in his food , and that Provoo later threatened to kill a colonel surnamed Cooper . The diaries of Frank Fujita , one of the few Japanese American soldiers captured by the Japanese during World War II , placed Provoo on Taiwan and then at Camp Omori , a Tokyo Bay facility which housed prisoners making propaganda broadcasts for the Japanese . After the war , Provoo was arrested , but then released in 1946 after eight months of investigation which concluded that there was no evidence he had collaborated with the Japanese ; he re - enlisted in the Army six weeks later . Re - arrest and trial . Provoo was honorably discharged from the Army on 2 September 1949 at Governors Island , New York ; however , an hour after his release , the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested him and charged him with treason . The story made the front page of " The New York Times " the following day . His trial , initially scheduled to begin in January 1950 , was repeatedly delayed as the government sought to gather more witnesses as well as due to Provoo ' s own 1951 commitment to the Bellevue Hospital Center for psychiatric evaluation . His trial finally began in 1952 . The defense ' s star witness was General Jonathan Wainwright , called in the trial ' s seventh week ; by his own testimony , he had never met Provoo nor heard any reports about him during the war . The general instead spoke of his experiences in Japanese POW camps . Lawyers had to shout their questions at him , as his exposure to loud shell bursts during the war had left him with severe hearing impairment . After a fifteen - week trial , the jury found Provoo guilty on charges of offering his services to the Japanese army , helping to cause the execution of a fellow prisoner , and making two propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Japanese . He was the eighth U . S . citizen convicted of treason after World War II , and only the second whose conviction related to actions during his imprisonment in a POW camp . His sentence was announced the following week ; the court spared him the death penalty on grounds of his emotional instability , instead giving him life imprisonment . In total , the costs of Provoo ' s trial were estimated at US $ 1 million . In August 1954 , the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned his conviction on the grounds that he should have been tried in Maryland and that the cross - examination about his alleged homosexuality inappropriately prejudiced the jury . By that time , the sixty - nine witnesses called to the stand at his trial had been scattered all over the country ; General Wainright had even died . As a result , the Department of Justice doubted that Provoo could be retried . He was indicted again by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Baltimore , Maryland , with Judge Roszel C . Thomsen presiding . However , Thomsen threw out the case in March 1955 , stating that Provoo ' s right to a speedy trial under the U . S . Constitution ' s 6th Amendment had been abrogated . The prosecution appealed the case to the Supreme Court , which on October 17 , 1955 unanimously upheld the lower court ' s dismissal . Post - trial . Provoo found it difficult to get over his treason trial ; he described it as being like " towing a shipwreck " behind him . He settled in Baltimore , Maryland , but had trouble holding down a job due to the publicity which had surrounded his trial ; eventually , his wife divorced him . In 1957 , he was arrested in Lincoln , Nebraska , and at trial pled guilty on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor , a 16 - year old runaway boy also from Maryland . He was sentenced in August 1958 to three years in prison . Life as a Buddhist priest . Provoo went to Japan again to study Buddhism after his release from prison . He was promoted to a high position in the Nichiren - shū Buddhist School , more or less equivalent to the Bishop position in the Catholic Church . At that time , Provoo was qualified to teach Buddhism and decided to come back to America and teach there . There was a shortage of Buddhist schools in America and he wanted to help Americans like himself who were interested in Buddhism and wanted to study it seriously . For him , going to another country and learning their language and culture was a burden and he wanted to make it easier for others . He returned to the United States in 1967 and led a Buddhist group on the island of Oahu . He later led a Buddhist group near the town of Pahoa on the Big Island ( Hawaii ) . He also started up the non - profit Buddhist School of America . On the Big Island , he built a small temple and some cabins . He lived there and would usually have a few students living with him . As a Buddhist teacher , he went by the Buddhist name " Nichijo Shaka " . He had earned the honorific titles " Reverend " and " Bishop " but preferred to be called " Nichijo " . In addition to teaching students , Nichjo would occasionally go out and conduct religious services for people in the community and occasionally people would come to him for counseling . He died at Hilo Medical Center on August 28 , 2001 ; his ashes were buried at the Hawaii Veteran ' s Cemetery No . 2 .