A Spy in Their Midst

During World War II, while thousands of Japanese-Americans were being sent to U.S. detainment camps, a Japanese-American from Hawaii working as a U.S. Army spy in the Philippines was captured by the enemy. Richard Sakakida was the only Japanese-American prisoner of the Japanese forces, and he faced death as a "traitor" because of his Japanese face. Despite unspeakable torture, Sakakida stubbornly refused to confess that he was an American spy; ironically, his Japanese cultural heritage is what enabled him to survive the beatings inflicted on him by his Japanese captors. Sakakida narrowly escaped a death sentence and was assigned to the office of a Japanese official, where he gained valuable military information for MacArthur and engineered a daring prison break that freed a Filipino guerrilla leader and hundreds of his followers. Fifty years later, Sakakida finally tells his tale of survival and perseverance against incredible odds.