Richard Motomune Sakakida (November 1920 – January 1996)
He was a terrible guy for the Japanese during the war.
As an able Japanese-American interpreter born in Hawaii, he was treated with respects in the Japanese headquarters in Manila but suddenly disappeared in the end of 1944 prior to the U.S. invasion in the early next year. According to Eizo Hori's testimony as a former Japanese intelligence officer, Hori tried to speak inaccurate information like the scheduled date '3' as '5' when there was Sakakida as he knew Japanese were hated by the local Philipinos and sympathizers. Sakakida is still regarded as a traitor by Japanese even after 73 years as he did not allow his pictures without sunglasses and that talked everything.
On the contrary, Sakakida seems to be regarded as a hero in the U.S.
Looks very interesting historical irony to me.
A book titled "A Spy in Their Midst: The World War II Struggle of a Japanese-American Hero" introduces him like this.
"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"
A Spy in Their Midst