Richard Sakakida

Richard Motoso Sakakida (, November 19, 1920 – January 23, 1996) was a United States Army intelligence agent stationed in the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II. He was captured and tortured for months after the fall of the country to Imperial Japan, but managed to convince the Japanese that he was a civilian and was released. Employed by the Japanese Fourteenth Army (though still under suspicion), he gathered and passed along valuable information to the Philippine resistance. He also planned and participated in the mass escape of about 500 Filipino prisoners.

Early life Sakakida was born and raised in Hawaii. He was a Nisei, the youngest of four children of Japanese immigrant parents.

After intensive training, and personal houseboy. However, he periodically faced devious attempts to trick him into betraying himself. Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii responded that "Sakakida's story has 'been confirmed time and time again.'"

Post-war Sakakida returned to the Counterintelligence Corps and was promoted to master sergeant. He remained in Manila for eighteen months, working on war crime investigations where he encountered some of his former torturers, whom he forgave.

Following the war, Sakakida received a direct commission as a lieutenant and transferred to the United States Air Force. He married Cherry M. Kiyosaki of Maui on September 25, 1948 before being stationed in Tokyo where he served in the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) where he was responsible for coordinating Japanese police and investigative agencies to stop black market activities in Tokyo. Overall, he spent 19 of his 27 years in the Air Force in Japan, where he retired as commander of AFOSI in Japan as a lieutenant colonel in 1975.

Following retirement, he lived in Fremont, California, where he died of lung cancer on January 23, 1996. and was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.