Hunt for the Bamboo Rat

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat is a 2014 historical novel by American author Graham Salisbury. Set during World War II, it is loosely based on the real life of Richard Sakakida, a Japanese-American intelligence official in the Counter Intelligence Corps. Sakakida was captured by Japan during while on assignment in the Philippines. The novel follows Zenji Watanabe, a recent high school graduate who leaves his home in Hawaii to become a translator for the U.S. Army. Watanabe strives to balance his drive to preserve his honor with his duty to navigate the risks and ambiguities of war. Like Sakakida, Watanabe is captured by the Japanese and learns to survive in harsh conditions as a prisoner of war.

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat picks up in the early summer of 1941. Watanabe, who is finishing his final weeks of school at McKinley High, lives in Honolulu’s Pauoa Valley region. For a few months, he earns money driving a forklift. Watanabe’s younger sister, Aiko, is still in high school, and his elder brother, Henry, is a bookkeeper and part-time college student. The Watanabe children’s mother is an immigrant from Okinawa; their father, also from Japan, died a decade earlier in a manufacturing accident.

Just before school closes for the summer, an officer recruiting for the ROTC at McKinley approaches Watanabe. Watanabe expresses interest and is instructed to go to the ROTC office. When he arrives the next morning, he is subjected to a background check and light interrogation in Japanese. He clears these initial screenings and returns for cognitive and social compatibility exams. Finally, he is brought to the Army base, Fort Shafter. There, he is notified that he will be working on a top-secret assignment translating Japanese communications in the Philippines. The Army asks for parental permission because Watanabe is underage. His mother reluctantly signs off. Henry throws him a farewell party, where he meets a girl named Mina whom he finds very attractive.



Watanabe departs for the Philippines. There, he meets another Japanese-American Freddy Kimura who also hails from Hawaii. Watanabe is given the code name “Bamboo Rat,” while Freddy gets “Spider.” They are sent to Manila and instructed to learn to camouflage themselves in the local culture. Watanabe goes to a Japanese hotel, blends in with a number of businessmen, and pretends to work at a job that brings him around the city as a cover for collecting information. Aside from infrequent visits to a nearby base, he submits all of his findings via a mailbox in the hotel.

After becoming adjusted to Manila, Watanabe is hired at the Japanese consulate. There, he works for Japanese-American Benny Suzuki. The consulate evacuates all of its American personnel after Japan’s attack on Manila, which coincides with the Pearl Harbor bombings. Watanabe is instructed to leave for Australia. He disobeys his orders, giving his flight to Benny, who has a wife and children. He is soon cornered and imprisoned by the Japanese.

While in prison, Watanabe plots tirelessly for his escape. Meanwhile, his captors subject him to intense interrogation and torture. He is treated even worse than the average prisoner of war for being a Japanese “traitor.” Eventually, he is sent to be the translator for a Japanese official, Colonel Fujimoto. Fujimoto treats him more kindly, slowly beginning to believe his denial of his identity of Bamboo Rat.



At the end of the novel, U.S. forces descend on the Philippines as Japan begins to lose ground in the war. Watanabe escapes his prison, surviving in the forest until he reaches civilization. Hunt for the Bamboo Rat is a testament to the feats of endurance prisoners of war accomplished in their effort to protect their home countries, often at great personal cost.