I Was An American Spy

Ann Dvorak

Claire Fuentes is an Americanborn Filipina living in Manila and working as a cafe entertainer on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor. She meets and marries an American soldier, Sgt. John Phillips Douglas Kennedy, and with her husband, witnesses the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during the siege of Bataan. Her husband is captured, and she watches as he is killed by machine gun fire in the Bataan Death March after he defies the order of a cruel Japanese soldier not to drink from typhoid contaminated water. In retaliation, Phillips uses a handgun to shoot and kill a Japanese soldier. She then joins the antiJapanese resistance, and in order to obtain intelligence to send back to the United States, she opens a nightclub catering to Japanese officers. Phillips is code named High Pockets for her habit of stashing items in her brassiere. She successfully passes useful intelligence on to the American forces and the Filipino underground, but is then discovered, imprisoned, and water tortured by the Japanese. Sentenced to death, she is rescued in the nick of time by American soldiers one of whom is Cpl. John Boone Gene Evans who storm Bilibid Prison, killing the Japanese guards. In 1951, she is awarded the Medal of Freedom on the recommendation of General Douglas MacArthur.Unfortunately for the studio, the relatively lowbudget film fell flat with critics, with The New York Times writing that it isnt especially stimulating either as a narrative or as a tribute to personal courage. Hal Erickson noted in AllMovie, however, that the film handles its more brutal scenes with a marked degree of tastefulness. ........

Source: Wikipedia