“Never in our history have such a large group of men endured so much and complained so little. Many couldn’t shake the fact that their country had abandoned them, left them to die in a foreign land. It was said to be of no significance to the war effort, but for me, it meant everything. It’s true, they had been left behind, but never forgotten.”
The above words were stated in the 2005 film “The Great Raid” on the secret mission to save American prisoners of war from being possibly killed by the Japanese military. In late 1944, this enemy was losing on every front within the fighting of the Pacific and Asia. Especially in the Philippines, the Japanese showed no mercy to American, British, Australian, New Zealand, Filipino, and many other prisoners. General Douglas MacArthur had a long path of “island hopping” campaigns to finally land in the Philippines, as his forces raced against time to save these men from being murdered.
A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the son of Italian immigrants, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci and his 6th Army Ranger Battalion were a highly trained but rarely used force within this war. This changed when General Walter Krueger ordered Mucci to prepare his men for the difficult operation to move thirty miles behind enemy lines. Mucci was motivated to carry out this operation through the support of the Alamo Scouts and the Filipino guerrillas who aided the Americans with detailed intelligence and reinforcements. A proponent of Special Forces, Mucci was hard on his men, but he was well liked by them. They followed him to the depths of hell that was known as the Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp, as the higher command counted on the prowess of Mucci to rescue these men.
Mucci expressed that the necessity of this mission was to move quickly, hit the Japanese hard, and bring home the surviving veterans of the 1942 Bataan Death March. Most of his soldiers were from the western areas of the United States, growing up as farm and ranch hands. One member of the 6th Army Rangers remembered, “Mucci — he worked us so hard that sometimes I’d think I hate that man, and I’d double-time back to my camp and say, ‘You can’t kill me, I can do more. You can’t give me enough; I can do more than you can give me.’ So, he had us in shape and once he got us trained, he was the nicest man you ever saw. But he knew how to train men.” No doubt, Mucci got his men in peak physical condition. Captain Bob Prince was the brains of this operation, and he described Mucci as making “a Ranger battalion out of a bunch of mule skinners, and he inspired us and trained us — and any success we had belongs to the Colonel.”
Prince was a graduate of Stanford University’s ROTC program, married his wife Barbara, and enlisted in the Army as a lieutenant on July 7, 1941. Earlier in uniform, Prince had an impacted wisdom tooth that delayed his overseas deployment, where he could have been captured by the Japanese. Not a brash leader, he was a soft-spoken figure, and Prince widely respected the leadership actions of Mucci. Prince served in New Guinea, the Philippine Islands, and later in Japan. He was inflicted with “jungle rot” and suffered through the seventy-mile round trip that was extremely painful for this Ranger.
On January 28, Mucci and 121 soldiers began this mission from the American-held town of Guimba, pushing into unfriendly territory with the aid of the Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas. There were constant risks of unknowingly running into the enemy or being turned over by Filipino collaborators. Scouts moved ahead twenty-four miles toward the outskirts of Cabanatuan to determine if the garrison was reinforced. These soldiers walked through heavy and, at times, open terrain, across streams, and always close to the retreating enemy trucks and armored convoys. The Rangers and the Filipinos under the command of Captain Eduardo Joson met near the town of Balin Carin with about 200 soldiers and proceeded toward Platero, which was less than two miles from Cabanatuan. The pressure of this mission was always felt, as one soldier recalled, “A Jap division was moving past all night until it shut down at dawn to hide out from planes during the day.” Mucci was told, “Our bacon will be out for frying if we collide with those bastards.”
The village of Platero was excited for the first time to meet Americans, as women of all ages wore their finest clothing to impress the Rangers. Mucci feared alerting the prison and the scores of enemy soldiers that were near the Rangers. Whereas these villagers had little food, they killed a cow that was distributed to the soldiers and, as they ate, “God Bless America” was softly sung to them by this community. Word spread to the neighboring villages of the Rangers’ presence, and another town mayor arrived to give the Americans whiskey. Mucci worried that the Japanese would be told of their location, and he ordered the mayor to be guarded until this operation was conducted. The Americans mingled with Filipino guerrillas and learned of the horrific stories of Japanese atrocities that were committed against them and their families, and they sought vengeance against this occupying regime. Mucci was also anxious over the eight thousand soldiers who were expected to be passing through the town of Cabanatuan, where they could easily reinforce the two hundred Japanese guards at the camp.
The American prisoners understood that MacArthur was nearby by watching friendly fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft overhead. But these American prisoners felt that the Japanese would rather kill them before they could be liberated. Mucci used the common air operations presence of P-61 “Black Widows” to fly only 500 feet above Cabanatuan to provide a key diversion. The American soldiers moved closer toward the Japanese, as Prince was pleased with the air support and claimed, “The P-61 was one of the biggest factors maintaining our surprise… And they did a wonderful job of it, including cutting out an engine to make it sound like the plane was in trouble.” There were two platoons that were directed by Prince to conduct different responsibilities: to engage the guards and attend to the needs of the weakened prisoners. Close to the camp, the soldiers observed that the front gate was nine feet high, there were guard towers, bamboo structures with thatched huts, and the prisoners were already seen as being in poor physical shape.
Mucci was briefed that an additional 2,000 Japanese soldiers were stationed near the Cabu Bridge, but he was reassured that the Filipino guerrillas would attack and prevent them from aiding the camp. Prince planned for elements of the Rangers and guerrillas to establish a bazooka team to halt enemy reinforcements from arriving at Cabanatuan. The Rangers feared that the Filipinos were unreliable to halt Japanese armor that was expected to push through them to help the garrison at the prisoner of war camp. Prince’s plans called for complete surprise and quickness that amounted to thirty minutes to overrun the Japanese and rescue the American prisoners of war.
Next week will be the attack on Cabanatuan and the legacy of this operation.