The Raid at Cabanatuan: MAJ Robert Prince

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Major Robert Prince. Prince served as an Army Ranger during World War II, and helped plan the Raid on Cabanatuan, a Japanese POW camp. With the help of Filipino civilians, the Rangers, Alamo Scouts and guerilla forces traveled 24 miles under the cover of darkness to launch a surprise attack on the camp. They successfully defeated the Japanese and liberated over 500 prisoners of war.

MAJ Prince:

I landed on Dinagat Island and there was no Japanese opposition. The other companies landed on Suluan and they did have opposition from a Japanese force that was operating a lookout in a lighthouse, and they prevailed.

About two or three nights after we landed, we were observers of one of the big naval battles of the war. It was at night, but the guns and the flashes and everything made it look sort of like the 4th of July, and the American Navy had crossed the T of a Japanese force, which means... when you cross the T, you bring to bear all of your weapons from your fleet against the one leading ship in the opposing fleet. And our fleet, with very minor damage, sunk every Japanese vessel that night with the exception of one small vessel. The next day, they radioed us from Leyte to go find some prisoners, survivors of the naval battle. They needed them for interrogation.

We marched about 20 miles down Dinagat Island and we asked the Filipinos if they had seen any Japanese and they said, "Yes, we've been killing them as they come ashore." So we prevailed on their saving a half a dozen of them for us to take back to send to Leyte Island itself for interrogation.

The interesting thing was that through an interpreter, these Japanese told us that they were off of five different vessels that had been sunk the night before. They were in pretty bad shape because of oil in their eyes. I think they recovered, but they were not feeling very good. But they did tell us that they had been told that the Japanese were winning the war and so forth, and that was our last bit of duty on Dinagat and we moved over to Leyte Island where the headquarters of the Sixth Army were, and also MacArthur's headquarters. He was in command of what they call the Southwest Pacific area.

We then prepared to land on Luzon, which happened on January 9th and 10th of 1945. There was no opposition in the landing, and we were used in part to guard the Sixth Army headquarters. B Company was sent to Santiago Island, which was a sizable island in Lingayen Gulf, and there were Japanese on there that they wanted removed because they were unloading ships and so forth. When B Company got there, the Japanese had already left so that operation didn't amount to much. While they were gone, the operation to save the POWs at Cabanatuan arose and Colonel Mucci selected C Company, of which I was the commanding officer, and one platoon from F Company. We had about close to a hundred men plus some medics from the headquarters company and some radio men.

We trucked from up near Lingayen Gulf down to a town called Guimba, and it was in control by that time by the Sixth Army. At Guimba, we met with two guerrilla chieftains, Pahota and the other name escapes me, but Pahota was the main one. And they described that we had to walk about 35 miles to get to the POW camp and that we would start in late afternoon, but we would be walking well into the night. They provided guides, and so we set off.

We marched mostly through the night. We went through two or three small Filipino barrios, which is a village of six or eight huts. And even though it got late at night, we were greeted everywhere we went, including the children. Little girls dressed in their finest and singing for us, and one of them handed me an egg and I said, "What do I do with this?" And one of our men that knew how, he said, "Take a pin and stick it in each end, and then suck out the contents." Well, for a city boy, was a new experience, but I did it.

When we got to Balancaran, which was another barrio,we stopped for the night, of which there weren't very many hours remaining. The next morning we were told by the guerrillas that a Japanese regiment was going to be bivouacked near the prison camp that night, and that it would be suicide for us in the prisoners if we went in there at that time. So we were delayed 24 hours. That allowed time for us to rest up and plan, and the Alamo Scouts were the first part of that. They went up as close as they could get to the prison camp and they had Filipinos helping them. And they got a layout of the plant and where the POWs were and where the Japanese soldiers would be, and from that layout we were able to devise a very good plan. So the day wasn't wasted at all. In fact, I think it was very necessary to the success of this operation.

We decided we would go in the next day at... leave about 5:30 with there still light and get in position just at dusk, just before it got dark, which we did. We walked about a mile across the Talavera River and walked a while farther until we were in view of the prison camp and we had some bare ground to cross where we were in full sight of the guard up in the tower.

I should add that this was the dry season, so all of our walking was on hard-baked mud, even in the rice paddies, because it was actually better for us and the rivers were lower, which would've been a real problem with weak POWs crossing in a rainy period of time. You can't crawl on your hands and knees, you've got to crawl on your belly so it's a matter of cradling your rifle across your arms and just crawling, using your feet to push off. The distance that we traveled on our bellies had to be several hundred yards, maybe two or three. I don't know. It obviously felt longer than that when you're under observation and worrying about what your job is going to be.

Well, about that time, P61 night fighter... they had twin fuselages, they were painted black and they were called the Black Widows. They were night fighters and they kept the Japanese as much off the roads as they could even at night by... they had primitive infrared equipment and they were a very important part of our overall campaign. But to us that night, they were vital. This one plane came in and circled around and over the prison camp and had the attention of all the POWs and all the Japanese guards as well, and they were watching that while we were crawling. And we got into the ditch just across from the main gate at 7:30 as we had planned.

That was C Company first and second platoons. The F Company platoon had farther to go. Their assignment was to crawl up a dry wash and get behind the prisoners and take out any Japanese that were behind them. So we had people to cover the rear, and we had a platoon to cover the Japanese soldiers, and then the other platoon was to get the POWs out. I looked at my watch and it was 20 minutes to 8:00 and that we were 10 minutes late of our hoped-for time, and I was beginning to wonder whether we would have to initiate the fighting or not.

In just that time, the Japanese guard at the rear of the camp spotted F Company people and sounded the alarm and he was shot out of the tower immediately, but the raid was on.

Somebody shot the gun out of Richardson's hand, and so Proventure was the one that shot the lock off the gate and in we went. The first platoon was to march to the right and then up through the middle of the camp and aim everything away from where the POWs were and kill as many Japanese guards as we could see or not see. The second platoon immediately went into the prison compound. Their duty was to get the POWs out and on their way. And the POWs started coming out almost immediately, and some of them couldn't believe that we were American soldiers, that we weren't dressed like they could remember.

The commanding officer of the POWs was Colonel Duckworth from the Medical Corps, and he told one of our rangers, "We're not going anywhere. We don't know who you are or anything." He said, "Colonel, these are General MacArthur's orders. Get your ass out of here." And the colonel obeyed and he was the only casualty that night because he tripped in the ditch as he went out and broke his arm. But he was one of the first POWs and was greeted by MacArthur the next morning.

The Japanese guards, I'm sure, were totally annihilated, the amount of firepower that went into their barracks area and where they had their equipment... we had a bazooka with us, and the bazooka took out a truck and a tank, if what I was told was correct.

And as the POWs came out, several of us were standing out in front of the camp because we had no direct assignment in it. And among those were the Alamo Scouts and our medical people, Captain Fisher and his two staff people with him. About that time, a mortar shell or two was dropped into this area and wounded a number of people, the soldiers that were standing there, including Captain Fisher. His was the only serious wound, and he died the next morning because the wound was severe. My first sergeant and one other man... all of a sudden, everybody was gone. We were just standing there. It was eight, 10 minutes after 8:00 and there was no noise. There was certainly nothing from the Japanese area. The shooting was all over.

And so we were instructed to fire a red flare when all of the prisoners and rangers had left the area. First Sergeant Anderson took care of that. In the meantime, I went into the two nearest prisoner buildings. I don't know what, probably a nipa hut of some sort, but it was dark and you couldn't see. And I went into each of them with my .45 automatic at half-cocked just in case I needed it. And I yelled, "Is anybody here?" And no one answered. We learned later that one deaf Englishman was in the latrine, wherever that was, and he didn't hear the whole thing. I tend to disbelieve that. I think he heard what he heard and decided he was in the safest place and stayed there, and he was picked up the next morning by Filipino civilians and returned to safety.

So after that, we left, three of us bringing up the rear and the red flare had been signaled to the two guerrilla captains that we were out of the camp and were on our way. And their duty was to fall in behind us and protect against any Japanese who might decide to follow us.

It is interesting to note, and of course we could hear the firing but didn't know what was going on, but Captain Pahota about a mile from where we were was set up to stop a Japanese battalion who were bivouacked there. And sure enough, that Japanese battalion tried their best, including a tank, to get across the bridge there and to attack us. Pahota and his men destroyed the tank. They destroyed the bridge. They destroyed the Japanese battalion almost to a man. They had some casualties, but they suffered no loss of personnel. The other group of guerrillas cut the phone line from the camp to the city of Cabanatuan, which was about four and a half miles away. They had no combat at all, but both guerilla units then fell in behind us and were our rear guard.

We stopped at the village of Balancaran again, and this is where Fisher was being treated by the local Filipino doctor, a Dr. Laiug. And Duckworth was there, but he said, "I can't help the man. I've got a broken arm," and so everybody was said to go along and some of the Alamo Scouts said that they would stay and protect him and try to move him when he could be moved.

I came in at the very end of this with another doctor from the prison camp, Dr. Musselman from Omaha, Nebraska, and he'd been in a prison camp for nearly three years, and yet he offered his services to stay overnight to see if he could help Fisher. I thought that took a lot of courage to do that in his case. Unfortunately, nothing could help Fisher and he died early the next morning. In the meantime, we'd been walking through the night and Colonel Mucci through Pahota had arranged for some ox carts to take the wounded men or the prisoners that weren't in good shape. And we started with 50 of those, and we had 500 POWs, and you could only put about four or five to a cart. I say ox, but it was a carabao, a water buffalo ox that is prevalent in the Philippines. Before the night was over, we had 250 of those carts, so a good half of the men that we had rescued were unable to walk the 30 miles that it took to get to safety.

As an aside, during the ranger training, we had plenty of walks where or hikes that we went 30, 40 miles. And unfortunately, all of us in that area had jungle rot, is what we called it, in the toes and armpits and the groin. And you just lived with it. Unfortunately, I got an infection and had to soak my foot every day for about 30 days to get rid of it. So no wonder I was not ready for this kind of a walk, and it took a toll on me, but from which I rapidly recovered.

We took a 30-day leave for each of us, which was very nice. And then we went back to the Philippines and we were fully expecting to go to Japan when the war ended. Another aside, while we were in Washington DC, we spent about four or five days at the Pentagon being debriefed. "Everybody around, get ready to... we're going to go over the White House," which was pretty exciting. And we were ushered in to see President Roosevelt, who was sitting in the chair. He did not rise or anything because he couldn't, but he greeted all of us and it was a... he didn't call it that at the time, but it was a photo op because it was in the papers the next day and it was pretty exciting to all of us.

The E Day was about May 8th, I believe, and we were in San Francisco, my wife and I, and knew that I was headed back, but that was quite a celebration. So I went back for another two or three months and came home... six months. I came home in November after going to Japan where I served as occupying forces for about four or five weeks.

A ranger company is 68 officers and men. And we had another platoon with us, so that's about another 32 or 33 men, or 34 men. And we had 12 Alamo Scouts and we had three Signal Corps, so they're around 120 of Americans in on the raid. It's in the book. I could look it up for you, but..

At the camp we figured around 150 to 200. I never talked to anybody later on that went back to count the bodies or anything, but they did go back to... well, the Filipinos found this one British man the next morning. But the POWs went back after this area was taken by American forces. They had some things hidden in the camp. They dug up... it was a lot of poetry by one fellow that was very good.;

But you see, just a few months before this raid, before we were on Luzon, the Japanese had taken all the healthy POWs out of there and sent them to Japan and Manchuria. And one of the ships was bombed by our airplanes because it had no marking on it that it was a POW, killed our own men and a submarine, I think got another one. So this Henry Lee, this poet, had been one of those that was on one of those boats. And I was watching the Smothers Brothers just recently, who are no longer very young, and their father, who was a colonel in the army, was on one of those ships and lost at that time, which was devastating to know that they were sunk by our own people, but without knowledge.

I considered it quite a privilege to have been part of the rangers, and I was a big admirer of Henry Mucci, our CO. And I wasn't sure I was going to stay there and become a ranger until I got to know him better. And I had so much confidence in his leadership abilities and his common sense and all the rest of it, and his motivation that I willingly stayed there and became part of the organization because a number of officers transferred out and he transferred some others out, whether they wanted to stay or not. He knew who he wanted and I felt privileged to be there.

Colonel Mucci was an inspiration to all of us that stayed, and he lived until he was about 88. He died in 1998 I think it was, or something like that. I took a trip to the Orient looking for export markets for apples, which was my business at the time. And I knew that he was over there in Bangkok and so I wrote ahead of time and said I was coming through there and I'd like to see him. And so when we got there, he called my hotel and he took us out to dinner, but it wasn't just... his wife had just left for Florida to find a place to retire to because he was just 65. It was in January of 1977, I think. And he took us this nice restaurant where it was almost private, the area that we was in and had a little stream running through it.

The fellow guests were... one was a princess, a Thai princess. One was the Taiwanese ambassador to Thailand, but he couldn't be called that because of the China-Taiwan conflict. And a great bunch of people that we won't see in average places. And he drove us home back to our hotel later, except he didn't drive. He said, "Everybody here like me has a driver," but they had a 12:00 curfew so he had to get us back and get to where he was going. And he'd spent a lot of time in Singapore. And we talked about that and he said, "Well, Singapore at this point isn't Asiatic, it's almost European in its way you live there." But Bangkok was different. And so some oil company in Britain that he'd represented over there for a number of years, then he retired to Melbourne, Florida. Melbourne Beach, I think it was.

There's a story there you should know. John Cook was born on a farm in Texas, and he was just the age that during the Depression, he had food to eat but no money like everybody else. At age 17, I think it was, he went into the CCC, which was the Civilian Conservation Corps during the very depths of the Depression. And then a year later at age 18, he thought he'd join the Army because he'd get paid there every morning. It was 21 bucks a month, I think it was, and they put him in the medics. And then after a little training, he went to San Francisco and on his way to the Philippines. And he just got there about a month or six weeks before Pearl Harbor, and he was not on the death march because he was a medic and he was treating guys that were still in the hospital, wounded and so forth.

And after they'd all been discharged or died or whatever, he did not have to make the march to Baton, but... I mean, up to Camp O'Donnell. But he was there. And then later in the Cabanatuan camps. And after the war, he stayed in the army for just 20 years. And when he retired, he was a sergeant major, which is the highest rank noncommissioned officer that there is. And he worked at Walter Reed Hospital part of the time. He went back to Japan for part of the time with American Forces. But he thought that... well, I was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 1999, and he thought that that was fine. But he said, "Every Ranger and every guy that was on that raid, I want to see their names somewhere in Fort Benning." This is where the Ranger Hall of Fame was.

And so at his own expense over the next year, he convinced people at Fort Benning, including a couple of retired generals that took quite a bit of convincing, that this was a good idea. And they got a big granite plaque... I mean a piece of granite, and put a beautiful metal, bronze plaque on there with the names of every soldier that was on that raid, including the two pilots and other things like that. And it cost him quite a bit of money, but he thought that was the proper thing to do. And so I went back down there when they dedicated that a year later. And since then, we've been in constant contact every three or four times a week, most of the calls from him. He just was a phone nut.

He called all around the country, different people that he knew. But he died about a month ago. I talked to him day or two before and he sounded fine, but he had to have a heart bypass. And they got in there and did the bypass and they looked at his heart and said, "He's not going to live four hours." Well, I think he lived about 24 hours and that was it. But a very nice guy and I'm going to miss him. My company in Seattle and another one in Tacoma, and they've died in the last two years. So age is catching up with us, and there's nothing you do about that.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Major Robert Prince.

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