The Cabanatuan Prison Raid: The Philippines 1945

Over the last couple years in the Army, I have become fascinated by military history, especially when it involves Raids. I think every kid who watches a movie of commandos or airborne troopers coming down from the sky, imagine themselves there at the scene. Or perhaps going behind enemy lines and liberating emaciated POWs. Well, this book shows you how the real men got the job done; and how forward thinking and initiative allowed the men of the 6th Ranger Battalion to launch one of the most successful liberation's of the Second World War.It goes from tactics, to firearms and the men behind the operation as well as the Guerrilla element that helped make the op happen. And who knows, perhaps in the future, when the nation is at war with some else, perhaps there will be Major Mucci's and Captain Prince's to liberate POWs held deep in enemy territory.

A good depiction of the true story written purely along factual lines. While not engrossing as far as escape stories go it was none the less a very descriptive account of the strategy and execution of the plan.

Excellent condensation of the raid. Well done.

Excellent book for good deatails about the raid.

excellent

On 30 January 1945, during the Luzon campaign, an American force made of Rangers and Alamo Scouts who earlier infiltrated behind Japanese lines, attacked a Japanese held POW's camp at Cabanatuan - in the same time a large force of Phlippine guerillas prevented the arrival of any rescue of reinforcements by shredding to ribbons a 1000+ strong battalion of Japanese infantry supported by tanks... Guerillas also later assured the transportation of wounded Rangers and especially of rescued POWs, who were almost all in very, very bad shape...This raid was made necessary by the atrocities committed previously by the Japanese against allied POWs - there were indeed reasons to believe, that those prisoners would be all massacred once the front line approached to the camp... Also, the POWs were almost all sick and exhausted from years of malnutrition and mistreatments and they were slowly dying - every day their numbers dwindled... In fact, one of rescued sick POWs died a couple of minutes after the camp was captured, literally in the hands of his saviors who were carrying him to safety... Later, once the Japanese retreated, remains of 3000 POWs (including 176 West Point graduates) who died there from malnutrition, disease and bad treatments since 1942 were found in mass graves.The raid was a huge success as 489 POWs and 33 civilian internees were liberated - two more POWs, both very sick, died before reaching allied lines... Most of Japanese garrison of the camp (200+ regular guards and a small Kempeital unit which just stopped for the night) was destroyed. Two Rangers, Captain James C. Fisher and Corporal Roy Sweezy, were also killed - seven more were wounded. Incredibly, Philippine guerillas, even if they waged a very tough fight against a whole Japanese battalion, escaped without even one man killed - although 21 were wounded.This book is well written and structured, is very much to the point and gives a lot of details. Lot of things can be learned from this book, like a good description of allied leaders in this raid: Lt Colonel Henry A. Mucci for the Americans and Captain Juan Pajota for the Philippinos. I also learned for the first time what name the Japanese were giving to the guerillas who fought against them - unsuprisingly, it was the same as the one used by the III Reich: "bandits" ("hizoku").A good point, not always present in other books about this famous raid, is how big a problem were local communist guerillas, the Huks - who fought against the Japanese, the pro-Japanese locals, but also against Philippine government in exile and the Americans. In fact they were at war against the whole world...Illustrations and maps are good and there are two colour plates by Howard Gerrard, although only the first one is good and interesting - the second one is a waste of place.Bottom line, this is a good, solid book about an extremely succesful military operation carried for possibly the noblest cause of all - saving completely defenseless and mostly very sick people from certain death... Americans call it "The Great raid" and it probably deserves this title, even if in Europe most people reserve this distinction to the British commandos raid on Saint Nazaire in 1942...

Gordon L Rottman's The Cabanatuan Prison Raid is the third volume in Osprey's new RAID series and it provides a very thorough and readable account of this famous Ranger operation. Since this volume covers a POW rescue mission in the midst of the U.S. liberation of the Philippines in 1945, it has more of a military content than some of the other volumes in the RAID series (e.g. Entebbe, Iranian Embassy). Overall, the volume is well written - indeed one of Rottman's best efforts - and completely answers the mail on this topic. Although there are other, longer works available on the famous Cabanatuan Raid, this volume offers excellent maps and graphics, as well as a succinct narrative of the raid itself. The volume begins with a brief introduction about U.S. military personnel taken prisoner in the Philippines in 1942 and how the 6th Army headquarters learned of the location of prisoners at Cabanatuan in January 1945. The next 8 pages cover the genesis of the rescue plan and include a color plate on Ranger and Japanese uniforms, a sidebar on the 6th Ranger commander (LTC Henry Mucci) and another sidebar on Ranger weapons. The plan for the raid is thoroughly covered in the next 9 pages and includes a chart showing the breakdown of the raiding force (sadly lacking in some other volumes in the series), another showing the organization of the raiders and a diagram of the layout of Cabanatuan POW camp. In this section, the author also discusses the enemy forces in/near the objective, terrain and weather factors and details about the camp. These last two sections are competently written and obviously put together by someone familiar with Ranger mission planning. The raid itself is covered in a 27-page section which includes three maps and a battle scene, as well as a sidebar on the SCR-694 radio and a table on Filipino guerrilla units involved in supporting the operation. This part of the volume is particularly gripping, beginning with the 30-mile infiltration march, then the pre-raid reconnaissance of the camp, the establishment of the Filipino blocking force, the actual break-in and rescue of the POWs, followed by the withdrawal. Indeed, the author's narrative moves along at a good pace and his exposition is faultless. The volume concludes with a 6-page analysis section, which actually includes some analysis (e.g. the author makes a good point that another Ranger company could have been detailed to assist the withdrawal to increase the odds for success). The only tiny fault I could note - probably derived from over-reliance on faulty secondary sources - was when the author erroneously described Ranger lieutenant John F Murphy as a "former Notre Dame quarterback." As a Notre Dame alumnus myself, I've seen other make this false claim and no one by this name is listed in the all-time roster. Aside from that minor glitch, The Cabanatuan Prison Raid is an excellent volume and provides readers with a thorough and professional assessment of one of the great Ranger operations of the Second World War.

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