News-Info-Alerts

Re: A WW II Raid That Freed More Than 500 POWs

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 16, 2002

"Thursday, March 14, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Books - Tales from the war in the Pacific

By Jack Broom - Seattle Times staff reporter
HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Robert Prince, 81, who lives in Kirkland, led a WWII raid that freed more than 500 POWs.


Wars may be recorded as vast campaigns, but they're remembered as a series of personal moments.

For Robert Prince of Kirkland, one such moment was directing a raid into a Japanese POW compound in the Philippines, an operation that lost only two men while freeing more than 500 American prisoners.

For Roy Matsumoto of Friday Harbor, one such moment was confusing Japanese troops in Burma by shouting orders to them in the darkness, using a Japanese dialect Matsumoto had learned in his youth.

U.S. Army veterans Prince, 81, and Matsumoto, 88, have been inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame. They're among 100 soldiers who tell their stories in a newly published book, "Into the Rising Sun," by military historian Patrick K. O'Donnell. (The Free Press, $26)

Many of the stories have been locked up inside for half a century by soldiers reluctant to share and relive personal moments of a war that killed more than a quarter-million Americans.

Their accounts, brief but rich with detail, are sure to resonate with veterans and loved ones in this state. According to the state Department of Veterans Affairs, 136,000 Washington residents served in the military during World War II.

Sadly, their stories are disappearing, many never having been recorded. Simple math tells part of the story: A G.I. who was 25 when the war ended would be at least 81 today. Memories dim. And nationally, statistics indicate more than 1,100 American World War II veterans die every day.

The new book offers a second helping of World War II memoirs collected by O'Donnell in 10 years of research and more than 1,000 taped interviews. The first installment, "Beyond Valor," was published last year, featuring stories of Americans in combat in Europe. "Into the Rising Sun" is a collection of stories from the Pacific theater.

O'Donnell, 32, met many of his subjects by attending military reunions coast to coast, and found a striking difference between the major realms of World War II.

"The one thing that was shocking to me (about Pacific combat) was the sheer brutality, compared to Europe. It was a visceral hatred on both sides." O'Donnell said more battles and skirmishes were fought to the last man, with relatively few prisoners taken.

In the Pacific, even the environment was more treacherous, O'Donnell said.

"Those swamps and those jungles were breeding grounds for insects and disease," O'Donnell said. "A bacteria called jungle rot was common and caused open sores." Hiking even modest distances could be torture for the many who suffered foot sores and infections.

Stories in "Into the Rising Sun" boil down patriotism to one of its most basic and dramatic forms: a willingness to risk the unthinkable to protect one's comrades and pursue the enemy.

Prince, an Army captain, saw this patriotism when he briefed his men on the mission that would take them far behind enemy lines to free survivors of the Bataan Death March, amid mounting concern that the Americans might be slaughtered by their captors.

Because of the danger, Prince wanted only volunteers, so he turned his back, asking those who were willing to take a step forward. When he first turned around, it looked like no one had moved, until Prince realized every soldier had stepped forward.

The raid was carried off with tremendous success, thanks to the element of surprise and the fact that Army scouts and Filipino guerrilla fighters had provided detailed information about the layout of the camp. American troops knew where the Japanese guard quarters were, and opened with heavy fire, killing about 250 and quickly silencing any resistance.

"It took only about 30 minutes to get some 500 men out of there," Prince recalls. The story of that mission was also detailed in the highly acclaimed "Ghost Soldiers," by Hampton Sides, published last year. Sides, in cover notes on "Into the Rising Sun," praises O'Donnell's new book as showing "the wet, dark, jungled truth of the Pacific War."

Matsumoto had a roundabout way into the service. Though he was an American citizen born in Los Angeles, he was among the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry put in internment camps under the order of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Offered a chance to leave the camp by joining the Army, Matsumoto seized the opportunity to help prove the internment process was wrong.

"I was bitter, but I wanted to show I was just as good as the next guy. I wanted to show that I was a real American."

In combat, Matsumoto volunteered for a high-risk unit, later known as Merrill's Marauders, to work behind Japanese lines to destroy communications and supply lines in Burma. Matsumoto's unit was told to expect a casualty rate of 85 percent.

At one point, more than 600 Americans were surrounded in a vast jungle for 10 days, all exit routes sealed, water, food and ammunition rapidly disappearing. One evening, Matsumoto crawled close to a Japanese encampment and overheard the group's plans to attack an American position the following morning.

With that tip-off, Americans pulled out of the target zone, booby-trapped their foxholes with grenades and took a new position on higher ground nearby.

"They thought they got us, but it turned the other way," Matsumoto recalls. "When they attacked at dawn, they were charging and yelling everything: 'Death to Americans! Die! Banzai!' They got no response because we were not there."

As the advance continued, American fire opened up from new, protected positions, mowing down the advancing troops, causing Japanese officers to order a retreat.

But in the darkness and confusion, Matsumoto, who knew the same dialect the Japanese troops used, shouted contrary commands, prompting Japanese soldiers to continue charging into a hopeless position directly in front of American guns. The success of that mission has been credited with allowing hundreds of Americans to reach safety.

Collecting "oral histories" of World War II has been a longtime priority for O'Donnell, of Fairfax Station, Va. In addition to the two books, O'Donnell maintains a Web "Virtual Museum" of combat veterans' individual stories, www.thedropzone.org.

His sense of the importance of preserving those accounts hit home dramatically in 2000, when he interviewed Andrew Amaty, 81, of New York, who talked for about five hours about his experiences in a parachute infantry regiment.

"He was a great storyteller. I felt like I was going back in time with the guy," O'Donnell said. The following day, Amaty, a former dockworker, strained to lift a heavy suitcase, suffered a stroke and died.

Jack Broom can be reached at 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company "