Raid at Cabanatuan - Prisoner Rescue

Prisoner Rescue

At 17:00, a few hours after Mucci approved Prince's plan, the Rangers departed from Platero. White cloths were tied around their left arms to prevent friendly fire. They crossed the Pampanga River and then, at 17:45, Prince and Murphy's men parted ways to surround the camp. Pajota, Joson, and their guerrilla forces each headed to their ambush sites. The Rangers under Prince made their way to the main gate and stopped about 700 yards (640 m) from the camp to wait for nightfall and the aircraft distraction.

Meanwhile, a P-61 Black Widow from the 547th Night Fighter Squadron had taken off at 18:00, piloted by Capt. Kenneth Schrieber and 1st Lt. Bonnie Rucks. About 45 minutes before the attack, Schrieber cut the power to the left engine at 1,500 feet (460 m) over the camp. He restarted it, creating a loud backfire, and repeated the procedure twice more, losing altitude to 200 feet (61 m). Pretending that his plane was crippled, Schrieber headed toward low hills, clearing them by a mere 30 feet (9.1 m). To the Japanese observers, it seemed the plane had crashed and they watched, waiting for a fiery explosion. Schrieber repeated this several times while also performing various aerobatic maneuvers. The ruse continued for twenty minutes, creating a diversion for the Rangers inching their way toward the camp on their bellies. Prince later commended the pilots' actions: "The idea of an aerial decoy was a little unusual and honestly, I didn't think it would work, not in a million years. But the pilot's maneuvers were so skillful and deceptive that the diversion was complete. I don't know where we would have been without it." As the plane buzzed the camp, Lt. Carlos Tombo and his guerrillas along with a small number of Rangers cut the camp's telephone lines to prevent communication with the large force stationed in Cabanatuan.

At 19:40, the whole prison compound erupted into small arms fire after Murphy and his men fired on the guard towers and barracks. Within the first fifteen seconds, all of the camp's guard towers and pillboxes were targeted and destroyed. Sgt. Ted Richardson rushed to shoot a padlock off of the main gate using his .45 pistol. The Rangers at the main gate maneuvered to bring the guard barracks and officer quarters under fire, while the ones at the rear eliminated the enemy near the prisoners' huts and then proceeded with the evacuation. A bazooka team from F Company ran up the main road to a tin shack which the Scouts had told Mucci held tanks. Although Japanese soldiers attempted to escape with two trucks, the team was able to destroy the trucks and then the shack.

At the beginning of the gunfire, many of the prisoners thought that it was the Japanese beginning to massacre them. One prisoner stated that the attack sounded like "whistling slugs, Roman candles, and flaming meteors sailing over our heads." Prisoners immediately hid in their shacks, latrines, and irrigation ditches. When the Rangers yelled to the POWs to come out and be rescued, many of the POWs feared that it was the Japanese attempting to trick them into being killed. Also, a substantial number resisted because the Rangers' weapons and uniforms looked nothing like those of a few years earlier, for example, the Rangers wore caps, earlier soldiers had M1917 Helmets and incidentally, the Japanese also wore caps.. The Rangers were challenged by the POWs and asked who they were and where they were from. Rangers sometimes had to resort to physical force to remove the detainees, throwing or kicking them out. Some of the POWs weighed so little due to illness and malnourishment that several Rangers carried two men on their backs. Once out of the barracks, they were told by the Rangers to proceed to the main, or front gate. Prisoners were disoriented because the "main gate" meant the entrance to the American side of the camp. POWs collided with each other in the confusion but were eventually led out by the Rangers.

A lone Japanese soldier was able to fire off three mortar rounds toward the main gate. Although members of F Company quickly located the soldier and killed him, several Rangers, Scouts, and POWs were wounded in the attack. Battalion surgeon Capt. James Fisher was mortally injured in the stomach and was carried to the nearby village of Balincari. Scout Alfred Alfonso had a shrapnel wound to his abdomen. Scout Lt. Tom Rounsaville and Ranger Pvt. 1st Class Jack Peters were also wounded by the barrage.

A few seconds after Pajota and his men heard Murphy fire the first shot, they fired on the alerted Japanese contingent situated across the Cabu River. Pajota had earlier sent a demolitions expert to set charges on the unguarded bridge to go off at 19:45. The bomb detonated at the designated time, and although it did not destroy the bridge, it formed a large hole over which tanks and other vehicles could not pass. Waves of Japanese troops rushed the bridge, but the V-shaped choke point created by the Filipino guerrillas repulsed each attack. One guerrilla, who had been trained to use the bazooka only a few hours earlier by the Rangers, destroyed or disabled four tanks that were hiding behind a clump of trees. A group of Japanese soldiers made an effort to flank the ambush position by crossing the river away from the bridge, but the guerrillas spotted and eliminated them.

At 20:15, the camp was secured from the Japanese and Prince fired his flare to signal the end of the assault. No gunfire had occurred for the last fifteen minutes. However, as the Rangers headed towards the meetup, Cpl. Roy Sweezy was shot twice by friendly fire, and later died. The Rangers and the weary, frail, and disease-ridden POWs made their way to the appointed Pampanga River rendezvous, where a caravan of 26 carabao carts waited to transport them to Plateros, driven by local villagers organized by Pajota. At 20:40, once Prince determined that everyone had crossed the Pampanga River, he fired his second flare to indicate to Pajota and Joson's men to withdraw. The Scouts stayed behind at the meetup to survey the area for enemy retaliatory movements. Meanwhile, Pajota's men continued to resist the attacking enemy until they could finally withdraw at 22:00, when the Japanese forces stopped charging the bridge. Joson and his men met no opposition, and they returned to help escort the POWs.

Although the combat photographers were able to shoot images of the trek to and from the camp, they were unable to use their cameras during the night-time raid, as the flashes would indicate their positions to the Japanese. One of the photographers reflected on the nighttime hindrance: "We felt like an eager soldier who had carried his rifle for long distances into one of the war's most crucial battles, then never got a chance to fire it." The Signal Corps photographers instead assisted with escorting the POWs out of the camp.