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00:00Many of us shed a tear to know that we were prisoners of war.
00:12We never thought that we would be prisoners of war, in any war.
00:19At the conclusion of World War II in the Philippines,
00:22500-plus Allied prisoners of the Japanese stare down the many courses of death.
00:27They're dying from dysentery, pellagra, scurvy.
00:31And the guys were dying, you know, 50 to 60 a day.
00:35We figured before the market got there, they're gonna bump us off.
00:40They'll kill every one of us, see.
00:43Faced with the knowledge that the Japanese would rather kill their POWs than return them,
00:49the six U.S. Rangers prepare a dangerous rescue plan.
00:54We had no time for rehearsal.
00:57They might all be dead if the Japanese decided to move.
01:01If anybody told me that they were not nervous, they were lying.
01:06I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:09My main objective is to get these prisoners out.
01:17If I have to give my life, I'm willing to give it.
01:21I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:24I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:25I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:26I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:27I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:28I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:29I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:30I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:31I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:32I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:33I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:34I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:36I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:37I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
01:38On March 13th, 1938, Hitler marched into Austria.
02:05These people that came in to talk to us when we were in high school, I do remember one thing.
02:12They had the damn swastika.
02:23Facing ruthless dictators in Europe, the U.S. government dedicates unprecedented amounts of resources to a military build-up in the late 1930s.
02:32A strategy hastened by Japanese invasions in the Pacific.
02:37Japan moved further into China.
02:39China was looted and shelled and put to the torch.
02:44I had a wife and a son that I was to go, you know what I mean? I didn't want no deferment. So I was drafted then from Rochester, Pennsylvania.
03:05Living and working in Butler, Pennsylvania with his new family, Joe Youngblood is one of millions of young Americans to have their life uprooted.
03:16Soon after his draft notice, he is sent to a training location in Alabama.
03:21We got on the train and somebody said, where the hell is Fort McClellan? Nobody ever heard of it.
03:28They asked you whether you wanted to go to the Pacific or Europe.
03:32Well, I said I wanted to go to the Pacific because I'd rather fight the bugs than the coal.
03:40Me and the wife and my son, we was going from Evans City to Beaver on Route 68.
03:49I had the radio on in the 1936 Chevy and that's when I heard the news.
03:56We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press.
03:59The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
04:04From then on, why, that's all everybody talked about.
04:09I hated to leave, I know that much.
04:12That's when I kicked myself in the butt for not taking the deferment.
04:21My parents were immigrants from Syria.
04:25We had a kerosene ladder.
04:28That's the only light we had in the whole house.
04:31From the same industrial town of Butler, A.B. Abraham begins his military career
04:37well before hints of American involvement in the new war.
04:41Abraham joins the army in 1932 and by 1941, he is living with his Filipino bride and new family in the Philippines.
04:50Well, I met my wife's oldest gate.
04:52I looked at her and I said, hi baby. She said, you're fresh.
04:57I finally got to talk to her.
04:59And she said, you're in the army? I said, yeah.
05:02She said, oh my God.
05:04My dad here said, he'll kill me.
05:06He hated the army guys.
05:09In 1940, the U.S. government takes over Savannah, Georgia Airport to create an airbase.
05:15One of the soldiers at newly christened Hunter Field as Burt Bank, having left his rural Alabama home for the first time.
05:25My mother was kind of laid back. All she was concerned about was her three children.
05:30And my dad did the worry about finances, which wasn't many problems because he had nothing.
05:37Also training in Savannah is James Hildebrand from Chicago.
05:42I was 21 years of age on May 30th, 1941.
05:48And on June the 2nd of 1941, I received my welcome from Uncle Sam.
05:55Well, by that time, I had myself a private pilot's license.
05:58And so consequently, I decided that I'm going to join the Army Air Corps.
06:03We had orders under Plum to move.
06:07They didn't tell us where our secret code Plum meant.
06:11And we got out to sea, and they opened up the orders.
06:14And it was Philippine Urgent Materials.
06:17That was the first time we knew we were going to the Philippines.
06:20There were about ten of us ready to go to flying school.
06:24In November, we were ordered to the Philippines.
06:28And that was the end of flying school.
06:32We stopped in Hawaii, and everything was fine.
06:36Except when we start leaving, we were escorted by carriers.
06:40This is when we start wondering, what are we getting into?
06:49Now, December the 7th of 1941, in Manila, was a beautiful, peaceful day.
06:56At 3 o'clock in the morning, somebody came into our tent with a portable radio.
07:02And they were announcing that Pearl Harbor was being attacked.
07:05When I was home, I heard a truck screech.
07:08And then the company commander said, Pearl Harbor was bombed.
07:14And the first thing I said, boy, are they in trouble.
07:17The Japanese, boy, are they in trouble.
07:20But I never realized that we were the ones who was in trouble.
07:24Just hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese bombers open up on the main island of the Philippines.
07:32A bunch of the officers had been out at the Army and Navy club living it up.
07:37And we came in, and nobody was in their bed.
07:39And they bombed Nichols and Nielsen Field.
07:45And a bomb hit close to our barracks.
07:49And the Japs came over strafing us.
07:52The President decided today, after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and Manila,
07:56to call an extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet for 8.30 p.m. tonight.
08:00We said, well, nothing to worry about.
08:02Our fleet's going to be coming in soon with a lot of help.
08:06No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion,
08:13the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
08:22The sense of confidence in President Roosevelt's address
08:25isn't shared by the short-handed Allied forces in the Philippines.
08:30We were looking for rumors. What's happening in Europe?
08:33What's happening in the United States?
08:35We had lots of folks that started rumors, which helped them around.
08:41But it was a real sad situation, basically.
08:50General Douglas MacArthur, the commander in the Philippines,
08:53enacts War Plan Orange, sending the Allied troops to Bataan,
08:59the southwest peninsula of Luzon, on Christmas Eve, 1941.
09:05So that evening we boarded the ship at this headed for Bataan.
09:11And we almost got bombed.
09:14The Japanese planes were bombed on every ship in the bay.
09:17My wife said, you're going to come give the kids a present.
09:22I said, Nick, back. I said, Nick, tell my wife I can't be here.
09:28And she started crying.
09:29And Nick came back and said she cried.
09:31Ain't nothing I can do about it.
09:33I never knew what might happen to my family, you know.
09:40We used to get bombed three times a day.
09:42You could sit here watching by them.
09:44Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
09:46The Japanese come over and bombed us.
09:49We were waiting for help from America.
09:53And General MacArthur told us that he had requested from Roosevelt several times.
09:58Police sent us men and equipment.
10:02And he was finally told all efforts were being promoted in Europe.
10:07And we were not going to get any help.
10:10I can't cry.
10:11Me, a sergeant, crying in front of my men?
10:15No way.
10:16I didn't cry.
10:17I didn't cry.
10:18But I had feelings, so.
10:21You always have feelings when you see a lot of your buddies dying.
10:27You're young and you start thinking,
10:30why am I in this?
10:32What's going to happen?
10:34Where is America?
10:37Where are the men?
10:39Where is equipment?
10:42Surrounded by water and the enemy,
10:44the Americans are slowly strangled by the Japanese.
10:48The diseased and unprepared men fight on,
10:51despite evaporating supplies of food, medicine, and ammunition.
10:57All we were concerned about,
10:59do we have enough men to repel the Japanese?
11:04And then when the Japanese put their final push on, that was it.
11:08We knew that the end was here.
11:09On April 9th, 1942, the U.S. bears its largest single surrender of troops,
11:19as 12,000 Americans are ordered to turn themselves in to their Japanese captors.
11:25General King on Bataan was sick about it, and he didn't want to surrender, but he had to,
11:31because we had been completely annihilated.
11:34And then, of course, we all became strictly bitter,
11:37because we didn't think we should be prisoners.
11:40We felt the Japanese should be the prisoners.
11:42The first thing the Japanese did was grab ahold of me and rip my dog tags off my neck and threw it on the ground.
11:49So I reached over to pick them both up, and I got clubbed in the back of the head by the rifle butt.
11:55And then I was starting to wonder exactly what type of situation this is going to be.
12:00In what will forever be known as the Bataan Death March, over 75,000 Allied and Filipino prisoners are formed into marching units to be transported out of the peninsula.
12:15So Japanese moved us on the dusty trail. Heat was 102 to 105 degrees.
12:24Japanese trucks go by to hit you with rifle butts.
12:28There's one truck ran right into a bunch of men.
12:34I was marching next to a POW that had a ring on.
12:38And a Japanese guard attempted to take that ring, and he couldn't get it off.
12:42And he took a machete and cut the man's wrist off.
12:47And I had the man. I kind of picked him up and was walking with him.
12:52And finally I had to drop him.
12:54And I looked back, and a Japanese guard was sticking a bandit through his stomach.
13:01I'm quite sure that if I had a gun there, I would have started shooting Japanese even after the surrender.
13:06Because they were just, you just couldn't understand them at all.
13:13I thought that maybe the Japs will have to pay some way.
13:18Because I don't believe America is going to leave us in this predicament.
13:25But they did for a long time.
13:27At the end of the Bataille death march, we ended up at a place called O'Donnell.
13:38It was a prison camp.
13:39And O'Donnell was a long way from being finished.
13:42We got to O'Donnell, which was a horrible place.
13:45They spoke to us for several hours.
13:48The officer told us that we would always be in fear to the Japanese.
13:55They're dying from dysentery, pellagra scurvy, and so forth.
14:00And the guys were dying, you know, 50 to 60 a day.
14:04My vision left me.
14:05I was talking to my friends, and I said, my vision is leaving.
14:11A couple of them said, same with Usbury.
14:13It's all mild nutrition.
14:20The Japanese would come in and say, I'm going to have 40 men today.
14:25We'll all be sick in horrible shape.
14:27But they got 40 men out.
14:30If you didn't do what they wanted, they may eliminate you.
14:35The Japanese guards were raised on that Shinto religion.
14:42That when you're not for your country, you go to heaven.
14:47And when they would kill an American, and they weren't being facetious,
14:57but they'd say, good American, he goes to heaven.
14:59You can't condemn a person that lives in a country going to war.
15:05But the atrocities that they're committing, that's not part of what war is.
15:11I did not have any hatred for the Japanese at all.
15:14In fact, I knew very little about them.
15:17But that hatred grew rather fast.
15:20After nearly 17,000 Allied and Filipino soldiers perish in just six weeks in Camp O'Donnell,
15:29the American prisoners are transferred 60 miles east to a new camp, Cabana Tuan.
15:34Cabana Tuan was a little better camp, but here we were divided into shooting squads.
15:41If one man escaped, they shot the other nine.
15:45One of the men who escaped had a brother in his shooting squad.
15:49And they're executing him.
15:52The brother screamed, God bless America, when he hit the ground.
15:55Well, that stayed with me.
15:58And I said, if I ever get out of here, I want to go see his parents.
16:03A very good friend of mine, when we witnessed that execution, he just gave up.
16:10He just sat there and cried.
16:12You know, we're lost.
16:14We're absolutely lost.
16:15I said, no, we're not.
16:16Damn it, hang together.
16:17And I couldn't get him mad.
16:18I couldn't get him anything at all.
16:19I was worried more about my family.
16:21How do we, are they starving?
16:24Are the kids being raped?
16:27Tortured?
16:28I don't know.
16:32That was one of the biggest worry I had, see.
16:36I worried more about them than the Japanese.
16:42To stay sane and keep his mind occupied in a nearly unbearable environment,
16:47prisoner A.B. Abraham begins recording the lives and deaths of his fellow captives on scraps of paper
16:55and hiding the notes in a tin can.
16:58New guys come in and say, where you from?
17:01So-so.
17:03What's your name?
17:06Address, so forth.
17:08I know the habits, the ways, I know all about hometowns.
17:12I figured somebody has to do it.
17:17If I didn't do it, how'd the world go know what really happened?
17:21The Japanese says, he died with a heart attack.
17:25Well, I wrote down starvation.
17:29Massacre, see.
17:30It's a good thing I kept record.
17:31Back in Fort Lewis, Washington, the military buildup continues at an aggressive pace.
17:46Holding the somewhat privileged status of college men doesn't preclude immediate service for Bob Prince or Bob Anderson.
17:53The drill sergeant said, you guys think you're in for a year, but we're going in war, and it's going to be a long war.
18:03So he knew what he was talking about.
18:05They got to Fort Lewis, and about two weeks or three weeks later, Pearl Harbor happened, and everything changed.
18:14So I asked my wife to forego her last two quarters at the University of Washington, and we could get married.
18:22We had ten months, and as far as I'm concerned, the whole ten months was a honeymoon.
18:32When you ship out on ship, you have no idea where you're going. Nobody tells you.
18:37We didn't know where I was going to land in Port Morris, New Guinea.
18:41The 98th Field Artillery Battalion, a mule pack outfit, is stationed in New Guinea in 1943, awaiting their war calling.
18:51A mule pack was a hard life. I mean, mules came first and soldiers second.
18:57We got pretty low down in New Guinea. We'd been there a year almost, and nothing had happened.
19:03I could see the thing going on for another four years, and I could sort of bleak.
19:06In April 1944, General Walter Kruger resurrects a large, elite force patterned after the successful Alamo Scouts, operatives trained for special missions.
19:19The 98th Field Artillery would now be the 6th Rangers Battalion, to be led by the diminutive but motivating presence of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Musi, a 1936 graduate of West Point.
19:34We got a big spiel from Moosey then about what we were going to do, do the training, and then we was going to be home for Christmas.
19:47Well, we took that with a grain of salt. We knew better than that.
19:49No, we didn't know what rangers were, but we were so happy to get out of the mule pack that we'd take anything.
19:58From then on, it was high-speed training, and by high speed, he just worked the ass off of us.
20:05Moose would weed you out. He transferred you out if you couldn't take it.
20:08We had this place called Misery Knoll. We'd run up that hill, and then roll down it.
20:17And then we'd go through this obstacle course, and then at the end, there was a crick there. Man, we'd just fall in that crick.
20:25We'd just be about dead. I would double-time back to that camp and say,
20:29You old so-and-so, you can't kill me. I can do more than you can dish out.
20:38He made us think that we were the best battalion in the whole army.
20:43That nobody else was as good as we were.
20:59Fulfilling a promise he made two and a half years previous, General MacArthur returns to the Philippines,
21:07as the American flag is planted on the southern island of Leyte in October 1944.
21:14As part of the same military plan, the newly minted rangers are summoned from New Guinea, well prepared for their first mission.
21:22We were so anxious to get into action. You won't believe people want action, but you sit over there a long time. We were ready to go.
21:39By 1944, hometown America begins to learn what had previously been known only in military circles.
21:46Stories of torture and murder in the Philippines from several escaped POWs reach the newspapers and newsreels.
21:56They didn't believe any of us would live to tell the horrible things they did.
22:01The tales confirm fears back home, that the victims are indeed their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.
22:11We received word from the Japanese government that our boy had died in the Philippines in June.
22:18The prisoners at Cabana Tuan, nearing their 1,000th day in captivity, find their numbers dwindling.
22:26Not only from the steady stream of death, but also because the Imperial Army has decided to send thousands of the healthiest prisoners to Japan and Manchuria as slave labor.
22:37The 2nd or 5th of October of 1944, they took 5,000 men out of Cabana Tuan and the less 513 of us.
22:48That was a big scare in itself because there was a few of us who could knock us off like crazy.
22:54They had about 200 Japanese guards. They knew every move that the 513 of us made.
23:01In crude fashion, the remaining Cabana Tuan POWs are monitoring the events to control their fate.
23:10There were some radio men in there that fixed your radio.
23:13So these guys would take out a couple pieces of the radio and tell them, these are no good, you have to get new ones.
23:23They did that enough times to where they finally got a radio.
23:26And so we knew all about D-Day.
23:28We found out about Palawan.
23:33You're about to see and hear six Americans who made their escape from prison camp 10A on the island of Palawan.
23:42December 14, 1944.
23:46Japanese guards on the southern island of Palawan fake an air raid to get 150 allied prisoners into a raid ditch.
23:54Their intentions, however, are not to protect POWs, but rather to exterminate them.
24:00They threw gasoline on us, lighted it with burning paper.
24:06Pacheco and I went through these double barbed wire fences, dropped down over a cliff along the bay,
24:14and crept along the bay and found a cave, which we hid in until that night.
24:19About 10 or 11 of those guys escaped, I think.
24:22And just plain murder was all it was.
24:25I was surprised the Japanese didn't find out we had a radio from that because the talk was very, very much about Palawan.
24:35The reports necessitate an immediate rescue mission at Cabana Tuan.
24:41Lieutenant Colonel Musi calls his hierarchy into a tent and names Captain Prince as commander of the raid.
24:48You know that there's 500 guys in there and there were most of them on the Bataan death march.
24:57It makes it so damn mad you can try to see straight when you think about it.
25:01But that's all I was worrying about, be sure that we did it right.
25:04They lined up and I said I'm going to turn around and all those who want to continue on this raid to take one step forward.
25:20They did and I turned around and they were all on the same line.
25:23They were just a foot closer to me.
25:26And so, First Sergeant Anderson, he said, Captain, we're all going.
25:32I felt in my heart that if I died, I was ready to go.
25:38Musi said, I want you to go to see your chaplain.
25:42I said, I don't want any atheists on this trip.
25:44My parents were Catholic and we were sitting to Catholic school.
25:54We had to remember those prayers.
25:56In fact, I remembered them in Latin.
25:59Without that religion, it was unthinkable.
26:03Corporal Francis Schilly's spiritual roots are challenged in the Philippine jungles
26:09as a ranger preparing for an urgent mission.
26:11The Japanese were in the habit of massacring prisoners of war.
26:17So the thing to do is get in there and get them out before the Japanese done that.
26:23We had no time for rehearsal.
26:26You couldn't wait several days here.
26:29They might all be dead if the Japanese decided to move.
26:33So there was no choice but to do what we did.
26:36The rangers would not act alone.
26:38Bands of Filipino guerrillas are training alongside the Americans to avenge Japanese atrocities.
26:45The soldiers who didn't end up as prisoners of war, they were the ones who came out and organized guerrilla forces.
26:54That was when we felt our countrymen's loyalty to our nation, that we should unite to fight the enemy.
27:00Benito Valdez is one of hundreds of guerrillas selected for the Cabana Tuan raid.
27:06We held meetings secretly in the mountains, in the forests, that was where we organized to fight the Japanese.
27:17We would spy on the Japanese camps, engage in intelligence and sabotage work.
27:22I don't think we had any fear of going into Japanese territory because we were surrounded by Filipinos who hated the Japanese with a passion.
27:35And nobody is going to rat on us.
27:37On January 28th, the rangers set out for an 18 hour, 28 mile hike behind enemy lines, without any military cover.
27:49It was a full moon, but it hadn't got up yet.
27:54We was all in the line, and you just had to make sure that guy in front of you, you knew where he was and didn't get lost.
28:02We saw trucks coming. The moon was up then. These trucks loaded with Japanese troops. You could see them.
28:14I was so trigger happy, you know, we could have killed a bunch of them there, but that would have destroyed everything.
28:23Unaware of the extensive planning occurring outside their meager home, the prisoners grasp any sign of hope.
28:30There were just certain situations that you could go to a guy and you could find what day it was.
28:35Like, I found out that September the 21st of 1944 was the first time we saw American airplanes.
28:42I wanted to know that day.
28:49It was a refreshing thing to everybody to see land-based planes.
28:54This is our first evidence that the Americans can be close by.
29:03Retreating Japanese troops are quite transient in the Cabanetuan city area.
29:08The prison camp provides a temporary resting area for the Japanese soldiers.
29:12The night before we were at the raid, Filipinos got word that they came to Colonel Moosey.
29:21He said, sir, it'd be suicide if you go tonight.
29:24It's a bunch of Japs that have concentrated in that camp.
29:27They stopped over during the night.
29:29And Moosey, you know, he had to think a long time.
29:32He finally radioed 6th Army Headquarters.
29:37Mission delayed 24 hours.
29:39That's all he said.
29:41General Kruger had thought maybe the raid had gotten too tough, we couldn't perform it.
29:47He didn't know why it was delayed.
29:49We all gathered in Platero.
29:56On the morning of the 29th through the night, we stayed there.
30:00The people of Platero cooked rice and prepared food to feed the six rangers.
30:05A bunch of girls, Filipino girls, came out singing, God bless America and all this.
30:12And Moosey said, we've got to quiet this bunch down.
30:15That day's wait before we had to go into the camp.
30:20That seemed like an eternity there.
30:22I was kind of upset.
30:23I mean, I was wanting to go right then.
30:34If anybody told me that they were not nervous, they were lying.
30:39I don't believe you could go through it without being nervous.
30:41At 1700 hours on January 30th, the rangers, guerrillas and scouts leave Barrio Platero in single file.
30:52The 375 men must negotiate two miles of varying terrain to reach the prison camp at Cabana Tuan.
31:00If it had been the wet season, it might not have been possible.
31:05But this was the dry season, low river.
31:08We got hard kicked rice paddies to go over.
31:11We're just going to have to walk as far as we can go and crawl the last three quarters of a mile to that camp.
31:20If that's such an open space there in the world, we're going to get there without being seen.
31:25You can't get up on your knees, you're on your elbows and you're just trying to keep a low profile.
31:33We'd made up our mind that if we had spotted, we were going to attack the front of the attack just head on.
31:39Start firing.
31:40If the guard had been paying attention or looked carefully, I think they would have seen us.
31:47One mile away, a large contingent of Japanese troops overnighting near the bridge at Cabu River provide another tactical concern.
31:59Several platoons of Filipino guerrillas are assigned to cut off any advance.
32:04The guerrillas also originate the most creative twist of the mission.
32:09Exploiting Japanese fears of U.S. planes by suggesting a low flyover from an American P-61 night flyer just as the Rangers are completing their approach.
32:21I'd say he was as low as 500 feet above the camp.
32:25And all the POWs and all the Japanese guards were looking up.
32:29He cut his motor off once and just glided in there and then cut it on again.
32:36Really put on a show.
32:38And that really helped us.
32:41We were crawling, going along and all at once we heard bells ringing.
32:50First thing that went through your mind, we've been spotted.
32:53The distant sounds are not an alarm, but a bell used by the POWs to mark Navy time in their makeshift society.
33:03It was a big joke because every time it would ring a bell, it goes,
33:07What time is it? The guy would try to answer back, but you couldn't hear him.
33:10We stayed there quiet for several minutes.
33:14That was the scariest part of our crawl.
33:16Lieutenant John Murphy has the responsibility of firing the first shot, thus beginning the raid.
33:27Murphy and the rest of Company F maneuver the most challenging route through a culvert to the rear of the stockade.
33:36I myself looked up at the guard tower and up there, there was a trap.
33:43And believe it or not, I felt like reaching up and grabbing them by the truth.
33:49We was living for Lieutenant Murphy's shots.
33:53That's all we was waiting on.
33:56Murphy's first shots are to fire right at 730.
34:00But at 740, the air is still silent.
34:04I was thinking that the squad had plenty of time to be in possession.
34:09Moosey was worried. Prince was worried.
34:12I was considering starting it myself because I knew we couldn't wait too long.
34:16Finally, they opened fire. Sounded like a war.
34:30And all of a sudden, the whole top of my roof in the back was blown off of machine guns.
34:37So I dove out flat on my stomach.
34:41And about the time I hit the ground, there was two big explosions up at the north end of the camp.
34:47And a machine gun cut loose around there.
34:52The people that went into the main camp, the challenge was to not shoot any of the prisoners.
34:59I was laying on the ground screaming to my friends,
35:03Don't run. Don't run. It's the Jabs.
35:04I started thinking, why would a Japanese want to kill us at dusk when he could kill us in the daytime?
35:14My job was to go in and start getting these prisoners out.
35:19Starting them towards the gate.
35:21Of course, we had a very hard time.
35:23Who in the world are you?
35:25And all of a sudden, a character showed up on the main road with a machine gun.
35:29He is blasting everything in the other direction.
35:31He even looked like a Japanese because I had never seen a uniform like that before.
35:37So he just put his rifle out like that, let me run into it, came back and shut the back in and knocked me down.
35:42It didn't hurt me at all.
35:44He said to me, where the hell do you think you're going?
35:47And I said, who in the hell are you?
35:48I said, Lieutenant Murphy.
35:50You run to the main gate and everybody you see on the ground, tell them they're free.
35:56The rangers are here.
35:58The rangers meant nothing to anybody.
36:01When I pick a guy's arm up and so forth and look at his face, come on, let's go. Burger free, getting out of here.
36:07And there's nothing but terror in his face. Absolutely terror.
36:09The Filipinos set up a roadblock to cut off those Japs coming down.
36:20There was a real war there.
36:22About a half a mile or a mile away, you could sure hear it.
36:25But they just, this Japanese officer must have been out of his mind.
36:31He just kept going in the same place and they just wiped them out.
36:36The guerrillas told me, they said, we stacked them up like cordwood.
36:42I'm feeling pretty good because I could see no effort by the Japanese that was going to affect us and that we were doing pretty well.
36:49Among the Ranger units is Captain James Fisher, son of the famed author Dorothy Canfield Fisher and doctor to the Six Rangers.
37:03Captain Fisher, Moosey had told him, said, I don't want you to go.
37:07But he just insisted. He said, I'm part of this bunch. I want to go.
37:12I was within 15 and 20 feet of him when they lobbed the mortar over that caught him.
37:20It knocked gravel on me, but most of it hit fishing.
37:26Just tore his stomach up.
37:28I had a medic there that gave him more feet.
37:32He knew, well, he wasn't going to make it.
37:34He shouldn't have been up there. He should have been back with Moosey.
37:39He talked him first into going on it and then secondly, he talked him into getting up in the...
37:53At the rear of the camp, Company F is moving to join the main body at the front of the stockade.
37:59Somebody says, where's Sweezy at? I said, he's right behind me.
38:06And two rifle shots fired.
38:10From one of our own men that lost it up here.
38:16And he thought that Sweezy was a chap.
38:19After they started shooting, I guess Sweezy thought he was in a football game, you know what I mean?
38:26He reared up and he wasn't supposed to rear up and Brown shot him.
38:30That brought me back to my religious training.
38:34And I said to the guys, I said, I'm going out and baptize Sweezy.
38:41And they all said, yes.
38:43They all said, yes.
38:45And I jumped out and Sweezy was still laying there mumbling.
38:51He says, I got killed by one of my own men.
38:53I baptized him in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
39:03And all the rest of the guys said, Amen.
39:07I didn't know to this day that all them men had enough religion in them to know the answer me, Amen.
39:16Well, it's just two that gave their life for the country.
39:23We look back now and I still think about it.
39:26I just said, why did we have to lose them?
39:29Why did it happen that way?
39:33But, you know, it did.
39:39We took our steak jackets off and shoved the rifles down the sleeves like a stretcher.
39:45Carried the prisoners, got them back to the river.
39:49Then they put them in these carts.
39:55Dozens of wooden carts assist the transport of the walking skeletons.
40:00Another Filipino contribution to the effort.
40:06I almost cried.
40:08It hit me so hard.
40:09Just seeing how pitiful the condition they were in and what they had been through.
40:15I still look back and say, I can't believe anybody would treat people like that.
40:21They were savage.
40:23Thirty minutes from the first shot to the last man out, the rangers and guerrillas rescue their precious cargo while annihilating the Japanese troops.
40:43Despite all of the obvious dangers on the slow trek ahead, the sense of freedom possesses everyone in the caravan.
40:52The guys would start cheering.
40:55The guys would start cheering.
40:56They would kiss the rangers in the face.
40:59The guys would say, I will make my next six babies after you.
41:04We didn't get to know their names, but they said thank you over and over.
41:10They were skinny.
41:11They were overjoyed.
41:12Some hugged us.
41:13We had several miles that they were talking to everybody, what town you from, Tuscaloosa.
41:22You'd know so-and-so.
41:23They were asking everybody what town they were from.
41:25And they were as happy as we were.
41:29I went up there and said, young one? Yeah.
41:33He said, my parents live in Butler, see.
41:36And my mother lives there too, see.
41:38Then he told me who he was.
41:40He's A.B. Abraham.
41:41He's from Butler.
41:42And that's how we got acquainted.
41:45It was good to hear from somebody from home.
41:50Makes you feel good.
41:55The biggest thrill we had when we hit the market lines.
42:02Behind the hillside, there's a flag wave in the breeze.
42:05Every man broke down crying.
42:08That flag went home.
42:14I used to tell my friends, I'm going to live.
42:18My mother and daddy are praying for me.
42:22And that's going to get me back.
42:25Everything was worth everything we put forth and did.
42:28What we went through.
42:30Just to see men, been three years prisoners, come out alive.
42:37When they would easily, they would have been killed.
42:40We know that.
42:44I felt blessed.
42:45I felt like it was protected by almighty God.
42:52A set of rangers smoking a cigarette.
43:08And I said, geez, that smells good.
43:10So he gave it to me.
43:12Smoking an American cigarette.
43:13Wasn't that fantastic?
43:15And so I'm looking at them and all of a sudden, he's looking at me.
43:20And he says, where the hell are you guys going?
43:24And I says, I hope we're going home.
43:27How the hell you rate that?
43:29And he says, well, you know, we've been over here for three years waiting for you.
43:33Where the hell you been?
43:34Nervously awaiting word on A.B. Abraham's fate is his wife and three daughters who had been interned at Santo Tomas in Manila.
43:49My wife came out and she saw me. She stood there for a while. She stared at me. Then she ran into my arms and started hugging.
44:00Crying and kissed me.
44:02She said, I see the flash of my tent. She said, I thought many times you got killed.
44:10As his comrades and family prepare to sail home, Abraham receives a higher calling.
44:16General MacArthur requests his detailed knowledge to provide closure for grieving families.
44:24He said, see these letters? They're all from his parents.
44:28It's going to be a tough assignment, but it has to be done.
44:32There's a thousand bodies that have to be recovered.
44:35Over two years.
44:38Sleeping with skulls.
44:41Digging up bodies.
44:42Every time I dig up three graves there, somebody says, I know where's two more.
44:55Five weeks after tasting freedom, the former POWs experience an emotional homecoming.
45:01This is where we've been dreaming. This is where we've been praying. This is where we wanted to be.
45:07And then we get on land and we all go down and kiss the ground. We've got our freedom. We're back home.
45:13I was surprised that the whole family came out to Midway Airport Chicago to welcome me.
45:22Oh God, it was just a fantastic reunion of the family.
45:26The Rangers' exploits are the stuff of instant hero, and no less than the Commander-in-Chief makes an appointment to greet them.
45:39We all shook hands with President Roosevelt, and I introduced each of our fellow Rangers.
45:47The President said, well, you know, a lot of people come to Washington, ask to see me, but said, I asked to see you people.
45:58He said, this is one of the greatest thrills I've ever had in my life.
46:01The wife got several letters from the prisoners before I got home and said how grateful they was that the Rangers got us out.
46:18It made you feel like as if you'd done something, you know, it was worthwhile.
46:23I've been to a couple of their conventions.
46:25One of them said to me, I contributed to the circumstances that brought your freedom back, Bert, and I said, that's the reason I love you.
46:36The Rangers of Cabana Tuan are honored with a plaque at the Rangers of Fame in Fort Benning, Georgia.
46:44The Rangers are the reason I'm here today.
46:48If it wasn't for the Rangers, I wouldn't be alive.
46:51Now's the time to appreciate and honor these living guys.
46:58You've got to honor them for the sacrifice.
47:00You cannot wait until they're all gone. Later on, you won't have no hands. It's a shake.
47:05Hi, Joe.
47:07What do you say, A.B.?
47:08How you doing?
47:09Pretty good. How you doing?
47:10Pretty good.
47:12When I first came back, we moved to Evans City, and then A.B. came down there a couple of times, and we went to his place.
47:20Up here in Butler.
47:22This is a picture I had. It was taken at San Fernando, A.B.
47:29That's General Kroeger.
47:31There is a bondage, a kinship among us.
47:34You know what, A.B.?
47:35They are our heroes.
47:37They come in, they didn't show no fear and all that.
47:40Seems good seeing you again.
47:42I want you to know I'm proud of you, Joe.
47:44I'm so proud of you, I'm going to convince you to take me out and buy me a dinner.
47:49Oh, I'd do that any time.
47:50I never liked the word hero.
47:51I was just a person in the place doing my duty, doing what I was supposed to do.
48:05A man serving in the American Army in the right place at the right time.
48:11Just unbelievable how much a small story has caught the public's attention.
48:21It changes the mission entirely.
48:29When you're trying to get somebody out, rather just to kill the enemy.
48:34In a war where it's measured by how many enemies you kill, this was one where we saved 500-plus lives.
48:42And that's the whole difference.
49:12In a war where there will be every time.
49:13And that's all.
49:14In the war where you're going, to win thequa.
49:15And like Perspectives, we'll have to win the race.
49:17If you're going, you're going to win the race.
49:19That's all.
49:21I feel so cute.
49:23I feel so cute about it.
49:25See you soon.
49:27I'm going to death.
49:28You're going to death.
49:29I need to die.
49:30I want to die.
49:32You're going to die.
49:34Yeah.
49:36I want to die.
49:37I want you.
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