The Great Raid-1945 & Today
Not much has changed in the manner of warfare from 1945 to present if you look at it from the perspective of the foot soldier. Today we have all sorts of modern gadgets to help the soldier, but ultimately it comes down to hand-to-hand combat. That’s what CSM Prosser, Lt. Col. Kurilla and Michael Yon experienced recently in Mosul. Read about it here and here.
In 1945, Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, Captain Robert Prince, the U. S. 6th Ranger Battalion, and Filipino resistance fighters endured the same down and dirty fighting as they rescued about 500 American POW’s held in the notorious Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp.
The movie Great Raid, currently in theaters, does an excellent job of depicting the horrors of captivity under Japanese control. When Japan began to lose the war, the Japanese military received instructions to begin killing the POW’s and destroying the evidence of war crimes committed against the captives. The movie opens with the Japanese military herding 150 POW’s into air-raid shelters and burning them to death with gasoline. As POW’s attempted to escape the fire, they were machine-gunned.
The raid was successfully accomplished with two American Rangers and 21 Filipino fighters dying at the hands of Japanese forces with a vast numerical superiority.
The movie does a good job of showing the face of fascism as it existed in 1945. The same fascist face exists today; only this time it is Islamic.
For those who maintain that war is never the answer, why don’t you ask the survivors of the Cabanatuan POW camp and their liberators what they think about war? There are still some of them alive today, including Captain (now Major, Ret.) Robert Prince.
In 1945, Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, Captain Robert Prince, the U. S. 6th Ranger Battalion, and Filipino resistance fighters endured the same down and dirty fighting as they rescued about 500 American POW’s held in the notorious Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp.
The movie Great Raid, currently in theaters, does an excellent job of depicting the horrors of captivity under Japanese control. When Japan began to lose the war, the Japanese military received instructions to begin killing the POW’s and destroying the evidence of war crimes committed against the captives. The movie opens with the Japanese military herding 150 POW’s into air-raid shelters and burning them to death with gasoline. As POW’s attempted to escape the fire, they were machine-gunned.
The raid was successfully accomplished with two American Rangers and 21 Filipino fighters dying at the hands of Japanese forces with a vast numerical superiority.
The movie does a good job of showing the face of fascism as it existed in 1945. The same fascist face exists today; only this time it is Islamic.
For those who maintain that war is never the answer, why don’t you ask the survivors of the Cabanatuan POW camp and their liberators what they think about war? There are still some of them alive today, including Captain (now Major, Ret.) Robert Prince.
posted by Paul Coambs | 1:10 AM
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