The Great Raid on Cabanatuan: Rescuing the Doomed Ghosts of Bataan and Corregidor

On January 30, , American troops staged a successful raid on Cabanatuan, a notorious Japanese POW camp where thousands of prisoners had been tortured and died. Based on interviews with the heroes who survived the raid, this book brings to life in electrifying detail the dramatic events that took place on that historic day. Praise for William B.

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Breuer and his books "A first-class historian. Mucci, leader of the 6th Ranger Battalion, embarked from their base in the Philippines on the most audacious rescue operation ever undertaken. Penetrate thirty miles behind enemy lines and liberate POWs from Cabanatuan, the notorious Japanese POW camp where thousands of American prisoners had been brutally tortured and killed. Little did Mucci's Rangers know when they got under way that morning that over the next few days and nights they would be making history.

Written by acclaimed military historian William B. Breuer, The Great Raid on Cabanatuan is a riveting account of that rescue mission and the gallant soldiers who carried it out against overwhelming odds. Based largely on interviews with the heroes who survived the operation, and featuring twenty-eight previously unpublished photographs--many of them taken while the raid was in progress--it brings to life in electrifying detail the dramatic events that took place on the night of the raid, January 30, and during the harrowing days that followed.

In sketching out the many roads that led to Cabanatuan, Breuer brilliantly combines oral history with dramatic narrative to bring to life some of the most spectacular events of the war in the Pacific.

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We relive the hellish battles for Bataan and Corregidor, where in American and Filipino soldiers fought bravely to hold back the Japanese invasion force. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Then, buy the movie. Watch the movie depicting this true story about the heroic and incredibly daring rescue of prisoners of war remaining in a camp near Cabanatuan on the main island of Luzon, the Phillipines, towards the end of WWII. This is a compelling saga of the decision by middle management military officers, based upon reports that General MacArthur's invasion to retake the Phillipines was being used by the occupying Japanese Imperial Army to eliminate all prisoners held in camps throughout the islands, to immediately plan and execute a military rescue operation to save these defenseless people.

In early , the Japanese army conquered the Phillipines and took approximately 92, Filipino, American, and a collection of emigres from all over the world prisoner, after completing the destruction of defending forces at Bataan and Corregidor. The Bataan Death March is legendary. You must read about it. After almost three years of captivity, with the American military engaged in retaking the islands with their landings at Leyte and rescue imminent, the few remaining prisoners probably were unaware that the Japanese High Command had ordered that all prisoners be killed and their remains covered up in mass graves to hide the deeds.

Prisoners who managed to escape from another camp encountered elements of the advancing liberators and described to them the horrors they had witnessed and the plans the Japanese had to exterminate the remaining human vermin. Word passed up the chain of command and the decision was made, planning ensued, and the rescue operation undertaken A year before this book was written to accompany the movie of the same name, Hampton Sides wrote a book covering the same raid called "Ghost Soldiers.

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This story, these books, are important to me because my Uncle Jeff Smith was one of the soldiers rescued from this camp. On the death march, a grinning Japanese soldier broke his back with a sharp rifle butt thrust. He was lucky to have survived.



He never once talked about the experience to his extended family, never told who had carried him the sixty miles from Bataan to Cabanatuan, never shared any part of that experience. Although he married, they had no children. Jeff and my father had a younger brother, Paul, who was killed in Europe leading his platoon against an enemy machine gun emplacement in I served six years during the Viet Nam Era, having qualified in submarines, nuclear power school, at Guam aboard the U.

The men and women of my family know about the horrors of war and what service to country truly means. I have no love, no regard for educators at all levels who poison the minds of our children by propagandizing them against this country in school facilities built and maintained by American Taxpayers and re-inventing the story of America by claiming we have been an imperialistic nation. These intellectual parasites are like the cur in the story which bites the hand that feeds it. These books, this movie, and so many others tell the stories our children need to know.

Buy the books and movies. Share them with your children. Provide them with honorable models to emulate. One person found this helpful. This was a gift. I was told by my history buff that it was excellent.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It taught me a good deal about McArthur that I did not know.

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I never thought much of him but now realize that politics was alive and well during WWII. What I didn't realize when I picked up this earlier book, was that it covers almost the exact same material, but in a much less engaging way. Here, Breuer provides a workmanlike account of the post-Pearl Harbor political and military context that led to the U. He similarly sketches out the spy network that operated under Japanese occupation, the regrouping of U. This material all more or less overlaps with Ghost Soldiers but isn't nearly as well written.

The Great Raid: Rescuing the Doomed Ghosts of Bataan and Corregidor by William B. Breuer

Breuer has a penchant for trite melodramatic phrasing, and tends to repeat information over and over and over as if his reader has no memory. It also doesn't help that instead of simply writing "three Rangers did X", he writes, "John Q. Doe of Plainview, MI did X.

Another small tick that bothered me was that if any soldier had played college football, that merited mention -- but only football, no other sport. Finally, his interviews with veteran POWs and Rangers seemed to yield little more than the most banal of anecdotes and recollections and their inclusion, again, while honoring them, really doesn't help the book's readability. Unfortunately, behind the weak writing lurk bigger flaws. Foremost of these is a total lack of explanation as why it was deemed so crucial to mount a dangerous, complex, behind-enemy-lines mission to rescue the POWs.

Breuer repeats a number of times that it was feared that the Japanese would massacre the POWs, but never tells what foundation that fear rested on.