On 29 January 1945, 6th Ranger C-Company met up with 250 Filipino guerrillas. They headed toward Cabanatuan, where the Japanese operated a prisoner of war camp holding American Prisoners since the Battle or Corregidor in 1942.
At 7.44 p.m. the Rangers launched their lightning attack taking the prison forces by storm. Within minutes Japanese prison troops had been killed or had fled into the jungle. Astonished and disbelieving inmates, pale shadows of their former selves were led or carried out by fit young GIs. As the Rangers headed for their rendezvous point, local villagers fed the prisoners. With Japanese troops nipping at their heels, the Rangers and the camp survivors arrived at Talavera where 531 Bataan veterans were put aboard waiting trucks to take them to the coast. Their rescue cost the lives of two Rangers and twenty-six Filipino guerrillas. Seventy-three Cabanatuan prison guards were killed along with 151 other Japanese soldiers. The adventurous episode, probably the most celebrated raid in modern US history until the killing of Osama Bin Laden, was reprised in the movie The Great Raid (2005) starring Benjamin Bratt and James Franco with Guerrilla Leader, Juan Pajota, played by Cesar Montano.
Source: Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941-1945 by Francis Pike
