Robert Prince was born in Seattle, Washington in November 1919. He was the second of four boys. All of them served in the Army and all survived. His father was a sales manager for a group of apple growers. Prince's job was phone sales. He graduated from high school in 1937 and from Stanford University [Annotator's Note: Leland Stanford Junior University, Stanford, California] in 1941. He had taken ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps], so he was inducted into the Army on 7 July 1941. He worked selling apples after the war in 1946. His parents expected him to attend college and he was interested in it. All of his brothers also graduated from Stanford. His father was in a sort of Depression-proof business, so they did quite well. ROTC was voluntary. Having read about World War 1, he knew he did not want to be in the infantry.

Robert Prince graduated from college and then reported to Fort Lewis [Annotator's Note: now part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington]. He was sent to Camp Roberts, California. He applied for, and was sent to, artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He chose to go to Fort Lewis upon graduation. The artillery organization was a field artillery battalion, pack [Annotator's Note: 98th Field Artillery Battalion (pack)]. "Pack" meant that there were four firing batteries, each equipped with 75mm howitzers that would breakdown into six pieces. The disassembled guns were carried on mules. Mules also carried other equipment and ammunition. They had 1,000 men and 800 mules. He had to learn equation, riding a horse. Colonel Callicutt [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel James M. Callicutt] was a commanding officer who had been in the 1932 Olympics. He taught them to jump a "hunter's course." It was challenging and fun. Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] happened about three weeks after he got there. Getting off post was difficult. His wife-to-be was at the University of Washington [Annotator's Note: in Seattle, Washington]. He convinced her to marry him so he could see her easier. They were married 31 January 1942. He was transferred in July 1942 to Camp Carson, now Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs [Annotator's Note: Colorado Springs, Colorado]. Callicutt was a veteran of World War 1. As a test, he took his entire battalion to the top of Pike's Peak [Annotator's Note: the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains] with all of their mules. It was a three day process and was sort of fun. They were to spend the winter in the Rocky Mountains. In November, it was decided they were needed in New Guinea. The men were sent to the East Coast and the mules went to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. They all met in New Guinea. The other three battalions went to Italy.

Robert Prince's outfit [Annotator's Note: 98th Field Artillery Battalion (pack)] was needed in New Guinea because at Buna, the 41st and 32nd Divisions [Annotator's Note: 41st Infantry Division and 32nd Infantry Division] were fighting the Japanese and struggling. Prince's unit was to land on the south side of the island, go over the Owen Stanley Mountains, and provide artillery support. They landed one week after the battle was over [Annotator's Note: Prince's unit landed on 17 February 1943; the Battle of Buna-Gona was fought from 16 November 1942 to 22 January 1943] . There was no need for them, so they spent a year in training. The mules and animal men were sent to India and became Merrill's Marauders [Annotator's Note: 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional); named after the unit's commanding officer US Army Brigadier General Frank Dow Merrill]. It was decided to make a Ranger Battalion out of the rest of them. Colonel Mucci [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Henry Andrews Mucci] showed up and only wanted volunteers who met his requirements. They started strenuous physical training then. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer backs up to discuss life in New Guinea.] It is tropical and near Port Moresby [Annotator's Note: Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea]. They got very little rain. It was not great jungle growth. It was hot all the time. The worst kind of walking was in kunai grass. It cuts off any breeze. He spent six weeks in Australia at Bomb Disposal School. Several of the instructors were from London and had disposed of bombs in the Blitz [Annotator's Note: July 1940 to June 1941; he describes the disposal process in detail]. Prince is glad he never had to test his training. The time there in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales [Annotator's Note: Australia] was very nice. He wrote home to his wife at least twice a week. It took several weeks to get a response, even with V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail]. Colonel Callicut [Annotator’s Note: Lieutenant Colonel James M. Callicutt] was transferred out when Mucci showed up. Mucci was friendly, out-going, and easy to talk to. Prince was unsure about being a Ranger, but the longer he stayed the better he liked him and the idea.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Prince volunteered to be a Ranger while in Port Moresby, New Guinea.] They moved to Finschhafen [Annotator's Note: Finschhafen, New Guinea]. Prince thinks General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] accomplished more with fewer resources and fewer casualties than any other General in World War 2. They continued training and became a Ranger Battalion [Annotator's Note: 6th Ranger Battalion; July 1944]. Prince became commander of Company C in August 1944. They were put on a ship to Hollandia [Annotator's Note: now Jayapura, Papua New Guuinea], but did not go ashore. They were split up and put on destroyers to go to the Philippines with minesweepers. The night before they landed there were 80 knot winds. One minesweeper disappeared during the night. They landed on Dinagat Island at the entry to Leyte Gulf [Annotator's Note: Philippines] in advance of the fleet coming in. There were no Japanese there. The main invasion force came by on 20 October and landed on Leyte. Prince stayed on Dinagat for a few weeks. The 7th Fleet was guarding the area and they "crossed the T" [Annotator's Note: classic naval warfare tactic; the last battle that used this tactic] on the Japanese coming through [Annotator's Note: Battle of Surigao Strait, 25 October 1944]. They heard it all and could see the flashes. They were radioed to go pick up survivors. Prince took 20 men and went about 25 miles south. The Filipinos said they had killed most of the Japanese as they came ashore. There were six survivors in pretty bad shape. Prince took them back to their camp. It was about three weeks before Prince and the battalion could be picked up. He was stationed in Leyte but not fighting there. They were preparing for the invasion of Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines].

[Annotator's Note: All of the locations listed in this clip are in the Philippines.] Robert Prince remembers New Year's Eve [Annotator's Note: 31 December 1944] being quite exciting. Every unit was firing into the air. A day or so later, they boarded LCIs [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Infantry] and headed for Luzon. They landed on 10 January [Annotator's Note: 10 January 1945]. There was no opposition that amounted to anything. They were assigned to guard 6th Army Headquarters near Lingayen Gulf. B Company [Annotator's Note: Company B, 6th Ranger Battalion] was sent to Santiago Island with their senior Company Commander, Art Simons [Annotator's Note: later US Army Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons] of Vietnam fame [Annotator's Note: Son Tay Raid, 21 November 1970, North Vietnam, Vietnam War]. In Simons' absence, Prince got command of the mission to free American captives [Annotator's Note: Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Philippines]. On 28 January, Mucci [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Henry Andrews Mucci] told Prince he wanted his company [Annotator's Note: Prince was the commanding officer of Company C, 6th Ranger Battalion] and some others including Alamo Scouts [Annotator's Note: US 6th Army Special Reconnaissance Unit; Prince describes the team in detail]. They were taken to Guimba and met with two guerilla [Annotator's Note: Luzon Guerrilla Armed Forces] captains, Pajota [Annotator's Note: Captain Juan Pajota] and Joson [Annotator's Note: Captain Eduardo L. Joson]. An American guerilla, Major Lapham [Annotator's Note: US Army Major Robert Lapham], wanted to go but was not allowed for fear of his possibly being captured, executed, and used for propaganda. The Filipino guerillas were especially capable. They left in the afternoon and had to cross two roads held by the Japanese. It became dark and they walked most of the night. The Filipinos would come out and greet them, give them food and sing to them. It was fun. They got to Balincarin and stopped. They were to attack the next day, but local intelligence [Annotator's Note: from Captain Pajota] said a regiment of Japanese were there. That gave them time to rest and scout out the place.

Planning for the raid on Cabanatuan [Annotator's Note: Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Luzon, Philippines] took place on a dirt floor in a little village. Robert Prince and the others used a stick to draw maps with. There were about eight or ten of them. He [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Henry Andrews Mucci] says that Prince planned the raid, but Prince says they all planned it. With the Alamo Scouts, they drew an outline [Annotator's Note: using intelligence from various sources]. It made it very easy. They left about five o'clock and darkness was about seven, when they crossed the Cabu River. They had designated Captain Joson [Annotator's Note: Captain Eduardo L. Joson; Luzon Guerrilla Armed Forces] be on their left flank, protecting the road from Cabanatuan. Joson cut the phone lines. They knew there was a battalion of Japanese up on the Cabu River. Pajota [Annotator's Note: Captain Juan Pajota; Luzon Guerrilla Armed Forces] positioned his men and put bombs on the bridge. When Prince's men started firing, the Japanese attempted to reinforce the prison camp. Pajota and his guerillas killed three or four hundred Japanese without losing a man. The Rangers [Annotator's Note: 6th Ranger Battalion] had reached the end of their cover. They had a long ways to crawl and it was still daylight. There was a guard tower and a P-61 [Annotator's Note: Northrop P-61 Black Widow night fighter aircraft] came in. [Annotator's Note: Prince mentions "the movie"; The Great Raid, 2005]. The two pilots that night [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Kenneth Schreiber and US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant Bonnie Rucks] were wonderful. They came in low and cut the engine like they were in trouble. It distracted the attention of the guards and the prisoners. Prince did not know about it. Pajota and Mucci had come up with the tactic and arranged for it.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Prince helped plan and execute the raid on the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Luzon, Philippines.] There were five elements to the raid; the Rangers [Annotator's Note: 6th Ranger Battalion], Alamo Scouts [Annotator's Note: US 6th Army Special Reconnaissance Unit], Filipino guerillas [Annotator's Note: Luzon Guerrilla Armed Forces], Filipino civilians, and the Air Force [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces]. They crawled close to the camp. Prince was lying in a ditch opposite the main gate, beside Tech Sergeant Richardson [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant Ted Richardson] and PFC Provencher [Annotator's Note: Private First Class Leland A. Provencher], whose job was to open the gate. F Company [Annotator's Note: Company F, 6th Ranger Battalion] had to attack the rear guard tower first. The firing started and they were off. Somebody shot the gun out of Richardson's hand. They shot the guard and got the gate open. The first platoon went in and unloaded with everything they had on the guard barracks. Prince says that if he was a guard and survived that first minute or two, he would have stayed hidden. The Rangers lost no men and there was not a sound out of those barracks. They used rifles, Browning Automatic Rifles, and a bazooka. They blew up some trucks. The second platoon was not to fight and just get the POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. They had to carry quite a few to the river [Annotator's Note: Pampanga River]. They started off with ten carts, and wound up using 50. Prince could hear the fighting on the Cabu river bridge. It was loud and ferocious. It was suddenly quiet, and First Sergeant Bob Anderson [Annotator's Note: First Sergeant Robert G. Anderson] told Prince to fire the red flare to signal the end of the operation. One man did not answer Prince's call for anyone left. He was found by the guerillas the next day. Prince fired a second flare to signal the guerillas to guard the rear now.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Prince helped liberate the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Luzon, Philippines on 30 January 1945, and started moving the freed prisoners out. All of the locations listed in this clip are in the Philippines.] They reached Plateros and Robert Prince found out that Captain Fisher [Annotator's Note: US Army Captain James Canfield Fisher], the medical officer, had been wounded but he was the only one seriously hurt. They moved him to Balincarin where he died. The Alamo Scout [Annotator's Note: US 6th Army Special Reconnaissance Unit] stayed with him as well as one POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war], Merle Musselman [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Merle McNeil Musselman]. To Prince, that showed considerable bravery. The Alamo Scouts spent the night trying to make an airstrip to fly Fisher out. When he died, they buried him and brought Dr. Musselman out. During the night, Prince had to cross one road held by the Japanese. The Japanese traveled at night because of the American air cover. The Rangers [Annotator's Note: 6th Ranger Battalion] put bazookas at each end but luckily no Japanese came. The group had to pass through a Hukbalahap village [Annotator's Note: Filipino Communist guerrillas]. They were anti-Japanese, but they were also Communists. They were not very friendly and told Mucci [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Henry Andrews Mucci] he could not go through. Mucci said he would level the town, and nothing happened. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Prince about a rumor that Mucci did not have a radio, so he could not have called in an attack.] The radios were not primitive, but they were not reliable. Mucci arrived to safety in the morning. Prince arrived about two hours later due to how many people were moving. By the time Prince got back, Mucci had moved on and General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] and General Kreuger [Annotator's Note: US Army General Walter Kreuger] had been by and were gone. Prince was just delighted to have delivered their charges. Everyone was dead tired. They all returned to their units.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Prince helped liberate the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Luzon, Philippines on 30 January 1945.] Robert Prince and 11 others were sent back to the United States to report to the Pentagon. They were used for public relations to have various war plants keep up the war effort. Prince and his group were in the northeastern United States. He did that for four weeks and then got a month of leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. The whole tour took three months. He returned immediately after the raid. He took different aircraft over days from Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines] to Hamilton Air Force Base, San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] where his wife was. [Annotator's Note: Prince gets slightly emotional.] His wife quit her job and joined him for the whole trip. He was following what was going on in Europe at the time. After he returned, they were planning for a landing in Kyushu [Annotator's Note: Kyushu, Japan] in November [Annotator's Note: November 1945], when the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] happened. It took several days to comprehend what had actually happened and that was the end of the war. Prince had enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to go home, but decided he had to see Japan. He went up mid-September 1945, stationed at Kyoto [Annotator's Note: Kyoto, Japan]. Because it had not been bombed, it was beautiful. He stayed three or four weeks and then went home.

Robert Prince was in San Fernando Sur, north of Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, Luzon, Philippines], close to Clark Air Force Base training to land on Kyushu [Annotator's Note: Kyushu, Japan] in November 1945 when the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped on Japan. They were planning to have US 1st Army land on Honshu [Annotator's Note: Honshu, Japan] in March 1946. The atomic bombs changed some minds. It took a while for what had happened to sink in. The acceptance of the fact that the war was over was wonderful. Prince was told that the Japanese, right down to the last civilian, would have resisted. He could not understand the people at that time. They took orders and never questioned them. You would not find that in our Army. We get orders yes, but if they are silly, well…. [Annotator's Note: Prince stops himself from saying more on the subject. The interviewer asks various questions about the raid on the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Luzon, Philippines on 30 January 1945.] There were a couple of photographers that had trouble developing their film due to the temperatures. There was only one guard at the gate. F Company [Annotator's Note: Company F, 6th Ranger Battalion] took the guard in the rear and a platoon of C Company [Annotator's Note: Company C, 6th Ranger Battalion] took the rest in the barracks. Prince was carrying his .45 Colt [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and he carried an M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. He never discharged his weapon. Prince could see no Japanese action that was threatening anything. Prince was not involved in any of the chaos in getting the POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] out. A former prisoner later told Prince that they did not believe they were Americans at first due to a uniform change and the fact that they chose not to wear helmets. Colonel Duckworth [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel James Duckworth] was the commander of the prisoners and he said he was not going anywhere without an order from MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area]. Someone told him to get off his ass and go where they told him to go. He was the only person hurt on the way out, because he tripped and broke his arm. Prince came home from Japan the day before Thanksgiving, 1945. His actual discharge was February 1946. He did nothing for a month or two before looking for a job. He had no nightmares or trauma. He says they talk about this thing [Annotator's Note: the raid to liberate the Cabanatuan prisoner of war camp] being well planned. There were five elements to it [Annotator’s Note: Prince identifies these five elements in the clip titled Attacking the Prison Camp]. A sixth one would be luck.