FReeper Help Needed - Looking for WWII images of General Chase in Manila or original Great Raid pics

Good evening fellow FReeps. I am doing a little history research and Google/Bing is not working out well. My grandmother, parents and I have been digging through some of my late grandfather's old commendation records and have learned some very interesting things about his history in WWII. He never would talk about it, but apparently he was part of the group that was depicted in the movie "The Great Raid" and was the second person to enter the recently liberated Manila right behind General Chase. He was the squad leader of the fifth Cav division.

We never knew much about what he did as he refused to talk about anything from the war but the more we dig, the more treasures we are finding.

I am hoping to find some images online, specifically around the 5th Cav in the Philippines and later Japan to start to put his the whole history together.

The story is the strange part. He would never talk about it, but apparently, he refused a Silver Star. One of the letters we found was from General Chase disappointed in his refusal of the commendation. That is the confusing part, especially considering he had pretty good career for the next decade, from Tokyo to Austria. Even my grandmother doesn’t know the story, there are a lot of mysteries around it. It may just be the kind of person he was, but I really would like to start filling in the blanks. (plus I’m a nut for this type of stuff).

That it realy interesting stuff, I think. I’m a WWII buff and all of it is interesting.

To make an extremely long story short, My Mother had bought a house from a long time friend of hers. For whatever reason, after the woman’s husband died, she became estranged from his family. Then, myMother died, I got boxes of stuff of the woman’s husband’s brother who was a Marine killed in the intial invasion of Saipan. There was a Purple Heart and numerous other medals. I tarcked down the remaing family and returned the stuff to them. I don’t know whether they appreciated it or not but I felt relieved.

If he was involved in the Cabanatuan raid, he would have been in the 6th Ranger Battalion. Perhaps he was in the covering/reception force to which the 6th Rangers returned ? I don’t think the 6th Rangers were sent to Manila.

The 1st Cavalry Division was heavily involved in the liberation of Manila. It consisted of the 5th, 7th, 8th and 12th Cavalry Regiments plus supporting units.

Brigadier-General Chase was the commander of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, and led the “flying column”, which was a mixture of units of the 1st Cavalry Division including parts of the 5th and 8th Cavalry Regiments plus other units as well, that liberated the Santo Tomas internment camp where the Japanese had imprisoned thousands of Allied civilians.

Perhaps he was referring to the Santo Tomas incident, which was very similar to that of Cabanatuan, and for that matter also the simultaneous Bilibid raid and the later raid on Los Banos.

He could have belonged to quite a few of the 1st Cavalry Division units and credibly claimed to have been first into Manila, or one part or another of Manila, as there was something of a general surge into the city by the 1st Cavalry.

This is a very good short article on the Santo Tomas raid -

http://www.1cda.org/santo_tomas_raid.htm

Some interesting pictures -

http://www.cnac.org/emilscott/santotomas01.htm

There is quite a large literature on the Santo Tomas incident, including lots of memoirs by the internees.

As for the 1st Cavalry, they were all involved in the subsequent and very bloody Battle of Manila. An uncle of mine, a Filipino guerilla, “attached” himself to I think the 5th Cavalry Regiment, which had many Spainsh-speaking soldiers from New Mexico, so he preferred their company as he could understand them better ! If your grandfather was in the 5th, they may have run across each other ! My uncle was with the regiment in the attack on the Rizal Memorial stadium, and for a few months later -

http://baseballinwartime.blogspot.com/2010/01/battle-for-rizal-stadium.html

This is an excellent short history, including a good section on the Santo Tomas raid -

The Battle for Manila - Richard Connaughton

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