Golden Gate Wing Guest Speaker Archive

Presentation Date: May 25, 2006

Master Sergeant Robert B. Bob Holland USMCR, WWII

Speaker Photo

M.Sgt. Bob Holland was one of seven U. S. Marines attached to the U. S. Army 1st Cavalry Division during the recapture of Luzon, the Philippine Islands in WWII.
From his Radio Jeep he directed air cover by 168 Marine Douglas “Dauntless” SBD Dive bombers for General MacArthur’s “Flying Column.”
This remarkable military action rescued 3700 American Civilian Internees who had been prisoners of the Japanese for three and one-half years in Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in Manila.
The Column of totally mechanized troops traveled 100 miles in three days through heavy enemy resistance by Japanese military that had been ordered to head from the valley to the hills.
On February 3, 1945, the tank “Battlin’ Basic,” of the 44th Tank Batallion, broke down the main gate of Santo Tomas and the internees were rescued. He tells the story, day by day, of this major campaign.
Bob will also present his excellent Power Point presentation of fifty-seven of these internees, their families and a few liberators, returning to the Philippines to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the rescue, on February 3, 2005, to be on the campus of Santo Tomas University on the exact day and time of the rescue sixty years before. M.Sgt. Bob Holland was one of seven U. S. Marines attached to the U. S. Army 1st Cavalry Division during the recapture of Luzon, the Philippine Islands in WWII.
From his Radio Jeep he directed air cover by 168 Marine Douglas “Dauntless” SBD Dive bombers for General MacArthur’s “Flying Column.”
This remarkable military action rescued 3700 American Civilian Internees who had been prisoners of the Japanese for three and one-half years in Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in Manila.
The Column of totally mechanized troops traveled 100 miles in three days through heavy enemy resistance by Japanese military that had been ordered to head from the valley to the hills.
On February 3, 1945, the tank “Battlin’ Basic,” of the 44th Tank Batallion, broke down the main gate of Santo Tomas and the internees were rescued. He tells the story, day by day, of this major campaign.
Bob will also present his excellent Power Point presentation of fifty-seven of these internees, their families and a few liberators, returning to the Philippines to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the rescue, on February 3, 2005, to be on the campus of Santo Tomas University on the exact day and time of the rescue sixty years before.

Liberation on Luzon

M.Sgt. Bob Holland

Communications Chief, Marine Air Group 24

By Col. John Crump

"Go to Manila. Go around the Japs, bounce off the Japs, save your men, but get to Manila. Free the internees at Santo Tomas. Take Malacanan Palace and the legislative building…" - - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, January 30, 1945

With those words from the Supreme Allied Commander in the South Pacific, Bob Holland says he prepared for the recapture of Manila, capital of Luzon, the Philippine Islands.

"I was one of seven Marines that was actually attached to the 1st Cavalry Division (US Army) for the Philippine operation. The seven of us were on the ground in two jeeps and a Hallicrafter radio truck. It was so big, it carried its own generator and you could talk to Egypt if you liked."

Master Sergeant Bob Holland was Communications Chief for Marine Air Group 24, First Marine Air Wing. Prior to the invasion to repatriate the Philippines, he had been on the first landing at Bougainville.

MacArthur’s objective at Bougainville was to end the Japanese use of airbases there, secure airfields for a mixed force of Allied bombers and fighters, and begin targeting Japanese air and naval power that flowed through the central enemy base at Rabaul. It took six months to secure the portion of Bougainville deemed necessary as a forward base, and Australian troops battled Japanese troops well into 1945.

Holland says there were reservations about MacArthur’s style among the men Bob knew and fought with, but few, if any of them, questioned the Army general’s substance.

"I’ll be honest with you, Marines weren’t too fond of General MacArthur, trouncing around in his pressed khakis… But I’ll tell you, he’d go right up on the first line.

"I called him a pompous ass, until I met him personally and saw that that man was probably the greatest military brain we have had in the United States in our time. He knew how to anticipate what the Japanese were going to do."

At the end of January, 1945, Macarthur ordered the Army to lead the rescue of 3700 civilian internees at the Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in Manila. The prisoners - - men, women and children - - had been held there for the three and one-half years of Japanese occupation of the Philippines.

After the initial Allied landing, January 21th at Lingayen, Holland was attached to the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division - - which had come ashore six days later.

"When they saw us coming, as we drove up, here’s the 1,000 1st Cavalry troops. And one smart guy jumped up and said, ‘Here comes our relief, seven Marines.’ We knew we were in for it, and we were."

The 1st Cavalry had finished securing Leyte, and its soldiers were told they had R&R coming. Instead they were diverted to Luzon for the San Tomas rescue mission. The immediate change in plans was necessitated by news that Japanese forces had been ordered to kill all internees if there was any chance they might be rescued.

The 1st Cavalry, totally mechanized, was composed of 800-900 troops, 43 tanks, and a force of 168 Marine SBD "Dauntless" dive bombers, based at Mingaladon. Together, they formed what became known as General MacArthur’s "Flying Column."

The Flying Column used its mechanized infantry and tanks to move through or around Japanese positions. When more help was needed, they called in the Marines for air strikes.

Using the radio in his jeep, Holland directed the dive-bombers, recalling, "We kept nine in the air at all times."

February 1st, the mission began, the column pulling out at one minute after midnight. Holland says they didn’t travel far before hitting their first resistance, Japanese troops, within 15 miles of the start point. The 5th Cavalry lost 14 soldiers when they were halted by Japanese troops trying to blow up the bridge over Pampanga River.

"General Macarthur came over and talked to me, because he was curious about what I was doing. And I wished he hadn’t been there. I didn’t want him there. There were nine planes up in the air waiting for me to tell them what to do. I wasn’t going to tell him to get out of here, but I felt like it.

"He said, ‘You’re doing a good job.’ And he turned and walked away."

Holland says the Japanese lost 278 men in that fight, and in another river crossing the same day, 478 of the enemy were killed, for no American losses. This was on the first day, before the group had moved 30 miles.

The Japanese troops were the first of some 255,000 that had been ordered by General Yamashita to go to the mountains that stretched 150 miles north and south through the island of Luzon. The troops, originally deployed along Luzon’s eastern coast, were not always cohesive fighting units, given their displacement from original defense positions. But many were dug into fortified caves or tunnels and had automatic weapons.

Bob says the radio coordination of the Marine SBDs with ground control proved devastating to the Japanese troops.

"I was told to call in a strike and have our SBDs destroy the town of San Ysidro. It was totally infested with Jap soldiers. In less than an hour I got a report back, ‘The target has been left in shambles.’

"They didn’t leave anything above the ground. That was the kind of work that our SBDs did."

"We reached Cabanatuan one day after the US Army Rangers rescued 513 Bataan Death marchers, all that was left in that camp. We had nothing to do with the rescue, but we were able to use our ambulances on our Flying Column to take some of those who could not walk, about half of the 513, back to hospitals in the north of Luzon."

On February 3rd, the Flying Column had advanced to what Holland called the ‘hot corner’ - - Novaliches and the Epo Dam - - which contained a lake that was the sole water supply for Manila.

The bridge at Novaliches crossed the Tuliahan River, and the 1st Cavalry reached it just as Japanese troops set the fuses on demolition charges. A Navy demolition expert bravely crossed the bridge, and extinguished the fuses, allowing the 1st Cavalry’s advance units to quickly roll across the river into the northern part of the Philippine capital.

At 6:35pm by U.S. Army records, the 1st Cavalry had reached the city limits of Manila. The unit had traveled 100 miles in three days (66 hours) through heavy enemy resistance.

Holland remembers well the stresses of keeping the Flying Column moving.

"We got no sleep. Well, I slept on the steering wheel. I couldn’t get out of the radio jeep."

Arriving in Manila’s outskirts, the 1st Cavalry headed straight to Santo Tomas University, while a platoon of tanks and cavalry were sent to Malacanan Palace.

Holland says that at 8:40pm, a 44th Tank Battalion M4 Sherman tank nicknamed "Battling Basic" broke down the main gate of the Santo Tomas campus. There was brisk fighting and most internees were freed from their Japanese captors, with the exception of internees on the third floor of the Education building.

Holland says there were Japanese machine gun crews on the first floor of the building:

"John Hinckey was in ‘Battling Basic’, and he told me personally he fired a round from the tank that blew all the way through the building, out the back. And they had to stop him."

Unable to use brute force, the liberators were faced with a hostage situation. Two hundred seventy internees were being held by 65 Japanese troops, commanded by Lt. Col. Toshio Hayashi. It took 35 hours to negotiate a deal - - the internees would be released when the Japanese were allowed to leave to rejoin their troops in south Manila. And, each Japanese soldier would be permitted to take a personal sidearm.

It was reported that 47 Japanese were escorted out of the university to the location requested, they and the Americans saluting each other as the enemies parted ways.  Apparently, the Japanese didn’t know they headed to an American-occupied area. Soon afterward being released, the Japanese were fired upon and several were killed, including Lt. Col. Hayashi. On the afternoon of February 5th, some of the Japanese returned to Santo Thomas, to become prisoners themselves.

Holland says, "There were a lot of rumors that it took 35 hours to get the (Filipino) guerillas lined up so they’d be there to ‘greet’ the Jap soldiers when they got to the city limits. This was not true, I believe. It’s never been proven, it’s never been disproven."

On the afternoon of February 7th, after MacArthur had come into Manila and continued on, Japanese forces began shelling the university. In the ensuing firefight, as American troops returned artillery fire, 23 of the rescued internees were killed.

The 1st Cavalry was relieved at Santo Tomas by the 37th Infantry on February 7th. In its three day "Flying Column" mission, the 1st cavalry had killed 1,587 Japanese troops and captured another 57 prisoners, for a loss of 36 men killed, 141 wounded and four missing.

After the war, Bob came back to the San Francisco Bay Area. His first job was with the War Assets Administration in Richmond, disposing of materials from the Kaiser shipyards. He married, settled in Napa and helped raise three children.

At this May’s CAF meeting Holland showed his Power Point presentation of fifty-seven Santo Tomas internees who had a reunion in the Philippines on February 3, 2005. The internees, their families and a few liberators returned to the Santo Tomas University campus to be there on the exact day and time of the rescue, sixty years before.

Holland - - a member of the Gideon organization, which places Bibles in hotel rooms, hospitals, and internationally - - says while he was in the island for the reunion, a fellow Gideon asked Bob to give a special presentation.

Holland says, "As we always do at these types of meetings, we read from the scripture. And we read that night from the book of Mark 10: 34, where Jesus was asked by James and John, the disciples, if they could have a special favor, if they could sit on his right and on his left when they all got to heaven.

"And Jesus answered them, saying ‘No, that is not My prerogative to give. It will be given by the person who owns it, who will be decided later.’

Bob continues, "The Gideon sitting next to me bent over and whispered in my ear, ‘He said that because he knows that seat is reserved for General Douglas MacArthur!’"

 

 

(sidebars)

A Mix of Internees

When the Japanese occupied Manila, the main building at Santo Tomas University was used to hold civilian POWs, and classrooms were used for sleeping quarters.  The campus, surrounded by two feet thick walls, was a prison from January 4, 1942 - February 3, 1945. In total there were 3,787 prisoners: the vast majority Americans, but also there were British, Australians, Canadians, Dutch, French, Swiss, Egyptians, Spanish, one German, and one Slovak. 

The overflow of internees at Santo Tomas were taken down to Los Banos University, which was also repatriated in February, 1945. All who survived at Santo Tomas were in captivity for 37 months, with 466 dying before they could be rescued.

A Final Attempt to Kill Internees

After the February 1945 rescue of internees at Santo Tomas University, Holland and his Marine "top cover" were recalled to the area. There were reports that Japanese troops had retaken the high ground of Epo Dam.

Holland says, "They had ten trucks of cyanide to poison the water. Our SBDs strafed and bombed the Japanese troops that were there. After it was over, I personally saw a team of 1st Cavalry go down to count them, and they said that there were over 600 of them dead, in less than two hours."