Sgt. Charles Sass made three combat jumps in the Philippines during WWII

Sgt. Charles Sass made three combat jumps in the Philippines during WWII

Charles Sass of the Laurel Oaks subdivision in Nokomis is a former platoon sergeant and a member of the 511th Paratrooper Regiment. He made three combat jumps on Luzon Island in the Philippines during World War II.
On Feb. 21, 1945, his unit jumped into Los Banos, a Japanese prison camp, to liberate 2,300 prisoners of war who were to be executed two days later. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of Allied forces in the Philippines, ordered the rescue attempt after receiving word of the prisoners' fate.
"Our captain and Company B were appointed to lead a parachute assault on the camp located 35 miles south of Manila. We were to jump at sunup from 400 feet, hit the ground two second later, destroy the Japanese garrison and rescue the prisoners," Sass recalled.
"It was probably the most near-perfect airborne jump in history. We landed 100 yards from the perimeter fence. The first of our guys on the ground took out the guard towers with their BARs (Browning Automatic Rifles)," he said. "We caught almost all of the 240 Japanese camp guards doing calisthenics. Half of them escaped and the other half we killed or captured. What a piece of luck."
Most of the prisoners were American, British or French civil servants and their families who had been rounded up by the Japanese when they invaded the Philippines almost three years earlier. All of them were confused and starving.
Sass and the 120 paratroopers of Company B had a half-hour to gather up the prisoners, get them aboard amphibious vehicles and flee the area. A half-hour away by truck were 150,000 Japanese soldiers.
"If their radio communications hadn't fallen apart when we landed, the Japanese would have been there in the snap of a finger," he said. "The day before, some 50 of our amphibious vehicle snuck across a nearby lake and waited until we jumped, then they raced to the camp two miles inland. They ringed the inside of the compound like a bunch of Conestoga wagons."
The detainees had no idea who the paratroopers were. When they figured out they were there to rescue them, the starving civilians eagerly climbed aboard the amphibious vehicles for the ride across the lake to the safety of the American forces.
"They were taken to Bilibid Prison on the far shore. It had been turned into a hospital for the sick and the dying," Sass said. "A dozen of us were told to stay behind as a rear guard until they came back and took us off.
"Trouble was, they never came back."
Sass and his buddies made a 2-mile dash to the shore just as the last two amphibious landing craft were pulling away. As he and the other paratroopers climbed aboard, incoming fire from the Japanese on shore started hitting nearby as the craft pulled out of range.
"When we reached the former captives at Bilibid Prison, they recognized us and screamed, 'Those are the guys who took us out of the camp!'"
For the rest of the time the 511th remained at the prison recuperating from their latest jump into enemy territory, the former POWs waited on their liberators hand and foot.
A couple of days before the Japanese surrendered at war's end, 250 soldiers in Sass' regiment were sent into Yokohama, Japan, to disable heavy artillery and airplanes.
"It was a nervous time to be on enemy territory. Two days later we were working side-by-side with officers and men in the Japanese Air Force," he said. "We couldn't have done our job without the full cooperation of the Japanese."
Originally Sass and his regiment were to parachute onto the southernmost Japanese island in November 1945. But Col. Paul Tibbits and a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay solved that problem by dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6.
"If we had invaded Japan according to our plans it would have been a disaster for the landing party because the Japanese were waiting for us," Sass said. "Our regiment would have been a wipeout."
E-mail: donmoore39@gmail.com

Commendations
As a member of the 511th Paratrooper Regiment in World War II in the Pacific, Sgt. Charles Sass received a number of commendations: two Purple Hearts, three Battle Stars for action in three major battles, two Presidential Unit Citations, the Bronze Star, the Combat Infantry Badge, the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, the Philippines Liberation Ribbon and an American Service Medal.
By DON MOORE

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