The Art of Manliness - The Heroic Exploits of WWII’s Pacific Paratroopers

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.560 when people think of the paratroopers of world war ii they tend to think of the european theater

00:00:15.180 the 101st airborne division and the band of brothers but paratroopers were also deployed

00:00:20.160 in the pacific and here to unpack their lesser known but equally epic and heroic story is james

00:00:25.040 a former paratrooper himself and the author of angels against the sun a world war ii saga of

00:00:30.760 grunts grit and brotherhood today on the show james tells about the formation leadership and

00:00:36.260 training of the 11th airborne division the role they played in the campaigns of the pacific which

00:00:40.600 included being dropped one by one out of a tiny plane described as a lawnmower with wings how they

00:00:45.720 built a reputation as one of the war's most lethal units and the division's surprising connection to

00:00:50.480 the creation of the twilight zone at the end of our conversation james shares what lessons we can all

00:00:54.960 take away from the exploits and spirit of the 11th airborne after the show's over check out our

00:00:59.380 show notes at aom.is pacific paratroopers james finelon welcome to the show thanks brett i appreciate it

00:01:21.240 as a fan it's a privilege to be here well you are a historian that has written two books about

00:01:26.800 paratroopers during world war ii your first book was four hours of fury which is about the largest

00:01:32.700 airborne operation in europe that's with the 17th airborne division you got a new book out about

00:01:38.460 paratroopers and that is called angels against the sun which is about the 11th airborne division in the

00:01:43.940 pacific what's interesting about you as a historian of paratroopers you were a paratrooper yourself before

00:01:49.820 you started writing about paratroopers so tell us about your career as a paratrooper and at what

00:01:53.600 point in your career did you start getting interested in the history of airborne operations

00:01:58.420 yeah i think it's actually a little bit flipped i think it was my interest in in history as a kid

00:02:04.720 that kind of got me interested in enlisting in the service actually my uncle was a paratrooper in

00:02:10.220 vietnam and his stories of his service and my own natural interest in history kind of led me

00:02:16.160 down that path and i enlisted in the army right out of high school i went to jump school in 1988

00:02:23.720 i served for the vast majority of my time in what what used to be called long-range surveillance

00:02:29.860 units which are kind of like small reconnaissance teams or maybe lerps is another concept that kind

00:02:36.840 of came out of the vietnam era the long-range reconnaissance patrols and so that's kind of what i did

00:02:41.760 during my service small airborne operations six-man teams that capability of course nowadays by and large

00:02:49.120 has been replaced by drones i still think they have some of those teams but not nearly as many

00:02:53.300 as they used to but it was during that time i got to go to jump master school and several other schools

00:02:58.780 in the army and it was during a conversation with a sergeant i think i was a corporal at the time

00:03:05.320 we were looking at a picture of some guys who were had their picture taken right before their jump into

00:03:11.640 normandy you know and they were all standing outside of their plane all kitted up and the sergeant said

00:03:18.140 to me he said wow the names change but the faces stay the same don't they and that comment really stuck

00:03:26.680 with me and that's kind of what's driven my mission if you will to document some of these stories

00:03:31.560 is to tell their story and to have us all connect to the fact that these are all ordinary guys put in

00:03:38.100 extraordinary circumstances and how have you leveraged your firsthand experience into your

00:03:43.340 history writing yeah i think one of the things that again struck me with that comment about the

00:03:48.420 faces never changing you know looking at those pictures of those young men in their late teens their

00:03:53.200 early 20s was you know i think one of the things that makes the greatest generation great is that you

00:03:58.800 know it's not a magic formula per se it's that those guys in particular recognize that you know you

00:04:04.880 can't choose what happens to you but you can choose how you respond to it and so i think i i'll kind of

00:04:11.180 leverage my service in my writing as a way to kind of initially introduce readers to the normality of

00:04:18.000 these guys right in their late teens their future is uncertain you know in most cases before they even get

00:04:24.360 to the war zone their primary mission in life is to escape the mundane ness of army life of service

00:04:30.560 life right a lot of these guys have left home for the first time they find themselves in the army

00:04:35.200 every minute of their day is being directed by somebody else as to what to do and where to go and

00:04:40.520 how to do it and all that kind of stuff and so i really kind of wanted to you know i use my services

00:04:45.920 as someone who who was in that circumstances is a way to kind of bring the humanity out if you will

00:04:52.180 lie that's maybe overstating it but no you do i think you did a good job with that you were able

00:04:56.560 to it really the transition from like your training life where it was just boring and mundane to i'm

00:05:02.320 suddenly thrown in the jungles we'll talk about that it was it was jarring um and you did a good

00:05:07.000 job capturing that so angels against the sun it follows the 11th airborne division and their campaign

00:05:12.800 in the philippines and then eventually into japan during world war ii and i think when most americans

00:05:18.400 think of airborne troops they typically think band of brothers in the european theater and i think when

00:05:24.000 most people think about the pacific theater they think like amphibious landings so like what role

00:05:28.780 did paratroopers play in the pacific during world war ii yeah i think it's a great question and it's a

00:05:35.320 great point of comparison and i think we'll we'll use that familiarity of band of brothers as a kind of

00:05:40.620 way to explore the topic because i think when we first talk about the pacific and i lean in to answer

00:05:45.580 that that question i think the first thing to understand is just the vast differences in the

00:05:50.500 pacific theater versus europe right and of course the pacific is characterized by you know immense

00:05:56.840 stretches of ocean between islands the island hopping campaign is of course this concept of

00:06:02.300 of starting basically in australia and island hopping our way closer to the home islands of japan using

00:06:09.900 those islands to build up logistical bases and air fields to then fuel and feed the campaign onto the

00:06:17.140 next island so that means a couple of things right first the pacific theater was was dealing with this

00:06:22.740 concept of scarcity you know resources are finite just like they are in in any circumstance right we

00:06:28.260 never have enough of what we want and so you're dealing with how do you navigate that and in the

00:06:32.960 pacific that meant of course scarcity in that supplies took a long time to get from point a to point b

00:06:38.580 because they were always invariably traveling by ship sometimes those ships started as far away as

00:06:44.440 san francisco and so aircraft were limited and so that had an impact on the use of paratroopers and

00:06:50.420 parachute operations in the pacific theater and then you also had this idea that you know europe had

00:06:56.000 the priority at the time when the 11th arrived in the pacific theater it was still very much a germany first

00:07:01.940 strategy and so that also had an impact on the scarcity of men and materiel and so you know it's

00:07:09.460 interesting when we look at the european conflict and we compare airborne operations you know certainly

00:07:14.680 the band of brothers they jumped into normandy and then later holland and these massive strategic use

00:07:20.700 of airborne forces almost to kind of lay either security on the flanks or seize bridges in advance of

00:07:26.500 the advance you know as the armies advanced into holland whereas in the pacific what you see is a

00:07:31.560 much more tactical use of parachute operations and so i'm sure we'll get into some of these more

00:07:36.180 explicitly but you know you go from these massive division size jumps in europe to you know in some

00:07:42.620 cases down to individual guys jumping out of observation planes into the jungles in the philippines

00:07:48.640 and it's really a great contrast to kind of understand the full range of capabilities of our airborne

00:07:55.020 forces in world war ii okay so you wouldn't have those scenes that you'd think of band of brothers

00:08:00.620 were just like hundreds or maybe thousands of parachutes falling out it'd be maybe just a few dozen

00:08:05.360 in the pacific yeah you know there was some regimental size drops in luzon in the philippines and those

00:08:12.320 were certainly larger but even then when one regiment jumped you you see the aircraft having to go back

00:08:18.440 to the airfield multiple times to pick up the rest of the troops and bring them in so when you see a

00:08:23.340 regimental jump in the philippines and a regiment's about 2 000 guys you know the aircraft are going

00:08:29.260 back to make multiple trips to pick them up and drop them so it's taking three round trips essentially

00:08:34.060 to drop 2 000 guys where in in europe you see to your point you know it's a one one lift operation

00:08:41.080 thousands of shoots in the sky at the same time so it's again that that concept of scarcity and having

00:08:46.380 to make do if you will so when was the 11th airborne division created yeah so the 11th was created

00:08:53.240 in february of 1943 at camp mccall north carolina they were commanded by a guy named general swing

00:09:02.300 and by airborne division again using the kind of band of brothers example an airborne division was

00:09:07.540 intended to be delivered into combat via glider and parachute so you had two types of units in an

00:09:14.900 airborne division you had the glider troops which were guys that were assigned to these units so you

00:09:20.100 imagine if you will for a minute you're you know you're a kid coming out of the great depression

00:09:24.540 you've never been in an airplane you're assigned to the 11th airborne division in a glider unit so

00:09:30.000 your first ride in an aircraft is an engine-less glider you don't get any additional hazardous duty

00:09:36.500 pay like the parachute troops and you don't get a parachute like aircrew do right so if you think of

00:09:42.360 you know aircrew and bombers or or fighters they all had the safety net if you will of a parachute

00:09:47.660 whereas glider troops didn't have any of that and then the other units of course were the parachute

00:09:52.360 units and in the case of the 11th airborne that was the 511th parachute infantry regiment these guys

00:09:58.280 were all volunteers one of the more notable volunteers in that unit was rod serling the creator of the

00:10:05.460 twilight zone television series of course that was after the war and these guys you know like rod

00:10:11.400 serling were attracted to volunteer to the parachute troops because of the the tough nature of their

00:10:16.500 training in many cases rod serling wrote home to his parents after he volunteered that he thought

00:10:21.560 going through the tough training would make him a better soldier and make him a better man and so

00:10:27.540 he was looking forward to that challenge other guys were motivated because they liked the uniform and

00:10:32.660 then of course they also all got paid 50 more a month for hazardous duty pay and that of course

00:10:38.020 attracted a wide share of recruits as well so it came across all you know socioeconomic there's you know

00:10:45.340 people from the country rural city rich poor just attracted a certain type of person you know of

00:10:51.260 course there's guys who wanted the money but a lot of guys they just like the prestige and the toughness

00:10:55.480 of it that's right i think it's a great observation because of that wide appeal of of that elite status if

00:11:02.400 you will it did attract every every walk of life right you had some guys that were you know rodeo clowns

00:11:08.540 all the way up to harvard graduates who wanted to test themselves and join the ranks of of these elite

00:11:13.960 soldiers so when it was initially formed in 1943 did they know they were going to be going to the

00:11:19.820 pacific or was it just like okay you got we're going to use you somewhere we're just going to get

00:11:24.600 you prepared for whatever wherever you're going to go yeah so the short answer to that question is no

00:11:31.020 they did not know that they were going to the pacific of course one of the favorite you know topics of

00:11:36.460 conversation when guys are sitting around with time on their hands was where are we going to be

00:11:40.440 deployed you know and there's raging rumors and debates on which direction they were going to go

00:11:44.980 but it wasn't really until they were leaving louisiana they did a series of training exercises

00:11:50.020 at camp polk and it was when the train started veering left meaning they were going west towards

00:11:55.540 the west coast that that was when it dawned on them that they were in fact headed to the pacific theater

00:12:00.540 so this was led by a guy named general joseph swing tell us about this guy what was his military

00:12:05.640 career like before he's put in charge of the 11th airborne and what was his personality like

00:12:09.600 yeah swing was an interesting character i really enjoyed learning a lot more about his military

00:12:15.640 career and i would say that where we start to see his leadership style kind of emerge was not long

00:12:21.540 after he graduated from west point he graduated he earned his commission rather as a artillery officer

00:12:28.900 in 1915 not long after that he was assigned as a young lieutenant into the punitive expedition or blackjack

00:12:37.460 pershing's expedition into mexico and this was really the army's first experiment with mechanization

00:12:44.720 so this is right before world war one the army at that point was you know you're either moving on

00:12:50.520 your feet or on the back of a horse and the expedition into mexico was really the first time the army

00:12:55.980 started integrating in things like vehicles cargo trucks to move troops they had some very rudimentary

00:13:02.480 armored cars they were using motorcycles to deliver messages and for scouting they had a handful of

00:13:10.160 biplanes that they were using and so what you see is is swing is really exposed to this this concept of

00:13:16.820 modernization early in his career and probably the biggest impact that had on him was that there was

00:13:22.160 no doctrine at this time right so these guys are getting all this new equipment nobody really knows how

00:13:27.640 to incorporate it into their scheme of maneuver or how they're going to actually conduct their

00:13:31.740 their campaign and what came along with that of course was a series of cautionary tales right these

00:13:37.220 things broke down or they didn't arrange to have enough fuel for them in the field and so they were

00:13:42.300 waiting on guys to bring you know gasoline forward and so all of these things were kind of witnessed by

00:13:48.500 swing and and in my opinion and i think i've you know i try to make the point in the book you start to see

00:13:53.080 later in world war ii where he's he becomes very comfortable with for lack of a better word making

00:13:58.500 things up as he goes along and i think that that flexibility of mindset was developed in this early

00:14:04.560 part of his career and then from there of course he went on to serve in world war one with the first

00:14:10.580 infantry division and then worked his way up the ranks until he became the commander of the 11th

00:14:15.700 airborne division in early 1943 another leader of the 11th airborne that had a big impact

00:14:21.300 on the division as a whole is this guy named colonel oren haugen who is this guy what was he like as a

00:14:26.920 leader yeah haugen was another interesting character he's kind of what i call an og parachute guy so he

00:14:34.100 as a captain in 1940 he was a company commander in the army's first organized unit of paratroopers

00:14:42.240 the 501st parachute infantry battalion and he kind of came at things parachute operations and airborne

00:14:49.880 from a very different perspective than swing did so swing you know you could almost use the term you

00:14:55.320 know kind of big army he viewed parachuting as simply a means to get to work a commute right a

00:15:02.000 unique commute to get to the battlefield whereas haugen had come up through the ranks and like i said as a

00:15:07.000 captain in this initial parachute unit where it was drilled into these guys that they were elite at that

00:15:13.800 point the parachute battalions were very similar to the early days of the ranger battalions so they

00:15:20.220 were you know elite infantry raiding units that were intended to be used to jump behind the lines and

00:15:26.400 blow up bridges and railroad lines and seas airfields and things like that so haugen really leaned into this

00:15:33.240 concept of self-reliance and again if we use the band of brothers as a comparison point you know their motto

00:15:40.440 of we stand alone together well haugen in the 511th trained right there at camp tokoa and ran curahee

00:15:47.260 just like the guys from band of brothers did and so haugen really embraced this concept of self-reliance

00:15:52.800 and relying you know on the guy next to you and not being the weak link so to speak and he really

00:15:59.440 led by example he led all the runs of the unit up mount curahee he would yell at them you are the best

00:16:06.880 you are the best and encourage them to run faster but he was a very you know strict taskmaster and so

00:16:13.700 that his men's nickname for him was hard rock and that was kind of in reference to his hardcore way that he

00:16:20.700 viewed their training he was extremely competitive he wanted to win and be the first at everything so he formed

00:16:27.780 a regimental boxing team a regimental football team and was constantly relieving coaches and players to

00:16:35.060 make sure that he got the best guys in there to win at whatever whatever they were doing and he also

00:16:41.580 i think one of the important things about haugen was that he recognized early on that the time for his

00:16:48.220 leadership his officers to establish trust with his men was there during the training and that was

00:16:57.780 the time to establish trust with the enlisted men right if you waited till you got into combat to

00:17:01.900 establish that trust it was too late and so he was really a hard taskmaster on his junior officers to

00:17:07.580 get them to again lead by example put their men first and establish that trust so you mentioned some

00:17:14.640 of the training they did before they got shipped out i always love reading about the training of the

00:17:18.720 paratroopers in world war ii tell us more about the training what was it like yeah so jump school at

00:17:23.460 fort benning at the time in world war ii was four weeks long and so that was kind of the individual

00:17:28.000 training or the individual skills to jump out of an airplane was done at fort benning four weeks long

00:17:33.080 there was some ground training where they did you know going through mock aircraft doors and learning

00:17:39.360 how to perform in the aircraft and then there was tower week where they're learning how to do

00:17:43.480 parachute landing falls you know and one of the things again that's important to remember at this

00:17:47.820 time is that the vast majority of these guys had never been in an airplane and so for most of the

00:17:55.480 recruits at this point the first time they're in an airplane is the same day that they're going to

00:17:59.480 jump out of it and so you know the army spent three weeks and in some cases four weeks getting these guys

00:18:06.760 ready for that event through a series of you know the crawl walk run kind of strategy if you will of

00:18:12.120 building them up over a period of weeks to then the final week being jump week where they spend

00:18:16.860 that week making five jumps culminating and then their graduation from that event right where they

00:18:23.540 earn their jump wings the jump school today is very similar the big differences in world war ii

00:18:28.600 you spend a week learning how to pack your own parachute which is not something that they do anymore

00:18:32.840 they now have dedicated group of professionals fortunately whose job is is to pack those parachutes

00:18:38.080 because as you can imagine packing a parachute is a perishable skill and it's something that you want

00:18:42.900 to be expert in so they they now they leave that to experts to do that and then they would you know

00:18:49.520 then units would get together and then start going through a series of unit exercises to where then

00:18:54.200 they started to learn how to perform as squads and platoons and maneuver in those larger elements as a team

00:19:00.680 and so as you said they didn't learn they were going to the pacific till they're on the train

00:19:05.320 and they started going west when they got to san francisco or wherever they shipped it was they get ship

00:19:10.000 out of san francisco i think yes that's right ships out of san francisco where did they go initially

00:19:14.420 to the pacific so their first destination was to new guinea just north of australia at that point new

00:19:22.280 guinea had largely been secured there were still some japanese holdouts on the far side of the island but

00:19:28.140 the 11th airborne did not see combat on new guinea they went into a training regimen there and took

00:19:35.520 advantage of the fact that they were now in an environment in the terrain very similar to what

00:19:40.560 they would be fighting as they moved into the pacific and so again you start to see here swing

00:19:45.900 and haugen's personalities really start to influence how the division would fight they started going

00:19:51.820 through a series of you know fairly elaborate live fire exercises incorporating you know live ammunition

00:19:58.520 mortar fire artillery fire and we know that it was realistic training because unfortunately several guys

00:20:05.980 were killed by friendly fire in those exercises so it was very demanding they also had the benefit of being

00:20:11.500 trained by several australian soldiers who had already been fighting the japanese so they incorporated

00:20:17.300 those lessons learned and it was really a time of development for the division as they started figuring out

00:20:23.140 how to operate in this jungle environment what year was this 1943 still 1944 this is middle of 1944 so they

00:20:31.520 had just arrived in may of 1944 and what was the state of the war in the pacific at this time

00:20:36.420 yeah so at this point the allies were pushing their way across the pacific working their way again is is

00:20:44.880 in line with that island hopping campaign new guinea had largely been secured so this was when

00:20:50.880 macarthur was in the process of fulfilling his famous i shall return promise that he made to

00:20:55.920 the philippine people and the americans invaded the philippines in october of 1944 the 11th initially sat

00:21:04.600 out the invasion and it wasn't until november of 1944 that the 11th airborne landed on the island of

00:21:10.960 late initially in an administrative capacity so they were just kind of if you you know you can imagine

00:21:16.200 following along that island hopping campaign and landing on a secure beach after it had the invasion

00:21:22.060 had already started but pretty quickly into that campaign macarthur and his ground commander a guy named

00:21:28.360 walter kruger has started realizing that they were suffering higher than expected casualties and so the 11th

00:21:34.380 was kind of then pushed up into the line to fill in as replacements and start moving into combat

00:21:40.280 so what was the objective on late was just to take back the island was that what it was late offered

00:21:46.120 what they thought at the time was going to be access to a number of land-based airstrips which would put

00:21:53.340 the allies in a great position to then use those airstrips to extend their air power to the other

00:21:59.340 islands in the philippines specifically the main island of luzon as well as use them as bases to cut

00:22:05.160 off japanese sea lanes where they were bringing in the raw materials to to still feed their war machine

00:22:11.480 if you will now there was some assumptions that went into that initially which failed to take into

00:22:16.000 account the horrific torrential rains on late so these airfields that macarthur and his staff had

00:22:22.260 planned to use turned out to be you know muddy quagmires at the time that they landed in october so

00:22:28.400 things didn't quite work out that way initially and the 11th airborne was brought in and then pushed up

00:22:34.360 into the central mountain range to cut off japanese reinforcements that were working their way from

00:22:40.660 the west side of the island over these mountains to try to come down into the valley where those air

00:22:46.100 fields were located so these guys were trained as paratroopers and gliders did they do any

00:22:51.040 paratrooping and gliding at late so yes kind of no no gliding but this is where we start to see

00:22:58.040 swings flexibility and in improvisation is the way that i like to think of it so as these guys started

00:23:04.000 moving up into the mountains you know this is basically like light infantry tactics at its

00:23:09.940 finest right there's no roads going up into the mountains so there's no jeeps can get up there no

00:23:14.660 trucks can get up there all the supplies that are going up into the mountains are man-packed

00:23:19.660 and so if you think about it you know these guys are going up like these little trails

00:23:24.160 you've got a division going up into the mountains and you've got to keep them supplied right with both

00:23:30.160 food and ammunition as they're gauging the japanese and so at some point they get up to this plateau

00:23:36.700 and this is where swing starts to utilize the unique airborne capability of his division

00:23:42.620 of course aircraft being in short supply as i mentioned earlier what he did have access to was

00:23:48.460 a handful of these small single engine observation aircraft one guy described them as a lawnmower with

00:23:56.740 wings right so think is the smallest airplane you can imagine they literally bring it ashore and then

00:24:01.100 bolt the wings onto it and so swing tapped a platoon of his airborne engineers so 30 some odd guys of his

00:24:07.920 combat engineering unit and one by one they climbed into the back of one of these aircraft and then jumped

00:24:14.380 into the jungle with their shovels and demolition charges to expand and create a drop zone in the middle of

00:24:21.980 the jungle so these guys were literally climbing in wrapping the static line of their parachute

00:24:26.680 around the spars of the chair in the back seat of this airplane and parachuting in well so those guys

00:24:33.440 30 of them soon landed one at a time they started chopping down trees using demolitions and expanding

00:24:39.820 the footprint of that drop zone so that swing could then start dropping in supplies additional men

00:24:46.720 and materiel into that forward base and using that as a way to then keep his men supplied you know

00:24:53.860 surgeons jumped in there as well parachuted in which allowed the rest of the unit to then keep pushing

00:24:59.780 forward up into the mountains we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:25:04.020 and now back to the show what was the fighting like at late too yeah so i think you know

00:25:16.600 when we think about the fighting on late i always like to begin with just the elements themselves and

00:25:22.180 so you know like i mentioned it had been raining for a number of weeks on late so the first enemy

00:25:28.920 that the troopers actually engaged was just the mud you know they're hiking up into these mountains

00:25:33.560 the mud in some cases is shin deep everything you own is wet you've got disease you've got the heat

00:25:41.240 and humidity so they hike their way up and then that's when as they're into the mountains that's when

00:25:45.440 they start to engage with japanese patrols and as they're up in these mountains it's really you know

00:25:51.160 the whole advantage in the way that the american army had geared itself around technology advantages

00:25:58.140 and firepower advantages were really negated by the mountains because you couldn't get any of that

00:26:03.240 stuff up into the mountains you couldn't get artillery pieces up into the mountains you couldn't get a lot

00:26:08.640 of these larger radios the mountains were covered in clouds so air support was difficult the maps were

00:26:16.240 horrible so nobody actually ever really knew where they were these maps that they had were often hand

00:26:21.240 drawn and had villages mislabeled and entire ridge lines or mountain peaks were missing from them

00:26:27.620 so that was kind of the conditions under which these guys moved up into the mountains and then of course

00:26:32.940 on top of that they had the enemy the japanese which started you know almost kind of imagine this

00:26:39.420 head-to-head collision up in the mountains as you had squads of the american paratroopers going forward

00:26:45.360 and in these very close combat conditions bumping into squads of japanese who were heading in the

00:26:50.980 opposite direction and the japanese they were just formidable opponents and then at this point

00:26:56.080 before the japanese they kind of understood like this the generals and the leaders there they

00:26:59.720 understood that their backs were against were against the wall so it's kind of turning into

00:27:03.560 a fight to the death for these guys yeah i think a fight to the death is a great way to describe it

00:27:09.380 at that point in the war the japanese leadership was really you know their strategy was to win

00:27:15.140 just one massive campaign right the strategic concept kind of was like well if we can bring the

00:27:20.500 americans to their knees in just one battle you know hit them with heavy heavy casualties maybe we can

00:27:26.740 approach you know uh a treaty on equal terms right and of course the americans had already made their

00:27:33.680 unconditional surrender kind of demand but that was the idea of the japanese and so they were throwing in

00:27:39.700 troops you know and in in these seeking a decisive victory if you will and one of the things one of

00:27:46.220 the traits of the japanese soldier was this concept of yamato damashi and i hope i'm pronouncing that right

00:27:52.440 but it's this idea of you know an unwavering belief in the righteousness of their cause and these guys

00:27:59.940 were kind of steeped in that ethos if you will that kind of involved equal parts bushido shinto religion

00:28:08.320 and of course honor played an important component of that but it was this idea of well if we're brave

00:28:13.620 enough and if we fight hard enough our spirit can overcome technological advantages that the enemy has

00:28:20.600 and it was interesting because up in the mountains of late when those two elements came together

00:28:25.180 and at this point in the war of course all of the americans understood that the japanese were not going

00:28:30.560 to surrender they understood from you know the news that had leaked out about the bataan death march that

00:28:36.400 they could expect to be treated very poorly as prisoners themselves and so it really devolved into this

00:28:42.480 battle of attrition because neither side was willing to give up the americans weren't going to give up

00:28:47.740 they're not going to put themselves in the position to where they're going to be taken prisoner

00:28:50.820 japanese units were fighting to sometimes 96 97 percent of casualties and so you really get this

00:28:58.780 this you know head-to-head no holds barred combat up in the mountains of late and honestly and all the

00:29:05.400 pacific campaigns were very similar to that well you also talk about there was reports from american

00:29:09.840 soldiers that the japanese at some points they would just attack with a samurai sword and it was

00:29:14.620 terrifying i mean usually they got gunned down but it was terrifying to see some guy coming at you

00:29:19.240 with just a sword absolutely yeah that's one of those things that's just really it's kind of hard

00:29:24.820 to comprehend the the terror of that when you've got guys you know human wave attacks coming at you

00:29:30.920 with swords over their heads the japanese bayonets were extremely long so that that's intimidating as

00:29:36.480 well you know there was one one veteran i interviewed remembered uh he shot a guy that was running

00:29:42.460 towards him in a bonsai attack and all he was armed with was a fountain pen he had a fountain pen like

00:29:47.300 raised up over his shoulder like a dagger you know that's how fanatical some of these attacks were

00:29:53.020 all right so they took late took a month and then you talk about after they finally took control of

00:29:58.740 the island they had to do this mopping up like oh let's go mop up and then basically that was to go find

00:30:03.120 japanese forces that were still there in hiding but you talk about the mopping up was actually more

00:30:08.260 dangerous than the actual assault what made mopping up quote-unquote more difficult or dangerous

00:30:14.180 yeah i'm glad you put the mopping up in quotes because you know it's one of those terms that

00:30:18.960 is easy to overlook you know i think what you had there was even a bigger level of desperation right

00:30:25.300 when you're dealing with these japanese units that have been you know in many cases overrun or bypassed

00:30:31.040 you know so imagine you know a group of japanese on a hilltop where the japanese have kind of you know

00:30:36.640 the sun zoo kind of way of just gone around that hilltop isolated it you know we'll come back for

00:30:41.900 it later type of thing when you come back for it later you've now got japanese who are cut off

00:30:47.140 they're viewing their mission now is to to take as many americans with them as possible and so there's

00:30:53.240 just no real easy way to go about doing that again you could you know at one point swing did utilize

00:30:59.660 the unique capabilities of his division and dropped in four small artillery pieces so they did have

00:31:05.780 some heavier firepower at that time up in the mountains to kind of help them in these situations

00:31:10.720 where they're trying to you know winkle out these holdouts but you know they're in caves they're not

00:31:16.100 going to come out you have to bring the mountain down around them basically i mean swing was very good

00:31:21.300 about using flanking attacks and he despised kind of frontal assaults that some other army commanders

00:31:26.660 were very comfortable with but it was just very nasty dirty work to go up there and try to get into

00:31:32.400 these fortified positions and get these guys out of there so what was the result of late so apart

00:31:37.300 from that we took control of the island what were casualties like and how did this this is kind of

00:31:41.820 this is the 11th like first like it was like baptism by fire how did this affect them for the rest of the

00:31:47.240 war yeah so i think you know the the haugen hard rock haugen's unit came out of late it took them a month

00:31:54.160 of trekking from one side to get to the other side of the island coming down out of the mountains on

00:31:58.980 christmas day essentially is when they started to emerge on the far side of the island they had a

00:32:04.080 number of casualties some of which they had left buried up in the mountains so there was efforts

00:32:08.120 to go get those guys they had i want to say right right around 500 casualties from that fighting they

00:32:14.000 had just as many if not more guys that were suffering from disease up in those conditions but you know

00:32:19.880 haugen did the math when they came out of the mountains and he and his men were boasting of a 45 to

00:32:25.140 one kill ratio of their time up in the mountains and so again this is where you start to see the

00:32:29.800 real aggressive nature of of haugen and swing both really always wanting to maintain contact with the

00:32:36.360 enemy always wanting to move forward and so they kind of boasted of this kill ratio if you will as a

00:32:41.880 way to you know set expectations for the unit for the division as to how they were going to continue to

00:32:47.520 to lean into the fight did that give them a reputation amongst the allies and the japanese

00:32:52.360 absolutely i mean you know one of the interesting things about the 11th airborne division is that

00:32:57.480 you know i use the term punch above their weight so you know both the 101st and the other airborne

00:33:02.560 divisions that were fielded during world war ii were only 8 500 men in the division and so this made

00:33:08.900 them in most cases a little bit more than half the size of a regular infantry division so a regular

00:33:13.860 infantry division was anywhere between 14 and 15 000 guys and again the 11th airborne was 8 500 so

00:33:20.700 you know to to kind of develop this this reputation of doing so much damage with about half of what

00:33:27.460 they had to a regular division and of course that also included having far less artillery than a

00:33:33.100 regular infantry division did it really bolstered their reputation and you you know you see them

00:33:37.740 particularly with general eichelberger one of macarthur's field commanders really leaned on the 11th

00:33:43.520 airborne for their aggressive spirit so what happened to the 11th after late so after late

00:33:49.480 macarthur had moved on and moved his invasion next to luzon which was the main island in the

00:33:55.980 philippines of course the main prize of that campaign was to be manila which was the capital

00:34:00.880 city before the war it was known as the pearl of the orient you know and i think it's important to

00:34:05.840 kind of get a good idea of what that city was like it had just under a million people living in it

00:34:11.600 so it was a massive urban area many of the boulevards along the bay there the reason it was called pearl

00:34:17.140 of the orient it was these beautiful wide boulevards where people could stroll to watch the sunset many

00:34:22.700 of the government buildings rivaled anything that you would see in washington dc you know with these

00:34:28.180 massive white marble columns i mean macarthur had hoped that the japanese were going to declare manila

00:34:35.400 an open city meaning that they would withdraw their forces out of the city to avoid what would become

00:34:41.340 you know massive bloodshed in an urban battle you know the germans did that in in paris they declared

00:34:47.100 paris an open city and left so that it wouldn't turn into the bloodbath that it could have well that

00:34:52.980 didn't happen unfortunately in in manila and so as macarthur's campaign was slowing down he had landed

00:34:59.700 several divisions to the north was pushing down towards manila he decided to launch several other

00:35:06.800 landings if you will south of manila as a way to kind of divide japanese forces the 11th airborne

00:35:14.340 division was assigned to one of these landings general swing really advocated for airdropping

00:35:20.640 the division in total so again using gliders and aircraft to land them south of manila unfortunately

00:35:27.360 again we see a lack of aircraft so there just wasn't enough aircraft at that point to be able to lift his

00:35:32.860 division and so they ended up going in kind of what he described as half a loaf meaning that half a loaf

00:35:38.360 went in amphibiously meaning he landed his glider units along the shore and then further inland he

00:35:44.320 airdropped haugen and his men south of manila to where the two units then linked up on the ground his

00:35:52.020 glider units and the parachute units linked up and then started pushing their way north up into the city

00:35:57.880 limits of manila so how did the fighting differ in the city compared to the jungle what were the

00:36:02.280 unique challenges the main thing was just the urban nature of it so as the 11th was moving up the

00:36:08.220 japanese had anticipated the americans returning to the philippines and that they would be attacking

00:36:14.000 manila so they had built a belt of defenses along the southern edge of the city right their initial

00:36:20.360 thought was that macarthur was going to attack from the south he didn't he attacked from the north but the

00:36:25.620 11th did attack from the south so they ran into this belt line of defenses which the japanese had

00:36:30.800 labeled the genko line think about this as a series of pillboxes machine gun nests these are built out

00:36:37.640 of brick these are built out of bamboo tree trunks they have taken aerial bombs and buried them in the

00:36:44.280 ground as mines across the road they've overturned bulldozers and city buses across the roads to

00:36:51.480 create blocking positions and so it really just becomes this you know brick by brick concrete battle as the

00:36:59.180 11th start pushing their way up into the city they're swarming through the city they're finding

00:37:04.660 you know japanese holdouts in attics and in basements behind them as in areas they thought

00:37:09.620 they've already cleared they start to you know the 11th and swing start to really work with

00:37:14.820 filipino guerrillas who are really important in this battle for the 11th because of course they know

00:37:19.640 the terrain they know the layout of the city they know a lot about the japanese defenses because of

00:37:25.640 course they watch them being built and so swing really starts to leverage several battalions worth

00:37:31.080 of filipino guerrillas in his scheme of battle there were some pretty epic exploits by the individual

00:37:37.880 members of the 11th airborne i think at this point there's a guy named manny perez who basically he won

00:37:43.240 the medal of honor for this what he did can you talk about what he did at this point in the war

00:37:46.900 yeah so perez was a member of haugen's parachute infantry regiment he was uh 21 years old at the time of this

00:37:54.960 attack so they were working their way up through this genko line at this point they had pushed their

00:38:00.500 way north and were now kind of maneuvering east if you will trying to hook around some of these defenses

00:38:06.440 his unit had been engaged all morning in attacking several pillboxes the counts vary but the general

00:38:14.400 consensus is they had taken out his squad and platoon had worked their way through 11 japanese pillboxes

00:38:20.880 and the 12th one had really had the squad pinned down it was a dual twin mounted machine gun that

00:38:28.100 had you know pretty good field of fire over some open terrain the squad had gone to ground in front of

00:38:34.800 this and as the story goes from the lieutenant who was up front trying to figure out how they were going

00:38:41.280 to attack this position he looked over and all of a sudden perez and his nickname his buddies called him

00:38:48.280 manny was sprinting forward towards the gun position and they yelled for him to get down he kept going

00:38:54.700 he threw himself down on the side of the gun position within hand grenade range he threw a couple

00:39:00.700 hand grenades into the machine gun position right as they exploded he's jumping up and you know following

00:39:07.320 them in find several japanese guys that have been wounded he quickly shoots them japanese soldier

00:39:15.760 approaches him and attacks him with his band on the end of his rifle perez ends up taking the rifle away

00:39:23.080 from him killing the guy with his own rifle and then at one point beating three japanese guys to death

00:39:29.660 with that rifle ends up breaking that rifle grabbing another one it's really one of those stories that if

00:39:34.560 you put it in a movie it would be hard hard to believe but at the end of it perez had taken the machine

00:39:40.480 gun nest and his medal of honor citation cites that he had killed single-handedly 23 of the enemy in that

00:39:48.120 action he was to your point awarded the medal of honor it was interesting because several of his

00:39:53.840 comrades that witnessed the event actually disputed the citation wanting to amend it because by their count

00:40:01.900 during the entirety of that morning perez had actually taken out anywhere from 70 to 75 japanese during

00:40:08.560 the assault on all those other previous pill boxes so he was quite quite a one-man machine

00:40:14.160 sadly even though he survived that event that he was awarded the medal of honor for it was awarded

00:40:21.440 posthumously because he was killed later on in the campaign so the 11th they take manila the 11th with other

00:40:27.920 divisions as well what happened to the 11th after that so one of the more interesting exploits of the 11th's

00:40:35.560 campaign while they were on luzon was their liberation of the los banos prison camp so when the japanese had

00:40:43.120 invaded the philippines they had taken prisoners several thousand civilians so think of you know

00:40:49.840 americans french british these were you know engineers who worked on the island entrepreneurs who owned

00:40:56.900 businesses clergy on missions things like that and the japanese had put them in a number of prison camps

00:41:03.720 some of which were in manila proper los banos was a couple of miles maybe 20 miles

00:41:09.600 outside of the city limits it was a camp that held a little over 2 000

00:41:14.640 of these civilian prisoners and macarthur and his staff were worried that as the japanese were being pushed

00:41:21.760 across the island that rather than evacuate these prisoners or just simply release them that they would

00:41:27.840 execute the prisoners and so macarthur put swing in charge of figuring out how to rescue these guys

00:41:34.540 and this again is where you see you know swings kind of flexible approach to his war fighting the plan

00:41:40.640 that his unit came up with was a kind of a multi-pronged attack that started with a ground assault by his

00:41:48.100 reconnaissance scouts they worked in conjunction with the filipino guerrillas to sneak up to the outskirts of

00:41:54.800 the camp they timed their assault to be launched simultaneously as the japanese were conducting

00:42:01.480 their morning calisthenics so the only armed japanese were the guys that were around the

00:42:06.140 perimeter of the camp everybody else was in there doing their morning exercises right as that happened

00:42:12.300 a company of guys parachuted in on the far side of the camp so about 120 men parachuted in and they

00:42:19.900 joined in the assault while that was happening the rest of that battalion came across the lake in

00:42:26.940 amphibious tract vehicles that then made their way into the camp knocked down the gates of the camp with

00:42:33.960 those tract vehicles and they loaded all of the prisoners onto those tract vehicles to to evacuate

00:42:40.720 them it was a raid meaning that they were just going in to rescue these guys and then get out

00:42:44.620 and so it was you know stunningly successful none of the prisoners were killed in the crossfire a

00:42:51.300 couple of them were wounded but nothing serious unfortunately two of the gorillas were killed in

00:42:56.200 the firefight but all of the american rescuers were evacuated unharmed as well so this is about

00:43:03.120 february 1945 when that prison liberation happened and then the next couple months the 11th they were

00:43:10.120 born along with the other divisions there they eventually secured the philippines was it pretty

00:43:14.940 easy after that point after they got manila or was it hard fighting even then um it was pretty much

00:43:20.460 hard fighting all the way across the island again i think you know one of the things that's interesting

00:43:25.020 to note i think that just provides some additional context you know the last japanese soldier to surrender

00:43:30.860 in the philippines took place in 1974 and so that gives you kind of an idea as to the tenacity

00:43:38.360 of these guys and their willingness to stay in the fight and so you know again we use that term in

00:43:44.280 quotes mopping up there was a lot of mopping up in luzon swing kept pushing his division east across

00:43:50.520 the island as an attempt to kind of cut the island in half if you will as other units were both to the

00:43:55.420 north and the south of them as they made that cut across and it was you know similar similar combat you

00:44:01.020 know pushing through sweeping past some of these more heavily defended areas cutting them off so that

00:44:05.980 they couldn't get resupplied with food or reinforcements and then coming back and dealing

00:44:11.300 with them later you know at one point swing had a garrison of something like 300 some odd japanese

00:44:17.440 kind of cornered on this mountain fortress that they had built and they sent a guy up to try to get the

00:44:24.780 japanese to surrender the japanese shot at the guy who was bringing up the surrender terms and so swing

00:44:30.440 was content just to sit back and i think something like they launched a thousand artillery shells a day

00:44:35.800 at this place until they finally just reduced it to rubble and that again was just kind of that that

00:44:43.080 battle of attrition that took place all across the philippines so they finally took it towards the

00:44:47.440 middle of 1945 and at this point the military was getting ready for just an all-out invasion of japan

00:44:54.260 what was the 11th division's role going to be in that land invasion of japan yeah so everybody all the

00:45:00.860 troopers in the 11th were convinced that they were going to be dropped into the japanese main island as

00:45:07.520 part of macarthur's invasion if you go look at the actual plans that were drawn up the 11th airborne was

00:45:13.900 going to be used in that invasion but as far as i can find they weren't actually going to airdrop them in

00:45:19.080 again maybe that was due to a lack of aircraft the plans that i've seen indicate that they were going

00:45:24.360 to be landed amphibiously but the guys at the time didn't know that the guys at the time all assumed

00:45:29.180 that they would be finally being used in one of these massive airdrops that you know we've already

00:45:33.540 compared europe to but of course that didn't happen the united states dropped two atomic bombs which

00:45:40.460 then brought about the surrender negotiations and ultimately the end of the war did they occupy japan

00:45:47.220 did they play any role in that yeah so this is where you finally kind of start to see the small

00:45:51.800 size of the 11th airborne division play into their favor so they were the first troops to be air landed

00:45:57.560 in japan they had flown from airfields in manila initially to okinawa where they staged for several

00:46:05.900 weeks it's kind of a misconception that the war ended immediately after the atomic bombs were dropped

00:46:12.460 there were several weeks there where you know there was internal debate going on in japan about

00:46:17.200 how to respond to the bombs how to approach the surrender terms those were ironed out and then

00:46:25.000 several after the division had sat on okinawa for several weeks they then flew from okinawa to a small

00:46:30.880 airfield outside of tokyo they secured that all of the guys from the 11th flew in fully armed expecting

00:46:38.500 a trap you know one of the one of the troopers commented that wow the japanese surrendered as hard as

00:46:45.460 they fought and so there weren't any incidents once they landed fortunately there was compliance with

00:46:50.440 the surrender terms and a couple of days after they got there macarthur landed at that airfield

00:46:55.240 for the eventual signing of the surrender documents on the missouri when did these guys go home did they

00:47:00.860 go home in 1945 some of them did it's an interesting kind of return if you will you know so similar to

00:47:06.700 what we saw in europe there was the point system of when these got you know you earned points for how long

00:47:11.080 you'd been in the service if you were wounded things like that the 11th itself stayed in japan for a

00:47:16.760 number of years as an occupation force so their initial mission once they landed in japan and

00:47:22.360 secured that airfield was disarming the populace so the japanese had armed millions of civilians for

00:47:28.680 this big fight that was anticipated to occur on the home islands and so occupation troops were

00:47:34.860 responsible for patrolling conducting inspections and overseeing weapons turn in and so the 11th kind

00:47:41.420 of came home in drips and drabs and ones and twos as these guys would get on ships and make their way

00:47:46.060 back to the states what happened to some of these guys when they came home i mean did they did a lot of

00:47:50.220 these guys have a hard time kind of processing what they went through yeah you know of course we know a lot

00:47:55.740 more now about post-traumatic stress than we did back then it was you know largely undiagnosed

00:48:00.940 interestingly enough i think one of the most vocal guys on that topic was was rod serling who

00:48:07.580 you know he certainly didn't call it post-traumatic stress but he certainly knew what was going on and

00:48:12.020 he talked about himself and his friends that had come back and there was those that had been physically

00:48:16.500 wounded and then of course those who had suffered mentally from their experience and he he talked

00:48:23.040 pretty freely about that and some of the challenges he had and that's really where he turned to writing he

00:48:28.940 he found that as an outlet of course now we know that writing and talking about it is a great way

00:48:33.680 to kind of excise those demons if you will but that was kind of his way of going about it and of course

00:48:38.580 i think if we look at the the twilight zone you can certainly see some of the themes in those episodes

00:48:43.420 that he wrote of trying to kind of explore humanity and the perception of what the human experience

00:48:49.040 entails yeah you can see that definitely in the episodes the themes like you know war is bad that was a

00:48:54.360 theme you see in the twilight zone also the twilight zone it kind of had there's like a an empathy for

00:48:59.400 people dealing with mental illness that you i don't think you saw in other shows but you saw that

00:49:03.680 in the twilight zone yeah absolutely i mean one of the most horrific events of the war took place

00:49:08.520 right in front of rod sterling's eyes you know when they were up in that that forward base that i was

00:49:12.940 talking about you know they were dropping supplies into them and sometimes those supplies were just

00:49:18.420 literally thrown out the side of a the airplane and at one point in that campaign they had gone

00:49:24.180 five days without food because the clouds had socked in the mountain where they couldn't get aircraft up

00:49:29.200 there so the clouds finally broke the planes are flying over to push out these crates one of rod

00:49:34.920 sterling's best friends jumps up and is impromptu singing a song about food you know getting a laugh out

00:49:42.000 of everybody when all of a sudden one of these crates falling out of the sky crushes his skull and kills

00:49:47.480 him right in front of everybody who's sitting there watching him in this moment of glee that he's

00:49:51.160 getting ready to get some food and again i think you know so you can imagine yourself sitting there as

00:49:55.680 a 19 20 year old and you know all of a sudden this moment your best friend's head is caved in

00:50:00.060 and i think rod spent a lot of his life trying to process those those kinds of things through

00:50:05.380 the exploration of his writing in his show what lessons about life and being a man do you hope readers

00:50:12.100 take away after reading about the 11th airborne division it's a great great question i think you

00:50:18.180 know there's so many interesting lessons to learn from both swing and haugen and the way that the unit

00:50:23.020 comported themselves during the war but i would say one of them was this concept of flexibility or

00:50:29.480 imagination right it's the idea of you know when we see that in swings comfortable take on how to

00:50:36.740 not stick to doctrine or not stick to a plan when it wasn't working and i think that's something we could

00:50:41.660 all benefit from right you know we got to be comfortable and objective enough with ourselves

00:50:45.880 and our approach to understand when we might have to pivot and attack something from a different

00:50:50.460 direction to make it work i think also the idea of initiative right in in in the 11th airborne that

00:50:57.200 meant always taking the initiative always pushing forward always keeping the enemy off balance

00:51:02.300 whereas i think in our daily life you know always looking for opportunities to stay on the

00:51:06.840 initiative there's always something that we can do to help ourselves to help others

00:51:11.220 and that's certainly within the spirit of that you know always always leaning into

00:51:16.820 a scenario or a task and then finally i would say endurance is another big lesson that i certainly

00:51:23.400 understood from learning more about these guys and by endurance i mean both physically

00:51:27.740 and mentally right i think one of the things that got them through some of that horrible jungle fighting

00:51:32.760 was both their physical and their mental endurance right so staying in shape staying in the game and

00:51:37.720 certainly your podcast gives us lots of tools as far as mental and physical endurance well james has

00:51:44.280 been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your work

00:51:47.400 yeah so the book is available at all the usual suspects you can order it online on amazon or

00:51:53.760 barnes and noble if you want to learn more about me and my work you can go to jamesfenelon.com

00:51:59.760 fantastic well james fenelon thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:52:02.540 thank you brett my guest here is james fenelon he's the author of the book angels against the sun

00:52:07.940 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information

00:52:11.260 about his work at his website jamesfenelon.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:52:15.720 slash pacific paratroopers where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:52:19.620 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:52:30.760 art of manliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:52:34.520 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you'd like to enjoy

00:52:37.860 ad for your episodes of the aom podcast you can do so at stitcher premium head over to stitcher

00:52:41.500 premium.com sign up use code manless to check out for a free month trial once you're signed up

00:52:45.660 download the stitcher app on android ios and you can start enjoying ad for your episodes of the aom

00:52:49.120 podcast and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us

00:52:52.660 review an apple podcast or spotify helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you

00:52:56.580 please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who think we get something out of it

00:53:00.420 as always thank you for the continued support until next time's brett mckay

00:53:03.520 reminding you to not listen to the aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:53:07.700 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Heroic Exploits of WWII’s Pacific Paratroopers

Episode Stats

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript