Alexander A. Vandegrift’s accomplishments during World War II came near the end of almost four decades of service in the United States Marine Corps.

As General Douglas MacArthur’s campaign on Luzon was underway, news of the Palawan massacre produced a call to action to save thousands of Allied POWs and civilian internees from a similar fate. With the extraordinary assistance of Filipino guerrillas, four daring raids were launched behind Japanese lines to liberate those camps.

Incredibly, a handful of American POWs managed to survive the Palawan massacre and with the aid of Filipino guerrillas reached safety.

As the Allied liberation of the Philippines was underway, Japanese commanders acted on orders to annihilate American POWs rather than allow them to assist enemy efforts, and in December 1944 cruelly executed 139 American POWs on Palawan.

Victory in the largest battle of the Pacific War came 82 days after it began, and the costs were high.

On August 28, 1942, the Detroit Times announced that the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion would receive its own official battle song. Newspapers across the country celebrated the battalion, informally called Carlson’s Raiders after the commander Lt. Colonel Evans Fordyce Carlson, for its successful assault against the Japanese on Makin Island in the Pacific.

At the outset of the Aleutian Islands campaign, 800 native Unangan were removed and interned in squalid camps from 1942 through 1945.

Richard Eugene Fleming not only embodied the concept of a “gentleman and a scholar”- he expanded it to include war hero for his fearlessness in the face of serious risk in the Battle of Midway.