On December 14, 1944, Japanese soldiers massacred 139 of 150 American POWs. This biography tells the story of Glenn (“Mac”) McDole, one of eleven young men who escaped and the last man out of Palawan Prison Camp 10A. Beginning on December 8, 1941, at the U.S. Navy Yard barracks at Cavite, the story of this young Iowa Marine continues through the fighting on Corregidor, the capture and imprisonment by the Japanese Imperial Army in May 1942, Mac’s entry into the Palawan prison camp in the Philippines on August 12, 1942, the terrible conditions he and his comrades endured in the camps, and the terrible day when 139 young soldiers were slaughtered. The work details the escapes of the few survivors as they dug into refuse piles, hid in coral caves, and slogged through swamp and jungle to get to supportive Filipinos. It also contains an account and verdicts of the war crimes trials of the Japanese guards, follow-ups on the various places and people referred to in the text, with descriptions of their present situations, and a roster of the names and hometowns of the victims of the Palawan massacre.

Retired journalist and reporter Bob Wilbanks was vice president of editorial at Stover Publishing Company for ten years. He lives in Urbandale, Iowa.

Bob Wilbanks
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 179
Bibliographic Info: photos, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2004
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1822-0
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5518-8
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii
Preface      1
Prologue      4

1. Pearl Harbor      5
2. Surrender      20
3. On the Move      30
4. Palawan Island      45
5. Guerrilla Contact      59
6. An Unforeseen Threat      72
7. A Change of Command      84
8. Goodbye to Old Friends      98
9. Air Raid Shelters      105
10. The False Air Raid      112
11. The Swim      124
12. Freedom      134
13. Back Home      148
14. The Men      154
15. The Places      157

Epilogue      159
Sources      165
Index      167

“exceptionally researched and written…valuable…worth reading”—Military Review; “once started, it will be difficult for any reader to put down Last Man Out until the final page is read. Once finished, it will be difficult for any reader to forget the horrors that the American POWs at Palawan endured, or the triumph of the human spirit in the survival of eleven men who were supposed to die on December 14, 1944”—WWII Forums.