Sundial POW Rescue Monument, Cabanatuan, 2023
Hours of the Great Rescue (Cabanatuan. The Great Raid)
This is the Historical Sundial Monument and Museum of the greatest Military Rescue Mission in WWII by Filipino Guerrillas and American Special Forces.
According to a website on April 6, 2003, the Nueva Ecija Provincial Government inaugurated a second memorial on a piece of land adjacent to the U.S.-maintained memorial.
In 2008 I visited the monument; it was still in pretty good shape, took these 53 images and posted them in these two venues:
app.photobucket.com/u/PI-Sailor/a/b7b06506-7aa5-49d0-b681-3fd3c6e8077a?field=TITLE&desc=asccorregidor.proboards.com/thread/1090/cabanatuan-pow-rescue-memorials?page=5On the 4 Oct. 2023 I visited again, sadly I have to report, that I found the monument site in a pretty much neglected condition and I took these 46 pictures and posted them here in my Photobucket account:
app.photobucket.com/u/PI-Sailor/a/23519dd3-538c-4967-8cf3-9c868879adc2?field=TITLE&desc=ascFor this Forum presentation I chose these 11 images:
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-#00 and #01 images are of a marker, just inside the Cabanatuan American Memorial, from the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor which say that this place was once a site of the 91st Div. Philippine Army. #00 image gives you a good view of the Philippine Great Raid Monument ground which is directly next to the drive way to the American Memorial. #01 image is a 2008 image of description of the marker, which today in 2023 is hard to read now.
No. 00.
No. 01.
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-#02 to #07 images are images of the Philippine Cabanatuan Sundial Monument of the Greatest Military Rescue Mission in WWII. The pictures are of the Commemoration Markers, the ground and a picture of the front of the memorial along the Cabanatuan-Aurora Road.
No. 07.
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-#08 to #25 images are the hour displays, the graph and the description which describe the Great Raid, hour by hour. Compared how they looked in 2008, as you can view them in the above URL, they are much harder to view now because of age and some paint marks.
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-#20 and #21 are of the 7PM Hour Marker; the plaque is gone! #21 images is of that plaque, shot in 2008 during my visit then. Why is that the only plaque that is gone?
No. 20.
No. 21.
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-#26 to #36 images are of the name-wall on top of the museum structure, The wall has the names of the of all the guerrillas that participated in the Great Raid and received the Bronze Star. On both sides of the wall at the high end were sculpture art displays but they are gone now. #27 image is from 2008 and shows one of those two sculpture art display.
No. 26.
No. 27.
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-#37 to #40 images are shots from on top of the museum structure of the grounds the Philippine Cabanatuan Sundial Monument; all are from the highway side of the monument grounds. In #40 image, in the very center of the image, one sees the entrance to American Memorial with the marker placed there by the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.
No. 37.
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-#41 to #45 images are of and inside the museum structure which on top houses the Hour Markers and the Wall of Honor, and some shots are from the top of the museum. Image # 41 is in the direction of the American Memorial. Image #42 shows that in this area of the memorial ground, the fence is gone! Image #43 seems to me, that a residence has been built on the memorial ground. Images #44 and #45 show the inside of the museum, empty, not secured and with water damage. That is very sad, shouldn’t the Filipinos be awful proud of the Great Rescue with all the important parts they played and without them it would not have been possible? It was a great demonstration of a FIGHT FOR FREEDOM!!
No. 42.
No. 44.