Friends
My Army friend left out the Navy in this story.
The PALAB complex, I'm sure, was the former US Navy Communication Complex with a huge antenna fields and had modern facilities for communication personnel and the US Marine security. It was the link between Viet Nam and the Pentagon. A cable run from Viet Nam to Subic and the Santa Rita Mountain was a link between those two points. The transmissions and receipt of messages were from the US Navy Communication Facility Camp O'Donnell.
(2014-07-29 NOTE FROM KARL, I GOT THAT WRONG, IT WAS THE AIR FORCE CAMP O’DONNEL, NOW I KNOW THAT THE NAVY TOOK OVER THE POW CAMP O’DONNELL AND THAT IS WHERE THE HUGE ANTENNA FIELD WAS)
During the Base negotiation (1991/1992), the NPA ambushed a car with US civilian communication employees and killed 3 or 4 of them. This was in this Capas area.
A Wikipedia pic of that area is attached and I know the area very well, been there about 10 times. I explored this area in the mid 90s when one was free to do so.
Then came Dick Gordon as the Tourist Secretary, told the last village there (Santa Juliana) don’t let anyone thru without hiring a guide and asked the existing RP Air Force outpost there ( guarding and closing the bombing range when in use) to enforce it.
Notes to the numbers on the pic.
1) Was the hill where the Bombing Range Control was and is, now run by the RP Air Force. Been there, it is only manned when in use. I was denied access to this O'Donnell river once because they were using it. That guard post ( at Santa Juliana, where one enters the river bed and bombing range is manned all the time to make sure the tourists have guides). That irks me of course because I can show the guides where to go and I explored this area freely before Dick Gordon came along.
2) Is the crossing to Zambales, that is where the road from Capas (in Tarlac) runs to Botolon (in Zambales) portions of that dirt road still exist. Explored this area 3 times and found the road and been across to Zambales 3 times. One time 2 armored vehicles gave us a ride to this point and we made the Tarlac to Zambales crossing in record time-9 hours. One time we came to the Air Force check point and they stopped us because of an 'encounter' between the RP Army and the NPA on the Zambales side.
3)Is the O'Donnell river and is now the easiest route to Mount Pinatubo. When one travels it now it doesn't look that forbidding. Been there 3 or 4 times. One parks in the river bed about even where the number 5 is and it takes me nearly 3 hours to reach the crater from there. It is a relative easy to a moderate hike. Fitter people can reach it in less than 2 hours.
4)This is my believe only but I heard, thru Korean money and effort, a new route has been developed to Mt. Pinatubo this way. Into that smaller valley and then continue on top of that lahar flat area to the right. That saves more walking time and from the end of the new Korean route one walks only an hour to the crater. On Google Earth one can see a road track now.
(2014-07-29 NOTE FROM KARL: YES THAT ORGANIZATIN EXISTED, I USED IT AND IT IS DISCONTINUED, PERHAPS THE DEATH OF SOME VISITORS CAUSED IT TO BE CLOSED)
5) Been on top there and looked in the next valley; where I made my arrow to, one can see, a lot of the area, up to that point is used by people for agriculture purposes. Below the 5, on the O'Donnell River side is a village, been there two times. All the Air Force bombing target facilities are buried under the lahar of Mt. Pinatubo except the control facilities at '1'
Don't know, but I think, where I found the US Military boundary marker, near the entrance to the former POW camp and now the shrine, everything west of there was considered once, one huge Military Training area, since from before WWII.
Karl