Lieutenant Albert Bacon Fall Chase
Bronze Star
Albert Bacon Fall Chase, grandson of Albert Bacon Fall, was born in 1918 and raised in El Paso TX, and Tularosa NM, often working on his grandfather’s Three Rivers ranch north of town. After graduating from Tularosa HS he enrolled at NMAMC in the fall of 1936. He stayed in school until he entered the U.S. Army in 1940 with an ROTC commission. As were many New Mexico troops, he was sent to the Philippines in 1941, where he trained native troops on Los Negros for the Philippine Scouts, 73rd Regiment. They fought on Mindanao, where Chase earned his Bronze Star in the defense of the Bacolad crossing, until they were surrendered to the Japanese on May 27, 1942. Chase was a prisoner of war in Camp No. 2, at Davao, Mindanao for two and a half years.
After being assigned as part of the LaSang Airfield detail and with American forces nearing the islands, Lt Chase and 750 others were marched shoeless to the Tabunco pier on August 19, 1944.
On August 20, 1944 they were crowded into the holds of the Erie Maru. Late in the afternoon of August 24, the ship arrived in Zamboanga harbor on the southwest corner of Mindanao.. After ten days of waiting in the harbor, still subject to occasional allied air attacks, they were transferred to the Shinyo Maru on September 4 and on September 5 the Shinyo Maru left harbor taking a zig zag path up the western coast of Mindanao as part of a convoy of seven ships.
Awaiting the convoy of Japanese ships was the USS Paddle who had been informed that the Shinyo Maru carried Japanese troops. Late in the afternoon of September 7, 1944 the submarine found its prey and fired two torpedoes that both hit amidships. As the survivors attempted to flee the holds they were fired upon by Japanese machine guns from both the Shinyo Maru and the other ships nearby. Thirty of those that did make it into the water and then gave themselves up to a Japanese patrol boat were executed with a shot to the back of their head the next day for attempting to escape. Of the 750 allied prisoners on board the ship, only 83 survived to swim to shore and were rescued by Philippine guerillas operating in the area. Lt Albert Bacon Fall Chase was 25 years of age at the time he was lost at sea.. He is memorialized on the Manila American Cemetery Tablet of the Missing.