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National Archives Photo NH 73459


The entrance to Naval Base Mariveles after the fall of Bataan.

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On 24 December Lieutenant Colonel Donald Curtis, the regimental executive officer, was directed to move Lieutenant Colonel "Red" Anderson's 2d Battalion to Mariveles without delay Curtis began work at once. At 1800, 24 December, Captain Benjamin L. McMakin, Company F commander, called his officers and noncommissioned officers together and said simply, "Gentlemen, it is Christmas Eve. We move all night." The 2d Battalion boarded trucks and began the move to Mariveles at 2000 with truck convoys continuing for the following two days and nights to move the regimental ammunition and equipment. As night fell on 26 December all personnel, equipment, and supplies were in place in the jungle near Mariveles.

Admiral Rockwell ordered a detail of Marines under Major Frank P. Pyzick to destroy the Olongapo Navy Yard. At the first blast of explosives, the power plant engineer cut off all power to the Yard and disappeared. All demolition work came to a stop until a Marine working party restored power to detonate the remaining explosive charges. The obsolete cruiser USS Rochester was towed into Subic Bay and sunk by depth charges blowing open her hull. The PBY ramp was destroyed and all aviation fuel and submarine supplies were burned.

"The hard part," remembered Private First Class Wilbur M. Marrs, "was destroying all the footlockers that had the deep carved chests inside filled with ivory jade, silk robes, and other souvenirs" that were carefully brought out of Shanghai. Marrs later wrote, "Buildings and equipment that were not blown up, we poured fuel on, including these footlockers." All structures, except for the main building of the Marine Barracks, were left in flames as the Marine detachment departed the Navy Yard for the last time at 1900, 26 December.