OBITUARIES - Jan. 19, 2009

Robert Prince, 89, who led an Army Rangers raid during World War II that freed 571 inmates from a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines, died Jan. 1 at his home in Port Townsend, Wash.

Prince was a captain in the Army when he was chosen by Lt. Col. Henry Mucci to lead 120 Rangers, Army Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas to rescue prisoners of war from the Japanese prison camp near Cabanatuan in the Philippines. Prisoners at the camp, many of them survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March in 1942, had endured years of abuse.

Prince and Mucci received the Army’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest decoration for valor after the Medal of Honor, for their actions in the January 1945 raid.

The operation against the Japanese camp became the subject of a 2005 movie, “The Great Raid.” Prince served as a consultant during the filmmaking.

A native of Seattle, Prince graduated from Stanford University. After the war, he returned to the Pacific Northwest and settled in Wenatchee, Wash., where he became a marketer of apples, retiring as president of Gwin, White and Prince Inc.