While the 11th Airborne Division was still outside Lipa on Luzon in early August of 1945, GEN MacArthur asked Major General Joseph Swing to form part of his Honor Guard for Japan from the 11th Airborne's troopers. General Swing passed word to his regimental commanders in the 511th and 188 PIRs and the 187th GIR to select their best troopers for the duty, with the stipulation that each trooper must be over 5’11”.

SSGT Wilbur Wilcox, a friend of my grandfather’s from D-511, said:

“The qualifications for the Honor Guard were height and combat experience. As the tallest Staff Sergeant picked, and because I had been through Leyte and Luzon, I was placed as the first man in the first rank. As the other men were picked to fill out the squad they were placed according to how tall they were.” Each regiment supplied one platoon of five squads led by two officers with sixty-six enlisted men that would guard MacArthur at the Atsugi airfield, during the surrender signings, at his Yokohama HQ (the five-story New Grand Hotel), his residence at the Sun Oil Company compound and at his home at the U.S. Embassy.

After my grandfather 1LT Andrew Carrico of Company D passed away in October of 2016, my beloved grandmother Jane gave me some of his books on military history and leadership. They are a special part of my collection, but the funny thing is....Grandpa really disliked some of them. He was painfully aware of just how few of the tens of thousands of books published on World War II even mention the 11th Airborne Division, let alone his proud 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment (you can likely count them on two hands)

When Grandma shared Grandpa's books with me, she pointed to one with a smile and said, "Andy hated that one. It doesn't even mention the 11th." And as a historian for the 511th PIR, and the 11th Airborne as a whole, I have to agree with Andy. While researching, writing and publishing WHEN ANGELS FALL: FROM TOCCOA TO TOKYO, THE 511TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY IN WORLD WAR II, I found myself disappointed by the lack of media coverage regarding the Angels' history (I admit to some bias there).

One of the most important aspects of the Angels' history that is hardly mentioned anywhere is their incredible landings at Atsugi, Japan between August 28-30, 1945. Apart from further cementing the reality of the war's end, this made the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment the first fully-formed foreign regiment to land on Japan in the country's long history, not to mention the first Allied unit into Japan at the war's end.