WHis\GMac-HM.DOC
The
General Douglas MacArthur Story, Sad But True!
by Daniel D. Howell, M.A. Ret USMC
General Douglas MacArthur was a pompous, blustery, imperious, egotistical, vain, arrogant man, known as the "American Caesar", who was driven by greed, opportunism and jealousy. F.D.R. privately termed MacArthur's defense of Corregidor "criminal" and Truman called his slogan, "I shall return," a "fiasco."
‘Dougout Doug’ MacArthur with Gen Sutherland
in the bunker on Corregidor, 1st March 1941.
Internationally recognized as a brilliant military strategist and idolized by Filipinos, General MacArthur was a human being who was not infallible. There were four blunders that were costly to him and his troops in the Philippines.
1. MacArthur, in the belief of General Wainwright, should have visited the peninsula of Bataan more than once "to help stimulate the sagging morale."[1] This was probably how the well deserved epithet of "Dugout Doug" was originated by the American troops.
2. MacArthur's delayed implementation of WPO-3.
3. Soon after General Richard Sutherland, MacArthur's chief of staff, broke the bad news to his commarder about the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, (radio operators of the Asiatic Fleet picked up the news at 2:30 in the morning, December 8th Manila time) all hell broke loose. The events of the next few confusing hours sealed the fate of the Philippines. Startled and maybe disoriented by the crisis (MacArthur had insisted war would not come before April), the General locked himself in his office, communicating only through Sutherland. When air force chief Brereton requested permission to launch a B-17 strike against Formosa, the General stalled. By the time MacArthur gave the go ahead (about nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack), waves of Japanese aircraft had descended on Clark Field. In minutes, over half the B-17 bombers and pursuit planes (the strongest American air concentration outside the United States) were destroyed on the ground. [2]
The reasons for MacArthur's delay in approving the strike against Formosa have never been explained to anyone's satisfaction. All the principals offered mutually exclusive accounts. However, sometime later Manuel Quezon told Dwight Eisenhower that when the "Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, MacArthur was convinced for some strange reason that the Philippine Islands would remain neutral and would not be attacked by the Japanese." Fearful that an airstrike would compromise this neutrality, he hesitated to permit Brereton to attack. As a result, "all our planes were still on the ground." The general, perhaps believed his own claim that no nation would dare challenge the Philippines. [3]
Unopposed in the air, the Japanese began landing their main force at Lingayen Gulf, northeast Manila, on December 22. MacArthur and Hart had counted on the submarines of the Asiatic fleet to help stop the invasion. This, too proved a disappointment, failing to sink even stationary ships. (The cause lay in a faulty torpedo mechanism that had never been adequately tested). As for the Philippine Army, it folded in about forty-eight hours, despite the fact it outnumbered the invading force. During the first weeks of war, virtually no one in Washington blamed MacArthur for the success of Japan's air strikes.
4. Just before his departure for Australia, MacArthur excluded the 4th Marines from his recommendation that the defenders be awarded the Presidential Unit Citation on the ground that "the Marines had gotten their share of glory in World war I, and they weren't going to get any in this one."[4]
As soon as they took Manila, Japanese military authorities called upon Filippino officials to remain in their jobs. Leading Filipino officials responded as a reward of early independence with collaboration with the enemy, in which a puppet regime was set up.[5]
Shocked by the collaboration of so many of their friends, Quezon and MacArthur both sought a way to "reaffirm" their allegiance to each other. On January 3, 1942, President Quezon issued a secret Executive Order awarding $640,000.00 in commonwealth funds (on deposit in the United States) to General Douglas MacArthur ($500,000) and members of his staff, including Richard Sutherland ($75,000), Richard J. Marshall ($45,000) and Sidney L. Huff ($25,000). The American commander waited almost six weeks before accepting the award.
In theory, this money represented special payment for services rendered while being Field Marshall of the Philippines. However, it included the period July-December 1941, after MacArthur had reentered active duty. Acceptance, was therefore in violation of army regulations.[6] Historian Carol Patillo, who first uncovered this transaction, thinks that Quezon gave the money as a gift and would confirm his faith in MacArthur and obligate the general to press Washington harder for assistance to the Philippines.
On February 15, MacArthur wired instructions for the War Department to transfer $500,000.00 from the holdings of the Philippine commonwealth to his personal account in a New York bank. Smaller sums went into accounts of the other recipients. Pending confirmation of the transfer, MacArthur asked Manuel Roxas, Quezor's aide, to loan him 1.2 million pesos worth over a half million dollars. (He returned this after the transfer was confirmed). Of all the honors and awards he received this was the only one the General kept secret. Besides implying that he knew nothing about the transaction possibly being illegal, MacArthur's behavior suggested that he never intended to "share the fate of the garrison."[7]
Before MacArthur left Correigidor, George C. Marshall weighed the idea of awarding him a Congressional Medal of Honor as a morale measure. Henry Stimson and Dwight Eisenhower disputed the awarding of this medal to MacArthur. Marshall argued he must find some way to "offset any propaganda by the enemy directed against his leaving his command." A Medal of Honor, the army chief told Stimson, would have tremendous "popular approval" and "constructive morale value."
In mid-March, as the general prepared to leave Corregidor, George Marshall took the initiative of writing a citation based on information supplied by General Richard Sutherland, MacArthur's Chief of staff. It described the commander's bravery in personally supervising defensive and offensive operations on the Bataan Peninsula and referred to his disregard for his own safety while exercising command. At best, this strained the truth since the general had visited Bataan but once. Certainly, the troops there who called him "Dugout Doug" did not share Sutherland's opinion. On March 25, President Roosevelt approved without comment Marshall's recomendation.
In other contexts, Roosevelt made no secret of his disappointment with the general. In March, he told Admiral Thomas Hart that MacArthur had assured Washington he could easily repulse a Japanese attack on the Philippines anytime after December 1, 1941. "If I had known the true situation, "Roosevelt mused, "I could have babied the Japanese along quite a while longer." On April 10, the president discussed the matter with former High Commissioner Frank Murphy, now a Supreme Court Justice. Roosevelt charged that the general had repeatedly misled the War Department about the situation in the Philippines after the Japanese attack. The Philippine Army had actually "dropped out by the hundreds" when fighting began, while the retreat to Bataan and Corregidor was "more a rout than a military achievement.” Why Murphy asked, did FDR approve the Medal of Honor? Roosevelt defended his act-as "pure yielding to Congressional and public opinion." Two years later when asked to sign a special citation for the medal, Roosevelt claimed he could not recall what heroism the award was actually based on.[8]
On 15 January, a week after the troops had reached Bataan, General MacArthur had addressed a message to the entire command. Every unit commander was made personally responsible for reading and explaining the message, and all headquarters were directed to be sure that these instructions were carried out. MacArthur's message to the troops was a promise of aid and a call to valor. It was also a cruel misleading propaganda lie, to try to instill morale into the already disenheartened troops. Like it or not they were nothing more than political pawns that had already been sacrificed by MacArthur and Washington." Help is on the way from the United States," he had said. "Thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched. The exact time of arrival of reinforcements is unknown (what and understatement) as they will have to fight their way through... " Declaring that no further retreat was possible, he asserted that "our supplies are ample" (authors note, most of the supplies that were supposed to have already been in Bataan under WPO-3, were in fact left at Stotensburg, Tarlac, McKinley and Los Banns, according to General Drake), and that it was imperative to hold until aid arrived. [9] Though the message carefully stated that the date of arrival was not known, the hungry men, grasping at every straw and feeling that "Uncle Sam" wouldn't let them down, assumed that it would come soon. As one soldier-poet wrote:
... MacArthur's promise in every mind. The time is secret but I can say that swift relief ships are on the way -- Thousands of men and hundreds of planes - Back in Manila before the rains! with decorations and honors, too. MacArthur said it, it must be true.[10]
After MacArthur got to Australia, a few days later, the Secretary of War declared himself in "shock" over the "emerging problem" of MacArthur. Stimson discovered that when leaving Corregidor the general ordered that all forces remaining in the Philippines should remain under his direct command rather than that of his successor, General Jonathan Wainwrigllt. MacArthur interfered with the War Department's efforts to communicate with the officer it supposed was the new commander. Stimson, among others, considered this a terribly dangerous division of authority. [11]
MacArthur's talk of a major Pacific Offence soon enraged administration officials. Ickes and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy now complained that the general was not "entitled" to the Congressional medal since he had "not been on the field of battle in the fight for the Bataan Peninsula, but stayed under cover at Corregidor." Roosevelt actually ordered the War Department to "make up an incident" to justify the award, McCloy claimed. Roosevelt was so angered at MacArthur that he "seems to have forgotton," Roosevelt noted ,that his record in Manila resembled that of Admiral Kirnmel and General Short who "face court-martial on charges of laxity at Pearl Harbor." MacArthur's leadership at Corregidor was "criminal" not heroic.[12]
Although MacArthur embraced Wainwright at the wars end, he actually opposed efforts to award him a Medal of Honor while he languished as a Japanese prisoner. In 1945, Stimson and Marshall insisted that Wainwright receive the medal.[13]
The defeat in the Philippines had an especially depressing effect on Eisennower, who had both served in Manila and had tried to assist the beleaguered troops there. MacArthur's effort to place the defeat on others enraged Eisenhower. When Corregidor fell, Eisenhower said this in his diary:
Poor Wainwright! He did the fighting in the Philippine Islands, another got such glory as the public could find in the operation........ General MacArthur's tirades to which T. J. [Davis] and I often listened in Manila would now sound as silly to the public as they then did to us. But he’s a hero! Yah. [14]
Eisenhower complained the “newspapers” (MacArthur was writing his own press releases), and the public had created a “hero out of its own imagination.” Everyone expected miracles from MacArthur -- and the general public was demanding the War Department go give him what he wanted to make a miracle. The Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) commander would probably go against the war department and start running his own war, and the whole war effort would suffer and if this happens Ike stated, “We’ll lose this war.”[15]
In an effort to try to censor some of the SWAP “official line” delivered by MacArthur, Time correspondent Robert Sherrod issued a report challenging the “official line” by MacArthur. Sherrod described the general as brooding, aloof, and remote, a “poser and extreme egoist/” MacArthurs staff spoke “bitterly against Roosevelt” claiming that FDR was trying to hold back MacArthur’s political bloom.” Outside of the close circle of “yes” men that MacArthur had surrounding him, headquarters staff, most officers “hated MacArthur almost beyond description.”
MacArthur expressed more concern with planning a new offensive than trying to deal with alleviating the suffering of his captured comrades. [16]
The Japanese resumed their offensive on Bataan on April 3. From Australia, MacArthur ordered the broken men to counterattack. Instead, the ravaged units collapsed. On April 9, over 70,000 sick wounded and starved troops surrendered. MacArthur reacted with rage. arguing that Bataan force should have broken through Japanese lines and begun a guerilla campaign.
The no surrender order issued by Roosevelt for the fighting men on Bataan, still applied when Bataan fell, although Stimson and Marshall had considered revoking it. Roosevelt withdrew his order that the garrison on Corregidor fight to the end. After heavy bombardment, Japanese landing forces established a position on Corregidor on May 06. Later that day Wainwright capitulated.[17]
MacArthur described the Joints Chiefs of Staff as bunglers, know nothings, that were under the thumb of Roosevelt. A colonel General Wilkinson, a British liaison officer who reported directly to Winston Churchill conferred regularly with MacArthur. MacArthur frequently unburdened himself to Colonel wilkinson during the few months of 1942 and into early 1943 when MacArthur felt trapped in Australia, awaiting the outcome of the first offensive in New Guinea. Wilkinson had this to say about the General:
He is shrewd, selfish, proud, remote, highly strung and vastly vain. He has imagination, self-confidence, physical courage and charm, but no humor about himself, no regard for truth, and is unaware of these defects. He mistakes his emotions and ambitions for principles. With moral depth he would be a great man; as it is he is a near miss which may be worse than a mile. His main ambition would be to end the war as Pan-American hero in the form of genralissimo of all Pacific theaters. He hates Roosevelt and dislikes Winston's control of Roosevelt's strategy.
He is not basically anti-British, just pro-MacArthur.[18]
OFFICIAL
RECORDS
Among senior commanders in the Philippines there was a strong desire to justify their conduct of the campaign to their countrymen. This, they realized, could be done only if the record was preserved, and on at least three occasions during the course of the battle precious air and submarine space was set aside so that the most impertant records might be sent back to the United States. The first of these occasions was in February 1942 when General MacArthur sent out by submarine, in the custody of Francis B. Sayre, the High Commissioner, a foot locker filled with personal and "official papers." This foot locker reached the United States safely and was stored in a bank in Washington for the duration of the war. It was then returned, by officer courier, to General MacArthur and remained in his possession. Though its contents were not known, there is reason to believe that the footlocked contained material of value.[19]
What did general MacArthur really have in this foot locker? Why weren't the contents shared with military historians so a more accurate account could have been written about the fall of the Philippines, if indeed the footlocker contained official papers.
The second shipment of records came in April 1942 when General Wainwright took advantage of the presence of two small aircraft on Corregidor to send to General Sharp on Mindanao fifteen packages of records, of undetermined bulk, to be delivered" in person to General Sutherland for forwarding to the Adjutant General, Washington, D.C." Included in this shipment were General Wainwrights diaries and the general staff journals, with supporting documents. [20]
The evidence that these records were received in Melbourne and placed in a vault in General Sutherland's office is indisputable. The seven packages of G-4 records may have reached Washington, for there exist in the files of the Adjutant General eight feet (one file cabinet) of records sent from Corregidor. These records deal only with supply matters. [21]
Assuming that the USAFFE-USFIP records are a part of those sent from Corregidor in April of 1942, the disposition of the remainder of the fifteen packages - the G-2 and G-3 journals, General Wainwright's diaries, and supporting papers (altogether eight packages) remains a mystery. A careful search for these files has been made and Generals MacArthur and Sutherland, assert they had no knowledge of their whereabouts! [22]
The author finds it very difficult to believe that eight packages could just disappear into thin air. Would it have been possible that Generals MacArthur and Sutherland inventoried the G-2, G-3 journals and Gereral Wainwright's diaries and decided it best to have them destroyed, because they contained incriminating or embarassing material, that they didn't want the War department or the general public ever to be privy to? This is a question that we will never have an answer to.
The third shipment of records from Corregidor was by submarine on 3 May, just before the fall of the harbor defenses. There is no description of these records other than the statement that they included "records and orders," but many, if not most of them, were probably finance and personnel records. Their final dispositior is unknown, but it is entirely possible that the eight feet of USAFFE USFIP records already described came from this shipment rather than the earlier one which went to General Sutherland in Australia. If that is so, then all fifteen packages of the second shipment have been "lost." [23]
General MacArthur's taste for the melordramatic, one of his worst faults, actually aided him and his conduct of the Pacific war. Many statements to the press appealed to the American people and helped build the morale in the United States. Most generals would have been fired after the debacle of his handling of Bataan and Corregidor. MacArthur's prose saved his career. He was very popular with the American people and therefore couldn't be dismissed, and because of his comeback many Americans could relate to that and live vicariously through his triumphs. MacArthur's big mistake was not attacking his commander-in-chief on military grounds; it would be his duty to question the wisdom of his political masters when it came to waging war. But it is quite another to attack his President or Joint Chiefs of staff on political grounds. That's why we have an elected president running the country and not a five-star general.
***O***
Excerpts
from American Caesar
by Chester Manchester
Page 186-189
Pacific," and that occupying the islands, even if they could be conquered, would cripple the Japanese strategically.
One correspondent who pressed him hard on this was Hersey. Germany, the General assured the reporter, had instructed Japan not to stir up any more trouble in the Pacific. Rising and pacing, he declared that if Japan did enter the war, the Americans, the British, and the Dutch could handle her with about half the forces they now had deployed in the Pacific, that "the Japanese Navy would be either destroyed or bottled up tight." Stopping in mid-stride, MacArthur vigorously shook his visitor's hand and bade him good-bye. "You go out," Hersev reported, "feeling a little brisker yourself, a little more cheery and more confident about things. What you have heard came, after-all, straight from the man who knows, and lie got it from his wonderful military intelligence."
When the situation worsened -- day by day the tentacles of the Japanese octopus crept farther southward -- MacArthur continued to be serene, though he based his optimism on a new premise. He still insisted that the commonwealth might "achieve a respectable defense and enjoy a reasonable safety if it is prepared and determined to repel attacks classed as adventurous, both in strength and purpose,” and he remained convinced that the tactical difficulties of an overseas invasion were staggering – that there was a “lack of plausible reason for attack” – but now, for the first time, he emphasized the “ultimate responsibility” of the United States for assuring the safety of the islands, describing the small army of the Filipinos as merely a practical reserve for the small contingent of American Forces stationed on this outpost.
The ball is now in Washington's court. And Washington, at last, was preparing to acknowledge it. As early as the Munich Conference, in the fall of 1938, the War Department's War Plans Division had begun wondering the wisdom of a US military buildup in the Philippines. MacArthur had not been told of it on the ground that since the end of 1937 he had been merely an emplovee of the American commonwealth and therefore was not privy to secret information. I-was absurd. Indeed, of all the blunders perpetrated by the United States as the Filipinos awaited the onslaught of the Japanese, one of the worst, in retrospect, was the division of army command until it was too late. On the one hand there was Field Marshal MacArthurs with his native troops. On the other hand there was the Philippine Department: American soldiers and Philippine Scouts, the scouts being carried on the rolls as members of the US Army. Under these circumstances, much depanded on the relationship between the commonwealth's Field Marshal and the US general commanding the Philippine Department, and MacArthur's record for sharing authority was not encouraging.
In tile spring of 1940 he had a stroke of luck. His new opposite number in the Philippine Department Major General George Grunert, an old friend. Bv the end of the summer Grunert was advising George Marshall that the United States should reject "appeasement and catering to Japan" and reporting that the mood in the islands was pessimistic only because of America's "lack of an announced policy backed by visual evidence of defense means and measures." He urged more US officers to train the Filipiiios, more American troops on the islands, and "a reallv strong air force and a strong submarine force both based in the Philippines." Together, he and MacArthur persuaded Quezon to abandon his defeatism and write Washington, requesting a stronger US military presence in the islands. Quezon's letter in October was followed a month later bv another warning from Grunert, who now was less concerned about Philippine gloom than about the possibility that the War Department might be misled over the commonwealths army's state of preparedness. He sent Marshall a newspaper clipping which reported that the commonwealth already, possessed twelve divisions ready for combat. Grunert pointed out that the target date for MacArther's defense plan was six years away, and that his progress was, for reasons over which he had little control, feeble.
Lights were burning past midnight in War Department offices every night now. On October 10 the War Plans Division recommended withdrawal of all U.S. forces in the Pacific east of the 180' meridian. This would have meant sacrificing, not only the Philippines, but U.S. posts on Guam and Wake. It would have entailed forfeiting Manila Bay, the finest anchorage under the American flag in the Western Pacific, commanding the north-south shipping lanes from Japan through the South China Sea. Yet in the context of the time it made sense. The Orange plan had assumed a conflict between just two powers, the United States and Japan. But the present war was global. Already American and British officers were engaged in secret staff talks. The upshot of them was the U.S.-British Commonwealth joint Basic War Plan, or, as it later became known, Rainbow Five. Adopted by Roosevelt's joint Army-Navy Board on June 2, 1941, its basic premise was that in the event of hostilities between the United States and the Axis, the Allies would conquer Italy and Germany first. As for Japan, Allied "strategy, in the Far East will be defensive" because "the United States does not intend to add to its present military strength" there. The Philippines, in short, was being abandoned before the opening shot. No one put it quite that way, and there were no plans for evacuating the Americans in the islands, but that was the gist of it.
Isolationist sentiment being as strong as it was, few Americans, including MacArthur, even knew that the talks were being held. It was just as well. He was sufficiently discouraged as it was. Late each evening he paced the floor of his penthouse library. (Once at 2:00 A.M. a guest in the room below phoned the hotel desk to protest, "Doesn't that guy know what time it is?") He was weighing the future and what role, if any, he would play in it. Grunert agreed with him that the entire archipelago could be defended, and had so informed the War Department. That was good. But the department was assuming that when the conflict came, Grunert would direct the defense of the islands. That, from MacArthur's point of view, was bad. Grunert was a good officer, but the coming struggle would require a military genius. The General in the penthouse had no doubts about the identity of that genius.
Over three years had passed since his retirement. The War Department now regarded him as an outsider. Chief of Staff Marshall, whom he had once exiled to the Illinois National Guard, was a protege of Malin Craig, who was a protege of Pershing -- it was Chaumont all over again. And MacArthur could scarcely have welcomed the prospect of accepting orders from men who had been colonels, or in some instances captains, when he was Chief of Staff. Nevertheless, on February 1, 1941, he moved to reopen his relationship with them. Writing to George Marshall, he pointed out that he had confronted, not only, the task "of preparing the commonwealth for independent defense by 1946, but also the mission given me by President Roosevelt, so to coordinate it’s development as to be utilizable to the maximum possible during the transitory period while the United States has the obligations of sovereignty." The Orange plan, he said, was dead. What was now contemplated was the defense of the Philippines as a "homogeneous unit.” Recapitulating his ambitious program, he estimated that he would soon have about 125,000 troops to fight, supported by aircraft and a naval corps “whose initial striking element will consist of from thirty to fifty, high-speed motor torpedo boats." He believed he could "provide an adequate defense at the beach against a landing operation of 100,000, which is estimated to be the most powerful potential enemy." The keystone of the arch was his intention to block all straits leading to the Philippines' inland sea, thus leaving those waters free for the movement of friendly ships. But he needed more equipment. Among other materiel he wanted shipments of mines, seven twelve-inch guns, twenty-five 155-milimeter guns, ammunition for coast defense guns, and thirty-two mobile searchlights.
Nothing happened. Things were drifting badly. He needed a friend in high places, and as it happened he had a good one: Steve Early, Roosevelt's press secretary. The two men had become acquainted on the eve of World War I when Early, then a young Associated Press reporter covering the War Department, had met Major MacArthur, the department's spokesman. Now in April 1941 the General sent Early a note, suggesting that he explore with FDR the possibility of appointing MacArthur commander of all soldiers, U.S. and Filipino, in the archipelago. At the time this, too, seemed fruitless, though there were a few flickers of interest. On May 21 Grunert invited MacArthur to attend some strategy conferences. That same day Stimson kept an appointment with Joseph Stevenot, a Philippine telephone executive, who urged even closer ties between the two generals in Manila. More important, Stimson wrote in his diary that evening, "Marshall incidentally told me that in case of trouble out there they intended to recall General MacArthur into service again and place him in command." But no whisper of this reached Calle Victoria or the Manila Hotel. The only word which did was unofficial and discouraging. Commissioner J. M. Johnson of the Interstate Commerce Commission wrote the General that, while chatting with Early at a Washington golf club, the commissioner had urged a larger role for MacArthur in the Far East. In Johnson's words, the press secretary had replied that "you had offered your services and a place was sought for you and no suitable place had been found." Concluding that all his efforts had been futile, MacArthur wrote Marshall on May 29 that he had reserved a stateroom on the next ship home. He was going to shut down his Manila operation and move to San Antonio. He sent Early a copy, and this time he got action.
"By, God, it was destiny that brought me here," the General would say of his return to active command. Actually, it was politics. Mark S. Watson, the military historian, has been unable to trace the exact sequence of events which led to MacArthur's return to the U.S. Army, but we know generally what happened. Through Early, MacArthur had a direct pipeline to and from the President. As Watson has noted, MacArthur's May 29 letter to Marshall was "singularly authoritative . . . in it he disclosed a fuller foreknowledge of events than General Marshall himself seems to have possessed." Clark Lee has noted that the General in the Philippines had gone “over Marshall's head to maneuver his own recall and appointment as overall commander in the Philippines at this time. Marshall was considering such action, but MacArthur seems to have forced his hand."
Strong initiatives having come from Manila for the second time, the oval office now responded with equal vigor. Soine men in the War Department might have preferred Grunert at the helm, but the commander in chief wanted MacArthur as his senior soldier in the Orient and the President, like the General, was accustomed to having his way. Channels between the department and the House on the Wall were now wide open, and on June 20 (In his Reminiscences MacArthur incorrectly writes that he received this letter on May 29.) Marshall wrote MacArthur that he and Stimson had "decided that your outstanding qualifications and vast experience in the Philippines make you the logical selection for the Army in the Far East should the situation approach a crisis. The Secretary has delayed recommending your appointment as he does not feel the time has arrived for such action. However, he has authorized me to tell you that, at the proper time, he will recommend to the President that you be so appointed." Marshall added dryly: "It is my impression that the President will approve his recommendation."
But MacArthur was growing more alarmed. American planes scouting the South China Sea repeatedly spotted Japanese troop transports heading south. On July 7 he again wrote Washington, urging the immediate . . . . .
Page 192-193
. . . .weight to the peaceful words of statesmen, but a feverish effort to create them once a crisis is imminent simply provokes attack." Now he himself was engaged in just such an attempt. It was, as he later conceded, "an eleventh hour struggle."
His only relaxation was listening to a daily news broadcast. A few minutes before 12:30 pm he would leave his office -- now dominated by a huge "V for Victory" poster -- and step down one step into a low-ceilinged room next to it. There he would sink into a low, soft armchair. Sutherland would take another chair while a corporal turned on a new Philips radio between them. After the commentator had signed off, the two officers would return to the General's office and briefly discuss the radiocast. Then MacArthur would be on his feet again, stalking back and forth, fingering his necktie, giving orders.
In Manila, as in Washington, speculation centered on Japan's intentions, and cables flew back and forth, exchanging theories. George Marshall thought that Japan wouldn't dare attack the islands; he argued that the risks would be too great. Most others disagreed. Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Stimson believed an invasion was inevitable -- Stimson thought by January 1942. Willoughby guessed it would come in June; MacArthur in April, when the monsoon ended. Optimistic as all ways, the General wrote Marsall that the constructors of barracks were making "excellent progress", that Filipion morale was "exceptionally high," that training had “progressed even beyond expectations" because the trainees were displaying “a real eagerness to learn,” that new airfields were being developed and PT boats expected soon -- that everything, in short, was coming along splendidly.
It wasn’t. On July 26 no reinforcement of the Philippine garrison had been contemplated. Five days later George Marshall had reversed that decision, telling his staff that "it is the policy of the United States to defend the Philippines," and the following day MacArthur had been told that his requirements would enjoy "the highest priority." Yet the buildup was agonizingly slow. On September 26 the President Coolidge tied up at the Manila dock and fourteen companies of American soldiers swung down the gangplank; six weeks later the under strength 4th Mairines arrived from Shanghai. The War Department assured MacArthur that 50,000 more men would land in February 1942, with ammunition for them to be, shipped seven months later, but between the establishment of his new command in late July and the following December 7 his strength was increased bv just 6,083 American regulars. Moreover, only half his Filipino soldiers were stationed on Luzon. The rest of them would prove to be useless, because the scarcity of inter-island shipping was appalling, and to protect it Admiral Tom Hart, MacArthur's naval counterpart, commanded a pitifully weak force: three cruisers, thirteen destroyers, eighteen submarines, and Lieutenant John D. Bulkeley's halfdozen PT boats.
The General's equipment situation was even sorrier. Signs in American defense plants read TIME IS SHORT, and key factories were working three shifts, but as weapons had grown more sophisticated, lead time had also grown. Even after the crates had been delivered to piers in the great industrial ports on America's East Coast, a six-week voyage to Manila lay ahead. It would be November 1 before the 192nd Tank Battalion could sail. Some armored vehicles did reach Luzon, but until late November a third of MacArthur's tank drivers had never even been inside a tank. At the end of October a War Department press release announced: "As a routine strengthening of our Island outposts we are replacing obsolescent aircraft in the Philippines with modern combat planes." The planes referred to were held up in California because of a lack of spare parts; they were to reach the skies over Honolulu on the morning of December 7, just in time to encounter Japanese Zeros. Moreover, much of the ammunition to reach the Philippines in those last months of peace, including 70 percent of the mortar shells, proved to be duds. The Mortars themselves were twenty-five years old; like the obsolete Enfield rifles and the shiny pith helmets, they were symbolic of the pacifism and isolationism MacArthur had fought so hard, and so unsuccessfully, during his years as Chief of Staff.
The only first-class defense fortification in the Philippines, was Corregidor's new hundred-foot-long Malinta Tunnel, with its laterals, ventilators, trolley line, aid stations. and walls of reinforced concrete. However, even the "Rock as the island was known, was vulnerable to cannon salvos from Luzon and to air bombardment. In the entire archipelago there were just two radar sets; to warn Manila of approaching bombers, MacArthur largely, depended upon Filipino lookouts with crude telegraph sets situated on the beaches closest to Formosa. Had Manila understood the significance of such primitive improvisations, the city would have panicked. As it was, an air of unreality prevailed. Hostesses were annoyed when the General sent word that he was too busy to attend receptions. Both Americans and Filipinos were amused by reports that Tokyo was constructing air-raid shelters, and appeared to be indifferent to the fact that Manila was building none. When a thousand Japanese departed after FDR's order freezing their assets, Filipinos crowed. Hersey notes: "Japanese evacuees, like Japanese everything in those days, were funny.”
Washington was just as quixotic. As autumn waned "there was still," Mark Watson observes, "no adequate realization in the War Department of how rapidly time was running out." Neither was there any appreciation of the burdens MacArthur now bore. In September he was loftily instructed by Washington to put aside whatever he was doing and confer with British and Dutch commanders over integrating defenses in the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Port Moresby, Rabaul, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra -- an area larger than the continental United States. Yet not until October did someone in the War Department realize that America's new commander of U.S. Army . . . .
Page 198-199
. . . . It was a question of improvising all along the line. . . . There were no spare parts of any kind for P-40s, nor was there so much as an extra washer or nut for a Flying Fortress. There wasn't a spare motor for either fighter or bombardment planes. There were few tools of any kind available with which an advance depot could begin rudimentary repair and maintenance.
Brereton's most singular mission in MacArthur's service came a week later. He was a key officer. His time was precious. How could it best be spent? Given the state of the archipelago's airfields, he should have made improvement of them his first task. Only two airports could accommodate heavy bombers. The runways at Nichols Field needed lengthening. Run ways near the beaches at Aparri and Vigan in northern Luzon, and at Legaspi in southern Luzon, could be used only for emergency landings. Except at Clark Field, there were no antiaircraft weapons. Brereton was troubled: "Conditions were disappointing. The idea of imminent war seemed far removed from the minds of most. Work hours, training schedules, and operating procedure were still based on the good old days of peace conditions in the tropics. There was a comprehensive project on paper for the construction of additional airfields, but unfortunately little money had been provided prior to my arrival. The construction necessary had to be accomplished through civilian and government agencies of the Philippine Commonwealth."
But instead of setting Brereton to work, correcting all this, MacArthur, goaded by Washington to touch base with future allies, sent him off on an extraordiary airborne odyssey. In less than three weeks the airman zigzagged between Manila, Rabaul, Port Morseby and Autralian airfields at Townsville and Melborne. He flew 11,500 miles, and when he returned he was told not to bother repacking; on December 8 he would be off again on a 5,733 mile journey to Djakarta, Singapore, Rangoon, and Chungking, where he would confer with Claire L. Chennault, Chiang Kaishek's air adviser. The implications of these long treks were lost on the US Navy, refighting the Battle of Jutland, and on the US Army, reliving the Argonne. It appears to have struck no one in Manila or Washington that if American aviators could cover these vast distances, the Japanese could, too.
Brereton's absence was to exact a terrible price. Because he was elsewhere, it was Friday, November 21 before he urged MacArthur to move their B-17s from Clark Field to Del Monte, Well beyond the range of Japanese fighters. The General told Sutherland to see that this was done. Brereton, preparing for his second trip, was unaware that only half the Flying Fortresses had been flown south. In his memoirs MacArthur would write: "I never learned why these orders were not promptly, implemented." It was, of course, his job to know, and he must be faulted for his ignorance. At this stage in his career he was still unaware of the possibilities in the sky. But it was part of his genius that at his age he could still learn.
Two flags flew over his penthouse -- those of the United States and of the Philippine commonwealth -- and his loyalties, as winter approached, were divided between them. He was a serving officer of the U.S. Army, a distant cousin of the American President. At the same time he was the Philippine president's compadre and the first chief of the emerging nation's armed forces. As a world power, the United States was committed to restraining Japanese aggression. But the Filipinos hadn't much more stake in the coming conflict than the Swiss had in the European war. At West Point it had sounded so simple; duty, honor, country. But which country? His situation was not unlike that of those medieval Germans who, after trying to take their own lives, discovered that the penalty for attempted suicide was death. Having made his commitment in Manila, he was trapped. There was no way out for him, no light at the end of his tunnel. He was in checkmate.
He was also surrounded. Japanese guns were pointed at him from every direction. They held Indochina to the west, the islands the Versailles treaty had mandated to them to the east, Formosa and the Chinese coast to the north, and the waters to the south. MacArthur was not concerned about his own safety. His record in France had demonstrated that he was absolutely fearless. But now he was responsible for a wife, a son, and an army, and over fifteen million Filipino civilians. He would have been inhuman if he had not prayed that the Japanese would bypass these lovely islands and treat them as neutrals. As he explained it after the war to Dr. Louis Morton, the official army historian, the Philippines, while a possession of the U.S., had, so far as war was concerned, a somewhat indeterminate international position in many minds, especially the Filipinos and their government." George Marshall, suspecting his dilemma at the time, warned him that he should move against the enemv when "actual hostilities” commenced, rather than await a declaration of war. The Japanese drive into China, he reminded him, bad not been preceded by a formal declaration. Tokyo had a long history of launching surprise attacks. To give MacArthur complete freedom, the Chief of Staff authorized him to fly reconnaissance missions beyond Philippine waters. Yet when the British asked the General to send a B-17 over Camaranh Bay -- where, they rightly suspected the Japanese were massing forces for invasions of Siam and Malaya -- MacArthur replied that his War Department orders prohibited him from complying.
It scarcely mattered. The huge Nipponese convoys could not escape detection. Merchant ships sighted them, and so did P-40s on routine patrols of the South China Sea. The future looked very bleak. In Washington peace talks between Secretary Hull and two Japanese diplomats had broken down. Hull had told them that the administration wouldn't unfreeze Japanese assets until Japan evacuated China and Indochina . . . . .
MacArthur Paper Footnotes