In our image, p.52
In Our Image, page 52
MacArthur managed the maneuver from Corregidor, the island citadel at the mouth of Manila Bay, where he had gone on Christmas Eve. The turning point came early in January, after Wainwright’s destruction of a key bridge at the town of Calumpit slowed down the Japanese at the torrential Pampanga River. The retreat was to rank among MacArthur’s glories. General John J. Pershing, neither a MacArthur fan nor inclined toward superlatives, spoke up from retirement at the age of eighty-two to call it “one of the greatest moves in all military history.”
Homma’s errors contributed to the triumph. Wainwright’s route had been congested for miles with refugees on foot or bicycle, in gaudily decorated buses, old jalopies, ramshackle trucks and peasant carts piled high with belongings. But despite his mastery of the air, Homma inexplicably refrained from strafing or bombing the horde—a tactic that would have caused chaos. A prudent officer, he also halted periodically to await supplies rather than maintain his momentum. Wrongly expecting MacArthur to defend Manila, he failed to press rapidly to block the roads to Bataan. By the middle of January, the Americans and Filipinos were inside the Bataan perimeter. His schedule to conquer Luzon in fifty days was severely set back—along with his reputation in Tokyo.
MacArthur also miscalculated badly. After persuading Washington to supplant the Orange Plan with Rainbow Five, his grand scheme to resist from the beaches to the boondocks, he stocked depots throughout the provinces with food, medicine and military equipment. But now the reversion to the Orange Plan required the swift transfer of the supplies to Bataan and Corregidor—an exercise that was to abort dramatically.
The logistical disaster began even before the enemy had landed. Alarmed by rumors of war, railway crews deserted, thus paralyzing the single line from central Luzon to Manila. Jittery troops prematurely evacuated Fort Stotsenburg, near Clark Field, without carrying away or at least destroying its stores of food, weapons and ammunition. Quezon, sensitive to the needs of the population, had induced MacArthur to ban American officers from confiscating food and clothing from warehouses—including those owned by Japanese. MacArthur also enforced a law prohibiting the movement of rice across province borders. So, for example, his quartermasters could not buy rice from a stock of fifty million bushels located at the town of Cabanatuan—a fifth of which, specialists later estimated, would have fed the Bataan garrison for a year.
“If we had something in our bellies,” Wainwright said afterward of the Bataan experience, “things would have been a little more endurable.” His eighty thousand men started their ordeal on two thousand calories a day, and the ration shrank during the months ahead—along with their morale. Hunger drove them to steal or hoard the tiniest scraps, and officers faked rosters to feed their troops. Sam Grashio, there with the remains of his squadron, quickly felt his energy sapped by famine. He foraged for bananas, coconuts and edible roots in the jungle and joined his comrades in killing any animal in sight: chickens, pigs, deer, dogs, cats, iguanas, snakes and water buffaloes, the ubiquitous beast of burden, whose leathery meat was indigestible. Mosquitoes, leeches, lice and flies plagued them—and “hanging over everything,” he later recalled, “were enormous clouds of choking dust and a horrendous stench rising from filth of every variety.” They suffered from malaria, dysentery, scurvy and beriberi. Hit by dengue fever, with its spasms of chills and sweat, Grashio tried to treat himself. “The grimmest places were the field hospitals,” packed with patients who “moaned or screamed in pain from wounds or disease or both, that the medical staff could do little about from lack of drugs and equipment.”
By contrast, MacArthur’s presence had assured Corregidor of supplies to sustain ten thousand men for six months. The island, roughly the size of Manhattan, bristled with coastal artillery and smaller guns, its Malinta tunnel an impregnable cave of storerooms, offices, barracks and medical facilities. It had once been touted as America’s answer to Singapore—a comparison that proved to be unfortunate for both places.
MacArthur had sailed there aboard an interisland steamer on Christmas Eve, along with his wife Jean, their son, Arthur, and the child’s Chinese amah, Ah Cheu. The party included Francis Sayre, the U.S. high commissioner, his wife and her fifteen-year-old stepson. Quezon, after first objecting that he had to “take care of the civilian population,” finally went with Sergio Osmeña, his vice president. Knowing him to be close to the Japanese, he had persuaded José Laurel, then his secretary of justice, to stay behind in hopes of curbing their excesses. He also asked his private secretary, Jorge Vargas, a skilled administrator, to remain as mayor of Manila for the same purpose. Flushed with emotion as he bid them farewell, Quezon said, “Keep your faith in America, whatever happens.” MacArthur warned Laurel not to swear allegiance to Japan—or else, “when we come back, we’ll shoot you.”
He saw “no reason for immediate worry,” MacArthur told Quezon after two weeks on the island, predicting that they could resist for “several months.” As Japanese pressure mounted, he told his troops that “help is on the way,” and exhorted them to “hold until these reinforcements arrive.” But his promises, though intended to boost morale, were either fatuous or deceitful, since he knew the chances of relief to be remote despite the predictable messages of encouragement from Washington. Frustrated by rebuffs, he accused Roosevelt, George Marshall and Henry L. Stimson, the secretary of war, of indifference. His special nemesis was Eisenhower, one of those “faceless staff officers” ranged against him, as he described the War Department bureaucracy. Worse than their misguided pro-Europe strategy, he believed, was their conspiracy to subvert his career.
Eisenhower, rankled by his virtual paranoia, did indeed reproach him—though only privately. MacArthur, he confided to his diary, was “as big a baby as ever” and appeared to be “losing his nerve”—his demands for immediate aid “a refusal … to look facts in the face, an old trait of his.” But Eisenhower worked around the clock on his behalf, noting that “we’ve just got to keep him fighting.” His labors were in vain. Offers of $10 million notwithstanding, few private shippers were willing to run the Japanese blockade of the Philippines. War Department planners figured that to aid MacArthur effectively would take at least seven battleships, five carriers, fifty destroyers, sixty submarines and fifteen hundred aircraft—an effort, even if feasible, that would mean an “entirely unjustifiable diversion of forces from the principal theater, the Atlantic.” Even Patrick J. Hurley, the never-say-die former secretary of war, saw no hope. Sent by Roosevelt to Australia to speed supplies to MacArthur, he admitted, “We were out-shipped, out-planed, out-manned and out-gunned by the Japanese from the beginning.”
Quezon was meanwhile in another of his zigzags—perhaps due to his tuberculosis, which had worsened in the humidity of Corregidor. Like MacArthur, he was becoming increasingly embittered by the delays in American assistance.
He had won a second term as president of the Philippine commonwealth just before going to Corregidor, and MacArthur improvised an inaugural for him there. Standing on a crude wooden platform, his voice cracked by coughing, he extolled MacArthur for “your devotion to our cause, the defense of our country and the safety of our population.” He also broadcast a message to the Filipino soldiers on Bataan, pledging that “America will not abandon us.” But, as the weeks dragged by without help, his trust in the United States waned. After learning that Roosevelt was sending aircraft to Britain, he decried those in Washington who favored Europe, branding them sinvergüenzas—“shameless ones.” “How typically American,” he railed, “to writhe in anguish at the fate of a distant cousin while a daughter is being raped in a back room!”
Hideki Tojo, the Japanese prime minister, had recently offered to respect Philippine sovereignty under a separate peace—a transparent device to drive a wedge between the Filipinos and the Americans. Tempted by the idea, which he had explored before the war, Quezon bounced it off a member of his staff on Corregidor. “Do you expect me to continue this sacrifice? The fight between the United States and Japan is not our fight.… We are not getting protection from those who promised us protection.… We must try to save ourselves, and the hell with America.”
Increasingly despondent, he bombarded Roosevelt with a series of gloomy radiograms. It was senseless, he said in one, for “all these men to be killed when … the shedding of their blood may be wholly unnecessary.” Finally he urged Roosevelt to grant the Philippines immediate independence so he could declare neutrality and “save my country from further devastation as the battleground of two great powers.”
MacArthur later claimed that he had “bluntly” warned Quezon against the illusory notion. In any case, he wrote in his memoirs, Quezon knew it was impractical, and had only intended to “shock” Roosevelt into recognizing his dilemma. As usual, MacArthur revised history. Mercurial but never flippant, Quezon did indeed hope for a deal with the enemy. MacArthur, moreover, had himself endorsed the proposal in a parallel message to Washington, terming it “the sound course to follow.” He could not vouch for the continued loyalty of the Filipinos, whose “temper … is one of violent resentment against the United States.” His own men also faced “complete destruction,” and a cease-fire “might offer the best solution of what is about to be a disastrous debacle.”
Given his heroic view of himself, MacArthur’s approval of Quezon’s willingness to capitulate remains yet another MacArthur mystery. Maybe, as historian Theodore Friend has speculated, he saw it as the only way to save his army, his family and his reputation. He might have conceivably argued that, as a soldier, he had no authority to interfere with Quezon, who as president of the Philippine commonwealth had every right to surrender. Or, endowed as he was with a fertile imagination, MacArthur could have manufactured all kinds of other alibis to justify his conduct.
The messages stunned Stimson as “most disappointing” and “wholly unreal.” He could understand Quezon’s frustrations—but, he noted in his diary, MacArthur was remiss for going “more than half way” to endorse virtual surrender at this “ghastly” juncture. Marshall shared his annoyance, and they promptly conferred with Roosevelt, who listened attentively as Stimson outlined their views like the seasoned lawyer he was, “standing as if before the court.” Roosevelt approved a firm stance and, with Eisenhower’s help, drafted two responses—one to MacArthur and the other to Quezon, both to bear the president’s signature.
They sent MacArthur an exhortation to stand and fight, better suited to “noble Romans” than to “ordinary” Americans, as Stimson later reflected with regret. The men on Bataan should resist as effectively “as circumstances will permit and as long as humanly possible” to delay Japan’s advances throughout the Pacific. MacArthur recanted. He had never meant to allow Quezon to quit, he replied. As for himself, he intended to hold his “present battle position in Bataan to destruction” and then struggle to the finish on Corregidor, where his family would “share the fate of the garrison.”
The message to Quezon was gentler. The present plight of the Filipinos, it warned, was “infinitely less than the sufferings” that awaited them if he struck a deal with Japan. The United States would defend them “to the death” or return to “drive the last remnant of the invaders from your soil” should Bataan fall. Quezon, shifting again, vowed to “stand by America regardless of the circumstances.” As he put it later, he could not “in decency” have been less generous or less determined than Roosevelt, who had promised to save the Philippines through “the sacrifice and heroism of his own people.” So, melted by U.S. influence, he discarded his idea of an accommodation with Japan. Late in February, planning to form a government-in-exile in America, he left Corregidor with his wife and the Sayres. Before boarding the submarine, Quezon slipped his signet ring onto MacArthur’s finger. “When they find your body,” he said morbidly, “I want them to know that you fought for my country.”
On the eve of his departure, he also gave MacArthur half a million dollars and paid smaller legacies to three of his aides as “recompense” for their “magnificent defense” of the archipelago. The sums were transferred to their banks at home from Philippine government funds in the United States. Quezon evidently believed that he owed MacArthur a debt of gratitude in the tradition of utang na loob, which imposes mutual obligations on compadres. But MacArthur’s motive for accepting the gift was puzzling, since he must have known that U.S. Army regulations prohibited officers from taking “emoluments.” He may have been reluctant to offend Quezon, or perhaps felt that the honorarium was due him as a field marshal in the Philippine army—a job he hoped to resume after the war. Or he could have been greedy. Eisenhower, interestingly, declined a similar offer. Underlining the words in an elegant report for the record, he wrote that he told Quezon that it was “inadvisable and even impossible” for him to “accept a material reward for the services performed.” Any “misapprehension or misunderstanding,” he said, might spur gossip, hurt his reputation and damage the war effort. Instead he would welcome a medal, which “would be of great and more lasting value to me … than any amount of money.”
Many of MacArthur’s own men were meanwhile losing faith in his leadership. They resented his self-promotion—as reflected by the fact that two thirds of his hundred and fifty communiqués during the first three months of the war, most of which he personally edited, cited only one soldier, Douglas MacArthur. His aloofness also alienated them. “They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stank. And I loved them,” he subsequently wrote of the Bataan defenders. He later dubbed his personal plane the Bataan, and after the war he reveled in reunions of the “Bataan gang.” Yet, during his seventy-seven days on Corregidor, he visited Bataan only once, in an apparent effort to bolster sagging morale. He was no coward. On the contrary, as reckless as he had been in World War I, he would stand unflinchingly during air raids as shrapnel flew around him—joking that “the Japs haven’t yet fabricated the bomb with my name on it.” Even so, his troops were unmoved. An anonymous GI set a taunting ballad to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:
Dugout Doug’s not timid, he’s just cautious, not afraid.
He’s carefully protecting the stars that Franklin made.
Four-star generals are as rare as good food on Bataan,
And his troops go starving on.
But Roosevelt, always seeking to buoy up support for the war at home, persuaded Congress to award him the Medal of Honor, and overnight he became the “Lion of Luzon,” a living legend. Newspapers ran extravagant reports of his exploits, confected of course under his own supervision, and even the Olympian columnist Walter Lippmann vaunted his “vast and profound conceptions.” Babies, streets, schools and dams were named for him along with the “MacArthur narcissus,” a flower, and the “MacArthur glide,” a dance. An Indian tribe made him an honorary chief, and the University of Wisconsin gave him an honorary doctorate. He was exalted by Democrats despite his conservative views, while Republicans began to consider him presidential. A missionary in Panama discovered that natives there had carved wooden idols of him to ward off evil spirits. The acclaim recalled the enthusiasm generated forty-four years before for Admiral George Dewey, after he defeated the Spanish fleet. The occasions, obviously, were different.
Once again, Eisenhower dissented privately: “The public has built itself a hero out of its own imagination.” But he saw the value of the myth. MacArthur, he wrote in his diary, should be left on Corregidor, where he was “doing a good job” in a situation freighted with “all the essentials of drama.” If he were withdrawn, “public opinion will force him into a position where his love of the limelight may ruin him.”
But Roosevelt had decided by the middle of February to pull him out—not merely for his safety. The Japanese had by then invested Singapore, taken Borneo, landed in Sumatra and were poised to attack Java, the main island of the Dutch East Indies. Ahead lay Australia, whose best troops were loyally fighting for Britain against the Germans in North Africa. Prime Minister John Curtin threatened to bring them home to protect their country unless America bore the burden. Roosevelt accepted. He assumed responsibility for Australia’s defense, named MacArthur supreme army chief for the Pacific and created a separate navy command with Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in charge. It was a momentous decision. The Australians stayed in North Africa, playing a vital role in the German defeat at El Alamein, a victory that saved the Suez Canal for the Allies. And Australia was to dilute its relations with Britain to become intimately associated with the U.S. presence in the Pacific—as it is to this day.
Roosevelt’s order to quit Corregidor posed a dilemma for MacArthur. He had pledged to go down fighting and now, as writer Robert Sherwood observed, he was like a captain abandoning the sinking ship first. But he finally obeyed Roosevelt, asking only that he choose the “psychological” moment to depart. On March 11, 1942, after waffling for more than two weeks, he boarded a patrol boat with his wife, son, the child’s amah and a few aides. They had a harrowing journey, risking capture by Japanese ships to reach Mindanao, whence they flew to Australia. Before leaving, MacArthur entrusted his command to Wainwright, telling him to “hold.”
A week later, while traveling by train across Australia, he stopped at one town and proclaimed to reporters waiting for a statement, “I have come through and I shall return.”
MacArthur’s critics denounced the personal pronoun as yet another symptom of his megalomania, while his supporters marveled at his ability to improvise memorable phrases. His massive ego notwithstanding, MacArthur usually selected his words for a purpose, and his public remarks were seldom extemporaneous. In this case, his pledge had been carefully crafted weeks before by Carlos Romulo, the chief Filipino propagandist on Corregidor. Having anticipated MacArthur’s departure, he had conceived a promise directed at Filipinos. They had long ceased to expect salvation from America, yet their faith in MacArthur was still firm. So, as Romulo put it, “if he says that he is coming back, he will be believed.” MacArthur, after all, was their compadre—and both he and they knew it. Their liberation was to become his primary goal, his obsession, his atonement for having forsaken them.
