But that’s not what happened—not even close. “The sight which met us was unbelievable” is how a Japanese pilot remembered his arrival over the Philippines.4 “Instead of encountering a swarm of American fighters diving at us in attack, we looked down and saw some sixty enemy bombers and fighters neatly parked along the airfield runways.” MacArthur’s planes were not in the air, and they were certainly not on their way to Taiwan. They were on the ground, lined up in rows.
The astonished Japanese pilots dropped their bombs.
*
MacArthur had gotten the Hawai‘i news. The phone rang in his penthouse atop the Manila Hotel at 3:40 a.m., Philippine time. He dressed and rushed to headquarters.
But what happened next is impossible to say. For hours, it appears, MacArthur did practically nothing. His air commander visited MacArthur’s headquarters twice in desperate bids for a meeting but saw only MacArthur’s closed office door. Repeated warnings from Washington went unacknowledged; direct orders were ignored.
Had MacArthur gone catatonic? Was he playing some devious (yet ineffectual) game? MacArthur’s biographer found his behavior “bewildering.”5 It’s a “riddle,” the biographer wrote, “and we shall never solve it.”
Whatever the cause, the effect was catastrophe. The Japanese struck sometime after noon, nine hours after MacArthur’s phone had rung. “We could see our beautiful silver Flying Fortresses burning and exploding right before our eyes as we stood powerless to do anything about it,”6 one B-17 navigator wrote. In hours, MacArthur lost eighteen of his thirty-five B-17s and some ninety other aircraft. Many of his remaining planes were badly damaged. His air commander regarded it as “one of the blackest days in U.S. military history.”7
Before the attack, MacArthur’s air force had been incomplete. Now it was inoperable.8 The Japanese returned again and again, and MacArthur could do nothing. They, not he, had command of the air.
It was 1898 and the Battle of Manila Bay all over again. Except now the United States was in Spain’s place: the distant empire losing its fleet in a single day.
With the best hope for an Allied defense of the Pacific knocked out in one quick blow, the Japanese made brisk work of the rest. Guam fell on December 10, Thailand on the twenty-first, Wake Island on the twenty-third, and Hong Kong on Christmas Day. New Year’s Day saw Manila succumb. Then came the other great colonial capitals of Asia: Singapore on February 15 (the “worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history,”9 Winston Churchill moaned), Batavia on March 5, and Rangoon on the eighth. In three breathtaking months Japan had brought the Dutch, British, and U.S. empires in the Pacific to heel.
MacArthur may have lost his B-17s, but he still had his army, which, counting reservists, was 150,000 strong. Yet those barely armed and undertrained reservists were wholly unprepared to face seasoned Japanese troops. Many simply vanished; in two weeks, the North Luzon Force shrank from 28,000 to 16,000.10 The troops that remained still outnumbered the first wave of Japanese invaders on Luzon, but that didn’t matter. MacArthur’s army fought Japan with all the efficacy (as a journalist put it) of a slab of oak fighting a buzz saw.11
MacArthur abandoned the fight and concentrated on maneuvering his men on Luzon to the relative safety of the Bataan peninsula. It was a back-pedaling waltz: engage, fall back, dynamite the bridge, repeat. The difficulty was that it was to be danced over long distances (184 bridges destroyed in all) by two of MacArthur’s deteriorating forces at once, and all to the accompaniment of enemy fire. Oddly, it was here, in retreat, that MacArthur proved his worth as a commander. The maneuver was by all accounts beautifully executed. General Pershing called it “a masterpiece,12 one of the greatest moves in all military history.”
With his crumbling army converging on Bataan, MacArthur declared Manila an “open city.” As of January 1, he would leave it entirely undefended, meaning the Japanese could enter in peace. But before the Japanese took the city, U.S. forces salted the earth. They set oil depots aflame and destroyed the city’s main bridges—bridges that the government had built with great pride (and with Filipinos’ taxes).
“It was hard to believe that our military situation had become this desperate,”13 one Manilan remarked as he watched the large pillars of black smoke rise over the city.
Once again, as in the days of Cameron Forbes, the whole top layer of government abandoned Manila. But this time it didn’t go to Baguio, which had also been attacked (five bomb craters dotted the Baguio Country Club’s golf course).14 Instead, it fled to Corregidor, an island fortress in Manila Bay a little smaller than Lower Manhattan.
If Baguio was an open-air spa, Corregidor was a claustrophobic bunker. More than ten thousand service members and leading politicians crammed into deep tunnels carved from the island’s rock. The money was there, too, since Roosevelt had ordered the high commissioner to empty the banks. In all, it was a strange scene: Japanese bombs pounding the earth overhead, MacArthur’s three-year-old son marching up and down the tunnels singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,”15 and a dragon’s hoard—some 5.5 tons of gold,16 150 tons of silver pesos, and millions in U.S. bills—just sitting there, glimmering.
Bataan was a more sober sight. From a military perspective, the peninsula was a promising place for siege defense. But to survive a siege, you need food, and there was nowhere near enough to feed eighty thousand troops and twenty-six thousand civilian refugees.17 The men ate half rations in January; by March,18 they were lucky to get quarter rations. They foraged desperately, picking clean the area around them. They ate horses, dogs, pack mules, iguanas, snakes, and monkeys19 (“it looked like roast baby,”20 a nauseated soldier remarked). One sergeant tried eating cigarettes.21 Unsurprisingly, disease flourished: dysentery, malaria, hookworm, and, that reliable indicator of prolonged nutritional deficiency, beriberi.
“There are no atheists in fox holes” is a familiar wartime proverb,22 conveying the desperation of frontline combat. It was coined, as it turns out, on Bataan.
*
Had the siege of Bataan pitted Japan against the United States, it would have been dramatic enough. But three-quarters of MacArthur’s men there were Filipino. The siege thus layered political questions atop military ones. Would the Filipinos fight for their empire? And would their empire fight for them?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated his position clearly enough. “I give to the people of the Philippines my solemn pledge that their freedom will be redeemed and their independence established and protected,”23 he said in a message to the colony. “The entire resources, in men and in material, of the United States stand behind that pledge.”
Those were strong words. Yet they were also, when examined closely, vague ones. Philippine freedom would be “redeemed,” yes, but didn’t that imply it would first be lost? Also, the president had said nothing about when this would happen. Immediately after making the statement, Roosevelt sent his press secretary, Steve Early, to clarify its timeline. Early scolded journalists for reading “too much of the immediate rather than the ultimate” into the president’s pledge.24 “You must consider distances,” he pleaded.
But Filipinos took the promise seriously. Rumors circulated of a massive convoy, miles in length, brimming with food and equipment, on its way. “In our mind’s eyes we saw the vast fleet of steel gray ships steaming toward us,25 their bows cutting the waves sending up a multi-colored spray,” a Filipino officer on Bataan recalled. Even MacArthur believed that Washington was preparing a relief effort.
Yet only a trickle arrived, and as the weeks dragged on, hope turned to rage. It was a feeling that Japanese propagandists seized upon. They dropped leaflets on the starving troops, targeting the Filipinos. “Our fight is not with you but with America,”26 one said. “Surrender, and we will treat you like brothers.” The Japanese promised the Philippines independence. They dropped menus from the Manila Hotel,27 which had the compound effect of redoubling Filipinos’ hunger pangs and reminding them of the whites-only high life that mainlan
ders had enjoyed.
Emilio Aguinaldo took to the airwaves, urging his compatriots to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Japan. When interrogated about this after the war, he was unrepentant. Japan had always supported his cause, he pointed out. “It was only the Americans who betrayed me.”28
It didn’t help MacArthur that Filipinos could hear all of Roosevelt’s speeches, not just the ones aimed at them. They heard him stress the German enemy over the Japanese one. They heard his firm resolve to defend England.
Barely a week after pledging all the United States’ resources to Philippine defense, Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address. “It was bitter for us not to be able to land a million men in a thousand ships in the Philippine Islands,”29 he said. (Wait, why is he using the past tense? Filipinos surely asked.) But, he explained, “we have been faced with hard choices.” An attack on Japan would come “in proper time.”
Manuel Quezon vibrated with anger. “I cannot stand this constant reference to England,30 to Europe. I am here and my people are here under the heels of a conqueror,” he exclaimed. “How typically American to writhe in anguish at the fate of a distant cousin while a daughter is being raped in the back room.”
MacArthur, too, was incensed. The Philippines—the site of his father’s glory, his adopted home—was being treated as a sacrifice zone.
MacArthur enlisted the Manila newspaperman Carlos Romulo to put a better spin on things. Romulo was one of the most influential writers in the colony—he would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize and become president of the United Nations General Assembly. From Corregidor, Romulo operated a radio station, the Voice of Freedom. Its goal was not just to counter Japanese propaganda but also, as one of MacArthur’s top aides put it, “to erase the unfortunate effect of the Europe-centered voices that came drifting through the air from America.”31 Help was coming, Romulo promised. Whatever it sounded like, help was coming.
But Quezon didn’t believe that, and as he stewed, he came to appreciate the logic of Aguinaldo’s position. “This war is not of our making,”32 he pointed out in a cable to Washington. What right did the United States have to drag the Philippines into a war and then abandon it? Why was Washington defending an imperialist power, Britain, while letting its own people perish? “While enjoying security itself,”33 Quezon told Roosevelt, “the United States has in effect condemned the sixteen millions of Filipinos to practical destruction.”
Quezon demanded immediate independence.34 That way, he reasoned, he could declare neutrality and negotiate to have both Japan and the United States withdraw their forces. MacArthur endorsed the plan, warning Roosevelt that “the temper of the Filipinos is one of almost violent resentment against the United States.”35
Now it was Roosevelt’s turn to be irate. “You have no authority to communicate with the Japanese government,”36 he scolded Quezon. “So long as the flag of the United States flies on Filipino soil,”37 he promised, “it will be defended by our own men to the death.”
“To the death” was not just stirring rhetoric; it was the likely outcome. The Roosevelt administration had already agreed with Britain on a “Germany first”38 strategy for the war, which meant prioritizing Europe. The acknowledged price of that strategy was letting Japan take the Philippines. Was the United States truly willing to see that happen? Churchill asked. The secretary of war, a former governor-general of the Philippines, re-assured him: “There are times when men have to die.”39
In March, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur, Quezon, and other top-ranking officials out of the Philippines. The colony was being abandoned.
First, though, the Corregidor headquarters would have to be scuttled. The gold was sneaked out, at night, to a waiting submarine, which took it to San Francisco. The paper currency was incinerated to keep it out of Japanese hands. (“Guess what I learned after burning ten million dollars?”40 one officer said. “That Jackson twenties burn faster than Lincoln fives.”) The 150 tons of silver pesos, too bulky to move, were dumped into a secret spot in Manila Bay—a tantalizing challenge for future treasure hunters.41
Quezon gave Douglas MacArthur half a million dollars from the Philippine treasury—a reward for services rendered.42 MacArthur, as an officer in the U.S. military, was forbidden to accept it, but he did anyway. Quezon and MacArthur set off for Australia, with Romulo trailing after them.
“I shall return,” MacArthur promised.
The troops on Bataan, though, went nowhere. The song they sang captured their plight vividly:
We’re the battling bastards of Bataan:43
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam,
No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces, No rifles, no guns or artillery pieces,
And nobody gives a damn.
*
Inevitably, the Bataan defenses collapsed, though more from starvation than from combat. The Japanese marched the captured troops, Filipino and mainlander alike, great distances to internment camps—the infamous Bataan Death March. Thousands of Filipinos and hundreds of mainlanders died en route, some executed by the Japanese, others simply keeling over.
It was as if the “world was standing on its head,” wrote a Filipina who watched this. “The Americans, rulers and idols for as long as we could remember,44 were turned overnight into unshaven, shambling wretches.”
Yet in mainlanders’ eyes, the whites who had faced Japan were heroes, MacArthur most of all. While the generals in charge of Hawai‘i on December 7 were relieved of their commands and subjected to repeated investigations, MacArthur got a Medal of Honor for his “gallantry and intrepidity.”45 Congress declared June 13, 1942, to be Douglas MacArthur Day, and button makers sold macarthur for president pins.
“All the people I know think God comes first and then MacArthur,”46 a shop owner in San Antonio told a reporter. A housewife in Hollywood felt the same: “I’ve never wanted to sin in my life, but I would with that man.”
A book about MacArthur’s defeat, W. L. White’s They Were Expendable (1942), became a hit—the first time a book about the Philippines had ever landed on the bestseller list.47 The director John Ford, for what was then the highest directorial salary in Hollywood history,48 made it into a movie starring John Wayne and Robert Montgomery.
It wasn’t the only movie. The “Bataan film” became its own genre. There was Bataan, Texas to Bataan, Corregidor, Manila Calling, So Proudly We Hail, Salute to the Marines, Cry “Havoc,” Air Force, and Somewhere I’ll Find You. Finally, after years of ignoring the Philippines, mainlanders were paying attention.
Carlos Romulo saw an opportunity not to be missed. He frantically toured the mainland, speaking in an astonishing 466 towns and cities in two and a half years.49 Everywhere his message was the same: Filipinos weren’t foreigners, they were family—and they needed help. The titles of two books he published during the war highlighted that kinship: Mother America and My Brother Americans.
Romulo’s favorite topic was Bataan. He noted that the soldiers there referred to themselves not as Americans or Filipinos, but as “Filamericans.”50 This put him in mind of Rudyard Kipling and of Kipling’s famous verse “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
“How I wished he had been with us on Bataan!”51 Romulo mused. “I should have liked showing him miles of fox holes piled with American and Filipino bodies and asked him to repeat over that mingled flesh ‘never the twain shall meet.’”
For Romulo, Bataan was the story of Filipinos sacrificing themselves for the United States. Yet that’s not how Hollywood saw it. Although the title of the film They Were Expendable accurately captured the Filipinos’ plight, the titular “they” referred to the whites in the Philippines—the John Wayne and Robert Montgomery types. In his soliloquy, Wayne’s character mourns Bataan and the “thirty-six thousand United States soldiers”52 stranded there, “trapped like rats but dying like men.” Actually, there were easily more than twice that many U.S. soldiers trapped on Bataan. It’s just that the other ones were F
ilipinos.
The films were incorrigible on this score. The stars were white, the writers were white, and the tragedies they acted out befell white people: soldiers, sailors, doctors, and nurses. Even the stereotype-shattering Bataan, a heroic tale of a racially mixed patrol (a young Desi Arnaz played a Mexican American), had only one speaking Filipino character, a Moro who used broken English and walked around shirtless. In other films, Filipinos served largely as scenery.53
Romulo, seeing this, tried to get cast in a Bataan movie. His idea was to play not some half-mute native helpmeet,54 but himself: an English-speaking, Ivy League–educated, decorated colonel in the U.S. Army. He didn’t get the part, though. There was no such part.
In a despondent moment, Romulo confessed to being “shocked and horrified”55 by mainland indifference to the Philippines. Washington seemed to him to be “crowded with little Neros,56 each fiddling away blithely” while the empire burned.
*
While Carlos Romulo implored mainlanders to remember that Filipinos were “Americans,” too, the Philippines was turning into a different kind of place. The all-white clubs now catered to Asians. The bartender at the Baguio Country Club stopped making mint juleps and started pouring sake—it was a Japanese officers’57 club. MacArthur’s penthouse in the Parsons-built Manila Hotel was preserved as a tourist attraction.58 The Leonard Wood Hotel,59 though, became a brothel.
Taft Avenue, Dewey Boulevard, Fort McKinley, and Burnham Green all got Japanese names. This happened throughout the empire, as Western names were replaced. Batavia became Jakarta, Singapore became Syonan, Manchuria became Manchukuo, Guam became Omiya Jima, and Wake became Odori. There was talk of renaming the Philippines, too. One idea was to name it after the nineteenth-century nationalist Jose Rizal,60 though nothing came of that.
How to Hide an Empire Page 22