War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  The euphoric U.S. Navy carrier pilots returning from the early-morning attack on Lae and Salamaua reported sinking two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, one destroyer, one minelayer, and five transports, and the probable sinking of two more destroyers and a gunboat. The attackers were awarded a total of fourteen Navy Crosses and eight Distinguished Flying Crosses, and President Roosevelt is reported to have told Prime Minister Churchill about the attack, calling it “the most cheering thing that happened in the Pacific so far.” No sooner had the naval aircraft flown back through the pass than eight U.S. Army Air Force B-17 Flying Fortresses from Townsville made high-level bombing runs on both beachheads. The Army pilots claimed to have left two ships sinking, four on fire, and one beached.17

  The attackers were in luck that morning because they faced no air opposition. Zero fighters from the 24th Air Corps at Rabaul, scheduled to move to Lae once the airfield was prepared, were on the ground awaiting word when they learned of the Allied assault. The first of these arrived over the beachheads at one p.m., long after the enemy was gone.18

  As usual, when reports relied on excited pilots engaged in combat, the reality proved less successful than originally believed. Japanese records note that four transports were sunk and that one cruiser—Admiral Kajioka’s flagship Yubari—received light damage, as did the seaplane tender Kiyokawa Maru and a fifth transport. Five additional ships, including two destroyers and a minesweeper, had minor damage done to them. Killed in the attack were 126 naval personnel and 6 soldiers. Wounded were 240 naval personnel and 17 from the army.19

  Though more than one hundred aircraft attacked an enemy base, with total surprise as their ally, the results were less than spectacular. One reason was the inexperience of many of the pilots, but another, even more important factor was the poor performance of some of the weapons they used, especially the torpedoes, which should have taken a heavy toll on the ships. In an interview long after the war, then-Admiral Jimmie Thach, a Wildcat fighter pilot off the Lexington, explained: “You could see streaks of torpedoes going right to the side of those cruisers and nothing happened. Some obviously hit the cruisers and didn’t explode. I saw one or two go right on underneath, come out the other side and bury themselves in the bank on the shore.”20

  Although the unexpected attack from carrier-based aircraft stunned Japanese commanders, they did not alter their original schedule. On the following day, troops from the South Seas Detachment occupied Finschhafen, fifty miles up the coast from Lae on the Huon Peninsula, and quickly set about expanding a small airfield north of the town. On March 12, General Horii’s army troops that had landed at Salamaua handed over the garrison to the troops of a naval landing force, as previously agreed, and returned to Rabaul. Soon after, Horii sent his evaluation of the plan for the seaborne invasion of Port Moresby in which his troops would be the main invasion force. He pointed out that the attack on the Lae and Salamaua by carrier aircraft revealed the presence of at least two Allied aircraft carriers in the region. This meant great difficulty in protecting an invasion fleet with several thousand valuable troops on transports unless Imperial Navy aircraft carriers were part of the plan.

  General Horii made the following three points in his recommendation for what would soon be code-named MO Operation, the invasion of Port Moresby through the Coral Sea:

  1.When considering the experience of the Salamaua-Lae operation, particularly the appearance of the enemy’s carrier task force, then I believe it will be very difficult to assign protection for the transport convoy by land-based air units, and to protect the air base establishments and the landing point after disembarkation. I would like to see discussion during a central agreement to doubly ensure the strengthening of land-based air units and the cooperation of a fully equipped aircraft carrier for the coming operation. The carrier Shoho [actually a converted light carrier] currently assigned to the Fourth Fleet is not sufficient by itself.

  2.I would like to see an increase by one in the number of transports exclusively assigned to antiaircraft duties (fitted out at Ujina for this operation).

  3.I would like consideration for the use of an advanced force of paratroopers to disrupt the enemy and occupy the airfield near the landing point. The capture of air base installations prior to landing would be extremely beneficial.21

  Horii got what he wanted on the first two points. First was the assignment of two fleet aircraft carriers as part of the protection for the invasion. In response to his second point, a specialized high-speed ship equipped with six antiaircraft guns, Asakayama Maru, also joined the fleet. As for the use of paratroopers, it is probably a good thing they were not used, for as events transpired, had they dropped into Port Moresby, they would likely not have survived.

  —

  Assigning the fleet carriers and the antiaircraft ship, as well as replacing the transports lost at Lae and Salamaua, delayed the planned invasion of Port Moresby until early May, laying the groundwork for the Battle of the Coral Sea. Fought between American and Japanese fleets from May 4 to May 8, 1942, this was the first naval engagement in history in which the opposing ships never actually sighted or fired directly at each other.

  General MacArthur, who soon took over as commander in chief of all Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area ordered additional strikes on Rabaul, Lae, and Salamaua by his Townsville-based B-17s throughout the month of April, and the expansion of air facilities at Port Moresby. Despite these harassing raids, the Japanese continued to build and expand the bases they acquired at the two beachheads and elsewhere along the New Guinea coast. It would require herculean efforts to dislodge them.

  With these strong footholds on the coast, especially around the Huon Peninsula facing New Britain, the Japanese effectively blocked the entrance to the Bismarck Sea, preventing MacArthur’s forces from having a direct route from Australia to the Philippines. They added to their protective ring around Rabaul by occupying several islands north of Lae, including Manus Island in the Admiralties. Japanese airfields staffed with powerful land-based bombers were under construction in all directions.

  CHAPTER 4

  A General in Search of an Army

  General Douglas MacArthur was the most widely recognized officer in the United States Army when Japan struck Pearl Harbor. His popularity among the American people and press was so great that at one point President Roosevelt judged him a potential rival for the White House.1 He was the son of a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who fought in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the Philippine-American War. In addition to rising to the rank of lieutenant general, Arthur MacArthur Jr. had served as military governor of the Philippines.

  On June 11, 1903, Douglas MacArthur graduated first in his West Point class of ninety-three students, having achieved the third-highest academic score ever recorded at the academy. Commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers, he served for one year as an engineering officer in the Philippines, then spent several months touring military installations in Asia, including Japan. Returning to the United States, he served as an aide at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt. Following the death of his father in 1912, Douglas was assigned as a young captain to the staff of Army chief of staff Major General Leonard Wood.

  MacArthur’s service under General Wood was marked by increased tensions with Mexico. Relations between the administration of Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican government of General Victoriano Huerta, who had used a military coup to take control of the country from a democratically elected president in February 1913, had plummeted to the point that Wilson demanded Huerta step down and allow democratic elections to select the next president. Huerta ignored Wilson’s demand. When soldiers from Huerta’s army briefly arrested nine U.S. sailors, Wilson ordered the Navy to occupy Mexico’s most important port city, Veracruz, on April 21, 1914.

  Occupied by a brigade of American soldiers, the city was soon surrounded by eleven thousand Mexican tro
ops loyal to Huerta. Without informing Brigadier General Frederick Funston, the American commander on scene, Wood sent MacArthur to Veracruz. His assignment was to collect intelligence on the enemy and the neighboring countryside should the president order the Army to send a substantial expeditionary force into Mexico. Along with three Mexican civilians he hired, MacArthur penetrated some thirty-five miles behind the Mexican lines and gathered the intelligence requested. On the return trip, armed and mounted Mexicans, probably bandits, attacked MacArthur’s party three times. He killed or wounded seven attackers. An examination of his uniform found bullets had pierced it at least four times, though none had found flesh.

  A grateful General Wood, with the support of General Funston, recommended that MacArthur be awarded the Medal of Honor for completing the secret mission “at the risk of his life.” An awards board, which was required to approve such a request, turned it down on the rather flimsy grounds that he undertook the mission without the knowledge of the local commander.2

  During the First World War, MacArthur served with the 42nd Division, known as the Rainbow Division. The name came from the fact that it was composed of National Guard troops from twenty-six states and the District of Columbia. He started the war as an infantry colonel and chief of staff for the division. The 42nd entered the Allied lines in France in February 1918, and over the next nine months, until the armistice that ended the fighting, MacArthur could always be found at the front. Promoted to brigadier general and placed in command of the 84th Infantry Brigade, he had the unique experience of being taken prisoner by soldiers from another American division who mistook him for a German general. By the end of the war, MacArthur had been awarded seven Silver Stars for gallantry, two Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and two Purple Hearts, along with nineteen awards from Allied nations, including two Croix de Guerre from France. For the second time MacArthur was recommended for the Medal of Honor, and again, the awards board rejected him.3

  MacArthur’s peacetime service included three years as superintendent of West Point, where he introduced many reforms. This was followed by three years as commander of the Military District of Manila, during which he developed a lifelong attachment to the Philippines and its people. He served as the president of the American Olympic Committee for the 1928 Summer Games, and then chief of staff of the United States Army under President Herbert Hoover and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  In 1935, Manuel Quezon, soon to be elected president of the Philippines, asked MacArthur to help organize an army for the newly semi-independent commonwealth. President Roosevelt, perhaps eager to be rid of a possible election opponent, thought that a good idea and appointed MacArthur military adviser to the new commonwealth government. Two years later, MacArthur retired from the United States Army but retained his rank of field marshal of the Philippine Army.

  With war on the horizon, Roosevelt recalled MacArthur to active duty effective July 26, 1941, and appointed him “Commanding General of the United States Army Forces in the Far East.” Perhaps the president was recalling his last meeting with the general before the latter departed for Manila, when he told him, “Douglas, if war should suddenly come, don’t wait for orders to return home. Grab the first transportation you can find. I want you to command my armies.”4

  MacArthur originally estimated it would take about ten years at a cost of five million dollars per year to build an army that could defend the Philippines. Given the funds and the time, the army MacArthur envisioned included hundreds of thousands of well-trained reservists built around a small professional army that would provide regular training in peacetime and leadership in war.5

  As events transpired, the commonwealth had neither the money nor the time before Japanese forces invaded. War came to the Philippines within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although the defenders outnumbered the invaders, most of the 100,000 Filipino soldiers had no weapons, or in some cases, only obsolete World War I rifles, and few had completed training. Over the next two months, the Allied forces withdrew, according to a prewar plan, to occupy the Bataan Peninsula and await resupply and reinforcements. They had little choice, as the Japanese had almost total control of the sea and the air around the Philippines. During this time, some of the worst fighting in the war took place between the Japanese and the American/Filipino forces on Bataan. Unfortunately, very few supplies arrived by submarine and no reinforcements. The plan had been for the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet to drive the Japanese out, but a good portion of that fleet now lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, or was being towed back to the States for repair.

  Throughout January and February 1942, the American press contained daily reports on the fighting on Bataan and the conditions on the small, fortified island of Corregidor at the peninsula’s tip (known to the American troops as “the Rock”). MacArthur’s headquarters were inside a vast tunnel on the island. As the situation grew steadily worse, with no hope of relief for the beleaguered forces, journalists and members of Congress began calling for the president to order MacArthur to evacuate. No one wanted American’s most famous general killed or captured by the Japanese.

  A U.S. submarine evacuated President Quezon, along with members of his family and government who were on Corregidor, on February 20, 1942. Also aboard were United States high commissioner to the Philippines, Francis B. Sayre, and his wife.

  —

  Officials in Washington were of two minds about MacArthur and his eighty thousand Filipino and American troops, as well as the thousands of civilians who had fled the invaders for what they thought would be the safety of Bataan. Chief of Staff General George Marshall recognized that all the talk in Washington about a relief expedition to Bataan was a waste of time. The Navy, on which such a task would rest, had too few capital ships to escort troop and supply vessels through the Japanese blockade of the Philippines. Several times Marshall urged MacArthur to take his wife and young son and evacuate Corregidor while there was still time to do so. Each time the general either ignored the request or answered that “they and I have decided that they will share the fate of the garrison.”6

  For his part, President Roosevelt opposed either a capitulation of the forces or the evacuation of their commander. He repeatedly sent optimistic messages to both MacArthur and President Quezon intimating that help was on the way. He reportedly told Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the evacuation of MacArthur “would mean the whites would absolutely lose all face in the Far East. White men can go down fighting, but they can’t run away.”7

  Stimson was in full agreement, writing in his diary on February 2, “There are times when men must die.”8 This was an interesting comment coming from a man who had served only three weeks at the front as an artillery officer in a “quiet” sector in the last war, and, as one biographer described it, “never faced the actual combat” he reportedly sought.9

  The newest member of Marshall’s staff, Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Eisenhower (almost universally called Ike), was intimately familiar with both MacArthur and the Philippines, having served there as a member of MacArthur’s staff. Marshall asked Eisenhower his opinion of what should be done for MacArthur. Ike studied the situation and options and responded, “It will be a long time before major reinforcements can go to the Philippines, longer than any garrison can hold out without any direct assistance . . . but we must do everything humanly possible. The people of China, of the Philippines, of the Dutch East Indies will be watching us. They may excuse failure, but they will not excuse abandonment. Their trust and friendship are important to us.” He went on to recommend that Australia be the American base in the area through which support for the forces in the Philippines could flow.10

  The relationship between these three men—MacArthur, Marshall, and Eisenhower—was complicated. Despite being lifetime members of the U.S. Army, Marshall and Eisenhower, as historian William Manchester wrote, “didn’t belong to the same fraternity [as MacArthur]. The issue
had nothing to do with personality, ability, or even performance. To MacArthur they were all officers who fought wars at desks far from the firing line and had little idea of what combat was like—who were, to use the derisive GI word, ‘chairborne.’”11

  This did not mean the experienced combat general did not respect their talents and abilities. MacArthur once wrote in a fitness report on Eisenhower, “This is the best officer in the Army. When the next war comes, he should go right to the top.”12 Clearly Marshall agreed with MacArthur, since he jumped Eisenhower over some forty officers senior to him, promoting Ike from lieutenant colonel in 1941 to major general by March 1942, then to commander of the European theater in June 1942. As one noted historian explained, Eisenhower “received extraordinarily fast promotion.”13

  The inner circle at the White House contained at least one influential voice in opposition to allowing MacArthur to remain in the Philippines: Major General Edwin M. Watson, known to all, including Roosevelt, as “Pa.” A decorated soldier in the Great War, Watson had served as aide to President Wilson at the Versailles conference and now served two posts for Roosevelt. He was the president’s military aide, and perhaps more important, his appointments secretary, controlling all access to the president. Watson and his wife were also close friends of Roosevelt’s, who often stayed at their home in Virginia. As far as General Watson was concerned, MacArthur was worth “five army corps,” and must be ordered out of the Philippines.14