The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur
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MacArthur was therefore not simply moving to Manila to serve as Manuel Quezón’s military advisor, but was also leaving behind an administration that had little use for him or for his followers. The general wasn’t simply heading west; he was heading into exile. And ironically, heading into exile with him was Dwight D. Eisenhower, the officer whom George Marshall would one day pick to lead American soldiers in Europe.
Two weeks after MacArthur boarded the President Hoover, Pinky became ill. MacArthur quickly radioed ahead to Manila to make certain she would receive the best care, but five weeks after his arrival in the Philippine capital, on December 3, 1935, she died. MacArthur was stricken. Eisenhower wrote in his diary that her death “affected the General’s spirit for many months.” MacArthur never wavered from his commitment to his mother and was never embarrassed by her interference in his life. In his Reminiscences, he describes her as the pillar of the MacArthur family, her departure marking the passing of a generation: “Of the four of us who had started from the plains of New Mexico, three now were gone, leaving me in my loneliness only a memory of the households we had shared, so filled with graciousness and old-fashioned living.” There was some compensation, however. While aboard the President Hoover, MacArthur met thirty-seven-year-old Jean Marie Faircloth, a sophisticated and affluent daughter of a Nashville banker.
An immediate friendship, begun as the two talked on the rail of the Hoover, blossomed into a deep but quiet love affair. Jean was to have disembarked in Shanghai (where she was to visit family friends) but stayed on board at MacArthur’s pleading and, arriving in Manila, took up residence near the MacArthur penthouse on the top floor of the spacious Manila Hotel. She was thereafter seen with him every day on his veranda, which had a spectacular view of the harbor, or arriving on his arm at Filipino receptions.
Faircloth was a perfect match for MacArthur. A loving and loyal companion, she was impressed by his command of history and literature and became friendly with members of his staff, who admired her. She called him “General” or “Sir boss,” and he addressed her as “ma’am.” In many ways, Faircloth was evidence that MacArthur’s relationship with women had matured: She never grasped for public attention, and she remained studiously unimpressed by the great and near great. She had nothing in common with Louise Brooks, and certainly not with Isabella Rosario Cooper. No hint of scandal ever touched her.
Sidney “Sid” Huff, who later joined MacArthur’s staff as a naval advisor, was one of her admirers, as well as a friend. He helped her acclimate to Manila social life, advised her on local customs, and, on one occasion, helped arrange a reception that she hosted for Manila socialites. He has shared an impression of her during one such event. A graceful worrier, she had been concerned that the general would arrive before the reception had ended and that the ever-demanding “Sir boss” would expect her to leave, as she and MacArthur went to the movies nearly every night. But she did not want to appear ill-mannered before her friends, as no self-respecting Nashville hostess would ever leave before her guests. “What should I do, Sid?” she asked. Huff told her to leave, but to do so quietly, as every hostess did at one time or another in Manila. So she did, sneaking out a side door and meeting MacArthur at his limousine for their nightly appearance at the local movie house.
But Faircloth rarely joined MacArthur during his work hours or when he paced the floor of his penthouse office, issuing perorations on the future of the Philippines, on military strategy, or on Japanese intentions. Huff remembered these scenes:
He stuck his hands in his hip pockets as he paced, his jaw jutted out a little and he began talking in that deep, resonant voice—thinking out loud. From time to time he paused beside the wide mahogany desk to push the cigarette neatly into line with the edge of the ash tray, and to glance over at me. “Do you follow me, Sid?” he asked, swinging into his pacing stride again. Or sometimes he would stop at the desk to line up a dozen pencils that were already in a neat pattern—or to turn them around and push the points carefully into line. But always he went back to pacing and to thinking out loud.
Air Force Major General Lewis Brereton, who commanded U.S. air assets in the Philippines, described MacArthur as “one of the most beautiful talkers I have ever heard,” adding that “while his manner might be considered a bit on the theatrical side, it is just part of his personality and an expression of his character. There is never any doubt as to what he means and what he wants.” This “thinking out loud” became a MacArthur characteristic—a means of trying on ideas and, later, of testing strategies. At fifty-seven, he did not view himself as old, but remained trim, energetic, and filled with life. He rose early, ate a modest breakfast, then exercised, though not very strenuously—and not for very long.
MacArthur, it turns out, was something of an obsessive, the result perhaps of his West Point training—where uniforms and shirts are neatly arranged, perfectly spaced, and properly buttoned, with shoes shined to a high gloss and where books and pencils and papers are arranged neatly on a desk. Brereton noted this in his diary, which includes a description of MacArthur as “one of the best dressed soldiers in the world.” This obsession with appearance was a carryover from his days in France and was replicated now for the Filipinos: His uniform was unornamented, his face scrubbed, his spine ramrod straight, his pressed khaki trousers with a distinctive crease. He walked with a purpose, chin forward. He never slouched, never put his feet on his desk, never lounged indulgently. He was fastidious; he was never late, never apologetic, never forgetful. He bowed and nodded when meeting someone, exercising a graceful turn to introduce “Miss Faircloth of Nashville,” after which he would smile, nod with interest, or laugh softly. It was a practiced pose, but one as necessary in Philippine society as it had been in Washington. These small obsessions were reflected in his constant editing and reediting of papers and directives, picking just the right word or phrase. He mastered the art of writing his instructions using the sparest prose (“there is never any doubt as to what he means”), so that his orders were clear, explicit, rigorous, and unambiguous. In this, he shared a trait common to America’s great soldiers, who practiced the art of writing precise orders—where may, perhaps, and seems are excised and replaced with will, must, and is.
MacArthur’s arrival in Manila was cause for rejoicing among Filipinos. He was much sought after by Philippine society, whose company he preferred to that of the small in-country American community. He was seen, with Jean, as a regular guest at receptions held by the new commonwealth president, Manuel Quezón, or standing quietly with a group of legislators at Manila’s parliament building. But there was still the sense among his closest associates that when he wasn’t with Jean, he preferred his own company. Unlike the gregarious impression left by Eisenhower (a master bridge and poker player and the head of a movable all-male group called Club Eisenhower), there is no report of MacArthur’s participation in the kinds of raucous, always-alcohol- fueled sessions then preferred by American officers (MacArthur was not a teetotaler, but abstemious). Nevertheless, wherever he went—whether it was on a tour of U.S. installations or to hear a briefing at U.S. military headquarters at No. 1 Calle Victoria in Manila’s Spanish old city—MacArthur was known by every senior military officer. He was easy, relaxed, and approachable.
But MacArthur’s easy manner belied the challenge he faced in building a Philippine army, despite the capable ally he found in Major General Lucius Holbrook, the commander of U.S. troops stationed in the country. The Philippine Department was undermanned and understaffed, the result of Roosevelt’s Depression-era cutbacks. The department consisted of the Philippine Division, a complex organization composed of the U.S. 31st Regiment (a little over ten thousand soldiers) and the combat-capable Philippine Scouts, a unit of three infantry and two artillery regiments of Filipinos under American command. The total strength of the Philippine Division was some twenty thousand soldiers, which is all that Holbrook had to defend an archipelago of seven thousand islands. While both the American g
arrison and the Philippine Scouts were well trained, they were the only soldiers MacArthur could count on. So even as he exuded confidence about the ability of the Philippines to defend itself, he hedged his statements with cautionary clauses. He would, he said, build an army that would “give pause even to the most ruthless and powerful,” before carefully adding that any defense of the islands would have to be mounted in “the furthermost retreat left available.”
The statement reflected America’s plan for defending the island archipelago. Back in 1934, MacArthur had blustered that if war came, he would immediately “send two divisions from the Atlantic coast to reinforce the Philippines.” He probably meant it, though he must have also known that the current version of War Plan Orange (the name of a series of joint army and navy plans for an anticipated conflict with Japan) presumed that U.S. and Philippine forces would be overwhelmed. The assumption was that the forces would be driven back into Bataan, a wide peninsula to the west of Manila, and thence to the island of Corregidor, at the mouth of Manila Bay. War Plan Orange assumed that despite being surrounded in Bataan and Corregidor, the U.S. Army would hold out, for months if necessary, while the U.S. Navy mounted an operation across the Pacific to rescue it. This was sheer nonsense, and MacArthur knew it. As army chief of staff, he had studied the plan and spoken to the officers assigned to review and update it. Their conclusion was blunt, as one of the plan’s analysts wrote: “To carry out the present Orange Plan—with its provisions for the early dispatch of our fleet to Philippine waters—would be literally an act of madness. In the event of an Orange War, the best that could be hoped for would be that wise counsels would prevail, that our people would acquiesce in the temporary loss of the Philippines, and that the dispatch of our battle fleet would be delayed for two or three years needed for its augmentation.”
Within weeks of MacArthur’s arrival in Manila, he set his staff to work building the Philippine armed forces. He was starting from scratch: from the naming of a general staff to the construction of airfields, from recruiting young Filipinos to training them. But nothing was done quickly, or easily. The work on building a Philippine army had actually begun in Washington, when MacArthur had assigned Jimmy Ord to write a detailed plan based on universal conscription. MacArthur then pulled Eisenhower into the planning, telling him to focus on how a small but highly trained force could protect thousands of miles of coastline. By the time MacArthur departed for Manila, the plan had gone through several drafts. The process had lasted for weeks, with each detail arriving on MacArthur’s desk in neatly bound volumes, before being returned to Ord and Eisenhower with amendments. Once in Manila, MacArthur directed that Ord and Eisenhower cut the budget for his new army to 22 million pesos. “We cut periods of training; cut down on pay and allowances; eliminated particularly costly elements of the army, and substituted conscripts for professionals wherever we considered it safe to do so,” Eisenhower wrote at the time. But after Ord and Eisenhower presented their revised plan, MacArthur cut it again. “We reduced the Regular Force to 930 officers and about 7000 enlisted men,” Eisenhower remembered, “substituting for the enlisted men so eliminated an equal number of conscripts that are to be retained in the service one year; we extended the munitions procurement program to attain fruition in twenty instead of ten years, and made important deferments in the development of an Artillery Corps and so on.”
MacArthur’s problems were exacerbated by his inability to get the War Department to take the defense of the Philippines seriously. For months after arriving in Manila, MacArthur argued with Washington over its providing him with four hundred thousand rifles at a cost of two dollars per weapon. The problem for MacArthur was not only that the rifles were obsolete (they were overstock Lee-Enfield carbines, manufactured in 1914), but also that the White House didn’t think it wise to arm former insurrectos with rifles, no matter how obsolete. The opposition to providing the rifles was led in Manila by High Commissioner Frank Murphy, a pacifist who was privy to MacArthur’s plans and duly passed them on to Harold Ickes, who enjoyed holding up anything MacArthur wanted. The decision on whether to supply the rifles was postponed, then postponed again. Even when Eisenhower convinced War Department officials that there was little likelihood of an insurrection, the administration hesitated. Eisenhower speculated that what was really worrying Washington was that arming Filipinos would “antagonize” the Japanese. That view put MacArthur in an embarrassing situation: He not only had to argue that the weapons were not a threat to the Americans, but also had to argue that the arms weren’t a threat to anyone—a counterintuitive position for a military advisor responsible for building a nation’s defenses. But oddly, the argument was convincing to Washington, which finally agreed to the sale of a hundred thousand outmoded rifles, with another three hundred thousand to follow over eight years.
Now that MacArthur had found weapons for his nascent army, all he needed were soldiers. Eisenhower was skeptical of Filipino recruiting practices, but pleasantly surprised when 150,000 Filipinos volunteered to serve. The bad news was that MacArthur had planned on training just 7,000 recruits. When MacArthur decided to increase the quota to 40,000 conscripts, he also trebled the training budget, which required another rewrite of the Ord-Eisenhower plan. “Disregarding entirely the cost of arms and ammunition for these men after they have been trained,” Eisenhower wrote, “the additional training and maintenance cost involved will be about 10,000,000 pesos.” The money wasn’t available, and the Roosevelt administration wasn’t going to provide it. One year after his arrival, MacArthur was stuck—his new Philippine Army had plenty of soldiers, but they were untrained and armed with outmoded weapons. He needed money. In late 1936, Eisenhower pressed MacArthur and Quezón to travel to Washington to explain the problem, saying that MacArthur’s high regard in the Senate might make a difference. Quezón immediately accepted this idea, noting that the visit would coincide with the swearing-in of Paul McNutt, a former Indiana governor, as the archipelago’s new high commissioner. A trip to Washington, Quezón also calculated, would allow him to make the case for better Philippine defenses directly to Roosevelt and to present his case that the Philippines should be granted its independence at the end of 1938, instead of in 1946.
Quezón departed Manila in mid-January 1937, accompanied by MacArthur, Jean, and MacArthur’s staff. While Washington was the centerpiece of Quezón’s trip, the Philippine president chose to begin his tour with a visit to Japan. Quezón and this large retinue were treated regally in Tokyo, which welcomed him as a head of state before he was solemnly escorted to an audience with Emperor Hirohito. The Hirohito meeting marks the beginning of MacArthur’s estrangement from the Philippine president: Quezón approached the emperor as a supplicant, nearly begging Hirohito to keep the Philippines out of the crosshairs of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Hirohito nodded sagely, smiled when he thought it appropriate—and said nothing. MacArthur had first visited Japan with his father in 1904 and was as impressed now as he had been then. If anything, Japan was stronger, more disciplined, and more militarized than it had been in the early 1900s. “Cooped up within the narrow land mass of their four main islands, the Japanese were barely able to feed their burgeoning population,” MacArthur later observed. “Equipped with a splendid labor force, they lacked the raw materials necessary for increased productivity. They lacked sugar, so they took Formosa. They lacked iron, so they took Manchuria. They lacked hard coal and timber, so they invaded China. They lacked security, so they took Korea. . . . It was easy to see that they intended, by force of arms if necessary, to establish an economic sphere completely under their control.”
The Quezón-MacArthur party arrived in Los Angeles in mid-February and stayed there for several weeks, much to MacArthur’s annoyance—he couldn’t understand why Quezón insisted on visiting the city in the first place. He learned soon enough: The Philippine president spent days in Hollywood, hobnobbing with stars and producers (including actor Clark Gable and producer Louis B. Mayer), before traveling on to
New York, where the Philippine president was honored with a parade, a banquet, and a meeting with city and state officials. Quezón then appeared at a high-profile Foreign Policy Association luncheon, arranged with great fanfare by MacArthur. But instead of meeting a sympathetic audience, Quezón was subjected to relentless questioning from a roomful of worried pacifists. He was attacked for provoking Japan, for impoverishing his own people for the sake of self-defense, for teaching Filipino children “to kill.” Angered by his reception, Quezón became irritable and defensive, at one point raising his voice to a near shout during the meeting. “If I believed that the Philippines could not defend itself,” he said, “I would commit suicide this afternoon.” Quezón turned on MacArthur, blaming him for failing to make the reporters understand the threats his people faced. MacArthur, for his part, was increasingly frustrated with the Philippine president, who seemed more interested in glitzy receptions than the hard work of diplomacy.