by Perry, Mark
The navy, in particular, was prepared to write off the archipelago. The United States should not be in the business of “defending the indefensible,” navy planners told Marshall after December 8. They pointed out that the original plan for the defense of the Philippines, dubbed Rainbow 5, was for MacArthur’s Philippine garrison to retreat into Bataan and wait for the Pacific Fleet to sail to its rescue. But since the plan depended on ships that now lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, it seemed inevitable that the garrison would retreat into Bataan—where it would surrender. So, senior navy officers believed, instead of reinforcing MacArthur, the United States should prepare for the day when a new fleet of battleships and aircraft carriers, based at a rebuilt Pearl Harbor, could defeat the Japanese in a series of naval battles in the Central Pacific. The events in the Philippines were a terrible tragedy, the navy said, but American military planners needed a sober dose of realism. MacArthur not only couldn’t be helped, but shouldn’t be helped. Or, as Admiral Thomas Hart told MacArthur during a December 12 meeting with him in Manila, the Philippines were “doomed.”
MacArthur cabled Marshall on December 13, reporting what Hart had said and arguing that if anyone ever suspected that the United States was abandoning the islands, “the entire structure will collapse over my head.” Irritated at Hart’s attitude, Marshall approached Secretary of War Henry Stimson, telling him, “We cannot give up the Philippines in that way.” The president needed to tell the navy to get in line. Stimson agreed. “Politically,” Stimson later recalled, “it was still more important that this defense be supported as strongly as possible, for neither the Filipino people nor the rest of the Far Eastern world” would forgive the United States if it abandoned the archipelago. Stimson met with Roosevelt on the morning after his talk with Marshall and showed him MacArthur’s cable. The next day, the president told the navy that as he was bound to defend the Philippines, so was the navy. Having lost the point, Harold Stark, the then chief of naval operations, pointedly instructed Hart to reassure MacArthur that the navy stood with him. But the result of this finger-wagging was tepid, at best. The navy should help MacArthur, Stark cabled Hart, when it was “practicable.”
The problem for Marshall was that reinforcing the Philippines was not all that “practicable.” MacArthur was left with what he had in place: a total strength of 22,532 men, of whom just over 3,000 were Americans in General Jonathan Wainwright’s Philippine Division. Another 12,000 Americans served as a part of air, naval, or various supply units. Ten “reserve divisions” of Filipinos, led by Americans, were also available, as were members of the small but well-trained Philippine Scouts—some 6,500 men. The recent arrival of an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, a tank battalion, and “reserve supplies” helped, as did fifty tanks that had arrived in August. But that was it. Which is why, on December 11, Marshall had sent his “buck up” cable and why, just weeks later, on the eve of the Japanese invasion, he told MacArthur to expect a fourth star, the rank that MacArthur had held as chief of staff. The promotion was Marshall’s way of keeping MacArthur’s morale intact, while at the same time sending the most unsubtle of signals to the navy. MacArthur might be isolated, perhaps even “doomed,” but Marshall would do everything he could to support him. That included making sure that the commander outranked every navy officer in sight.
On December 22, General Masaharu Homma’s Fourteenth Army, more than forty-three thousand well-armed soldiers, came ashore on the beaches of Lingayen Gulf. The size of the invasion fleet was sobering: The Japanese arrived aboard seventy-six transports in three convoys that were escorted by two battleships, four heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, two seaplane carriers, and a handful of destroyers. MacArthur had nothing to match it. A single American submarine sortied to meet the invading army, but then lay on the seabed to avoid detection (its commander was later relieved). Six more submarines were dispatched to intercept Homma, but they succeeded in sinking only a small transport. Four B-17s were able to strafe the convoy, hitting the cruiser Ashigara, Homma’s flagship. Otherwise, the defense was paltry. Thomas Hart’s attitude didn’t help. His December 8 performance and his blunt assessment that the Philippines were “doomed” had set MacArthur against him. By mid-December, Hart had decided that without air cover, he should salvage what he could of his fleet by sending it to Borneo. It mattered little to MacArthur that Hart’s actions were approved by Washington—in the general’s view, the navy was running. The two met a final time, on the street outside MacArthur’s headquarters. MacArthur was direct, giving Hart instructions on what the admiral should do when he reached the south, but inside, MacArthur was seething.
The Far East commander didn’t underestimate the enormity of the situation in the Philippines. In the two weeks before Homma’s convoys appeared in Lingayen Gulf, MacArthur gave his staff crisp, precise, and unambiguous instructions. Large numbers of Japanese citizens in the Philippines were interned in a single swift operation. MacArthur directed his quartermaster officers to secure anything of use in Manila and the surrounding area. Food stores, weapons, trucks, and petroleum products were seized and forwarded to Philippine and American units; the rest was packed up and sent to Corregidor, the tadpole-shaped island in Manila Bay. The naval base at Cavite was stripped of weapons and munitions; every ship in Manila Bay was searched and unloaded; and junks, barges, rafts, floats, and rowboats were requisitioned. The port area, vulnerable to continued Japanese bombing, was cleared. There were unexpected windfalls. MacArthur’s teams came across a load of Bren guns and assorted munitions aboard a Canadian ship bound for Hong Kong. He secured its release, and the weapons were transported to a tank group in northern Luzon.
Less than one week after the debacle of December 8, Philippine High Commissioner Francis Bowes Sayre ordered the destruction of all Philippine currency to keep it out of the hands of the Japanese. The commonwealth’s gold was shipped to Corregidor under guard. On December 13, the Philippine National Assembly passed a resolution giving Quezón extraordinary powers and voted $10 million to purchase assorted weapons, but the funds could not be spent on what did not exist. That same night, in a meeting in his penthouse, MacArthur told Quezón that he wanted the Philippine government to move to Corregidor. Quezón objected. “Were I to go to Corregidor,” he told MacArthur, “my people would think I had abandoned them to seek safety under your protection. This I shall never do. I shall stay among my people and suffer the same fate that may befall them.” This was a fine speech, and Quezón meant it, but MacArthur was adamant: The general wanted to declare Manila an open city to keep it from being bombed, and he didn’t want Quezón to become a hostage.
After conferring with his wife and children, Quezón agreed, and the Philippine government began preparing for the move. Jorge Vargas, the mayor of Manila, was given the unenviable task of dealing with the Japanese when they arrived in the capital. He sought out MacArthur for his advice. “There is nothing you can do,” MacArthur told him. “[Y]ou have to follow what the Japanese Army of occupation orders you to do. Under international law you must obey the orders of the military occupant. There is only one thing you should not do: take the oath of allegiance to Japan because, if you do, we will shoot you when we come back.”
MacArthur was now working around the clock to strengthen his defenses. He presented a face of calm to his exhausted staff, attempted to buoy Wainwright’s characteristic gloom, and adopted an air of confidence to Jean and their three-year-old son Arthur. The boy had a habit of following his father during MacArthur’s morning routines, with the two marching like soldiers through the penthouse. “Hup, two, three, four; hup, two, three, four,” MacArthur chanted, and Arthur’s legs went up and down as he followed behind his father. MacArthur was devoted to his wife and son, and it must have worried him that they might fall into Japanese hands. But he never mentioned the possibility; nor did he bother Jean with his concerns. Not only must he now manage the balky navy, but he also had to deal with Washington, where Roosevelt, Marshall, and the Joint Chiefs
had decided that the United States would adopt a Germany-first policy. In other words, the bulk of American men and matériel would head to Europe, and not the Pacific.
Despite Marshall’s reassurances, MacArthur knew that Roosevelt’s primary focus was on keeping Russia in the war. The decision had been made in staff talks between the British and the Americans: The Allies would fight in Europe and stand on the defensive in the Pacific. The question of whether the strategy was sound was no longer an issue; Japan’s victories in early December had made the reinforcement of the Philippines impossible. “Do what you can for them,” Marshall had told Eisenhower. But it wasn’t much.
The Japanese plan to isolate the islands had worked—some supplies were arriving, but not nearly enough, and convoys bound for Manila were being diverted to Australia. The flow of cables between MacArthur and Marshall peaked in the days before the Japanese landings, with MacArthur authoring “big ideas” on how to fight the coming war. MacArthur is rarely given credit for his political abilities, but he could read a map as well as anyone. Within weeks of the Japanese attack, he countered the Germany-first policy by proposing one of his own. He sent Marshall a cable suggesting that the United States mount a surprise air attack on the Japanese home islands—a “master stroke” that would force Japan to pull back its air assets to defend the home islands. Several days later, MacArthur argued that everything should be done to bring Russia into the war against Japan. With Russia in the war, Japan would be required to strip its forces in the South Pacific. Once in the war, the Russians would make short work of the overextended Japanese and force their surrender, after which the Allies could take on the Germans.
The idea was big, and it appealed to Marshall, who took it to Roosevelt, who forwarded it to Joseph Stalin in Moscow. Not surprisingly, the Soviet leader was less than enthusiastic. The threadbare Red Army, freezing in its trenches or falling back pell-mell through the snow, was then barely holding on against the Germans. Opening a second front to fight the Japanese would only make things worse. When Winston Churchill heard of the proposal, he dismissed it out of hand.
MacArthur’s “big idea” cables fell off thereafter, as his attention turned to Homma. With Wainwright gathering his forces to fight the Japanese step-by-step back into Bataan, MacArthur cabled Washington, reviewing the odds he faced and ticking through the obstacles weighing in on him: “Enemy penetration in the Philippines resulted from our weakness on the sea and in the air. Surface elements of the Asiatic Fleet were withdrawn and the effect of the submarines has been negligible. Lack of airfields for modern planes prevented defensive dispersion and lack of pursuit planes permitted unhindered day bombardment.” Despite these extreme disadvantages, MacArthur remained optimistic, telling Marshall that he might be able to stop the Japanese if the Philippine Army would stand and fight. But would it? The answer to that question came within twenty-four hours of Homma’s landing, on December 23, when the 71st Division of the Philippine Army brushed up against Homma’s troops. The 71st arrayed itself behind a series of low ridges as American officers confidently barked out orders in the tropical heat. The fight was short and bloody, with the Japanese taking fire, hesitating, and then coming on like a rising tide. The 71st, as one U.S. officer noted, “fled to the rear in a disorganized mass.”
Masaharu Homma’s plan was to implement a coup de main—sending his Luzon divisions slamming south against Wainwright, while a 15,000-man detachment landing at Lamon Bay in southeastern Luzon sprinted north into Manila. But Homma’s units were hamstrung from the moment they entered Philippine waters. The lead convoy missed its mark, dropping its soldiers into the roiling surf four miles from its intended target on the east side of Lingayen Gulf. Because of the poor weather, Homma’s heavy armor and artillery couldn’t land in the first waves, and Homma was unable to achieve surprise. His convoy had been spotted four days earlier, and guns from the 86th Field Artillery of the Philippine Scouts bombarded the transports as they disgorged their troops. At Baung, the Philippine Army’s 12th Infantry cut into the Japanese barges with .50- and .30-caliber machine guns, causing heavy casualties, but the Japanese kept coming, moving inland. Twenty-four hours later, Homma’s forces struck south toward Manila and soon thereafter MacArthur decided that Wainwright—and Major General George Parker’s South Luzon Force—would implement the delaying actions he had sketched out for them in the wake of the December 8 debacle. The American-led forces would strike at Homma in a series of fighting retreats before withdrawing into the Bataan Peninsula.
Wainwright planned his retreat carefully. With his front lines behind Lingayen’s beaches thinly manned, he mounted his initial defense along the Agno River, sixteen miles further south. Wainwright commanded four barely trained Philippine infantry divisions and one Philippine cavalry regiment. His strongest unit was a regiment of Philippine Scouts. The American Philippine Division was in his rear, hurriedly constructing a series of defensive positions across the base of the Bataan Peninsula. Wainwright wanted the division released, to help him in the fight for Luzon, but MacArthur told him that it could only be used as a last resort. MacArthur’s plan was to bleed Homma, denying him a quick end to the campaign and allowing the Americans to complete their Bataan defenses. Wainwright did the best he could, while realizing that the arrows and lines on his plotting board designated phantom units. Back at his headquarters, MacArthur tried not to be disheartened, though an aide later commented that the commander reminded him of an “old-time fighter recalled from retirement and suddenly thrust into the ring against a young and hard hitting opponent whose lightning reflexes left him dazzled.” The description was accurate: MacArthur struggled to match Homma’s battle tempo. “I intend to hold,” MacArthur cabled Marshall on December 22. That now seemed a fantasy as Wainwright staggered south, ordering his men into a series of retreats to designated defensive lines he had sketched out on his headquarters’ map—D-1, D-2, D-3, and so on.
Despite the inadequate defensive forces, there was reason for hope. When Homma’s Lamon Bay detachment came ashore in southeastern Luzon two days after his landings at Lingayen, the detachment was met by George Parker’s 1st (Philippine) Regular Division, which fought hand-to-hand before giving ground. The Filipinos fought well, taking up positions along a line of low hills facing east and taunting the Japanese into a frontal assault. But when the division’s First Regiment was forced to retreat, American General Albert Jones (who had taken command when MacArthur decided that Parker should be given the responsibility for building Bataan’s defenses) berated them. “Why do you allow these Goddamned bastards to overrun your country?” he asked a group of retreating Filipino soldiers. Jones forced the division’s First Regiment into a counterattack, which worked, if only for a time: The Japanese at Limon, tough veterans of the China conflict, inevitably slapped aside the scrappy Philippine force and moved northwest toward Manila.
MacArthur never had any illusions about the odds. His decision to put Philippine Army units in the defenses facing Homma reflected a compelling, if cruel, logic. Pushing poorly armed Filipinos into Homma’s maw wouldn’t stop the Japanese juggernaut, but it would slow it enough to give him time to organize a defense on Bataan, where better-trained American units could stop the onslaught. His was a cold and calculating nod to the battlefield’s arithmetic: MacArthur decided he would trade blood for time, sacrificing poorly trained Filipinos in the hope that by the time the Japanese reached Bataan, they would be too exhausted to storm his redoubt. Two decades later, MacArthur summarized his thinking in his Reminiscences: “General Wainwright quickly developed a pattern of defense to cause the maximum delay to the enemy. He would hold long enough to force the Japanese to take time to deploy full force, when he would slowly give way, leaving the engineers under General [Pat] Casey to dynamite bridges and construct roadblocks to bar the way. Again and again, these tactics would be repeated. Stand and fight, slip back and dynamite. It was savage and bloody, but it won time.” And so the Philippine Army stood and fought, expended lives
and ran, then stood and fought again, trailing rows of corpses down the full length of Luzon.
By December 24, Wainwright’s North Luzon Force was in position behind the Agno River, but was pressed hard by Homma’s tank regiments. Wainwright had learned to rely on the elite Philippine Scouts to plug holes in his seeping line, but they had been in close combat with the Japanese for nearly seventy-two hours and were exhausted. The scouts had fought a series of engagements at Damortis, Rosario, and Binalonan, and despite the imbalance of the foes, the contests had sapped Japanese strength. But the Japanese kept coming, routing the Philippine 26th Cavalry Regiment at Carmen and breaching Wainwright’s Agno River line. Wainwright, bleary-eyed and coated in mud, returned to his headquarters on the twenty-fourth and was reminded by his staff that it was Christmas Eve. An aide presented him with a bottle of Scotch, but the dinner that followed was the same given to the men on the firing line: canned corned beef, asparagus tips, hardtack, and coffee.
On the morning of December 27, Wainwright established a new defensive line (D-3) further south, midway between Lingayen Gulf and Manila. But the line was only temporary; Wainwright intended to pull his troops back even further, to his D-4 defenses, which provided interlocking fields of fire and were studded with tank traps to provide his tattered troops with a respite from expert Japanese gunners. Even so, Wainwright was worried. No matter how well constructed his defenses were, he feared that if pushed too hard, his troops would break. If that happened, MacArthur’s defensive strategy would unravel and Jones’s South Luzon Force, some twelve thousand soldiers, would be cut off south of the capital. To Wainwright’s surprise, however, Homma decided to rest his troops, using all of December 27 to bring up supplies. The decision provided Wainwright with desperately needed time to pull together his far-flung units. Wainwright pulled his troops into his D-4 line and organized them for what he hoped would be a successful holding action. Homma’s move, the first in a series of inexplicable mistakes by the Japanese commander, was a godsend. Wainwright issued new orders. “D-4 will be held at all costs until ordered withdrawn,” he told his commanders on the twenty-seventh. “Maximum delay will be effected on each position.”