by Perry, Mark
Thus Churchill, complete with the impressive capital-letter Churchill tropes: Comradeship. Loyalty. Ordeals. Glory. The Dark Valley. Churchill meant it, of course, and hoped it would be convincing. But privately, he was dismissive: He thought Curtin was weak and vacillating and, despite Churchill’s well-aimed praise, the British prime minister looked upon Australian soldiers as barely competent—as auxiliaries to the British army. Curtin, who had friends in London spying on the prime minister (and reporting on Churchill’s private views), wasn’t fooled and wouldn’t cede his point. Like Quezón, he wanted a pledge, or as near to one as he could get, that the Americans and British would focus as much of their resources on Japan as they did on Germany. He threw a roundhouse right, but covered it with a velvet glove. “The long distance programming you outline is encouraging,” he responded, “but the great need is in the immediate future. The Japanese are going to take a lot of repelling, and in the meantime may do very vital damage to our capacity to eject them from the areas they are capturing.”
In this realistic assessment, at least, Curtin held the edge on his British counterpart. When Singapore was assaulted, Churchill considered but then rejected a plan to withdraw all the imperial forces. He then watched in dismay as the Japanese crept south and overwhelmed the empire’s “impregnable bastion.” Churchill’s refusal to withdraw was, as Curtin described it, “an inexcusable betrayal.” Of the 60,000-plus non-Indian forces taken captive, 15,000 of them were Australian, many of whom were diverted to Singapore in midstride, just as they were being shipped to Australia. Curtin’s view was reinforced by eyewitness reports from Australian officers describing British incompetence. One of them wrote that “the whole operation seems incredible: 550 miles in 55 days—forced back by a small Japanese army of only two divisions, riding stolen bicycles and without artillery support.” More adept at political maneuvering than either Churchill or Roosevelt would then (or later) concede, Curtin told Churchill that England could keep the Diggers in North Africa, but only if Churchill agreed to the appointment of an American commander for the Southwest Pacific. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt needed to read between the lines: Curtin wanted MacArthur.
Marshall and Roosevelt were thinking the same thing and had hinted as much to their Far East commander. Marshall first broached the subject in a February 2 cable that asked for MacArthur’s views on sending MacArthur’s wife and son south. Two days later, Marshall sent another message, saying that consideration was being given to evacuating Philippine officials from Corregidor. Finally, on February 20, Marshall asked for MacArthur’s views on transferring his command to Mindanao, the southernmost island in the Philippine archipelago. From there, Marshall suggested, MacArthur could lead a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese or transfer his command to Australia. The next day, one of MacArthur’s oldest friends and longtime supporters, Patrick Hurley, who had served as secretary of war during the Bonus March incident, contacted MacArthur from his billet in Melbourne, where he was serving as a newly minted brigadier general. Hurley told MacArthur that he thought it was “logical and essential that the supreme command in the Southwest Pacific be given to an American.”
All these efforts had the look and feel of a well-designed campaign to pry MacArthur out of his Corregidor bastion and send him south, where he could not only do battle with the Japanese but also, as importantly, serve as a calming influence on the increasingly angry John Curtin. After seeding the idea for a rescue with the Philippine commander, Marshall communicated his thinking to Henry Stimson in a memo detailing the political reasons why he believed MacArthur should be transferred south. At the end of the memo (as if it were a mere afterthought), Marshall added that “a dominating character is needed down there [in Australia] to make the Navy keep up their job in spite of rows which we shall have between them.” We do not know Stimson’s reaction to Marshall’s reasoning, but he must have smiled: MacArthur would go to Australia to calm Curtin, to fight the Japanese, and—oh yes, to counter the influence of Ernie King.
By the end of February, Marshall had successfully shaped a consensus on MacArthur’s removal. Marshall’s reasoning was sound and had as much to do with the talent on hand as with Curtin, the Japanese—or the navy. As he scanned the list of senior officers capable of higher command, MacArthur’s name stood out. While MacArthur was “shrewd, proud, remote, highly strung and vastly vain,” as a British senior officer later described him, he was also experienced, courageous, imaginative, a brilliant organizer, and the sole senior American officer who had actually commanded large formations in wartime.
As Marshall scanned his list of potential army, corps, and division commanders—Dwight Eisenhower, Mark Clark, George Patton, Omar Bradley, Courtney Hodges, Robert “Nelly” Richardson, and a half dozen others (all of them listed in the little black book he kept in the drawer of his office at the War Department) he noted that none of them had the Philippine commander’s experience. Eisenhower was untested, Clark a sniveler, and Patton a marplot; Bradley had never heard a shot fired in anger; Hodges lacked ambition; and Richardson was unwilling. MacArthur was the only one who wouldn’t have to learn on the job and who had the experience necessary to reassure the frightened Australians. Even Churchill himself, back in December, had hinted that MacArthur might be more useful in Australia than in Corregidor. During Churchill’s talks in Washington, he had shown Roosevelt and Stimson a telegram he had written ordering the evacuation of Lord Gort from Dunkirk in 1940 and thus depriving the Germans of a military trophy. The same could be done for MacArthur, he said. “I was struck by the impression it seemed to make on them,” Churchill recalled. “A little later in the day, Mr. Stimson came back and asked for a copy of it, which I promptly gave him.”
The argument for MacArthur’s removal to Australia was convincing to Roosevelt, not the least because pulling MacArthur off Corregidor would serve the president’s own political agenda. Roosevelt was facing public pressure to exact revenge on Japan (polls showed that Americans viewed Japan, and not Germany, as the nation’s primary enemy). Moreover, sending MacArthur to Australia would relieve pressure from Republicans who were pressing for MacArthur’s appointment as supreme commander. Wendell Willkie, who had lost the 1940 election to Roosevelt, publicly proposed that MacArthur be recalled from the Philippines and appointed supreme commander of all U.S. forces, and Congress had introduced a bill calling for the establishment of a Supreme War Command, which MacArthur would head. Roosevelt was not in the least bit intimidated by these political initiatives, but he agreed with Marshall that MacArthur’s rescue from Corregidor could serve multiple purposes. The most important of these would be to calm the clamor that the president do something to fight the Japanese. Then too, as Roosevelt conceded, the defense of Bataan and Corregidor had made MacArthur a national hero.
What was not clear, however, was whether MacArthur would agree to a “rescue.” Many of his colleagues in the War Department doubted that he would, arguing that he would instead insist on the evacuation of his wife and son while staying to fight to the last soldier on Corregidor. Patrick Hurley, in Australia, agreed. He wrote to Marshall, saying that the proposed transfer would have to be handled carefully because MacArthur would view his rescue as a stain on “his honor and record as a soldier” and would be sensitive to claims that he was abandoning his men. Hurley suggested that it be made clear to MacArthur that he was only being evacuated to organize a new command—to fight the Japanese. On February 23, Stimson met with Roosevelt to talk about MacArthur’s status and to find the words that would convince the Philippine commander that journeying south was the noble thing to do. This mission was more delicate than either man would later admit: A mere suggestion would likely result in a MacArthur rejection (with the political fallout that would entail), while a cajoling directive would force the Philippine commander to guard his honor. After a short discussion, Stimson threw up his hands. “Make it an order,” he said. Roosevelt agreed: MacArthur would never refuse a direct order, no matter how distastef
ul, and the president instructed Stimson to have Marshall draft it. At the War Department, Marshall gave the assignment to Eisenhower, who knew how to appeal to his former boss.
Events moved swiftly. On the day that Roosevelt decided to order MacArthur to Australia, the American commander bid farewell to High Commissioner Francis Sayre and Philippine President Quezón at the nearly destroyed South Dock on Corregidor. A submarine would take Sayre and Quezón south. Standing on the dock with MacArthur, an emotional Quezón slipped his signet ring from his finger and handed it to the general. “When they find your body,” he said, “I want them to know that you fought for my country.” That night, Dwight Eisenhower wrote a draft of the cable ordering MacArthur’s evacuation from Corregidor, carefully editing the message to get it just right. MacArthur was to stop in Mindanao, Eisenhower directed, but for no longer than one week (“to insure a prolonged defense”) before proceeding to Australia, where he would assume command of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific.
At first, MacArthur wanted to refuse the order. He argued that he would resign his commission and join the guerrilla force in Luzon fighting the Japanese. His staff heard him out but strongly disagreed. He had no choice, they said, but to do what Roosevelt wanted. He could not resign, could not refuse the order, and certainly could not retreat to the mountains of Luzon. MacArthur listened closely, reviewed Roosevelt’s cable, and then—in a return cable the next morning—requested he be allowed to determine the date of his departure. “I know the situation here in the Philippines,” he wrote, “and unless the right moment is chosen for this delicate operation, a sudden collapse might occur. . . . These people are depending on me now and any idea that might develop in their minds that I was being withdrawn for any other purpose than to bring them immediate relief could not be explained.” Marshall took the cable to Roosevelt. “Your No. 358 has been carefully considered by the President,” Marshall responded, “[and] he has directed that full decision as to timing of your departure and details of method be left in your hands.”
MacArthur wasn’t as concerned about his rescue as he was with the fate of Wainwright and Parker’s soldiers, who gained a much-needed pause from Japanese attacks after their victory at the Battle of the Pockets. The triumph had been sealed by Clint Pierce’s headlong response to the Japanese amphibious landings along Bataan’s west coast—the so-called Battle of the Points. The two victories lifted Allied spirits, provided a needed rest for American and Filipino soldiers manning the Orion-Bagac line, and embarrassed Homma. But there was never much doubt among the Americans and Filipinos that they would be attacked again, and in force. They were on half rations or worse (officers reported that there was often only a single can of salmon for fifteen men), and there was no hope of reinforcement: The Japanese had so tightened control of the shipping lanes into the archipelago that nothing was getting through to the islands. But MacArthur refused to be pessimistic—Wainwright and Parker’s defenses were strong enough (as MacArthur cabled to Marshall) that “we may be approaching the stalemate of positional warfare.”
In fact, that is precisely what the Japanese also believed. The Battle of the Pockets and the Battle of the Points had so embarrassed the Japanese high command that it replaced Homma’s chief of staff with Lieutenant General Takeji Wachi. After arriving with great fanfare from Tokyo, Wachi talked at length with Homma’s senior subordinates before conducting a tour of Homma’s Bataan positions. Wachi was shocked. Homma’s army was in chaos, his officers demoralized, and his soldiers intimidated by MacArthur’s formidable defenses. “The Japanese Army,” Wachi told his Tokyo superiors, “[has been] severely beaten.” The response in Tokyo was immediate: the high command sent the battle-hardened 11,000-man 4th Division and the 4,000-man Nagano Infantry Regiment to Manila from China, then supplemented them with five artillery regiments from Hong Kong and the 10th Independent Garrison from the home islands.
MacArthur didn’t know of Homma’s reinforcements, but it would have made little difference if he had. By March 10, he had decided to travel to Mindanao by PT boat. In fact, the decision was made for him: The submarine assigned to take him, his staff, and his family off Corregidor was not available, and the claustrophobic MacArthur would have been queasy about making the journey in so confined a space. As a result, Admiral Francis Rockwell (Thomas Hart’s successor) assigned four PT boats commanded by Lieutenant John Bulkeley (in PT-41) to the mission. MacArthur chose twenty-one people to accompany him, including his wife and son; General Richard Sutherland and Army Air Force Brigadier General Harold H. George; a handful of signals, engineer, artillery, and air officers; Sutherland’s assistant; a medical officer; and Ah Cheu, Arthur’s nurse. The mission was to bring MacArthur safely to Mindanao, where four aircraft would be waiting at Del Monte Field to take him and his party to Australia. Bulkeley was to steer his human cargo through hundreds of miles of Japanese waters, dodging sea mines and (Bulkeley hoped) outrunning Japanese destroyers and cruisers. Australia was straight south, some twenty-five hundred miles distant, with nearly every inch of it under the control of the Japanese Empire. Sid Huff was counted among those who would make the trip—an irony because several years earlier, it was Huff who had suggested that deploying PT boats would be an important first step in building a Philippine navy. Now, here they were—four sleek, low-in-the-water seventy-footers, each powered by 4,000-plus horsepower Packard motors. Bulkeley insisted that his passengers comply with his requirements: Each passenger would be allowed a single suitcase, and no more. The key, he told MacArthur, was to avoid detection, and the only way to do that was to travel light—and fast.
The plan to “rescue” MacArthur was secret and had remained so for several weeks. Not even Australian Prime Minister John Curtin was told of it, for fear that an unintended leak of the information would make the escape impossible. Which it nearly was; the Japanese had increased their patrols outside Manila harbor, tightening the cordon around the archipelago. “It was only too apparent,” Bulkeley remembered, “that the Japanese navy not only expected General MacArthur to leave Corregidor, but would do everything it could to intercept him.” MacArthur, who would be on Bulkeley’s boat, conferred with him about the journey, then ordered an attack by Philippine Q-boats near Subic Bay on the night of his departure to divert the Japanese navy’s attention.
Bulkeley gave his commanders their orders: They would leave Corregidor’s South Dock at sunset on March 11 with Bulkeley’s PT-41 in the lead. The four-boat squadron, in a diamond formation, would head straight south. If all went well, the boats would reach Tagauayan Island, 250 miles away in the Sulu Sea, twelve hours after leaving Corregidor. “Buck tells me we have a chance to get through the blockade of PT boats,” MacArthur told the other passengers. “It won’t be easy. There will be plenty of risks. But four boats are available, and with their machine guns and torpedoes, we could put up a good fight against an enemy warship if necessary. And, of course, the boats have plenty of speed. If we can get to Mindanao by boat, bombers from Australia can pick us up there and fly us the rest of the way.” This sounded simple enough, but Bulkeley was taking no chances. If they were attacked, he told the other three PT boat commanders, he would make a run for it while they fought the Japanese.
MacArthur’s most challenging duty came in his last hours on Corregidor, when he summoned Wainwright from Bataan to the command post on Topside. Sutherland met Wainwright in the main tunnel at Malinta to give him a heads-up on what to expect. “General MacArthur is going to leave here and go to Australia,” Sutherland said. “He’s up at the house now and wants to see you. But I’ll give you a fill-in first.” Sutherland provided Wainwright with details of MacArthur’s escape plan, then told him that he, Wainwright, would be named commander of the forces in the Philippines after MacArthur’s departure. Sutherland offered Wainwright lunch, but Wainwright declined. Everyone was on short rations, and Wainwright had recently had to kill his horse, his beloved “Joseph Conrad,” for meat. Sutherland then escorted Wainwright to MacArthu
r’s cottage. The jungle around it was filled with bomb craters, the undergrowth singed and burned. MacArthur, standing in an old khaki coat that hung on him, greeted Wainwright warmly, then motioned him to a chair near the cottage entrance. Wainwright slumped into the chair, gaunt and exhausted.
Wainwright was a good soldier—he never criticized MacArthur and never complained about his troops or questioned an order. But in private, and with his subordinates, he had other opinions. He said that MacArthur should have been seen more on Bataan and should have been more outspoken in insisting that the American government arm the Filipinos. Wainwright also believed that MacArthur had been terribly wrong in ordering a fighting retreat through Luzon, no matter how brilliantly it had been conducted. But he never mentioned any of this to MacArthur, whom he admired. MacArthur had similar complaints. He thought Wainwright was too tentative in his deployments, too careful on the offensive, and too old-fashioned in his military thinking. And MacArthur thought Wainwright drank too much—which had caused problems between them. But MacArthur admired Wainwright as a soldier and never doubted his courage or commitment. The Far East commander trusted his subordinate completely. MacArthur called Wainwright “Jonathan” (“the only person to ever do so,” Wainwright later acknowledged), while Wainwright called MacArthur “Douglas.”
MacArthur got to the point: “Jonathan, I want you to understand my position very plainly. I’m leaving for Australia pursuant to repeated orders of the president. Things have gotten to such a point that I must comply with these orders or get out of the army. I want you to make it known throughout all elements of your command that I am leaving over my repeated protests.”