The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur
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But the debate over the date for the Luzon landings was only beginning. The new schedule meant that MacArthur had to contend yet again with Nimitz, who had convinced King to support Spruance’s plan to seize Iwo Jima and Okinawa—and to cancel the invasion of Formosa. The Formosa decision angered King, but Nimitz insisted that a late-December date for Luzon’s invasion simply couldn’t be met. Halsey had had to remain off Leyte for weeks longer than anticipated, and the fleet was in desperate need of rest and repairs. In the end, everything was pushed back: The landing on Mindoro was set for December 15 and on Luzon for January 9. Nimitz then pushed back his own operations: Iwo Jima was to be assaulted on February 9, and Okinawa on April 1.
For MacArthur, however, there was one more crisis to overcome. Richard Sutherland, still smarting from his Hollandia confrontation, had surreptitiously recalled his mistress from Australia, ordered a cottage built for her at the new naval base south of Tacloban, and then visited her regularly. MacArthur’s staff knew of Sutherland’s subterfuge and plotted to undo it. The job of discreetly leaking the news was given to Roger Egeberg, who, in a private lunch with MacArthur, implied that something was amiss. MacArthur took the hint: “Whatever happened to that woman?” the commander asked. “She’s at Tolosa,” Egeberg answered, referring to a nearby village. So much for discretion. MacArthur’s explosion was immediate. He ordered Egeberg to “find Sutherland,” stalked down the hallway to his office, and then (after angrily slamming his door) confronted his chief of staff. “You God-damned son of a bitch,” he roared. Sutherland was relieved of his duties and placed under house arrest, while Elaine Clarke was summarily put aboard yet another flight to Australia. Sutherland remained defiant, dispensing with his earlier blubbering. It didn’t matter. MacArthur stripped him of responsibilities and moved him to a nearby room to keep an eye on him.
While Sutherland remained on MacArthur’s staff, in the weeks ahead his place in MacArthur’s inner circle was taken by logistics chief Richard Marshall and Colonel Courtney Whitney, an unrepentant ultraconservative who had once been a lawyer for Manila’s richest families. Whitney’s influence in MacArthur’s staff would have an appalling effect, institutionalizing the insular anti-Washington paranoia among those closest to the commander. He was, as one staff officer later wrote, “a consummate flatterer” of MacArthur.
And so, for a time, it seemed that MacArthur’s luck had become bad luck. Halsey’s claim that Leyte was defenseless had proved wrong, he had left Kinkaid’s sailors vulnerable, and all of this while Japanese pilots wheeled overhead and plowed into the American fleet. MacArthur’s headquarters became a favorite target, as if the Japanese knew he was there, as they probably did. By mid-November, its walls were pockmarked; whenever a Japanese aircraft appeared, the retinue of reporters, aides, assistants, and other staffers unceremoniously scrambled for cover.
Inevitably, however (even though the fight for Leyte seemed interminable), MacArthur’s luck began to turn. The first evidence of this came on November 26, as MacArthur stood before a room full of his commanders, giving a briefing on how best to peel apart Japan’s Leyte defenses. In the midst of his talk, a Japanese bomber strafed the headquarters, screaming as it made its final dive. Robert Eichelberger was in the room when the attack occurred and remembered the details:
The Japanese bombed the house, and MacArthur was standing with a pointer in his hand, as though he were a cadet pointing out places on the map. The bomb exploded, but he went on. No one in the room noticed any hesitation or any change in his hand at all. When he finished his sentence and his thought, he turned to one of his subordinates and said, “Better look in the kitchen and outside. That bomb was close, and someone may have been hurt.” At least three people in the kitchen of the house in which he was speaking were injured. One, I believe, was killed.
MacArthur’s next piece of good luck came on December 15, when the 19th and 503rd Regimental Combat Teams came ashore on the southwestern coast of Mindoro. By December 20, MacArthur’s engineers (protected by twelve thousand infantrymen) had built two dry airfields for Kenney’s fliers. But while American GIs moved inland on Mindoro, the Japanese mounted a stream of kamikaze attacks, sinking two LSTs and a tanker and damaging a light cruiser and four destroyers. The light cruiser was the USS Nashville, MacArthur’s command ship. But MacArthur wasn’t aboard. At the last moment, he had decided he didn’t need to oversee the Mindoro operation and sent a lieutenant colonel in his stead. The officer took up residence in what would have been MacArthur’s quarters, which is where he was when the attack came. The officer lost a leg but was fortunate not to lose his life. One hundred and thirty-three sailors were killed in the inferno.
The Nashville episode would have been a fitting end to a bloody year, but on December 19, as German tanks in Belgium rolled westward through the snow toward Bastogne, MacArthur was informed in a cable from Marshall that he had been promoted to general of the army—five-star rank—the day before. Marshall himself had gained that rank two days earlier, while Eisenhower was given his two days later, to be followed by Hap Arnold and Omar Bradley. The promotions extended to the navy high command, with William Leahy, Ernie King, and Chester Nimitz named fleet admirals. King’s promotion was dated one day later than MacArthur’s. The commander was undoubtedly pleased: He was now senior to King by a single day.
The first wave of Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army—68,000 men in four divisions abreast, lit by a shimmering midmorning sun and riding through glass-calm seas—came ashore under the guns of Kinkaid's and Halsey’s fleets on the southern beaches of Lingayen Gulf on S-Day, January 9, 1945. Krueger’s divisions (the 43rd, 6th, 37th, and 40th) pushed inland and secured the bridges over the Calmay and Dagupan Rivers. Within the next forty-eight hours, upward of an additional 150,000 troops made it ashore, nearly all without incident. This was the stuff of legend, as Filipinos talked of how they had never seen Lingayen so calm; it was as if Japan’s divine wind had been quieted by MacArthur himself. But while the waters of Lingayen Gulf were calm, the air above them wasn’t. Three days before the landings, the battleship New Mexico had been hit by a kamikaze attack, along with the destroyers Walke, Allen M. Sumner, and Brooks and the attack transport Callaway. The next day, the battleship California was targeted and suffered 200 casualties, and the Australia, hit during the Leyte invasion, was hit again. The roll of casualties lengthened on the day Krueger landed, with the cruiser Columbia suffering 92 dead, bringing the total to twenty-five ships sunk or damaged in just four days. The attacks abated as Kenney’s fighters gained control of Luzon’s skies, but the Japanese response to the invasion had been ferocious and costly. MacArthur waded ashore in the wake of Krueger’s landings and tramped around the beach, wondering where Yamashita would make his stand.
Yamashita was, in fact, surprised by the landings. After the war, American intelligence officers discovered that “the Tiger of Malaya” had calculated that MacArthur would land on the eastern side of Lingayen Gulf to keep his forces clear of the currents and winds on the southern beaches. He had guessed wrong. “It was apparent that our landing in the Lingayen-Mabilao area had taken the enemy completely by surprise,” Krueger wrote after the war. “He had probably assumed that the rivers, estuaries, swamps and fish ponds in that area, to say nothing of the high surf, would make a landing there impossible, or at least very unlikely.” Yamashita had gathered his forces in the east, near San Fernando, naming the La Union area as MacArthur’s likely landing zone. The result was that the Japanese were now in the mountains on Krueger’s left flank and nearly in his left rear, where the 43rd Division scraped against them. As Krueger’s army leaped ahead to the Agno River, his 24th Division (on the American left) fought off Japanese lunges from the heights overlooking Rosario. When the 24th counterattacked, it was met by Japanese burrowed into Luzon’s rocks. Unable to pry the Japanese from their positions, the infantry burned the Japanese out of their defenses with flamethrowers.
Three days after the landings, Krueger went aboard t
he USS Boise to meet with MacArthur, who congratulated him on his successes, then suggested that an additional two divisions be landed at Subic Bay, in the Japanese rear. His logic was impeccable, if predictable: Having lived through the cauldron of Leyte, with his soldiers pinned into the razor-sharp ravines of Breakneck Ridge, MacArthur longed to open a campaign of maneuver that had eluded him since his leaps through New Guinea. He pushed Krueger to move faster, arguing that the defensive lines that faced him were lightly manned. Yamashita was making his stand elsewhere, he said, leaving the central valleys of the Philippines lightly defended. Krueger agreed with the need for the Subic Bay landings but stubbornly rejected MacArthur’s argument that the push to Manila be accelerated. Krueger suspected that his commander was simply hoping to parade in Manila for MacArthur’s birthday, on January 26, which was, coincidentally, Krueger’s birthday as well. “He emphasized repeatedly that our losses so far had been small,” Krueger remembered. “He expressed the view that the advance would encounter little opposition and that the Japanese would not attempt to defend Manila but would evacuate it.” This was MacArthur reading Yamashita’s mind. The Japanese, MacArthur said, would take advantage of Luzon’s terrain to wage a war of attrition, going down to defeat while killing as many Americans as possible. Krueger disagreed. An advance on Manila, he argued, would expose his 24th Division to a counterstroke from his left, adding that “an all-out drive to Manila would not be feasible until the 32nd Division and the 1st Cavalry” were ashore. Clyde Eddleman, Krueger’s chief of staff, praised his commander. “The old man stuck to his guns,” he said.
The meeting on the Boise set the pattern of Krueger’s relationship with MacArthur on Luzon. Krueger, MacArthur complained, was being too careful. Krueger pushed back, standing up to his commander in conference after conference. As the tensions radiated outward, MacArthur chafed at Krueger’s glacial pace and, at one point, placed his Luzon field headquarters in advance of Krueger’s, hoping to embarrass him. He scribbled pointed criticisms, saying that Krueger was not moving quickly enough. “Where are your casualties? Why are you holding I Corps back? It ought to be moving south.” After MacArthur visited the 37th Division, he wrote Krueger a hurried warning, urging him to accelerate his operations. Finally, MacArthur baited Krueger, hinting again that Eichelberger might replace him. Krueger dismissed the threat, but his staff could tell he was worried: His pack-a-day cigarette habit (he smoked filterless Camels) was now at two packs, supplemented by specially ordered cigars and pipes. Still, he would not be bullied. In fact, Krueger’s lack of speed was the result of his lack of supplies. Earlier, he had not had enough of anything, but now had plenty of everything—but no way to bring it to the front. “Our advance toward the south was slower than desirable,” he later wrote, “but its pace depended upon reconstruction of the many destroyed bridges, some very large ones, rehabilitation of the roads and the Manila-Dagupan Railroad. Shortage of vital bridge material, lack of locomotive[s], and limited rolling stock complicated matters.”
The differences between MacArthur and Krueger also flowed from their estimates of Yamashita’s strength. Intelligence chief Charles Willoughby claimed that Yamashita could call on no more than 152,500 troops, whereas Colonel Horton White, Krueger’s chief of intelligence, estimated that there were 234,500 Japanese on Luzon. In fact, Yamashita could call on some 275,000 soldiers, whom he had organized into three defensive groups: the northern Luzon Shobu Group (152,000 soldiers), the Kembu Group (30,000) guarding Manila’s approaches, and a mixed complement of 80,000 infantrymen and naval marines guarding Manila’s eastern approaches. Yamashita had prepared well, for although his Fourteenth Area Army was short on munitions, medical supplies, fuel, and food, the largest portion of his troops was dug in along a large and easily defended triangle north of San Fabian. Yamashita calculated that his defense, laid out in a tangled morass of mountainous terrain, would cut MacArthur to pieces.
Back in Hawaii, an impatient Nimitz angrily followed the news on Luzon. He had pushed MacArthur to set back his timetable for the Luzon invasion, then had set back his own for the landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Now, with Krueger grinding forward, the schedule for the return of Halsey’s fleet to Nimitz was slipping. Nimitz and MacArthur traded strained messages on the subject, and while the two eventually agreed that Kinkaid could keep some of Halsey’s forces (four battleships, two cruisers, and twenty-six destroyers), Nimitz worried that the kamikaze attacks that had hit Kinkaid would be repeated at Iwo Jima. Then too, the Japanese were deeply entrenched on the island, a volcanic moonscape pockmarked with deep caves. Nimitz, King, and Spruance grew increasingly embittered by MacArthur’s stubbornness, as he seemed unconcerned with any problems but his own. Later, Marine General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, one of the toughest American combat commanders, claimed that MacArthur’s Manila obsession cost him lives. Spruance’s comments were as pointed: Luzon forced Spruance to reduce the number of ships he could use at Iwo Jima, he said, which cost the Marines cover. MacArthur issued no apology, told Kinkaid to deal with Nimitz, kept what he could from Halsey, and pressed Krueger.
But if MacArthur shrugged off the controversy, it was because he was convinced that the only way to meet Nimitz’s schedule was to push quickly on to Clark Field, with its paved runways. Major General Oscar “Gris” Griswold (Halsey’s New Georgia and Bougainville “fireman”) agreed—and disagreed: Taking Clark was the key, but it couldn’t be done by simply demanding it.
Finally, on January 21, Krueger directed Griswold to accelerate his push south. As one of the army’s best tacticians, Griswold intensely disliked MacArthur’s antinavy views and defended Krueger’s methodical pace. Griswold did everything he could to protect his soldiers from impetuous commanders, adopting tactics that included massing artillery fire to save his men from the close-support rifle and grenade brawls that decimated American battalions. He moved the 40th Division toward Clark on the twenty-second and reached the air base the next day, with his GIs grappling with the Japanese across the same tarmacs once marked by the charred fuselages of Lewis Brereton’s air force. The 160th Infantry Regiment ran into heavy resistance from the Japanese at Bamban, northeast of Clark, but captured the town on the twenty-fifth. The firefight was a withering back-and-forth affair that continued into the twenty-sixth, when the 160th attacked across the Bamban River. The Japanese defended the river crossing and rooted themselves along a series of ridges to the west, where they defended their “cave positions in the hills to the last man.” This was good progress, but MacArthur was nearly frantic. Walking now over the old battlefields that marked “Skinny” Wainwright’s 1942 defense of Luzon, MacArthur prodded and pushed. He brought Robert Eichelberger back into the fight, landing his 38th Division at San Narciso to bring pressure on the Japanese from the south and to keep them from slithering, MacArthur-like, into Bataan.
On January 28, two days after his sixty-fifth birthday, MacArthur visited the 25th (“Tropic Lightning”) Division on Griswold’s left and became involved in a chaotic firefight when Japanese armor surged through San Manuel towards the 161st Regiment. “Our lines reeled,” he later wrote, “and I became so concerned over a possible penetration that I personally hastened to the scene of action of the 161st Infantry. Its colonel, James Dalton II, was one of its finest commanders. I joined him in steadying the ranks.” The next day, MacArthur headed east, and the day after that, he walked the tarmac of Clark Field. He then drove south, toward the front lines, but stopped at San Fernando to issue a rebuke. “There was a noticeable lack of drive and aggressive initiative today in the movement to Calumpit,” he wrote Krueger. In fact, Krueger’s offensive was now clicking elegantly into place. The 32nd and 1st Cavalry Divisions were ashore and moving south, the 6th and 43rd Infantry Divisions were driving northeast against Yamashita, two regiments of Swing’s 11th Airborne Division were ashore at Nasugba southwest of Manila, the 25th Division was fighting its way east through San Manuel, and Griswold’s men were poised above the capital.
Mudge put together a column from the 5th and 8th Regiments, the 44th Tank Battalion, a Marine covering force, and demolition experts and sent it barreling south. The raid covered one hundred miles in sixty-eight hours, brushing aside Japanese units in two firefights, before arriving at the gates of Santo Tomas on the late afternoon of February 3. A tank knocked down the front gate as infantrymen took on a squad of surprised guards. Mudge’s soldiers, as one of his officers testified, were greeted “amid scenes of pathos and joy none of the participating troops will ever forget.” The 37th Division, meanwhile, was just one day behind, its forward units probing through Grace Park, north of the city. By the night of February 4, elements of the 37th were in the city, and the next day, Griswold divided the city in half, ordering the 1st Cavalry to sweep in a wide arc through Manila’s eastern suburbs, while the 37th occupied Manila itself.