by Perry, Mark
Tomoyuki Yamashita was tried for war crimes in Manila in 1945. He was convicted and executed, by hanging, in February 1946.
Acknowledgments
I want to express my appreciation to Lara Heimert, my publisher and editor at Basic Books, whose patience and detailed comments on this narrative proved invaluable; to Roger LaBrie, whose edits and suggestions saved me much embarrassment; to James Zobel, the archivist at the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, who provided tireless research guidance; to Gail Ross, my agent, who has stood by my side through a lifetime of writing; and to my wife Nina and my children Cal and Madeleine for their unfailing love and support. I have dedicated this book to General Bruce Palmer Jr., who served his country with honor and distinction and was a good friend to me.
A Note on Sources
The Most Dangerous Man in America was written from the firsthand accounts of the historical participants: the diaries, digests, interviews, notes, letters, monographs, memoranda, papers, and reminiscences of Douglas MacArthur, Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Jean MacArthur, Henry Arnold, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, William Halsey, Jonathan M. Wainwright, Harold Ickes, Henry Stimson, Robert Eichelberger, Walter Krueger, George Kenney, Ennis Whitehead, Richard Sutherland, Richard Marshall, Sidney Huff, John D. Bulkeley, Thomas Blamey, Daniel Barbey, Thomas Kinkaid, Thomas Hart, and Lewis Brereton.
The MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, contains the correspondence of both MacArthur and his wife, his reminiscences on his service in World War One, an extensive cache of interviews he conducted during his career and after, and, most importantly, thousands of radio cables that MacArthur sent and received during World War Two. The memorial’s archivist, James Zobel, provided valued and patient assistance in the research for this book.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, contains the president’s invaluable correspondence with MacArthur during World War Two. The library also holds notes and papers that provide his views on his relationship with MacArthur, Marshall, Eisenhower, and their subordinates—as well as his most important wartime papers.
Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall’s papers are collected in The Papers of George Catlett Marshall (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), which includes his wartime memoranda to Franklin Roosevelt and his wartime cable messages to MacArthur. I have also relied on the invaluable postcareer interview of Marshall conducted by his biographer, Forrest Pogue.
Dwight Eisenhower’s views of MacArthur, including those during his tenure as a staff officer for MacArthur during the Bonus March, during the budget fights when MacArthur was army chief of staff, and then during MacArthur’s prewar tenure in Manila can be found in Eisenhower, The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905–1941 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Eisenhower’s wartime dispatches to MacArthur are contained in the multivolume The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years (John Hopkins University Press, 1970).
The memories and reminiscences of the events of World War Two of each these major participants have been checked against the official accounts of the battles and campaigns as contained in each military service’s official history (these also contain interviews with the major commanders after the fact). Samuel Eliot Morison’s fourteen-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Little, Brown & Company, 1947); the six-volume Army Air Forces in World War II (University of Chicago Press, 1948); and the multivolume U.S. Army in World War II (Center of Military History, 1996). I have relied most particularly on those multiple volumes of the U.S. Army’s official history dealing with MacArthur’s campaigns and his relationship with the army chief of staff and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (all sources from the U.S. Army Center of Military History): The Supreme Command (1954); Strategy and Command: The First Two Years (1962); The Fall of the Philippines (1952); Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (1949); The Approach to the Philippines (1953); Victory in Papua (1955); Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls (1955); Cartwheel and the Reduction of Rabaul (1959); Leyte: The Return to the Philippines (1954); and Triumph in the Philippines (1963).
Nearly all of MacArthur’s commanders have provided personal reminiscences of him and an account of their service in the Southwest Pacific Area. These are invaluable first-person accounts: Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey’s MacArthur’s Amphibious Navy: Seventh Amphibious Force Operations (United States Naval Institute, 1969); Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger’s Our Jungle Road to Tokyo (Viking Press, 1950) and Dear Miss Em, General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945, edited by Jay Luvaas (Greenwood Press, 1972); General George Kenney’s George Kenney Reports (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949); General Walter Krueger’s From Down Under to Nippon (Combat Forces Press, 1953); and General Jonathan Wainwright’s General Wainwright’s Story, with Robert Considine (Doubleday, 1946). Of less value, but of interest, is MacArthur’s own account of his life: Reminiscences (McGraw Hill, 1964). I recommend the often-ignored but valuable two-volume autobiography of Paul P. Rogers, an eyewitness to the MacArthur-Sutherland relationship: MacArthur and Sutherland: The Bitter Years and MacArthur and Sutherland: The Good Years (Praeger, 1990).
No account of the life and campaigns of Douglas MacArthur can be written without acknowledging the work of the biographers who have contributed to the MacArthur story. The works include D. Clayton James’s two-volume The Years of MacArthur (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970); William Manchester’s American Caesar (Little, Brown and Company, 1978); and Geoffrey Perret’s Old Soldiers Never Die (Random House, 1996).
A complete list of the literature on the life of Douglas MacArthur and his career during the Great Depression and the Pacific War would run to hundreds of pages. But a select listing of those most valuable biographies and studies that contributed to this narrative must include the following:
Allen, Thomas B., and Norman Polmar. Codename Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan (Headline, 1995).
Borneman, Walter R. The Admirals (Little, Brown and Company, 2012).
Brands, H. W. Traitor to His Class (Doubleday, 2008).
Buell, Thomas B. Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Little, Brown and Company, 1980).
Campbell, James. The Ghost Mountain Boys (Crown, 2007).
Connaughton, Richard, John Pimlott, and Duncan Anderson. The Battle for Manila (Presidio, 1995).
———. MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines (Overlook Press, 2001).
Davidson, Peter D. Bulldozing the Way: New Guinea to Japan (privately published, 2009).
Gamble, Bruce. Fortress Rabaul (Zenith Press, 2010).
Griffith, Thomas E. Jr. MacArthur’s Airman: General George C. Kenney and the War in the Southwest Pacific (University Press of Kansas, 1998).
Harries, Meirion, and Susie Harries. Soldiers of the Sun (Random House, 1991).
Hastings, Max. Retribution (Knopf, 2008).
Holzimmer, Kevin C. General Walter Krueger (University Press of Kansas, 2007).
Hoyt, Edwin P. MacArthur’s Navy (Orion Books, 1989).
Leary, William M., ed. We Shall Return! MacArthur’s Commanders and the Defeat of Japan (University Press of Kentucky, 1988).
———. MacArthur and the American Century (University of Nebraska Press, 1995).
McAulay, Lex. MacArthur’s Eagles: The U.S. Air War over New Guinea 1943–1944 (Naval Institute Press, 2005).
Norman, Michael, and Elizabeth M. Norman. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009).
Persico, Joseph E. Roosevelt’s Centurions (Random House, 2013).
Petillo, Carol Morris. Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Indiana University Press, 1981).
Potter, E. B. Nimitz (Naval Institute Press, 1976).
Prados, John. Islands of Destiny (NAL Caliber, 2012).
Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan. Allies Against the Rising Sun (University Press of Kansas, 2009).
Schultz, Duane. Her
o of Bataan: The Story of General Jonathan M. Wainwright (St. Martin’s Press, 1981).
Sloan, Bill. Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
Smith, George W. MacArthur’s Escape (Zenith Press, 2005).
Smythe, Donald. Pershing: General of the Armies (Indiana University Press, 1986).
Taaffe, Stephen R. MacArthur’s Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign (University Press of Kansas, 1998).
———. Marshall and His Generals (University Press of Kansas, 2011).
Thomas, Evan. Sea of Thunder (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
———. The War Lovers (Little, Brown & Company, 2010).
Toll, Ian W. Pacific Crucible (Norton, 2012).
Weintraub, Stanley. Fifteen Stars (Free Press, 2007).
Young, Kenneth Ray. The General’s General: The Life and Times of Arthur MacArthur (Westview, 1994).
Index
Abe, Hiroaki, 224
Adachi, Hadacho, 266
Adelaide, 157, 159
Aguinaldo, Emilio, 42–43
Aitape, 261
Akin, Spencer, 168
Alexander, Milton, 117
Alice Springs, 155–156
Allen, Robert, 22, 23–26
Allen, Terry de la Mesa, 226
Andrews, Frank, 32, 36
Aparri, 86–87, 88
Arawe, 247
Arcadia Conference, 119
Army budget. See U.S. army budget
Army-navy competition, 163–164, 243–246, 248, 276, 354
Arnold, Henry H. “Hap,” 31, 32, 73, 193, 226, 232, 257, 327
and commanders, assessment of, 205–208
and Kenney, George, 191–192
and Philippines, U.S. airfield attack in, responsibility for, 76, 81, 82
and promotion to general of the army, 309
Australia, 89, 90, 100–102, 140, 177–178
establishment of three combat commands in, 167–168
and MacArthur as commander and chief, Southwest Pacific area, 140, 143–147
MacArthur’s evacuation to, 148–153
MacArthur’s request for reinforcements in, 178–183, 185
See also Blamey, Thomas; Chifley, Joseph Benedict “Ben”; Thomas; Curtin, John; specific cities, towns, battle sites, battles, etc.
Australian Imperial Force, 142. See also Blamey, Thomas
Baker, Newton, 32
Baliuag, 114–115
Barbey, Daniel, 233–234, 246, 252, 262, 286, 300, 356
and Operation Cartwheel, 240, 242
and Operation Oboe, 340–341
Baruch, Bernard, 29
Bataan, 54, 96, 98–99, 105, 118–119, 322
MacArthur’s escape from, 157
promise of relief in, 119–121, 123–125, 139–140, 173
retreat into, 111–118
surrender of, 169–171
surrender of, responsibility for, 174–176
See also Battle of Bataan
Bataan Death March, 172, 173–174, 176, 207, 256–257
Battle of Bataan, 119–121, 122–123, 128–131, 133–135, 136, 173. See also Bataan
Battle of Bloody Ridge, 204
Battle of Leyte Gulf, 292–294. See also Leyte
Battle of Luzon, 118. See also Luzon
Battle of Midway, 187, 189–190
Battle of the Bismarck Sea, 228–230
Battle of the Bulge, 330
Battle of the Coral Sea, 187
Battle of the Eastern Solomons, 203
Battle of the Philippine Sea, 266
Battle of the Pockets, 135, 136, 147–148
Battle of the Points, 147–148
Beard, Charles, 12
Beightler, Robert, 319, 320, 321–322
Biak, 263–264, 265–266
Blaik, Earl “Red,” 220
Blamey, Sir Thomas, 167, 217, 234–235, 279–280, 283, 336–337, 356
and Leyte, 286
and New Guinea, 195, 196
and Operation Cartwheel, 241
Bong, Richard, 305
Bonus Army/Bonus March/Anacostia Flats scandal, 3–4, 6, 7, 13, 14, 25, 29, 37, 38, 40, 45, 144, 328, 354
Borneo, 87, 336–341. See also Operation Oboe
Bradley, Omar, 144–145, 226, 309, 343
Bratton, Rufus, 69–71
Brereton, Lewis, 52, 67, 74, 76, 87–88, 106–107, 356
and Pearl Harbor attack, 71–74
and Philippines, U.S. airfield attack in, responsibility for, 81–85
Brett, George, 100, 155, 166, 167, 191, 195
Brisbane, 194–195, 211
Brooke, Alan (1st Viscount Alanbrooke), 185
Brooks, Louise, 22, 24, 51
Brougher, William, 176
Bruce, Andrew, 298
Buckner, Simon Bolivar, 245
Bulkeley, John, 126, 148–149, 151–152
Buna, 196, 208–213, 213–219, 221–222, 224, 225, 226
Burma, 161
Byers, Clovis, 218–219
Byrnes, Joseph, 39, 40
Callaghan, Daniel, 224
Calumpit Bridges, 114, 115, 116
Camero, Archibald, 337
Canberra, 162
Cape Gloucester, 246–248
Carney, Robert, 268
Carpender, Arthur Shuyler “Chips,” 206, 242, 244–245
Casablanca conference, 1943, 231–233
Casey, Hugh, 168, 178, 197–198, 212, 263, 306
Casey, Pat, 99
Cavite Navy Yard (Manila), 87–88
CCC. See Civilian Conservation Corps
Central Pacific campaign, 243–246, 248, 276
Chamberlin, Stephen, 168, 231, 261–262, 282
Chifley, Joseph Benedict “Ben,” 337, 338, 341
Churchill, Winston, 64, 88, 180, 183, 348
and anti-British sentiment, 338–339
and Bataan, promise of relief to MacArthur in, 119–120
and Casablanca Conference, 1943, 231–233
and Curtin, John, 140–143, 161–162
and France, second front in, 184–186
and MacArthur, 96, 109–110, 143, 145
and Operation Sledgehammer, 189–191
and Roosevelt, Franklin, 100, 223
and two-front war strategy, 179, 182, 183
and Yalta Conference, 316–318
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 7–13
Clark, Mark, 144–145, 226, 275
Clark Field attack, 74, 76, 80–85, 91–93, 313–314
Clarke, Elaine, 283–284, 307
Colin, P. Kelly, Jr., 87
Collins, Ross, 4–5, 15, 22, 23, 24, 26, 32, 37
Conner, Fox, 30, 32, 36, 277
Cooke, Charles, 231, 251
Cooper, Isabella Rosario, 22, 23–26, 51
Corregidor, 54, 105, 131, 135–136, 140, 322
MacArthur’s escape from, 157, 159–160
MacArthur’s evacuation from, 140, 143–147, 355
MacArthur’s evacuation to, 106–109
Philippine government move to, from Manila, 94–95
surrender of, 171–172
surrender of, responsibility for, 174–176
Craig, Malin, 38, 40, 48–50, 60–61, 134, 220
Cruzen, R. H., 292–293
Curtin, John, 149, 159, 179–181, 182, 229, 336–337, 355
and Churchill, Winston, 140–143, 161–162
and MacArthur as commander and chief, Southwest Pacific area, 143, 144, 155
Dalton, James II, 314
Daniels, Josephus, 4, 5, 26, 38
Darwin, 156, 166
Davis, Thomas Jefferson, 47, 48
Dawes, Charles, 20–21
Decker, George, 321
Dern, George, 14–16, 21, 24, 33, 34, 43, 44, 49
and army air corps, 31–32
and army budget, 16–17, 36
Dewey, Thomas, 267, 271–272, 303–304, 305
Diller, LeGrande “Pick,” 304
Doe, Jens, 263
>
Doolittle, Jimmy, 186, 238
Drum, Hugh, 48, 50
Early, Jubal, 82
Early, Steve, 10, 25, 65–66
Eddleman, Clyde, 312
Egeberg, Roger, 254–255, 289, 307
Eichelberger, Robert, 219–221, 234, 252, 267, 314, 323, 331–332, 356–357
and Biak, 266
and Buna, 218–219, 221–222, 224, 225
and Distinguished Service Cross, 227, 228
and Eisenhower, Dwight, 261
and Hollandia, 261, 263
and Japan, invasion of, 343
and Japan, surrender of, 347–348
and Krueger, Walter, 237, 297–298, 312
and Leyte, 299
and MacArthur, 218–219, 220, 221, 227–228
and MacArthur’s criticism of colleagues, 324–325
and nomination for Medal of Honor, 228
and Operation Oboe, 337–338
and Operation Victor, 332–333
and POWs, 347
and Sanananda, 227
Eisenhower, Dwight, 29–30, 36, 49, 53, 138, 144–145, 220, 331
and army budget, 9–10
and Australia, 89, 90
and Bataan, promise of relief to MacArthur in, 125
and Clark, Mark, 226
and Collins, Ross, 15
command structure of, 236
as commander of the invasion of France, 250
and Cooper, Isabella Rosario, 24
and Eichelberger, Robert, 261
and Far East assistance plan, 88–90
and France, second front in, 184
and Japan, invasion of, 343
and MacArthur, 22, 28–29, 47, 48, 50, 62, 63, 64, 101–102, 146, 324–325
and Marshall, George, 339
and Patton, George, 228
and Philippine Army, 54–56, 62, 63
and Philippines, 59
and promotion to general of the army, 309
and Quezón, Manuel, 63, 118
and Rabaul, 194
and Roosevelt, Franklin, criticism of, 6
and Russia, 89