The actual situation was more complicated. Though he would go to his grave insisting that he had been hopelessly outnumbered, on paper MacArthur had almost twice as many soldiers as Homma. The difficulty was that so many of them were melting into the hills. At the same time, American troops, the Philippine Scouts, and scattered units of Filipinos were fighting well enough to slow down Homma, a cautious commander. Wainwright asked MacArthur’s permission to withdraw behind the Agno River. The General was weighing this when word reached him from Brigadier George M. Parker, Jr., commander of his South Luzon Force, that the enemy had made another major landing on three beaches at Lamon Bay, sixty miles southeast of Manila. Already ten thousand Japanese had formed three columns there and were advancing on Manila. Homma had assumed that MacArthur would defend the capital, as Homer Lea had recommended; the Japanese general planned to invest it and starve it into submission. Until now the American General had wavered, but a glance at the map showed him his plight. Unless he moved rapidly, he would be trapped by two gigantic pincers. He radioed all commanders: “WPO is in effect.” At 4:30 P.M. the next day he announced: “In order to spare Manila from any possible air or ground attacks, consideration is being given by military authorities to declaring Manila an open city, as was done in the case of Paris, Brussels and Rome during this war.” That was on Wednesday. The actual proclamation would not be made until Friday, when both Manila newspapers would carry identical headlines: MANILA ES CIUDAD ABIERTA. Meanwhile the General, back in his Calle Victoria office, worked furiously on orders directing the razing of all supply depots and storage tanks. At one point Sutherland touched him on the arm. A nearby warehouse held four thousand books—most of the General’s father’s library. Probably because making exceptions would bewilder his men, and because the situation was confusing enough as it was, MacArthur muttered: “Blow it.”31
Outside, tradesmen were boarding up storefronts. Already looters were skulking in the mean streets along the waterfront, making off with everything from contraceptives to new cars. Life photographer Carl Mydans was off photographing them when a cable from Henry Luce arrived at the Bayview Hotel where Mydans and his wife Shelley were staying. The message read:
ANOTHER FIRST-PERSON EYEWITNESS STORY BUT THIS WEEK WE PREFER
AMERICANS ON THE OFFENSIVE. Shelley answered it for her husband: BITTERLY REGRET YOUR REQUEST UNAVAILABLE HERE.32
Military patois for a retreat is a “retrograde maneuver.” It is a difficult feat under the best of circumstances. Napoleon’s legions in Russia, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia after Gettysburg, and Gamelin’s Frenchmen being routed by Hitler’s columns in 1940—all illustrate the demoralization of soldiers when pursued by a victorious foe. MacArthur’s sideslip into Bataan was, by any standards, a classic of its kind. Pershing called it “a masterpiece, one of the greatest moves in all military history. ‘ More recently D. Clayton James has written that “a more difficult operation than the planned retreat into Bataan, or one more beset by disastrous contingencies, had seldom been attempted.” After the war captured Japanese records revealed that Hirohito’s general staff had regarded it as “a great strategic move,” and noted that the attackers “never planned for or expected a withdrawal to Bataan. The decisive battle had been expected in Manila. The Japanese commanders could not adjust to the new situation.”33
Actually, MacArthur was attempting a double retrograde maneuver, extricating both the twenty-eight thousand men of the North Luzon Force and the fifteen thousand men of the South Luzon Force, uniting them, and thereby foiling the enemy’s attempt to split his command. Leapfrogging his divisions backward required exact timing, holding successive positions until the last possible moment. At the same time, he had to prevent the Japanese from double-enveloping either body of men by infiltrating their flanks. That is what Yamashita was doing to Britain’s Lieutenant General Arthur E. Percival in Malaya, and Percival, unlike MacArthur, was leading seasoned troops. MacArthur’s best units, including the elite 4th Marines, were in reserve on Corregidor, preparing defensive positions there. Wainwright’s men, and those of Brigadier Albert M. Jones, who had replaced Parker, were dazed Filipino conscripts. In many cases their American lieutenants had to give them orders through an improvised sign language; they didn’t understand English, and the lieutenants couldn’t speak Tagalog.34
The two forces were over 160 miles apart. The General had to coordinate their movements, directing the northward retreat of Jones’s force and instructing Wainwright when to fall back on a series of five delaying lines which MacArthur had drawn on a map. Some 184 vital bridges had to be held and blown at the last moment. Stragglers had to be re-formed in new companies. Disengagement from the attacking Nipponese had to be timed with exquisite precision, and technical advice radioed to harassed divisional commanders who, until now, had never led any unit larger than a regiment, or, in some cases, a battalion. Later MacArthur wrote: “Again and again, these tactics would be repeated. Stand and fight, slip back and dynamite. It was savage and bloody, but it won time.” While the maneuver was in progress, he reported to the War Department that his men were “tired but well in hand.” He expected to hold in the north until the South Luzon Force had entered Bataan and then to “pivot” the North Luzon Force into the peninsula. 35
The gaunt, hard-drinking Wainwright was MacArthur’s best field commander, and he had been given the most difficult task. Unless his rearguard actions succeeded in slowing Homma’s southward drive, Jones would be unable to retreat through Manila and into the peninsula. With the help of the many east-west streams which crossed the plain, and Pat Casey’s bridge-blowing engineers, Wainwright was able to meet the rigid schedule the General had given him. Jones, meanwhile, had received an unexpected boon. Homma couldn’t decide whether to seize Manila or drive toward Bataan. While he was making up his mind, Jones disengaged the bulk of the South Luzon Force—a division and a regiment—and slipped away.36
The General, sleepless and haggard, held a phone in one hand while the fingers of his other hand moved over the map coordinates of terrain which he had first explored as a junior officer, and had later surveyed. Warning his two leaders of mounting threats, urging them to move faster, telling them where to hold, stiffening their resolve, he saw that the key to the battle lay twenty miles northwest of Manila. It was the twin-spanned Calumpit Bridge, which crossed the unfordable torrents of the Pampanga River and its surrounding marshes just south of the San Fernando rail junction. One span bore a railroad track; the other, a two-lane road. Since all roads from the capital and the plain converged there, troops and equipment headed for the prepared positions in Bataan would have to pass through the Calumpit funnel. Wainwright was now in Plaridel, ten miles northeast of the bridge. That was the last of his delaying lines. His three divisions and a cavalry regiment would have to stonewall the Japanese long enough for field pieces, fleeing civilians, and the men of the South Luzon Force to cross and enter the peninsula.37
They did it. First naval guns and Long Toms (155-millimeter cannon) were brought over. Then, for two days and two nights, Calumpit was the site of a ten-mile-long traffic jam as commandeered taxis, squat Pambusco trucks, buses, calesas (small horse-drawn Philippine carriages with folding tops), limousines, oxcarts—anything, in fact, with wheels—ferried back and forth carrying refugees. Finally, at first light on December 31, the South Luzon Force started to cross. One formation of Mitsubishis could have destroyed their vital stepping-stone to safety. But Homma, less familiar with the ground than his adversary, let the bridge stand. MacArthur set a deadline for demolishing it: 6:00 A.M. on New Year’s Day. Homma and his staff, still believing that the capital was the key to the campaign, thought that the mass migration into Bataan was a disorganized flight, but on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve one of their field commanders, finally suspecting what was happening, tried to capture the road junction above Calumpit. MacArthur had anticipated that. His light tanks were virtually useless in jungles and rice-paddy country, but they were inva
luable here, and he had, in fact, reserved them for just such a contingency. The charging Nipponese fell back before their muzzles. At 2:30 the next morning the tanks crossed the railroad span to the safe side of the river. The last infantryman passed over the other span at 5:00 A.M. Waiting for stragglers, Wainwright postponed detonation until 6:15. Dawn broke then, and a heavy force of Japanese appeared on the far shore. “Blow it,” he told Casey, and a billowing mass of mortar and steel exploded in the enemy’s faces. The peril was not yet past—another, lesser stream had to be crossed at Layac—but MacArthur had held back five thousand men to fight a delaying action there until his defensive positions in the peninsula had been completely manned. When the Layac bridge went in the early hours of January 6, 1942, the retrograde maneuver was complete. Counting troops already withdrawn from other parts of Luzon, he now had eighty thousand fighting men on Bataan—fifteen thousand Americans and sixty-five thousand Filipinos—in addition to twenty-six thousand refugees. Now the problem was, not the enemy, but food. In the pandemonium some of the trucks had actually entered the peninsula empty. Having saved his army, the General had to put them on half rations—two thousand calories, or thirty ounces of food, a day. Later this would be reduced to three-eighths of a ration.38
Looking like “a tired hawk”—the phrase is Carlos Romulo’s—MacArthur had directed this operation from Corregidor, now the hub of his defenses and his only communications link with Washington. The first Filipino to know that he contemplated withdrawal to the Rock had been Quezon. On December 12 the General had sent Huff to fetch the commonwealth president. As Huff recalls, he and Quezon climbed into the president’s automobile and, “running without lights, headed for the blacked-out city. There were Filipino guards at bridges along the way, some poorly trained, and a couple of wild shots were fired at the presidential car. But when we reached the Manila Hotel we seemed far removed from the signs of war. No lights showed through the curtains. Inside . . . we could hear the music of a dance orchestra and the voices of the dancers.”39
Huff phoned the penthouse. To avoid prying eyes and rumors which might start a panic, MacArthur told him to take Quezon to a rear entrance. Using the back stairs, the General met them by a service elevator, shook Quezon’s hand, and guided him by the elbow to a garden which sloped down to the waterfront. There, in utter darkness and out of earshot of the music coming from the Winter Garden ballroom, MacArthur told the president that he and his family must be prepared to evacuate Manila on a few hours’ notice. They might have to move military headquarters, the office of U.S. High Commissioner Francis Sayre, and the Philippine government to the Rock. In his memoirs the president wrote that “it had never crossed my mind . . . that there would ever come a time when I had to go to Corregidor. I was no American Governor-General, but the Filipino president of the commonwealth . . . . I was, therefore, wholly unprepared for the startling message from General MacArthur.” He protested: “My own first duty is to take care of the civilian population and to maintain public order while you are fighting the enemy.” The General said: “Mr. President, I expected that answer from such a gallant man as I know you to be.” They were, he assured him, merely discussing a contingency plan. However, if it came to that, he pointed out, the president’s escape would deprive the Japanese of a propaganda victory. After fifteen minutes of vigorous discussion, Quezon walked to his car and MacArthur rejoined Huff. Sitting on the steps, he breathed a sigh of relief. He said: “You did a good job, Sid. Everything is going to be O.K.” They lingered there for a few minutes, listening to the muffled dance music from the ballroom; then the General rose and climbed the five flights of stairs to his apartment.40
The following morning Sayre beamed a broadcast to the United States: “Out here on the firing line we have come to grips with reality. . . . We are in the fight to stay. War enjoins upon us all action, action, action. Time is of the essence. Come on, America!” But it was becoming increasingly clear that America was not coming, not with the strength and determination which was needed. Already Huff was scrounging spare torpedo heads, to be used when the moment came for blowing up his Q-boats. As with the meeting between MacArthur and Quezon, this was done furtively. In their anxiety to avoid panic, the American leaders were behaving like conspirators. They even hid the truth from one another, pretending that they would be celebrating normal year-end holidays at home. On the afternoon of December 22—the day Homma landed at Lingayen and Wake Island fell—the General told Huff that he had forgotten to buy his wife a Christmas present and had been so busy that he had no notion of what she wanted. Would Sid see what could be done? Sid agreed, and thus it was that even as forty thousand Japanese bayonets swept down the central plain toward Manila, Lieutenant Colonel Sidney L. Huff found himself standing at a counter in a department store, asking salesgirls what they had in lingerie and size-twelve dresses.41
Jean had already decorated a Christmas tree for Arthur, and she and the child’s Cantonese nurse had filled a closet with presents for him, including a new tricycle. That evening the MacArthur’, who by now had a pretty good idea that they would be elsewhere on December 25, pretended that it was already Christmas. The little boy, elated, played with his toys while his mother carefully opened her own beribboned packages and cried out in delight as she held up each article of clothing and admired it. Then she carefully rewrapped them and put them away in her wardrobe, as if she would wear them sometime. To her husband she said gaily: “Sir Boss, they are beautiful. Thank you so much.”42
In those last days before the city fell Jean’s mouth always seemed tight. That was the one sign of nervousness others noticed. Lips compressed, she carried on as though tomorrow would be just like yesterday. She knew the blow was coming, of course; it was only a question of when. As it happened, it fell on Christmas Eve. That afternoon Sutherland summoned key officers to No. 1 Calle Victoria and told them they would be leaving in four hours. Each man could bring field equipment and one bedroll or suitcase. Meanwhile the General was telling Huff: “Sid, get Jean and Arthur and Ah Cheu. We’re going to Corregidor.” 43
His wife, like the others, was pondering what to put in her suitcase, a relic of her honeymoon bearing the label NEW GRAND HOTEL—YOKOHAMA. Each of the men, as they would discover when they reached the island, had found room for a fifth of whiskey, but Jean took almost nothing of her own. From a closet she pulled out the brown coat with a fur collar which she had worn on her honeymoon; that, and a few cotton wash dresses, an extra pair of shoes, a tiny cardboard box containing jewelry, her toilet articles, and a few necessities, was it. Most of the space was taken by food and clothes for Arthur. Somehow she found room for pictures of her husband’s parents and paternal grandparents. At the last minute she paused by a glass case containing his decorations, including the little gold medal he had won at the West Texas Military Academy and his field marshal’s baton. Opening it, she scooped them all up, dumped them in a towel, and crammed the lumpy bundle into the valise. Huff carried Arthur’s tricycle. Ah Cheu, the amah, was holding Old Friend, the child’s stuffed rabbit. Jean had given her silverware to some Filipino friends and asked them to hide it. The bag in one hand and her son’s hand in the other, she took a final look at the apartment and its Christmas tree. On the grand piano she spotted two vases which Hirohito’s grandfather had given her husband’s father. The names of Mutsuhito and Arthur MacArthur, Jr., were clearly engraved on them. Handing her suitcase to Ah Cheu, she put the vases in the penthouse’s entrance hall. “There,” she said with a ghost of a smile. “Maybe when the Japanese see them, they will respect our home.” She said to the boy, “Ready to go to Corregidor, Arthur?” He nodded. Ah Cheu opened the door. As they entered the elevator an air-raid siren began its banshee wail.44
During the next half hour three bombs rocked the Marsman Building, where Admiral Hart was holding his last Philippine conference with his flag officers. In a few hours, he told them, all of them except Admiral Rockwell would sail for Java, taking with them every U.S. Navy vess
el except three gunboats, six PTs, and the submarines. Rockwell would stay behind to command these. Junior officers and bluejackets would fight under MacArthur as riflemen. Hart wondered aloud how the General could ever have convinced him that these islands were defensible; less than three weeks had passed since Pearl Harbor, and the very survival of the admiral’s command was in jeopardy. Tomorrow morning, he had learned, the Japanese would start landing on Jolo Island, southwest of Mindanao, threatening the admiral’s escape route. He had to go now.45
It was an hour of farewells. On Calle Victoria Brereton was saying goodbye to MacArthur. Except for four patched-up P-40s on Corregidor’s tiny Kindley Field, the airman had sent his few remaining planes to Darwin in northwest Australia. Now he was going to follow diem. “It had become evident,” he wrote in his diary, “that the remnants of the air force and Admiral Hart’s small submarine force could not prevent [further] enemy landings. ‘ Any aircraft left would be quickly sacrificed; already carrier-based Japanese bombers were mounting an air offensive against Mindanao. MacArthur said he understood. As they parted, he told Brereton, “I hope you will tell the people outside what we have done and protect my reputation as a fighter.” Shaking his hand, the airman said, “General, your reputation will never need any protection.”46
In Malacarian Palace, Vargas and Judge José Laurel embraced Quezon. His eyes filling and his voice choked, their president said: “Keep your faith in America, whatever happens.” He said: “You two will deal with the Japanese.” In the House on the Wall the General cleared his desk, as though he expected to return in the morning, and ordered that some of his personal belongings be sent ahead. Then he picked up his family and Huff in the battered Packard. At the dock the MacArthur’, the Quezons, and a hundred others awaited the small inter-island steamer Don Esteban. It was just dusk. Out of the gadiering gloom a naval officer approached them. He was Hart, here to say good-bye and to transfer his authority formally to Rockwell before retiring southward on the largest remaining warship under his command, the submarine Shark. Hart and the General stepped off from the. others, talking earnestly. The steamer arrived and the passengers boarded her. MacArthur was die last one up the gangplank. They couldn’t leave yet, however; a convoy of heavily guarded trucks had appeared on the pier bearing the Philippines’ gold and silver bullion. While these crates were being manhandled aboard, Arthur played on deck. He became bored and drowsy. Tugging at Jean’s hand he said sleepily, “Mummy, I’m tired of Corregidor. Let’s go home. “ She told him they hadn’t even reached die island yet. He repeated, “I want to go home.”47
American Caesar Page 29