American Caesar

by William Manchester

  Already a message from the President to the General was being decoded on the Nashville: YOU HAVE THE NATION’S GRATITUDE AND THE NATION’S PRAYERS FOR SUCCESS AS YOU AND YOUR MEN FIGHT YOUR WAY BACK. Roosevelt’s failing health, his global command responsibilities, and his campaign for reelection prevented him from agreeing to broadcast an address to the Filipinos, so their first vivid recollection of their liberation was the two-minute address which the General had edited on the Nashville and was now prepared to deliver. It was not an auspicious occasion. The mobile communications truck had broken down. No one could be certain that it was working. Though GIs had begun to fan out inland, the crack of riflery and the thunder of naval gunfire could be heard in the background. And just as MacArthur cleared his throat and grasped the microphone, a heavy, steady, ominous downpour began—a sign of what was to come.

  “People of the Philippines: I have returned,” he said. His hands were shaking, and he had to pause to smooth out the wrinkles in his voice. He then continued: “By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil—soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples . . . . At my side is your President, Sergio Osmeña, a worthy successor of that great patriot, Manuel Quezon. . . . The seat of your government is now, therefore, firmly re-established on Philippine soil. The hour of your redemption is here. . . . Rally to me. Let the indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead on. As the lines of battle roll forward to bring you within the zone of operations, rise and strike. Strike at every favorable opportunity. For your homes and hearths, strike! For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! In the name of your sacred dead, strike! Let no heart be faint. Let every arm be steeled. The guidance of Divine God points the way. Follow in His name to the Holy Grail of righteous victory.”34

  Next Osmeña and then Romulo spoke briefly into the hand-held mike. That ended the little ceremony, and a small cluster of Filipinos, who had been trapped here since the beginning of Kinkaid’s bombardment, cheered. One old man limped up to MacArthur, grinned toothlessly, and said: “Good afternoon, Sir Field Marshal. Glad to see you. It has been many years—a long, long time.” After embracing him the General returned to the Nashville to coordinate the attacks on other beaches, signal a general guerrilla uprising throughout Leyte that night, and provide the partisans with coded instructions on where new guns, ammunition, and medical supplies would be parachuted to them.35

  That night he slept soundly, despite a derisive Radio Tokyo broadcast revealing that the Japanese air force suspected that he was aboard the cruiser even if Yamashita didn’t, and promising that the ship would never leave Philippine waters. Enemy air attacks were in fact increasing. Between 8:30 and 9:15 the following morning, fifty Japanese planes from Luzon attacked the shipping in Leyte Gulf. Eichelberger wrote home: “Knowing what boat he was on they were able to attack that type of boat and they did sink a sister ship, largely through a suicidal attack.” Kenney noted that “the shipping in Leyte Gulf was wide open to Jap attack from their fields in Luzon. For the next two days it seemed that the air was full of Nips day and night . . . . I thought more than ever that a sailor’s life was not for me, particularly during wartime. I would cheerfully have traded my comfortable quarters and excellent mess on the Nashville for a tent under a palm tree ashore and an issue of canned rations.” He said so to MacArthur. The General chuckled. He chuckled again when Kenney asked him how soon he was moving his headquarters ashore. The airman told him he was serious. MacArthur said he would move as soon as a house was fixed up. The airman writes: “I decided that as soon as I go ashore I’d hurry that job up myself.” MacArthur suggested that Kenney concentrate on getting runways in shape; they would need air cover, because until shore quarters were ready for them, they would be commuting there by barge, visiting a different division each day, beginning today with the 1st Cavalry’s lines around Dulag.36

  In Dulag they found pandemonium. Troopers of the 1st Cavalry had dug in along a defensive perimeter at twilight the day before, siting mortars and machine guns with interlocking fields of fire, as a precaution against a night attack. No Japanese had appeared; instead they had been inundated by jubilant Filipinos. Robert Shaplen of the New Yorker saw an ancient Filipina, her face a mesh of deep creases, standing with her arms spread wide, an ecstatic smile on her lips, and an expression of utter joy in her eyes, as though unable to believe in her good fortune. An eight-year-old child clutching a parcel introduced herself to Romulo as Glory Godingka; she had a present for MacArthur, she said, and she wouldn’t give it to anyone else. Romulo led her to the General, who opened the package and found within a box of cigars for him and a knitted handbag for Jean. Several weeks earlier MacArthur had read enviously that the people of Belgium had presented Field Marshal Montgomery with a jeweled saber. Now, his eyes filling, he said, “Carlos, I would rather have this gift than Montgomery’s sword.”37

  Kenney wanted to inspect an old Japanese airfield nearby. MacArthur decided to join him. Kenney later recalled that “my enthusiasm cooled when I found that the west end of the field was being used as a firing range by the Japs on one side and our troops on the other. General MacArthur, however, decided to go anyway, so I went along. We had to halt a couple of times on the way, once until a Jap sniper had been knocked out of a tree about 75 yards off the road and again when we had to wait for about twenty minutes until a Jap tank headed in our direction had been hit and the crew disposed of. We passed the burning tank on the way to the airdrome.” Once there, MacArthur paced around the strip, asking Kenney how quickly it could be made operational. Ricochets of enemy bullets were whining around them. The airman afterward remembered, “I told him I’d like to look at it under more favorable conditions, when I could inspect all of it at the same time. I added that I would feel much better at that moment if I were inspecting the place from an airplane. MacArthur laughed and said it was good for me to find out ‘how the other half of the world lives.’ ”38

  Back at the beach they learned that the seizure of Tacloban was imminent. Soon the General was there, choosing as his command post a two-story stucco-and-concrete mansion at the corner of Santo Nino and Justice Romualdez streets. It belonged to an American businessman named Walter Price, who was now imprisoned at Santo Tomás on Luzon; his wife, a Filipina, had been tortured by the Japanese and was now living in the jungle. Romulo found her and her children, but “they refused to move back into their beautiful home if the American forces might have need of it.”39

  No sooner had MacArthur hung his cap there than Radio Tokyo broadcast: “General MacArthur and his staff and General Kenney have established their headquarters in the Price house, right in the center of the town. Our brave aviators will soon take care of that situation.” Kenney was already feeling nostalgic for the embattled Nashville, and the staff suggested that they move elsewhere. The General wouldn’t hear of it. The edifice was the most spacious in Tacloban—the Japanese had used it as an officers’ club—and once Pat Casey’s engineers had patched it up, he said, it would suit him perfectly. He particularly liked the wide veranda. As he was striding back and forth, testing the floor, he suddenly halted and pointed at the yard, asking, “What’s that mound of earth there by the edge of the porch?” One of them explained that it was an elaborate bomb shelter, twenty feet underground, furnished with rugs, lounge chairs, electricity, and ventilating fans. The General said: “Level it off and fill the thing in. It spoils the looks of the lawn.”40

  Now that MacArthur had committed himself to Leyte, now that over 200,000 troops of Krueger’s Sixth Army were pouring ashore, the Japanese navy made its great move. Thanks to an uncoded message sent out by a U.S. commander two days before the General’s landing, the enemy had vital information on the disposition of the Allies’ 218 warships. Admiral Toyoda, flying his flag on Formosa, had hatched a brilliant plan. His main fleet, led by seven battleships, thirteen heavy cruisers, and three light cruisers, was racing up from Singapore under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita. Kurita was instructed
to divide this force in two, with the smaller detachment, under Vice Admiral Teiji Nishimura, entering Leyte Gulf through Surigao Strait while the main body, commanded by Kurita himself, knifed through San Bernardino Strait. Both jaws would then converge on MacArthur’s troop transports and Kinkaid’s obsolescent warships. Banzai.

  Halsey’s Task Force 34, the backbone of his Third Fleet, was guarding San Bernardino Strait. To divert him, a third Nipponese flotilla of four overage carriers and two battleships converted into carriers was steaming down from the Japanese homeland. The mission of its commander, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, was to entice Task Force 34 away from Leyte Gulf. Actually Ozawa’s vessels weren’t good for much more than a decoy role; he had fewer than a hundred planes, and their pilots were inexperienced. The Americans didn’t know that, however. And they were peculiarly vulnerable to Toyoda’s grand design. Halsey, gifted but impetuous, disliked his standby role; he preferred engaging enemy ships on the high seas. And he had been given carte blanche to do just that. Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance had been sharply criticized for continuing to protect the marines’ landing on Saipan when he might have been pursuing a nearby Japanese fleet. Therefore the fiery Halsey had been told that while he was sent to cover MacArthur’s beachhead, should an opportunity arise to destroy a “major portion” of Japanese naval strength, that would become his “primary task.”41

  On the night of Monday, October 23, 1944, two U.S. submarines, the Darter and the Dace, sighted Kurita’s main force off the coast of Borneo. At first light Tuesday morning, they torpedoed three of his cruisers, sinking two of them, and warned Halsey and Kinkaid that trouble was on its way. The Nashville prepared to join the line of battle. MacArthur wanted to go along. He told Kinkaid that all his life he had “been reading and studying naval combat, and the glamour of sea battle” had always excited his “imagination.” Kinkaid replied that it was out of the question. MacArthur submitted, but his interest in the coming engagement was more than whimsical. It was a matter of life or death for him and his men. If such vessels as the Yatnato and the Musashi broke through, their eighteen-inch guns could easily sink all American transports and bombard the beachhead into submission. Later the General would write that during the coming sea fight his invasion was “in jeopardy,” and Krueger, his ground commander on Leyte, would declare that the enemy’s huge guns “could have leisurely and effectively carried out the destruction of shipping, aircraft, and supplies that were so vital to the allied operations on Leyte.”42

  Like most battle plans, this one was being swiftly altered by events. Kurita hadn’t expected to be spotted by U.S. subs. Ozawa, the decoy commander, learned of this development and tried to draw Halsey toward him by sending out uncoded messages. Halsey didn’t pick up the signals, however, and his reconnaissance planes missed Ozawa because they were all flying westward, looking for Kurita’s vanguard. Finding it, U.S. planes hit the massive Musashi thirty-six times, thereby sending to the bottom a vessel that the Japanese thought unsinkable because of its armored decks and subdivided hull. It was now late Tuesday afternoon. Kurita turned his fleet away from Leyte Gulf, intending to sail beyond reach of U.S. naval planes until dark, when he could return. Halsey concluded that he was retreating and could now be ignored. But the American admiral noted that no enemy carriers had been sighted. Believing that there must be some in the vicinity, he sent up reconnaissance planes on broader searches. At 5.00 P.M. they finally discovered Ozawa’s bait. Halsey went for it, leaving San Bernardino Strait wide open.43

  Tuesday night, under a roving moon, Admiral Nishimura, commanding Kurita’s southern unit, entered the narrow waters of Surigao Strait. Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf, USN, had the strait corked. As the enemy vessels came through one by one, Oldendorf “crossed their T”—raked them viciously with broadsides from all his ships. Nishimura drowned and his force was wiped out; at dawn there would be nothing left of it but wreckage and streaks of oil. Meanwhile, however, U.S. scouting planes had reported that Kurita’s fleet had turned back toward San Bernardino Strait at 11:00 P.M. Halsey was now 160 miles to the north, and moving farther away every minute. Under the impression that many other enemy vessels went down with the Musashi, he dismissed the maneuver as a suicide gesture and kept right on going. As day broke on Wednesday, Kinkaid signaled Oldendorf his congratulations on the night battle.

  Believing that Nishimura had represented the only threat to him, and under the impression that a detachment of Halsey’s battle fleet was still guarding San Bernardino Strait, Kinkaid sent no dawn reconnaissance flights to the northwest. Now, to his horror, he learned that Kurita was almost upon him, and that the Japanese force was intact except for the sunken Musashi. Kurita had passed through San Bernardino Strait and was already training his mammoth guns on part of Kinkaid’s fleet, six escort carriers and a group of destroyers covering MacArthur’s beachheads. The fox was among the chickens.

  At 8:30 A.M. Kinkaid radioed Halsey: “Urgently need fast battleships Leyte Gulf at once.” There was no response. Thirty minutes later he repeated this cry for help, this time in clear. Halsey, now 350 miles away, was beginning to maul Ozawa, but American prospects in the waters off Leyte were very grim. At this point there occurred one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of naval warfare. Kurita was less than thirty miles from his objective. All that stood between his guns and Kinkaid’s carriers was a screen of destroyers and escorts, the latter being puny vessels used for antisubmarine work and manned mostly by married draftees. The destroyers counterattacked Kurita’s battleships, and then their gallant little escorts sprang toward the huge Japanese armada, firing their small-bore guns and launching torpedoes. Kurita’s Goliaths milled around in confusion as the persistent Davids, some of them sinking, made dense smoke. Kinkaid’s carriers sent up everything that could fly, and Kurita, with the mightiest Nipponese fleet since Midway, hesitated.44

  This was the critical moment. It was 11:15 Wednesday morning. Kinkaid radioed Halsey: “Situation very serious. Escort-carriers again threatened by enemy surface forces. Your assistance badly needed. Escort-carriers retiring to Leyte Gulf.” In Hawaii, Nimitz, who had been watching this traffic with growing anxiety, sent Halsey a sharp dispatch: “The whole world wants to know where is Task Force 34.” That did it. Halsey broke off action with Ozawa; he sent six fast battleships and a carrier force back to Leyte. But he had gone so far in chasing the decoy that they could not arrive until the next morning. By all the precedents of naval warfare but one, Kurita had won the battle. The exception was confusion. He had intercepted messages ordering U.S. carrier planes to land on Leyte. The purpose of these was to prevent the aircraft being sunk with their carriers, but the Japanese admiral concluded that this was preliminary to swarming attacks on his ships by land-based U.S. aircraft. Then he intercepted and misread two of Kinkaid’s messages to Halsey. Believing that Halsey was approaching rapidly, and that he would soon bolt the door of San Bernardino Strait, Kurita turned tail. He passed through the strait a few minutes before 10:00 P.M.—unaware that Halsey’s leading ships would not reach it for another three hours.

  Thus ended the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It had involved 282 warships, compared with 250 at Jutland in 1916, until then the greatest naval engagement in history. And unlike Jutland, which neither side had won, this action had been decisive. The Americans had lost one light carrier, two escort carriers, and three destroyers. They had sunk four carriers, three battleships, six heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and eight destroyers. Except for sacrificial kamikaze fliers, who made their debut in this battle, Japanese air and naval strength would never again be serious instruments in the war. U.S. officers had every reason to be jubilant, and they were, though some of them had recriminatory words about Halsey’s performance. Thursday evening MacArthur was sitting down to dinner in the restored Price house when he heard staff officers at the other end of the table making choice remarks about the aggressive admiral. They were, Kenney recalls, “extremely critical of Halsey’s action in aband
oning us while he went after the Jap northern ‘decoy’ fleet.” The General slammed his bunched fist on the table. “That’s enough!” he roared. “Leave the Bull alone! He’s still a fighting admiral in my book.” Kenney hoped “that, if I had been in MacArthur’s shoes and my biggest and most crucial campaign of the war had been threatened with complete disaster by an error or mistake in judgment such as Halsey had made, I would have been broad enough in my outlook to have said what the General said at mess that evening.” But there is another explanation. As MacArthur had told Egeberg, in his opinion the greatest martial quality was loyalty. Halsey had been loyal to him. And now he was reciprocating.45

  Monday afternoon, while the rival fleets were groping toward one another, MacArthur had honored what Filipinos call his utang na loob — literally, his “IOU,” his promise of redemption—in a little ceremony at Leyte’s large, columned Commonwealth Building near San Pedro Bay. There Tacloban was designated as the islands’ provincial capital pending the recapture of Manila, and Osmeña was officially sworn in as president. He and the General spoke briefly into a microphone which beamed their remarks throughout the archipelago; then Sutherland read a White House proclamation restoring civil government to the commonwealth. A bugler sounded “To the Colors,” and troopers of the 1st Cavalry simultaneously raised U.S. and Philippine flags on twin poles. MacArthur pinned a Distinguished Service Cross on the tunic of the Filipino who had served as Leyte’s guerrilla leader. Then the Americans piled into jeeps, leaving Osmeña behind. The new president not only lacked a ride; at that moment he didn’t even know where he was going to sleep that night. He began to appreciate Ickes’s advice.46