Killing the Rising Sun

by Bill O'Reilly

  However, that meeting turned into a debacle. Truman was rankled that MacArthur delayed exiting from his plane for forty-five minutes, effectively keeping the president waiting. In addition, MacArthur treated the president like an equal, shaking his hand rather than offering a salute when they first met. Never a man to forget a slight or grandstanding behavior, Truman was deeply upset that MacArthur had publicly questioned the president’s foreign policy in the Pacific as a strategy of “appeasement and defeatism”—a matter that was read into the official Congressional Record.

  This behavior reinforced Truman’s initial misgivings about MacArthur’s ego, which he felt was out of control. The general did not return phone calls, thinking it beneath his position as “head of state.” When asked to brief US State Department officials about the crisis in Korea, MacArthur’s response was telling: “Why, as a sovereign, should I? President Truman doesn’t do so, nor does the King of England or any other head of state.”

  The tide of the Korean War turned against MacArthur following the Wake Island meeting. Chinese forces joined the North Koreans to halt the American advance. In defiance of direct orders from Truman, MacArthur sought to expand the size of the war by pushing north into China to confront the invading Communists. On April 5, 1951, in direct contravention of the wishes of President Truman, MacArthur authorized a penetrating American strike into China. By this time, MacArthur’s immense popularity made the decision to fire him a political liability, but Truman was unfazed. Calling a meeting of his top advisers on April 6, he broached the topic of dismissing the vaunted general. At stake was the question of whether or not civilian authorities had a say in military policy. It was clear that MacArthur planned to fight the war in Korea and China on his terms, without heed to the authority of the president of the United States.1

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff soon weighed in, favoring the dismissal of MacArthur for insubordination. On April 7, Truman wrote in his journal of the Joint Chiefs that “it is the unanimous opinion of all that MacArthur be relieved. All four so advise.”

  But on April 11, 1951, when Truman formally announced that he was relieving MacArthur of command, there was an enormous public outcry of support for the general. Truman’s public opinion rating once again tanked. Nevertheless, at 8:00 p.m. Washington time on April 11, MacArthur was sacked. Truman had authorized his secretary of the army, Frank Pace Jr., to deliver the news, but Pace did not receive the order. Instead, MacArthur heard about his firing on the radio while eating lunch with his wife in Tokyo.

  This marked the end of Douglas MacArthur’s military career. He returned home a hero, feted by a parade in New York City viewed by more than seven million people that wound through nineteen miles of Manhattan streets. More than three thousand tons of paper were dropped from windows, balconies, and rooftops.

  Meanwhile, there were calls for Truman to be impeached. His approval rating dipped to 22 percent, forcing him to decide against running for reelection in 1952.

  * * *

  Douglas MacArthur lived out the rest of his life in luxury, residing with his wife and son in a penthouse atop the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. In 1962, he gave his legendary “Duty, Honor, Country” speech at West Point, concluding with the words: “The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell.”

  Douglas MacArthur died on April 5, 1964, of primary biliary cirrhosis, a disease of unknown origin that destroys the bile ducts in the liver. He was eighty-four years old. Before burial, his body lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda, where an estimated 150,000 people waited in line to pay their respects.

  * * *

  Harry Truman’s habit of long daily walks and drinking healthy doses of branch water and bourbon resulted in a long and prosperous life. He died on December 26, 1972, at the age of eighty-eight; his wife, Bess, died ten years later. Both are buried at his presidential library in Independence, Missouri.

  NOTES

  Chapter One

  1. The American military campaign in the Pacific followed a strategy known as “island hopping.” The US Navy, Army, and Marine Corps invaded Japanese island strongholds in the Pacific, slowly working their way north toward an eventual invasion of Japan. Islands not deemed vital to the advance were bypassed.

  2. The concept of endurance engagements, as opposed to decisive engagements, as a means of fighting a protracted defensive battle to wear down the Americans was initially used on the small island of Biak, off the western coast of New Guinea. It was unsuccessful there; the Japanese were annihilated during the battle, losing 6,100 soldiers. The soldiers of the US Army’s Forty-First Division, most of whom hailed from Oregon and Montana, earned the nickname “The Jungleers” for their success in the dense rain forests. They lost fewer than five hundred men.

  Chapter Two

  1. Two months after MacArthur’s landing, Japanese kamikaze aircraft flew into the Nashville. The light cruiser remained afloat but suffered the loss of 133 sailors and an additional 190 wounded in the fiery explosions.

  2. At the time, the invasion of Leyte was the second-largest amphibious landing of the Second World War, next to that of Normandy. Leyte was unique in that the American soldiers had to travel four thousand miles by ship—a distance greater than the width of the United States—in order to launch their invasion. The distance from England to Normandy was roughly twenty miles.

  3. Arthur MacArthur Jr. was just eighteen when he rallied Union troops during the pivotal battle of Missionary Ridge, outside of Chattanooga, on November 25, 1863. The son of a former Wisconsin governor, MacArthur rushed to the top of the hill during thick fighting, planting the regimental colors of the 24th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment on the summit and shouting “On Wisconsin!” as he did so.

  4. MacArthur’s pipes were made to his precise specifications by the Missouri Meerschaum Company, which continues to sell a replica of his deep-bowled, long-stemmed pipe. Similarly, Ray-Ban named a line of sunglasses in the general’s honor in 1987.

  5. MacArthur is a right-wing Republican whose political philosophy does not line up with that of the liberal Roosevelt.

  6. “Dai Nippon” refers to the assemblage of islands and colonies under Japanese control at the outset of World War II. The usage is similar to the term “Great Britain,” the name of another island nation dependent on colonies and conquests as a source of empire.

  7. In addition, MacArthur’s list of accomplishments and battle commands during his long military career would have made it ludicrous for any other general to assume this post. His passion for the Pacific way of life extended to the Orient—he often relaxed wearing a Japanese kimono.

  8. The Arcadia Conference, a summit between British and American leaders in Washington, DC, during December 1941 and January 1942, led to the “Europe first” strategy. While the United States and Britain worked closely together to defeat Germany, the British role in the Pacific theater was focused on General William Slim’s victories in Burma. The battle against Japan in the last year of the war was largely an American enterprise.

  9. General George C. Marshall put forth Wainwright’s name for the Medal of Honor on July 30, 1942. MacArthur, still stinging from the surrender of Corregidor, openly opposed the nomination, an act unheard of in the history of the award. In a letter to Marshall, MacArthur wrot
e: “As a relative matter, award of the Medal of Honor to General Wainwright would be a grave injustice to a number of general officers of practically equally responsible positions who not only distinguished themselves by fully as great personal gallantry thereby earning the DSC but exhibited powers of leadership and inspiration to a degree greatly superior to that of General Wainwright thereby contributing much more to the stability of the command and to the successful conduct of the campaign. It would be a grave mistake which later on might well lead to embarrassing repercussions to make this award.” Marshall rescinded the nomination. Wainwright never held a grudge toward MacArthur, whom he considered a dear friend and great general. Upon his release from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp at war’s end, Wainwright was treated like a national hero and honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York. On September 10, 1945, he was finally awarded the Medal of Honor.

  10. Teddy Roosevelt (awarded posthumously in 2001) and his son Theodore III were the second such pair.

  11. Admirals Ernest King and Chester Nimitz believed retaking the islands was not a priority, and that they could be bypassed altogether. They felt MacArthur was too emotionally attached to the Philippines to view them with a critical strategic eye. Even General George Marshall, MacArthur’s superior in Washington, cautioned him, “We must be careful not to allow our personal feeling … to override our great objective, which is the early conclusion of the war with Japan.… ‘Bypassing’ is not synonymous with ‘abandonment.’” MacArthur refused to change his pro-invasion stance, and ultimately won the argument in the summer of 1944.

  Chapter Three

  1. While he was popular with the Far Left, Wallace’s Communist sympathies were well known. Roosevelt publicly endorsed him as his vice president before the 1944 Democratic Convention but was pressed to see a replacement by party leaders who worried that he might die in office. Truman, the dark horse choice due to his outspoken nature, was seen as a better successor to lead America into the postwar world. In the end, FDR acceded to the demands of some Democratic power brokers who wanted Wallace off the ticket.

  2. The Roosevelt-Truman ticket won the election in a landslide over the Republican ticket of Thomas Dewey and John W. Bricker; the final Electoral College tally was 432 to 99.

  3. The S stands for nothing. Truman’s parents were torn between using the family names of Solomon or Shipp as a middle name; in the end, they could not decide and simply used the S. Common in Roman times, middle names fell out of favor for more than a thousand years. In America, middle names made a resurgence after the Civil War but were not standard practice until after World War I. Many of America’s founding fathers, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, had no middle name.

  4. Truman had long been a public proponent of civil rights for black Americans. The quote comes from an editorial in the People’s Voice, a Harlem, New York, newspaper founded by civil rights leader Adam Clayton Powell Jr. In addition, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) came to Truman’s defense.

  Chapter Four

  1. The last of Nakagawa’s soldiers eluded capture until April 22, 1947.

  2. The other recipients of the Medal of Honor were First Lieutenant Carlton Robert Rouh, Private First Class Charles Howard Roan, Captain Everett Parker Pope, Private Wesley Phelps, Private First Class John Dury New, Private First Class Richard Edward Kraus, and Private First Class Arthur J. Jackson.

  3. Arthur J. Jackson received his Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony on October 5, 1945. In 1961, having attained the rank of captain, he fatally shot a Cuban spy at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Fearing an international incident due to the strained relations between Cuba and the United States, Jackson attempted to conceal the death by burying the body. Jackson was found out, however, and lost his commission.

  4. The bodies of Colonel Nakagawa and Major General Murai would not be discovered for almost forty years, at which time they were transported to Japan for burial. Colonel Nakagawa’s wife lived to see the day her husband finally made his return home.

  Chapter Five

  1. Japan is made up of 6,852 islands, of which just 430 are inhabited. The four largest and most populous are Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu. The capital city of Tokyo is located on Honshu’s eastern shores.

  2. Prior to this battle, Japan was ruled by daimyo (samurai lords) who established their own small kingdoms. Forces led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi defeated those of the shogun (military dictator), Akechi Mitsuhide, thus beginning the reunification of Japan. Hideyoshi’s brilliant generalship has been compared to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Daimyo rule remained in effect in some areas of Japan, coming to an end in 1871.

  3. The so-called fire balloons were indeed launched. Most did not reach America, and those that did inflicted little damage. Yet the fire balloons were history’s first intercontinental weapons. Not until 1982 and the Operation Black Buck raids of the Falklands War would they be surpassed as the longest-range attacks ever conducted.

  4. The first Geneva Convention of 1864 was signed by Japan in 1886; subsequent agreements were produced in 1906 and 1929. Japan signed the 1929 treaty and verbally agreed to adhere to the terms of the 1906 treaty. The emperor obviously did not live up to his word.

  5. President Roosevelt had ordered the Pacific Fleet’s headquarters moved from San Pedro, California, to Pearl Harbor in May 1940. This intended show of strength instead became a vulnerability.

  Chapter Six

  1. Based on a 1937 Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name, To Have and Have Not tells the story of a down-on-his-luck charter boat captain in wartime Martinique. The character of Harry “Steve” Morgan, played by the forty-five-year-old Bogart, soon falls for the young American traveler, Marie “Slim” Browning, played by Bacall. The two generated a great deal of interpersonal chemistry on and off the set, leading director Howard Hawks to enlarge Bacall’s role. Bogart’s third wife, actress Mayo Methot, filed for divorce in May 1944. Bogart and Bacall married in May 1945 and would remain happily wed until his death from cancer in 1957. Their son, Stephen, born in 1949, is named for the character in To Have and Have Not.

  2. Byrnes was one of Roosevelt’s eight appointees to the Supreme Court, but he stepped down after less than a year, leaving the bench in 1942. The former US senator from South Carolina and good friend of FDR preferred helping the president run the war effort to the intellectual rigor of the Supreme Court. He would later go on to serve as secretary of state and governor of South Carolina.

  3. The reason for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was its need for precious resources: coal, iron, salt, and arable land. The growing Japanese population meant that the nation was not self-sufficient. Manchuria offered the chance to gain access to those natural resources and relocate Japanese citizens to work the fields. The Soviet Union’s intended invasion was fueled by a similar search for territory and mineral resources and also by desires to regain lands lost in the Russo-Japanese War, particularly the warm-water naval base at Port Arthur; install a pro-Soviet regime in Korea; and invade Japan itself.

  4. Approximately 127,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II.

  5. The Maltese Falcon was a 1941 film noir that marked the directorial debut of John Huston. Humphrey Bogart played private detective Sam Spade; he was complemented by a stellar supporting cast that included Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, and Elisha Cook Jr. Robert Serber, the Los Alamos scientist in charge of code-naming the bombs, chose “Fat Man” from Spade’s nickname for Greenstreet’s character. The naming of “Little Boy” is more complicated. The Maltese Falcon was originally written by Dashiell Hammett. A third atomic bomb prototype, code-named “Thin Man” after a separate Hammett story, was abandoned in July 1944. “Little Boy’s” shape was smaller and more bulbous than that of “Thin Man,” which is how it earned its code name. At the time of the atomic bomb’s development, Hammett was serving as an enlisted soldier in the Aleuti
an Islands, soon to be discharged at the rank of sergeant. Hammett would be called before Congress in 1953, suspected of harboring Communist sympathies. He refused to cooperate and was blacklisted, making it impossible for him to find work as a writer. Ironically, as a veteran who served in World War I and World War II, Hammett is now buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

  Chapter Seven

  1. Basilone joined the army in 1934, at the age of seventeen. He was posted to the Philippines for three years, enjoying it so much that he talked about it continuously, which earned him the nickname “Manila John.” He left the army in 1937 but joined the marines in 1940 when war appeared imminent. Basilone earned his Medal of Honor at the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, at one point battling his way through hostile positions in order to resupply men under his command. Basilone would also go on to be awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism on Iwo Jima.