MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

by Douglas Niles

  Sutherland looked at the two junior officers. His eyes were suddenly wild—panicked, Johnny realized. “Wait here. Don’t say a thing. I’ll deal with you later,” the chief of staff hissed.

  Quickly he moved toward MacArthur. “How are you, General?” Sutherland asked in soft, soothing tones, like a man talking to a child.

  “I… I’m tired, Richard. So very tired …”

  “Why don’t we just get you back to bed, sir?” Sutherland suggested.

  MacArthur ignored his chief of staff, drifted close to the two junior officers. “You seem like a fine young man,” he said, putting a friendly arm on Johnny’s shoulder. “What’s your name?”

  “L-lieutenant John Halverson, sir.”

  MacArthur’s eyes came into a little bit of focus and seemed to fasten onto the Quartermaster Regimental Eagle insignia on Johnny’s collar. “Halverson. You work for General Drake, I see. You’ve made sure all our brave soldiers have ample supplies for the upcoming battles, have you?”

  Halverson felt Sutherland’s glare with the force of a heat ray. “I-I’ve done my best, sir,” he hedged.

  “Of course you have!” The General leaned closer, as if to whisper in Johnny’s ear. “But you can’t very well allocate what you don’t have in the first place, can you?”

  Sutherland’s face was shading from red into purple. Johnny knew he’d better be very careful how he handled this. “I do my best, sir,” he said again.

  The General frowned. “Have you done your best? Have I? The Japanese are here too soon and my enemies—Marshall, King, Pershing, Roosevelt—have thwarted me. They all hate me, you know … and … and …” MacArthur looked upward with an anguished expression. “There were no good choices! None! MacArthur couldn’t run away with his army and hide. MacArthur couldn’t get the supplies he needed to win. What was the General to do?”

  He grasped Johnny by the shoulders and looked into his eyes as if he might have the answer. “What do we do now?” he asked in a plaintive voice. “You know, Marshall called me last night to tell me about Pearl Harbor. He did that for spite, you know, because he hates me. He ordered me onto war alert, but I never had the tools! It’s a trap—a trap to discredit me and all my years of service. Do you know what I did?”

  “No, sir,” Johnny replied.

  He turned toward Moore. “Do you know what I did?”

  “I’m afraid not, General MacArthur.”

  He turned his head to look at Sutherland. “You, Dick—you know, don’t you? You came over when you got the news. You always come. But you don’t always help.”

  “I’ll help, General,” Sutherland said soothingly. “Why don’t we go back—”

  “No!” said MacArthur. “The General wishes to speak.” He turned back to Johnny. He lowered the tone of his voice again. “You must listen to MacArthur carefully, and you will learn what you must do if you are confronted with a terrible choice.”

  Johnny waited. He didn’t think MacArthur was looking for an actual reply.

  “I asked my wife Jean to bring me my Bible. Then I sat on the edge of my bed and read my Bible. I have put myself in the hands of a Higher Power.” He looked at the three faces in turn and smiled. “I have prayed continuously throughout this long morning. Continuously. And so I put my trust in Almighty God that He will deliver us from evil. Let us pray together.”

  General Douglas MacArthur knelt on the rug in front of Sutherland’s desk. Johnny waited until he saw Sutherland and then Moore begin to follow, and then he also knelt and bowed his head. He snuck a glimpse through half-lidded eyes. The others had heads bowed and hands folded reverently as well.

  MacArthur began to pray. “Almighty God, Maker of all things, Heavenly Dispenser of justice, see the rightness of our cause and send Your terrible swift sword to fight on behalf of Your children who now beseech you most humbly for deliverance. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the three men chorused.

  All Johnny could think of was the old saying—he’d heard it attributed to Napoleon—“God fights on the side with the best artillery.” If that were true, God had already abandoned them. He wanted to scream at the old, tired man, to shake him until he realized the truth of their hopelessness.

  For a moment MacArthur seemed transformed, radiant, majestic. Then he sighed, and it was as if the air had suddenly been let out of a balloon. His shoulders slumped. His face, already ashen, went gray and bloodless. His lips were thin.

  In a low voice, he said, “I have deceived myself. I’ve put the supplies near the beaches. But what else could I have done? There were no good choices.”

  He turned away from Johnny, suddenly animated as he grasped Sutherland’s shoulder. “Tell me, Richard, what do I do now? What now?” Sutherland was silent.

  MacArthur looked a hundred years old as he slowly shuffled back into his office and shut the door.

  There was a long pause, and then Sutherland turned back to the junior officers and spoke in a furious, low voice. “He is a great man. He is worth a hundred of any of the rest of us. What you saw is not who he is, and so if either of you say one word about this little scene to anyone—at any time—on any day—for the rest of your fucking, miserable, and probably short lives, I won’t court-martial you, I will simply hunt you down and cut your fucking tongues out of your mouths personally using a dull knife, do I make myself clear? Now get the hell out of my office before I change my mind and shoot you both on the spot.”

  With hurried “Yes, sirs,” Moore and Johnny got the hell out of his office.

  Safely behind closed doors back in the servants’ quarters, Moore said, “He means it. He really will cut your tongue out.”

  “Sir, I didn’t doubt it for a second.”

  Moore thought for a moment. “I’m going to see if I can get to General Drake. Be where I can get you at a moment’s notice.”

  Johnny went back to his desk. Even in the midst of chaos, the interoffice mail system still functioned. There was a War Department letter on his desk. It had his name on it. He stared at it for a minute, then decided to satisfy his curiosity the traditional way. He opened the envelope and pulled out its contents.

  It was his transfer to Aberdeen Proving Grounds. He was authorized to travel by “any available military transport,” though with a pathetically low priority.

  Fucking hell.

  He was still sitting at his desk staring at the letter when Moore came for him. “Let’s go talk to the boss,” Moore said.

  Johnny’s voice choked. “Guess what, Captain? My transfer came through. I’m heading stateside on the first available military transport. I’m going home.” He handed Moore his letter.

  Moore looked at it and then stared at Johnny with pitying eyes. “Oh, fucking hell. Damn. Shit, I’m sorry, Johnny.” He looked at his hapless subordinate, and then he started to laugh. After a few seconds, Johnny joined in. There was nothing else to do.

  Manila’s air-raid sirens began to blare a few minutes before noon. Reports began to pour into headquarters, and the rumor mill quickly spread them through the building. Bombs were falling on Clark Field. The fleet was retreating out of range. Even the polo field at Stotsenberg had been hit—the colonel in charge reported that not a single horse had panicked. There were rumors that Japanese paratroopers had landed in force just outside the city, that the Japanese fleet was even now steaming into Manila Bay.

  MacArthur began to issue orders by midmorning. The paralysis that had seized him in the predawn hours had obviously begun to ease. It was not until Friday morning that the Japanese army landed in force. The defenders on the beaches held out surprisingly well, and for a time in mid-December Johnny could even believe MacArthur’s radio promise—made to the troops and Philippine citizenry—to “drive the enemy into the sea.” Maybe all the secret backup work had been a waste of time. It was a great thought.

  It didn’t last.

  General Drake called his team in on December 23, the day after MacArthur’s radio address. His face was pale as h
e said, “The Japanese are breaking through at the beaches. Another landing force is on the way. The Lingayen defenses have collapsed.” He paused. “The General has decided to revert to War Plan Five.”

  War Plan Five meant retreat to Bataan Peninsula and the island of Corregidor. The most crippling logistics problem in this complicated withdrawal was a lack of transportation. Fortunately, the secret team—Moore, Johnny, a lieutenant named Andy Sarnuss, a few others—had already done some of the work without waiting for orders. Drake had approved the quiet shipment of half a million C rations and a million gallons of gas. Most of the food and other supplies stockpiled in supply dumps near the beaches would have to be torched or abandoned.

  By January, the retreat had been successfully completed, and officers who understood such things called it “brilliant,” “beautifully executed.” As for Johnny, the supply problem took up all his time.

  He hardly noticed the combat.

  Except for the day a Jap Zero on a strafing run killed Captain Moore.

  • MONDAY, 26 JANUARY 1942 •

  LATERAL 8, MALINTA TUNNEL, CORREGIDOR ISLAND,

  PHILIPPINES, 2146 HOURS

  In the early 1920s, the American military had begun constructing a concrete tunnel system on the island of Corregidor, which guarded the entrance to Manila Bay. More than five thousand men, sixty-eight women, and a handful of children inside lived the lives of besieged moles.

  Malinta Tunnel had not been designed for people. It had a constant graveyard smell about it, mildew and rot and urine and sweat with liberal amounts of diesel fumes thrown in for good measure. The regular booms of artillery shells and bombs hitting the Rock, as Corregidor had come to be known, formed part of the background of life in the tunnels. There was traffic day and night and every sound echoed.

  Bluish lights shone twenty-four hours a day. Bare bulbs illuminated work areas, casting monstrous shadows on the walls.

  Johnny slept in a lateral crammed with bunks, sharing one shower and one sink with twenty-seven others.

  He couldn’t sleep much, so he decided to work.

  There was a lot to do. First, all the supply calculations had to be thrown out the window. They were told there’d be a little over forty thousand troops. Instead, there were a hundred thousand, including thirty thousand civilians. General Drake put everyone on half rations in the first few days of January. If it hadn’t been for the secret team stockpiling in advance, rations would have had to be cut even more.

  Work was the great blessing of Johnny’s life. Work took the place of thought. Thought was dangerous. It led to anger, to depression, to endless speculation of what minor changes would have spared him this fate. He didn’t particularly believe in a personal God, but he made bargains with Him anyway, all the exemplary ways he would live his life if only He would rescue him from the Rock. Even during an air raid, Johnny would work. Everyone had a strategy. MacArthur—the “Coward of Corregidor” to so many of his trapped soldiers—went to the surface and stood outside as the Japanese bombed the Rock.

  Johnny knew he was lucky to draw Corregidor rather than Bataan. At least it was an island and a fortress as well. General Drake’s office of the chief quartermaster had moved there immediately, starting with a headquarters aboveground but—harassed almost continually by Japanese air attacks—soon transferred into Lateral 8 of the Malinta Tunnel.

  He’d made captain with Moore’s death, but all the extra rank meant was extra headaches. Calculating the supply situation was one of the worst.

  The numbers were bleak. They had maybe thirty days’ rations. Sutherland first insisted that the hundred thousand number had to be a gross exaggeration made by people trying to scrounge extra supplies. Johnny helped develop a complicated ration credit system to make sure the supplies were shared as fairly as possible. Sutherland looked skeptically at Johnny’s work but didn’t yell. As long as I keep my mouth shut, I’ve got some leverage, Johnny thought. He didn’t dare hope it might lead to an escape.

  “Guess what, Johnny?” It was Andy Sarnuss, who also worked for Drake and who’d been part of the secret team. He’d gotten to know Andy well only after they’d moved into Lateral 8. Andy’s cynicism and bitterness translated into humor, and Johnny could always use a laugh.

  “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

  “Who needs sleep?” replied Sarnuss. “All times are the same around here, and nothing has meaning. Might as well relax. But go ahead and guess.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea and it’s so late my brain hurts. So tell me or let me do something I can get my mind around, okay?”

  “Sure, sure. Guess what? It’s MacDoogie’s birthday!”

  “No shit.” Johnny just looked at him.

  “You’re not impressed? You’re not motivated to wander down and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ really loud in front of his private room, where he, unlike the rest of us, enjoys the happy privilege of a fuckable roommate?” MacArthur’s wife Jean and young son Arthur were both with him.

  Johnny was shocked. Not that Jean MacArthur wasn’t good-looking, but she was the General’s. “I can’t believe you said that,” he said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say I wanted to fuck her, I said I wanted a fuckable roommate. You’ve got a dirty mind, Halverson. Fuck Mrs. MacArthur? Brrrr.”

  “Well, if you’re dreaming, put me down for a nice three-inch-thick steak, and why don’t you throw in a couple dozen Maryland blue crabs, all steamed and ready to crack.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re out of those requisition forms. As soon as I can get some, I’ll fill them right out for you. Whatcha got there?” Andy looked over Johnny’s shoulder.

  “I’m trying to figure out an equitable way to handle our remaining rations,” Johnny said.

  Andy whistled as his eyes skimmed down the column. “That bad, huh.”

  “Yep. If I could figure out that loaves-and-fishes gimmick, we’d be okay, but so far, nothing.”

  “Have you asked Mac? He can walk on water, you know, so maybe he can do that loaves-and-fishes thing. Have you thought of that?” Andy said in mock seriousness.

  “I’d prefer to see him part the Pacific Ocean so we could all march out of here, maybe walk down to Australia, or all the way back to the States.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Andy said. “Let’s take it up with him in the morning.”

  “First thing,” Johnny said. He took the papers and put them in his desk drawer. Now that he’d had a laugh, maybe he could sleep for a while.

  • TUESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 1942 •

  MALINTA TUNNEL, CORREGIDOR, 1148 HOURS

  Johnny never liked going up to Lateral 3, which contained USAFFE headquarters. MacArthur’s office was there, and of course his chief of staff Sutherland was never far away. However, supply reports had to be sent up regularly, carried by an officer able to answer questions if there happened to be any. That used to be Captain Moore’s job, so now it was Captain Halverson’s.

  As he came out of Lateral 8, he turned and followed the trolley track east. The island trolley once ran right through the Malinta Tunnel as part of its route around the island, but the first major Japanese shelling had destroyed too much of the track to make operation worthwhile. The moist, mildew smell was even worse here, and the echoing sounds of conversations, footsteps, and other noises blended into a random and unpleasant cacophony.

  Normally, Johnny handed the report to the sergeant on duty, waited ten or so minutes to see if there were any questions, then walked back to his own lateral. There were almost never any questions. Today, the sergeant came back and said, “General Sutherland would like to see you.”

  Johnny’s heart sank. It was like going to the principal’s office. What had he done this time to incur Sutherland’s wrath?

  He stepped into the office, snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “Captain Halverson reporting to the chief of staff as ordered, sir!”

  “Oh, at ease, at ease,” said Sutherland, who acknowledged the s
alute, stood up, came out from behind his desk, and shook Johnny’s hand. “Have a seat, Johnny. It is Johnny, right, Halliwell?”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnny replied, deciding again not to correct Sutherland on the matter of his last name.

  “I understand your captain, Moore, got killed in Manila?” the chief of staff began, making a forced effort at comradeship.

  “Yes, sir. Killed by a strafing fighter.”

  “Too bad, too bad. But I see you got the promotion to his job. Congratulations. I remember getting the papers for my signature.”

  MacArthur’s G-1, Colonel Stivers, had actually signed Johnny’s promotion paperwork, but for all Johnny knew, Sutherland may have approved it as chief of staff.

  Sutherland’s eyes narrowed as he studied Johnny. “It seems you’ve kept quiet… about that little incident, when the war was starting. You haven’t spoken of it?”

  “No sir, not to anyone.” It was the truth.

  “Good. Good man. You know this is very important to the General, you know that. It would unfairly damage him if it were spoken about. I appreciate the way you’ve handled yourself. So does the General. You know that some … ah … questions have been raised. Maybe you’ve heard songs being sung?”

  Like everybody in Bataan or Corregidor, Johnny knew about “Dugout Doug” and the “Battling Bastards of Bataan,” two ditties that had been making the rounds. But what to say? “I’ve … uh … been aware of them, yes, sir.”

  “There’s a reporter, Hewitt, and some other people who’ve been making noises, and they’re particularly interested in any dirt they can dig up. Some people might remember that you were in the office that morning and come to ask you questions about it.”

  “No one has yet, sir,” Johnny said.

  “Good. I’m glad. But there’s still a chance. Now, if it happens, I still need you to keep your mouth shut, and I also need you to let me know about anybody who’s getting curious. Can you do that for me?”