In the morning, MacArthur’s suspicions about a political motive for the trip were confirmed when Roosevelt squeezed the general and Nimitz into the back of the same open car that MacArthur had just used and, with Leahy in front with the chauffeur, set off on a whirlwind tour of Oahu military installations. Nimitz later maintained that there were only two open cars in all of Honolulu: one belonged to a well-known madam and the other was the fire chief’s bright red vehicle. The chief’s was chosen because riding in the madam’s vehicle might have serious repercussions.10
MacArthur was long past being a viable presidential candidate—in 1944, at least—but he still held considerable sway in Republican circles, as well as being genuinely popular with the American public at large. Shrewd Roosevelt had weighed the political benefits of either appearing before a partisan crowd at his nominating convention or being seen in the field as commander in chief in the company of two of the most popular military heroes of the day—MacArthur and Nimitz. It was an easy choice.
Political cartoonist Jim Berryman caught the mood when he depicted MacArthur, Nimitz, and a vibrant-looking FDR with “Commander-in-Chief” on his sleeve seated at a table labeled “Pacific War Council.” MacArthur and Nimitz are looking over their shoulders at another FDR leaning jauntily against a palm tree, cigarette holder in hand and lei around his neck, while his hat reads “Democratic Nominee.” “Oh, don’t mind him, gentlemen,” FDR’s commander in chief character says. “He just came along to get away from politics!”11
As usual, the press paid Leahy little mind during these tours, but Halsey added additional star power when he joined the group for dinner. Only after that did the serious discussions begin, with only Roosevelt, Leahy, MacArthur, and Nimitz in the living room of a Waikiki residence that was bedecked with maps. FDR addressed MacArthur first: “Well, Douglas, where do we go from here?” With pointer in hand, MacArthur jabbed at a huge map of the Pacific and replied, “Mindanao, Mr. President, then Leyte—and then Luzon.”12
With MacArthur arguing the Philippines alternative, it was left to Nimitz to put forward the case for Formosa. In a session that lasted until midnight and then continued the following morning, Nimitz and MacArthur took turns congenially debating the pros and cons of each plan.
King had long favored an invasion of Formosa as the most effective means of severing the flow of natural resources between the East Indies and Japan. American submarines had certainly choked that supply line, but King wanted it cut completely with a fleet presence in Formosa. Having leaped to the Marianas, Nimitz was convinced that he could make the jump to Formosa, although his lines of communication and supply would be squeezed between Okinawa to the north and Luzon to the south. Somewhere along that line, such a thrust was bound to precipitate a final pitched battle with the Japanese fleet.
King, by the way, had just departed Hawaii after his visit to Saipan with Nimitz, and in fact flew over the Baltimore on his way east. He was not invited to attend the conference, nor were the other members of the Joint Chiefs, Marshall and Arnold, who had accompanied the president to all the other important strategy conferences. With the breakout from the Normandy beachhead just under way, it might be said that Marshall, Arnold, and King were busy winning the war, while the president was indeed indulging in political posturing with his two high-profile field commanders.
King’s views on the Honolulu conference were summed up by the subtitle of the corresponding section in his autobiography: “President Roosevelt Intervenes in Pacific Strategy.” King also recounted that a few weeks before the Pearl Harbor conference, Leahy came into his office and asked that the navy stop using the long-held title “Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet” (or Atlantic Fleet) and simply say “Commander, Pacific Fleet.” King asked if this was an order, and the deft Leahy replied that it was not, nor was it even a request, but he knew the president “would like to have it done.” King said he would gladly follow a direct order but otherwise would take it under advisement. He did, and did nothing, but there was at least the inference in the discussion that FDR was determined that any reference to “commander in chief” be only to him.13
There is some evidence that the final decision between the Philippines and Formosa was more political than military. Supposedly, MacArthur managed to corner FDR alone for ten minutes and chastise him that bypassing the Philippines, with its millions of friendly inhabitants, under American protection since the Spanish-American War, would foster a “most complete resentment against you at the polls this fall.” In any event, Roosevelt went to bed that evening demanding an aspirin and grumbling, “In all my life nobody has ever talked to me the way MacArthur did.”14
By the time MacArthur departed after the morning conference on the third day, FDR, on the issue of Formosa versus the Philippines, was leaning toward the latter. King later felt that Nimitz let him down in his arguments for Formosa. In reality, Roosevelt may well have already decided to placate MacArthur before Nimitz spoke. In either event, the Joint Chiefs continued to debate the issue for another month before a final decision was made in favor of the Philippines. When it was, Leahy strongly supported that route because he thought it was “of a more conservative nature at a lesser cost of lives” than an attack against Formosa or Kyushu.15
As usual, it was Leahy who painted a serene picture of the Honolulu scene: “After so much loose talk in Washington, where the mention of the name of MacArthur seemed to generate more heat than light,” Leahy recalled, “it was both pleasant and very informative to have these two men [MacArthur and Nimitz] who had been pictured as antagonists calmly present their differing views to the Commander-in-Chief.”16
On Saturday, July 29, the day after MacArthur departed, Roosevelt again toured military facilities and then lunched at Nimitz’s quarters—hastily revamped to accommodate the president’s wheelchair. After lunch, they made a tour of the five-thousand-bed Aiea Naval Hospital and returned to the president’s temporary residence so that Roosevelt could hold a late afternoon press conference.
Roosevelt expressed satisfaction at seeing his commanders and noted that whenever and however the invasion of the Philippines came about, General MacArthur would “take a part in it.” As for Leahy, he recorded in his diary that evening perhaps an even greater strategy issue than the Formosa versus Philippines debate.
“Their agreement on the fundamental strategy that should be employed in bringing defeat to Japan,” wrote Leahy of MacArthur and Nimitz, “and the President’s familiarity therewith acquired at this conference, will be of the greatest value to me in preventing an unnecessary invasion of Japan.” The planning staffs of the Joint Chiefs and the War Department had been advocating just such a preparation, “regardless of the loss of life,” and Leahy was decidedly opposed to a ground invasion.
While Leahy admitted that General MacArthur “seems to be chiefly interested in retaking the Philippines,” he was convinced that both MacArthur and Nimitz “are in agreement with me… that Japan can be forced to accept our terms of surrender by the use of sea and air power without an invasion of the Japanese homeland.”
With that, the president’s party reboarded the Baltimore and sailed east. “I look forward to little of value in the remainder of our scheduled cruise on the Baltimore,” Leahy noted, “but the entire journey has already been fully justified by our conferences with MacArthur and Nimitz in Honolulu.” Just where the Baltimore was headed was once again a closely guarded secret.17
Meanwhile, despite his public pronouncements of support for Spruance after the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Admiral King was personally “disappointed in the results” and reiterated to Nimitz, “If an opportunity arises or can be contrived to destroy a major part of the main Japanese fleet, this becomes the primary objective.”18
This emphasis on engaging ships was hardly new. In May 1943, Nimitz had bemoaned that a Japanese cruiser had been damaged but left on a reef and permitted to escape despite Nimitz’s request to MacArthur for his planes to finish it off. “As yo
u well know,” Nimitz told Halsey then, “ships, combatant and merchant type, are still our prime objective for all kinds of strikes.”19
The Japanese were about to oblige such an opportunity, and making the most of it was certainly Bill Halsey’s priority as he sailed west from Pearl Harbor on August 24 in the battleship New Jersey, ultimately to cover MacArthur’s landings in the Philippines. Two days later, command of the fleet officially passed from Spruance to Halsey.
Halsey’s choice of the New Jersey as his flagship is interesting, particularly in light of later events. His “first inclination” had been to pick a carrier because, he said, “I had spent so many years in them that I would have felt more at home there than in anything but a destroyer, which was now too rough for my old age [emphasis added].” But, Halsey worried, the carriers would be particularly vulnerable to attack, and “we could not afford to risk having flag functions interrupted by battle damage.”
That left the new Iowa-class battleships, the only big ships that could match the speed of the 32-knot carriers. During the Marianas campaign, Halsey had dispatched observers to Spruance’s flag plot on Indianapolis, Marc Mitscher’s flag carrier, and several battleships, and the result of this review of efficiency was that his staff was able to craft a flag plot on the New Jersey that Halsey called “the best in the fleet.”20
By the time Halsey rendezvoused with Mitscher’s fast carrier task force—now numbered Task Force 38, instead of 58, to account for the Fifth Fleet becoming the Third Fleet—Mitscher’s planes had been blanketing the Palau Islands and Mindanao in the Philippines. Running out of enemy resistance, Halsey ordered strikes in the central Philippines as well. Over the course of three days in early September, the sixteen carriers of Task Force 38 launched more than 3,000 sorties that shot down 173 Japanese planes, destroyed another 305 on the ground, and caused havoc to shipping—all with minimal losses. This set Halsey to thinking.
MacArthur’s invasion of the Philippines via Mindanao was scheduled for November 15, with landings at Leyte in the central Philippines to follow by December 20. In the meantime, Nimitz’s Central Pacific forces were to seize the intermediary islands of Peleliu and Angaur in the Palaus on the same day that MacArthur landed on Morotai, halfway between New Guinea and Mindanao. But if these outer defenses were protecting a largely empty shell in the central Philippines, why not strike directly to the heart of the matter and invade Leyte instead of Mindanao, expediting the timetable and bypassing the outlying resistance in the process?
Halsey sat in the corner of the flag bridge of the New Jersey chain-smoking cigarettes and mulling it over. Dare he recommend such a move to Nimitz? Finally, the admiral summoned his chief of staff and told him, “I’m going to stick my neck out. Send an urgent dispatch to CINCPAC.”21
The invasion of Peleliu was only forty-eight hours away and intended to coincide with MacArthur’s strike at Morotai. Nimitz agreed with Halsey about striking Leyte directly, but the tightness of the Peleliu invasion was vexing. Eighteen thousand men of the veteran First Marine Division and another eleven thousand from the Eighty-first Infantry Division were on board transports headed for the island. They might have been recalled, but such an action would have clogged the endless supply lines that were by now pouring men and materiel into the Pacific. Nimitz fretted but decided to go ahead with the landings. After Peleliu proved to be heavily fortified with a system of limestone caves, the operation turned into another bloody Tarawa for the First Marines and became one of Nimitz’s more controversial decisions.
But meanwhile, Nimitz flashed Halsey’s suggestion about Leyte to King, who was in Quebec with his fellow Joint Chiefs attending yet another strategy session with Roosevelt and Churchill. General Marshall was reluctant to make such a momentous decision without input from MacArthur, but MacArthur was on board the cruiser Nashville under radio silence en route to the invasion of Morotai. His alter ego and chief of staff, Richard Sutherland, made the decision in MacArthur’s absence and wired a hearty concurrence in MacArthur’s name.
This message reached the Joint Chiefs in Quebec while they were attending a formal dinner given by Canadian officers in their honor. When a staff officer interrupted, Leahy, Marshall, King, and Arnold excused themselves and “left the table for a conference.” Ninety minutes after the message was received, orders were en route to MacArthur and Nimitz to execute the Leyte operations on October 20. “Having the utmost confidence in General MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz, and Admiral Halsey,” Marshall later wrote, “it was not a difficult decision to make.”22
With the invasion of Leyte moved up, Halsey led the Third Fleet northwest toward Formosa—not for purposes of an invasion, but to neutralize airfields there and prevent reinforcements from reaching the Philippines. The American carrier pilots were becoming so proficient—and Japan was running out of top-line fliers—that the Formosa raid achieved great success. But then Halsey’s dreaded Friday the thirteenth jinx struck at sea.
Since young Bill’s rescue, Halsey’s phobia had been dormant, but on the evening of October 13, as the Third Fleet was retiring eastward from Formosa, the American heavy cruiser Canberra (CA-70) was hit by an aerial torpedo and went dead in the water. Halsey faced the decision to abandon the ship and either sink it, or take it under tow. He chose the latter and prepared “to fight our way out” at the agonizingly slow speed of four knots.
This was not all bad, because although the Canberra became an easy target for the remaining Japanese aircraft, the combat air patrols from Halsey’s carriers shot down many of them. But late on the evening of October 14, another aerial torpedo found its mark in the light cruiser Houston (CL-81). Now Halsey had two cripples on his hands. Both of these cruisers were namesakes of other ships sunk earlier in the war, in 1942—the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra (D-33) in the Battle of Savo Island, and the American heavy cruiser Houston (CA-30) near Java.
Halsey was now faced with abandoning two ships or continuing to tow the cruisers eastward. At first, he was inclined “to sink them and run beyond the range of the Japs’ shore-based air before a worse disaster struck us.” But then his chief of staff and operations officer suggested using the crippled cruisers as bait to lure out a heavier concentration of Japanese ships. If they could do so, it would provide them with an opportunity to destroy “a major portion of the enemy fleet” per their orders.
Halsey dispatched two of his carrier groups to lurk just outside of the range of enemy patrol planes and the other two to pound airfields on Luzon. Meanwhile, the Canberra and Houston and their escorts were designated “the Bait Division” and told to keep up a steady stream of distress messages.
Japanese planes continued to attack the cruisers with detrimental results because of the combat air patrols, but no major concentration of Japanese warships appeared. By the time the Bait Division was safely out of range and bound for the navy’s new forward base at Ulithi, Halsey’s attention was focused on MacArthur’s landings on Leyte. It would soon become clear that part of the reason the Japanese did not take Halsey’s proffered bait was that they were baiting a trap of their own.23
After two years of a steady erosion of its position across the Pacific, the Imperial Japanese Navy was desperately seeking another Tsushima-type victory. For a brief time, wildly inflated Japanese propaganda reports suggested they had achieved it by destroying a major portion of Halsey’s fleet off Formosa. Save for the damage to Canberra and Houston, this was largely nonsense. So many Japanese planes had in fact dropped burning into the sea that it was difficult for attacking pilots to realize that the American ships themselves were not afire.
Admiral Soemu Toyoda, commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, was not swayed either way. He had already committed his remaining forces to a do-or-die defense of the Philippines. Toyoda later testified that “questions were beginning to be asked at home as to what the navy was doing after loss of one point after another down south,” but the loss of the Philippines—or Formosa, if King had had his way—would cut t
he Japanese jugular.
If Toyoda’s fleet stayed in its home waters, it could not obtain fuel from the East Indies. If it remained south of the Formosa–Philippine choke hold, it could not be resupplied with men and ammunition from Japan. “There would be no sense,” Toyoda acknowledged, “in saving the fleet at the expense of the loss of the Philippines.”24 Thus, the Japanese navy’s imperative was to repulse MacArthur’s landings at Leyte and hope for a Tsushima-like surface engagement with the American fleet.
To do so, Toyoda devised a massive four-pronged offensive that was much more concentrated and complex than any prior thrusts at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, or even Midway. It is interesting to speculate what such an assemblage of Japanese naval power might have done toward subjugating the Hawaiian Islands immediately after Pearl Harbor or parading up and down the West Coast of the United States early in 1942. But instead, Japan had stabbed here and there and then been content to wage a holding action. It had not mounted another major operation with its Combined Fleet until the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and even then the confrontation had not resulted in the long-awaited surface duel between battleships that some strategists on both sides still thought must inevitably occur.
On the American side, there would later be many questions about divided command during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but the Japanese also had their own command and control issues from the start. While Toyoda gave overall strategic direction from southern Formosa, four semi-independent fleets sailed toward Leyte. The Main Force (which the Americans called the Northern Force) assembled in Japan’s Inland Sea under Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa. It consisted of one large carrier, three light carriers, two cruisers, and a dozen destroyers.
The Admirals Page 41