Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  MacArthur’s resolution wavered. Nonetheless, that evening he drew up a formal letter of resignation, though Sutherland convinced him to wait until morning before sending it. After a sleepless night, MacArthur saw that his staff was right. He would leave the Philippines; but he and only he would decide when.

  His radiogram to Washington went off on February 24. “Please be guided by me in this matter,” it read in part. “Unless the right moment is chosen for so delicate an operation a sudden collapse might result”—that is, if the beleaguered bastards on Bataan felt that they were being abandoned by their commander.78 He asked for time to choose his own departure. As for his men, “any idea that might develop in their minds that I was being withdrawn for any other reason than to bring them immediate relief, could not be explained”—and he wanted Washington to commit to that rescue mission.

  So there was still that inner conviction that somehow, he would get Wainwright, Parker, and their men out of this mess, even if it meant going to Australia to summon up the men, ships, and planes to do it. It was that belief that, in the final analysis, sustained his decision, and what sustained him in the days afterward.

  Meanwhile, two days later Marshall gave his answer:

  “Your message [of February 24] has been carefully considered by the President. He has directed that full decision as to timing of your departure and details of method be left in your hands since it is imperative that the Luzon defense be firmly sustained.” The phrasing was ambiguous; it could have suggested to MacArthur that the commitment to sustaining the defense of Luzon, meaning Bataan, included a future relief mission.79

  As it happened, on the day MacArthur’s message arrived in the morning, FDR had a press conference in the afternoon, where someone asked about the situation in the Philippines, and whether MacArthur was “at odds with the high command” in Washington over the issue of relief and reinforcement.

  For once, Roosevelt was nonplussed. With reporters gathered around his desk, he gave a long, incoherent, stuttering reply:

  “I wouldn’t do any—well, I wouldn’t—I am trying to take a leaf out of my notebook. I think it would be well for others to do it. I—not knowing enough about it—I try not to speculate myself.”

  Still, Roosevelt was pleased that MacArthur was leaving Corregidor. The president had dodged a major political bullet. What would happen when he reached Australia—when he realized just how thin the resources would be when he got there—was something the president, Marshall, and Stimson would have to deal with when it came up.80

  By then, it would be too late for MacArthur to turn back.

  —

  Commissioner Sayre and his family were the next to leave. The Swordfish returned the night of the 24th to pick them up, only to find that in addition to the three Sayres another ten people who were part of his staff were also going. They were MacArthur’s codebreakers (the navy had pulled its team and their PURPLE machine on February 4), who were beginning a long and fascinating journey—not just for themselves, but for MacArthur once they set up their operation in Australia.81

  Once again the tender went out in the darkness to the sea, and once again MacArthur and his party saw them off and then returned to the Malinta Tunnel. “They are leaving us one by one,” Carlos Romulo wrote in his diary that night—not knowing yet, but perhaps sensing, that MacArthur would soon be one of them.82

  CHAPTER 17

  I SHALL RETURN

  How the hell can we win this war unless we can crack some heads?

  —DWIGHT EISENHOWER, MAY 6, 1942

  The only question for MacArthur now was not whether he’d leave, or why, but how.

  The others had gotten out by submarine; Washington assumed MacArthur would too. MacArthur himself, however, would have none of it. He sensed that the trip to Australia might be perilous, with Japan having complete control of the seas. “It is a long run to Australia,” he told his staff one evening, “most of it through seas that are not well charted or not charted at all.”

  He was in the living room of the house, with blankets nailed up to black out the windows. He paced up and down and smoking one of the cigars President Quezon had left him, while his staff sat and listened under the dim light of a single overhead bulb.

  They knew they were all going with him. There would be a total of eighteen in addition to MacArthur, Jean, Arthur, and his ayah, Ah Cheu. The rest of the list included Sutherland, Marshall, Rear Admiral Francis Rockwell and Rockwell’s chief of staff, Captain James Ray; MacArthur’s naval aide, Sid Huff; Hugh Casey, the engineering officer, and his G-2, Charles Willoughby. There was also Billy Marquat, in charge of antiaircraft, and Colonel Paul Stivers of army personnel; and the man who would prove to be perhaps the most significant of the group: Brigadier General Spencer Akin of the Signal Corps.

  In all, there were eighteen persons chosen to escape certain death or capture, for a new lease on life and the war in Australia—if they made it out alive. And few thought they would, especially when MacArthur announced the way he was planning to leave.

  “I had a talk with Lieutenant Bulkeley,” MacArthur was saying as he paced. Bulkeley was the commander of the PT squadron on Corregidor who had arrived shortly before Pearl Harbor—the navy’s last vessels in the Philippines. “He tells me we have a chance to get through the blockade in PT boats. It wouldn’t be easy. There would be plenty of risks. But four boats are available and, with their machine guns and torpedoes, we could put up a good fight against an enemy warship if necessary. And of course the boats have plenty of speed.”1

  MacArthur’s plan wasn’t to go all the way to Australia in the seventy-foot-long plywood boats, of course. It was to land on Mindanao and then get to Del Monte airfield, where an escort of B-17s could pick up the entire party and ferry them by air to Darwin, Australia.

  The rest of the group listened in tense silence. They said nothing about the general’s plan, but to some, if not most, it must have seemed daylight madness. The idea of the lightweight boats taking to the open seas, and then encountering a Japanese destroyer or cruiser would have appealed to anyone’s sense of the absurd—not to mention mortal danger.

  But MacArthur’s mind was made up. He gave his last terse orders. Sutherland then told Huff, Bulkeley, and Ray to work out the details.

  The date set for their departure was March 18.

  —

  Meanwhile back on Bataan, ironically, morale was higher than it had been since the start of the war.

  Rations were just as short, disease just as rampant, and men were still venting their frustration with occasional choruses of “Dugout Doug.” But the victories in February—wiping out the last pockets of Japanese infiltrators from the last week in January, one of which alone cost the enemy 450 dead, and foiling a series of unexpected amphibious attacks the first weeks in February—had left the Japanese “badly mauled,” as MacArthur said in his report for Marshall, and turned his Filipino frontline troops on Bataan into tough, seasoned veterans. “The opinion here,” wrote a naval intelligence officer who was usually skeptical of the Philippine Army’s competence, “is that the army has improved by many discharges and thousands of desertions, by the realization that it has to fight its own battle with little if any substantial aid”—and made them eager for battle.2

  As February turned into March, increasingly confident Philippine and American troops boldly ventured into the no-man’s-land of marsh and jungle between the two lines of defenses, seeking out combat with their enemy. At times HQ had to put the brakes on efforts to take the offensive northward in hopes of retaking lost ground.3

  The Japanese were not idle either. General Homma had been given a new chief of staff, Lieutenant General Takeji Wachi, and when Wachi toured the Japanese positions on Bataan he was shocked by what he found. He bluntly told the high command in Tokyo, “The Japanese Army [has been] severely beaten.” Morale was low, and the army’s disposition in chaos. The high command immediately set about correcting that problem. Night by night massive
new reinforcements poured in, including the 4,000-strong Nagano Infantry Regiment from China and the veteran Fourth Division, some 11,000 strong. No fewer than five artillery regiments arrived from Hong Kong, as well as sixty-two twin-engine bombers—while big new guns were sent to pulverize MacArthur’s remaining defenses on Bataan as well as Corregidor.

  The Japanese knew nothing, of course, of MacArthur’s evacuation plans; nor did he know the details of Homma’s intense preparations, although he and Wainwright could easily guess. Reinforced and reinvigorated, Homma’s army would soon be ready to take the offensive. The full-scale bombardment of the Allied positions was set for March 24; the final Japanese push would follow on April 3.4 Afterward Homma would take on the toughest nut of all, Corregidor; but by then the Rock would be without its commander in chief or his staff.

  MacArthur had ridden in PT boats before, but Jean hadn’t, and so he arranged a demonstration for her with Lieutenant Bulkeley. They met one afternoon at the dock. Bulkeley was easy to spot. The hero of the Battle of the Points in February when his PT boats had taken on and sunk several Japanese amphibious transports, he wore a long, unruly beard and two enormous pistols holstered at his side. His eyes were red-rimmed from a chronic lack of sleep and constant night missions, but his immense nervous energy gave him an impressive swagger. “A swashbuckling pirate in modern dress” was a standard description of Bulkeley, who was a MacArthur favorite.5

  They roared around the island a few times—hardly a fair test for traveling in open seas, but it gave Jean a sense of the little boat’s pitch and power, with the spray coming over the deck at every turn.

  For security purposes, Bulkeley still did not know where they would be going (the night they left, even his crews still did not know their final heading). Sutherland had simply ordered him “to prepare his squadron for a trip over 500 miles to an undisclosed location.” Over several days he made fuel consumption and speed runs with a fully loaded boat and checked the boats’ compasses for deviations. He also made sure that each boat had a rubber dinghy and a deckload of gasoline, as well as plenty of emergency provisions.6

  Meanwhile Admiral Rockwell’s aide Captain Harold Ray, Bulkeley, and Sid Huff were working out the final logistical details. They agreed that MacArthur and his family would be aboard Bulkeley’s boat, PT-41, with the others distributed on the three other boats. The first night out they would head for the Cuyo Islands, a group of uninhabited clumps of sand and rock northwest of Mindanao. There they would sit out the daylight, to evade Japanese air and naval patrols. Then when the sun set, the four boats would start out for Mindanao; a submarine would join them just in case the boats couldn’t make the last leg of the journey.7

  Even with these preparations, MacArthur’s plan looked outlandish and risky. Supposing they somehow managed to reach Mindanao, they would still have to rendezvous with the bombers coming in from Australia to Del Monte field, and then take off again, evading Japanese navy and air force planes, which by then would have guessed the truth and would be hot on their trail. Navy officers were thinking that MacArthur had barely one chance in five of making it out alive.8

  But now there were no alternatives. It was, as the saying goes, the best bad plan they had. And on March 1 a signal went out to General George Brett, the new head of United States Army Forces in Australia (USAFIA):

  Request detail best pilots and best available planes be placed in top condition for trip. B-24’s if available otherwise B-17’s. Ferry mission only. Desire if possible initial landing on return to be south of combat zone. Anticipate call for arrival Mindanao about 15.

  The message began: “You have probably surmised purpose of mission.” If Brett hadn’t, he would soon be getting his instructions from Washington, as well as Fort Mills.9

  Every morning for the next ten days MacArthur met with Bulkeley to work out the final details of the evacuation.

  Even so, MacArthur hesitated.

  On March 6 a cable arrived from Washington: “The situation in Australia indicates desirability of your early arrival there.” There was no answer from Lateral Tunnel No. 3, no setting of a date for departure, no date for landing in Australia. There was only MacArthur, pacing relentlessly and smoking his cigars. Carlos Romulo, who had moved into the house next door to the general and Jean when Quezon left, could almost feel the physical weight of MacArthur’s decision. He would be “breaking, in his own mind, his pledge to die with his men on the Rock,” Romulo realized. Far from allowing MacArthur to feel relief at going, it involved a betrayal of a vow that would haunt MacArthur the rest of his life.10

  Another cable came on March 9—just as the Japanese resumed their regular bombardment of Corregidor.11 By now MacArthur’s mind was fully made up. It was just a matter of choosing a final date of departure. He replied to Washington that he expected to leave on March 15—“the Ides of March,” as he sardonically told his staff—and planned to be in Australia on the 18th.

  But there were still security worries. The longer MacArthur put off the trip, the more likely it was that the Japanese would learn his plans—and by March 9 it seemed they had. The number of navy patrols around Corregidor had tripled. Philippine lookouts reported that a Japanese destroyer division was headed for the southern Philippines at flank speed, and there was increased activity in Subic Bay, northwest of Bataan.12

  Bulkeley, for one, was convinced that the Japanese knew MacArthur was leaving and were determined to intercept him. Speed was now of the essence. They could not wait for the submarine USS Permit to show sometime after March 13; they had to leave “as soon as preparations [can] be completed,” preferably on March 11 when the moon was still on the wane.

  On March 10 a grim-faced Sutherland handed Bulkeley his orders.

  They stated that Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron would be taking a party of twenty-one passengers (there were three last-minute additions to the original roll of eighteen) “to a southern port to be designated later.” They would be leaving the next night, March 11, in time to rendezvous at the turning buoy at 8 P.M. They were to take fuel for a 510-mile journey and food for five days. “Enemy air and surface activity will be expected along the route.”13

  Before leaving, however, MacArthur had one last unpleasant duty to perform.

  —

  At noon a fast Elco cabin cruiser, marked J-230 on her prow, pulled up at Mariveles dock on Bataan. Three U.S. Army officers climbed aboard and the J-230 quickly roared away from the pier, headed for Corregidor.

  “Wonder what he wants, General?” one of the officers asked General Jonathan Wainwright.

  “Wish to God I knew,” Wainwright replied wearily, his eyes focused on the growing bulk of Corregidor on the boat’s prow. “All I know is that Sutherland phoned last night and told me to come over, the General wanted to see me.”14

  Week by week, Wainwright had watched his command deteriorate. They were nearly out of food, nearly out of ammunition, and despite the lull in the fighting since mid-February, nearly out of hope as well. Some units were down to one tin of canned salmon for every fifteen men.

  Unless a regular shipment of supplies arrived from somewhere, Jim Wainwright had resigned himself to watching his men slowly starve and waste away—although he, and they, were still committed to fighting to the end. Wainwright felt strongly that MacArthur had made some serious mistakes, but the friends were too close to argue about it. In fact, he was the only person who ever called the commander in chief of USAFFE Douglas, and MacArthur was the only one who called him Jonathan. Although they were friends, they had clashed over the MacArthur plan for defending Luzon, then over abandoning the plan and reverting to WPO-3, and over the fighting withdrawal strategy.

  On one thing, however, they were in agreement. There would be no retreat, no surrender. Perhaps that was why, when Wainwright reached the island, it was Sutherland, not MacArthur, who broke the news.

  “General MacArthur is going to leave here and go to Australia,” he said gruffly. “He’s up at the house now and wants to
see you…”

  They were standing in the half-gloom of Lateral Tunnel No. 3 as Sutherland filled him in. How the White House had been pressuring MacArthur for days, but MacArthur had kept refusing. How MacArthur was now planning to leave tomorrow evening by PT boat for Mindanao. And how Wainwright was to tell no one—“no one,” Sutherland sternly repeated—until the morning of the 12th.15

  Wainwright said nothing as the shock of the news settled in. Instead, he listened as Sutherland outlined some of the command changes MacArthur would be making before departing for Australia. Wainwright would now assume command of all troops on Luzon; General Jones was getting a promotion to take over Wainwright’s I Corps; General Moore would keep command of all harbor defenses and fortified islands in Manila Bay, including Corregidor; and MacArthur himself was retaining overall command from his new headquarters in Australia.

  They made the quarter-mile walk to the general’s house, and as they arrived, the door opened and MacArthur stepped onto the porch.

  In his mind, he had a clear conscience. If Wainwright felt MacArthur had made mistakes, MacArthur had similar private doubts about Wainwright. He felt Wainwright hadn’t been aggressive enough in defending Bataan; he felt Wainwright had missed opportunities in fighting the Japanese; he also believed Wainwright drank too much. But they were old friends and there could be no hard feelings, MacArthur believed. Besides, he was leaving the new Luzon commander with enough supplies and a ration plan that he thought would be enough to enable the remaining men to hold on until July 1, by which time he’d be back with relief and reinforcements.

  All the same, he couldn’t disguise his shock at Wainwright’s appearance. The general, already nicknamed “Skinny,” had lost so much weight on half rations that he looked like a living skeleton.

  “Jonathan,” MacArthur said after the two generals shook hands, “I want you to understand my position very plainly.” He went over his arguments with the president over the past several days, and ended with, “Things have gotten to such a point that I must comply with these orders or get out of the Army.”