Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  He looked at Kenney. “If I should die today, tomorrow, next year, anytime, my last words will be, ‘George, bring up the Fifth Air Force.’ ”2

  —

  The first arrivals of that air force came two days later at his new HQ at Tacloban, at Price House.

  When MacArthur had finally gone ashore on Leyte on the 26th, he had taken up occupancy of a large two-story colonial building called Price House, which had served as the Japanese commander’s headquarters. When they arrived, Sutherland, Rogers, and the other staff were amazed to discover the desks covered with files and papers, even pots of tea.3

  MacArthur was still settling in at his Price House offices and lunching with General Kenney on the 27th when he heard the roar of engines.

  “Hullo, what’s that?” he wanted to know.

  “That’s my P-38s from the Forty-ninth Fighter Group,” Kenney promptly said. The pilots included ace Richard Bong, and when Kenney and MacArthur drove out to the airfield to meet the fighter group the general called out, “Bong, get over here.”

  The fighter ace got his first meeting with the SWPA commander, as did the other Forty-ninth Group pilots, to whom MacArthur simply said, “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

  The warm fuzzy feeling didn’t last more than a couple of hours, since at five o’clock Japanese planes swept to hit Tacloban airfield. The Lightnings jumped aloft to catch them and shot down several. But the raids continued over the next twenty-four hours, and the relentless Japanese attacks shot down half of Kenney’s P-38s. Kenney hastened to send up more, but still Price House and the sector around the airfield were in the Japanese crosshairs and the raids continued to take their toll.

  And it wasn’t just the Japanese; the liberator of the Philippines sometimes had to look out for friendly fire. At one point an American antiaircraft shell smashed through the wall of the room adjacent to MacArthur’s; another landed in his bedroom but failed to explode. MacArthur saved it until his antiaircraft expert, Bill Marquat, arrived for dinner, then set it down on the table along with the first course.

  “Bill,” he said with deadpan sangfroid, “ask your gunners to raise their sights a bit higher.”

  Then one night a Japanese light bomber passed overhead and opened up with its machine guns. MacArthur all but ignored bombs that dropped outside his office window or on the lawn outside, but this time .30-caliber shells ripped past his head and embedded themselves in the rafter eighteen inches from his desk.

  MacArthur immediately summoned his aide Larry Lehrbas.

  “Larry,” he said, pointing to the bullet holes, “dig those out.”

  “Thank God, General, I thought you had been killed.”

  MacArthur said nothing, just ordered the spent slugs to be sent to his son in Brisbane. With them went this note:

  “Dear Arthur—Papa is sending you two big bullets that were fired at him and missed. He misses you and Mama and sends you both his love. Poppie.”

  It was impressive bravado. But it couldn’t cover up the fact that a week into the invasion of Leyte, if the Japanese didn’t have air superiority, neither did the Americans. The other grim news came from the other end of the island. After Krueger’s initial success, which cleared the eastern half of the island, Japanese resistance was growing, and the fighting on Leyte was getting bogged down.

  —

  That was not how the invasion was supposed to play out. Part of the problem was the arrival of Japanese reinforcements that no one had counted on—the crack First Division. Akin’s and MacArthur’s ULTRA people had failed to identify the force’s ultimate destination as Leyte. So instead of 26,000 Japanese on hand when the invasion came, there had been more than 70,000, with 45,000 sneaking in by boat despite constant air attacks by Kenney and the Seventh Fleet.4 Still, it was the arrival of the Japanese First Division, “more than any other,” as the official U.S. Army history has it, that “was responsible for the extension of the Leyte operation.”

  The truth was beginning to dawn on MacArthur, as well. As he wrote to Kinkaid, “[T]he enemy has decided to make a decisive stand in western Leyte in order to delay our further advance in the Philippines.” It was time to break the bottle, and soon.

  His cause was not helped by Krueger’s own serious miscalculation. He had captured Carigara, on the northern edge of the island, on November 2 virtually without a shot. The next move for General Franklin Sibert’s X Corps was across the rugged line of mountains west of Carigara and then south to Ormoc and the tempting anchorage at Ormoc Bay. But Krueger also worried about a seaborne attack on Carigara and ordered Sibert to dig in there and wait until it was secured before pushing for Ormoc. The delay was crucial; by the time Krueger was satisfied and told Sibert to “advance vigorously to the south,” the Japanese First Division had dug in along the steep, rugged slopes and were patiently waiting for the Americans.

  Military historians have debated the wisdom, or the lack thereof, of Krueger’s move ever since. Wise or not, by the time Sibert’s weary troops of the Twenty-fourth Division arrived in Ormoc Valley on the 5th, they met a firestorm and all advance ground to a halt. The next two weeks brought some of the bloodiest fighting of the campaign, as Americans and Japanese attacked and counterattacked, scrambled up and down the rocky slopes and through the cogon grass of Breakneck Ridge, throwing hand grenades and mortars and meeting death hand to hand—and going for days with no supplies except what Kenney’s C-47s could drop by parachute.

  MacArthur was not pleased. He was frustrated not only by Krueger’s lack of forward progress on Ormoc, but also by the continuing failure to get any airfields on Leyte up and running. Despite every effort by his engineers, the runways at Tacloban and Dulag couldn’t be turned into effective airfields. When the monsoons hit in early November, they became virtual lakes, almost unusable. That meant no air support for the men fighting for their lives on Breakneck Ridge. It also meant that MacArthur had no means of attacking the kamikaze bases on Luzon that continued to wreak havoc on the Seventh Fleet.

  Finally there was a meeting, on November 8 at Krueger’s headquarters at Tanauan, and another on the 12th. They talked about “the progress of the battle, the frustrating effect of the continuous rain, and the disappointing condition of the Leyte airfields.”5 MacArthur promised that he would send Krueger every replacement the entire SWPA region received—yet in the end that would come to barely 5,000 troops. The next day news reached the Sixth Army HQ that still more Japanese reinforcements had reached Ormoc. Krueger told MacArthur that he couldn’t possibly clear the Leyte valley and take Ormoc without fresh combat units.6

  MacArthur agreed to send along the Thirty-second Division and the 112th Cavalry Combat Team, the first elements of which started showing up five days later, as well as the Eleventh Airborne and the Seventy-seventh, a division that had been part of the retaking of Guam and was now under MacArthur’s command. But in addition to this embarrassment of reinforcements, as it were, MacArthur also had another, more-loaded card up his sleeve. It was General Robert Eichelberger and his newly formed Eighth Army. MacArthur broadly hinted that if Krueger couldn’t complete the conquest of Leyte, it would be Eichelberger and the Eighth who would—and very likely would then lead the Luzon invasion.

  Krueger got the message. He knew MacArthur was quick to replace officers who he felt weren’t up to the job, and he had no intention of joining that growing list—or to have the combat reputation of the Sixth Army sullied.

  So he begged his boss to give him an extra three weeks, and to give him the Seventy-seventh Division for the kind of bold move he knew MacArthur would approve: a swift surprise seaborne landing on Leyte’s west coast, just south of Ormoc itself.

  MacArthur was delighted with the Ormoc landing—so much so that years later in his memoirs he would claim credit for it.7 But now a new obstacle loomed in front of his goal of completing the conquest of Leyte. This time it was his Seventh Fleet commander, Thomas Kinkaid.

  —

  At the start
of November MacArthur’s biggest disappointment was General Krueger—“I expected him to be a driver,” he confessed privately to Eichelberger. By the end of the month Admiral Kinkaid had become the other source of MacArthur’s disappointment. Kinkaid was daily haunted by a fear of kamikazes, and the prospect of exposing his ships to sustained attacks by moving them clear around Leyte was not only distasteful, but seemed to court disaster.

  Even more, MacArthur’s plans to stage a further landing on Mindoro to create large airfields for the Luzon invasion, code-named L-3 and set for December 5, made still less sense. His two top invasion force commanders, Admirals Arthur Struble and Theodore Roddock, were dead set against it. “I do not consider L3 sound at this time,” Struble told Kinkaid forthrightly, and on November 30 Kinkaid brought the unwelcome news to MacArthur at Price House.

  It was a stormy meeting. Only four days earlier, Kinkaid had told MacArthur he could do the operation, using six escort carriers, three battleships, three light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers.8 Now MacArthur felt cheated, betrayed almost by Kinkaid’s volte-face, only days before the invasion was supposed to take place—and just hours after he had relayed those plans to a group of reporters, including The New York Times’s C. L. Sulzberger.9

  For two hours MacArthur paced up and down his cramped combination office-bedroom, his arms working like windmills as he and Kinkaid argued the point back and forth. Japanese airpower is weak, he kept telling Kinkaid; it’ll cause little trouble. Kinkaid described how a single kamikaze hit was enough to disable or even sink his escort carriers, but MacArthur wouldn’t listen.

  Finally a frustrated Kinkaid told MacArthur, “I intend to tell Admiral King that you are rejecting my professional advice.” MacArthur’s temper roared to rage, forcing Kinkaid to lean against the bedstead, as if for support.10

  At that moment, as a Kinkaid biographer has put it, “the admiral’s career hung in the balance.”11 He returned to the Wasatch dazed and angry, and immediately drafted a letter for King that read, “General MacArthur declines to accept my evaluation that the Mindoro operation be not, repeat not, conducted now.” He stated his forthright opinion that such a move would be “disastrous.” It ended, “I regret the necessity for sending this dispatch but as COM 7th Fleet it is my duty to do so. I can find no alternative. I request immediate action on this dispatch.”12

  The “alternative” that Kinkaid actually was considering, but did not mention in his dispatch, was resigning. But then a message arrived for MacArthur from Nimitz that made resigning unnecessary—and largely saved the Mindoro operation. It spelled out Admiral Halsey’s problems with trying to get his fast carriers ready for action against Japanese air bases in Formosa, in order to give MacArthur more freedom from air attack during the Luzon landing. Halsey needed at least ten more days, Nimitz explained. By delaying both Mindoro and Luzon to give him that extra margin, Nimitz believed, Halsey could race back in time to make both landings a sure success.

  Kinkaid now felt more confident about arguing for not launching the attack on the 5th; his staff were also telling him that they felt better about the Mindoro operation as long as Halsey’s carriers were there to support it. He returned to Tacloban that afternoon—his angry letter to King still unsent. Kinkaid and MacArthur had another set-to over the wisdom of sending the Seventh Fleet’s carriers to Mindoro without adequate air support (even the usually optimistic Kenney had said his bombers couldn’t cover a predawn landing that far out in the Sulu Sea).

  MacArthur still refused to budge, but then put his arms on Kinkaid’s shoulders like a Roman emperor, and said, “But, Tommy, I love you still. Let’s go to dinner!”13

  They were just starting dessert when Halsey’s dispatch from the 29th, forwarded on from Nimitz, arrived at Chief of Staff Richard Sutherland’s elbow. It asked for a ten-day delay in the Luzon and Mindoro operations, promising that his carriers would then be more effective. MacArthur and Sutherland adjourned to another room for a brief conference. When they came back they told a highly relieved Kinkaid that the Mindoro operation would be postponed until December 15, giving Halsey his ten-day margin, and delaying the Luzon landings until January 9, 1945—a full twenty days away.

  That night Kinkaid returned to the Wasatch. He stuck his unsent letter to King in a file in his desk. Neither King nor MacArthur or Nimitz would ever know how close to a major crisis the original L-3 had brought them all.

  The landings on December 15 were a complete success. MacArthur had fully intended to sail with the landing force, but at the last moment his staff persuaded him not to. It was a good thing, too, because kamikazes caught up with Admiral Strubel’s fleet as it entered the Sulu Sea on the 13th. One smashed into the Nashville, killing 133, including Strubel’s and General William Dunckle’s chiefs of staff, and wounding 190 others. Strubel had to transfer his flag to a destroyer. Then another kamikaze struck the destroyer right next to his, killing or wounding another 40 sailors.14

  It was not a good start. But after that, Strubel found that his passage to Mindoro was virtually incident-free. Halsey’s carriers, back from their missions over Formosa, spent three days smashing or shooting down anything that flew or moved on Mindoro or in central and southern Luzon. On the 15th more than 27,000 troops quickly poured ashore, pushing aside the Japanese, whom they outnumbered more than twenty-five to one, and securing the island. It took only five days to get airfields built and the first of Kenney and Whitehead’s squadrons ready for future operations—including protecting the future landings at Lingayen Gulf.15

  By then Krueger had also gained the upper hand on Leyte. As MacArthur pointed out to Kinkaid, now that the Seventh Fleet no longer had to land at Mindoro, they were free to do the Ormoc landings instead. That came on the third anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1944, as the Seventy-seventh Division stormed ashore with hardly any opposition. As with the Mindoro operation, MacArthur had caught the Japanese completely by surprise: some furious kamikazes managed to sink a destroyer and a destroyer escort as they lay at anchor, and a group of Japanese bombers sank a landing craft and hit some other vessels. But otherwise the Ormoc operation was a complete success.16

  The truth was, the Japanese on Leyte had no troops left to fend off the threat to their main supply port, and despite desperate efforts to land troops to save Ormoc (including some 500 paratroopers who successfully dropped on a nearby airfield), they could do nothing to prevent the Seventy-seventh from taking the town on December 10. The Seventy-seventh Division commander wired Krueger exultantly, “Rolled two sevens in Ormoc.” Then, referring to the Seventh Division and the Eleventh Airborne, still fighting their way eastward toward the coast, “Come seven, come eleven.”17

  There was still plenty to do. There remained 40,000 Japanese soldiers on Leyte, prepared as always to fight to the death. Krueger’s resupply situation was still precarious; and he still had no adequate air cover (the airfields on Mindoro some 400 miles away were being readied for the invasions to come). What MacArthur’s men had to endure was driven home to him when two privates from the Eleventh Airborne’s 511th Regiment who had been wounded in the fighting in the Leyte valley came back to Tacloban to recuperate and found themselves in front of Price House. Impulsively they asked a general standing outside if they could meet General MacArthur. They wanted to ask him why the Eleventh Airborne wasn’t getting the battlefield credit it deserved, and kept getting left out of official communiqués.

  The general told the two men, PFC R. J. Merisiecki and PFC Charles Feuereisen, absolutely not, the general was too busy. But MacArthur had heard them through the open window and ordered the privates to come in. He showed them on his own operational maps just where the Eleventh was located, and the part it was playing in the fighting, and explained that he was leaving the Eleventh out of official communiqués in order to conceal its presence from the enemy, until he judged it the right time to reveal the role it was playing in the fighting.

  He asked them to show him where their companies were on t
he map, and then asked them to carry a message back to their comrades and their commander, Major General Joseph Swing.

  “Tell them I know of their great fight against the enemy,” he told the two awed privates, “as well as the terrain and the elements, and that as soon as I can I will give the 11th Airborne the full credit it deserves.”

  Merisiecki and Feuereisen left Price House “with a mixed feeling of eminence and satisfaction,” as the Eleventh’s official historian put it, and the knowledge that their outfit was indeed not forgotten. As far as they were concerned, “General MacArthur was beyond reproach” from that day on, and they let every man in their company, and General Swing, know it as soon as they got back.18

  There was still fighting ahead, but for all intents and purposes the battle for Leyte was over. MacArthur knew it, although he did not officially declare the island secure and the campaign ended until December 26; his attention was now entirely focused on Luzon—and what he and his men had accomplished in just a year.

  “A year before the assault on Leyte,” he wrote later, “my forces had been deep in the tangled jungles and swamps of New Guinea, almost 1500 miles from the Philippines. Now we were in the very heart of the islands—in a position to become masters of the archipelago…” Then he added dramatically, “The dark shadow of defeat was edging ever faster across the face of the rising sun of Japan. The hour of total eclipse was not far off.”19

  On his desk at the time was a message from George Marshall in Washington: “Congratulations on the great success of your operations.” So was a telegram announcing that he had been promoted to the nation’s highest military rank, general of the army (Marshall had received the same title two days earlier). From now on his collar and the flag on his jeep would carry five stars instead of four.