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“I came through and I shall return.”
-Gen. Douglas MacArthur
On March 11, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur, under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt, left the Philippines as the Japanese began to overwhelm the remaining Allied forces there. The anniversary of this called to mind the book Lucky 666, written by Bob Drury and yours truly and re-emphasizes to me that history is absolutely the judge of people considered heroes in their time.
MacArthur would soon reach Australia wondering how his vaunted army, which actually greatly outnumbered the invaders, collapsed under the Japanese onslaught that had begun on December 8, 1941. On Christmas morning, 17 days after the enemy landings on the north coast of Luzon, MacArthur had abandoned his command post in Manila for the island of Corregidor in the mouth of Manila Bay. There he had spent several weeks pacing his bunker, calculating the most opportune moment to depart while still saving face.
Meanwhile, as the general transferred a half a million dollars into his American bank account as a “reward” from Philippines President Manuel Quezon for his defense of the islands, nearly 100,000 American and Filipino soldiers were fighting a doomed rear-guard action across the Bataan Peninsula. MacArthur had visited those troops precisely once in the interim, and they in turn had bequeathed him with the disdainful nickname “Dugout Doug.” Those who were captured and survived the notorious Bataan Death March offered harsher epithets.
Even some of his own officers were put off by MacArthur’s egocentricity. In his biography American Caesar, the historian William Manchester makes the observation that of the 142 communiques dispatched by the general during the first three months of the war, 109 mentioned but one soldier, Douglas MacArthur. And when MacArthur wrote from Australia to his starving subordinates still in the field on the Philippines, “if food fails, you will prepare and execute an attack on the enemy,” it was too much for Gen. William Brougher, who complained to what was left of his staff that the order was a “foul trick of deception played on a large group of Americans by a commander-in-chief and his small staff who are now eating steak and eggs in Australia.”
Nevertheless, if to err is human, to blame it on someone else was military politics, at which MacArthur excelled. In Melbourne, he and his derided “Bataan Gang” of aides were escorted off the Adelaide Express train by his honor guard of Philippine Scouts with the all the pomp reserved for a conquering hero. Despite his scampering retreat, when MacArthur set up his headquarters in the swank Menzies Hotel, he carried with him the official title of the United States Army’s Supreme Commander in the Far East.
Despite his famous promise to the Philippine people about returning, his primary goal for the foreseeable future was the defense of Australia and New Zealand. “Hold Hawaii; Support Australia; Drive Northward” became the War Department’s slogan. Unfortunately, the general had few troops with which to fulfill the mandate. So he was left to swanning about the antipodes in his garrison cap and khaki blouse and trousers holding press conferences, giving speeches to the Australian Parliament, and making scores of radio broadcasts; a “Hero on Ice” in the words of a Time magazine headline writer.
MacArthur was indeed a strong speaker, and in each of his famously polished addresses he invariably portrayed himself as the last best hope standing between the United States and the yellow scourge spreading across Asia. There is no doubt he believed this. As the writer Ring Lardner noted after witnessing the general exit his special train car that day in Melbourne, “More than a record, military or otherwise, goes to form … a genuine magic in such men. There is magic in MacArthur. I don’t doubt for a minute that the general knows it.”
The combination of this relentless self-promotion and resentment of the delight the Axis powers took in ridiculing his retreat from the Philippines prompted Congress to award him the Medal of Honor. Gratifying as this commendation was – MacArthur and his father Arthur, a Civil War hero, now shared the distinction of being the only father and son to have received the nation’s most prestigious military award – the general nonetheless stewed incessantly over his failure to be appointed supreme commander of the entire Pacific Theater.
As early as October 1941, two months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, there had been intramural skirmishes within the Joint Chiefs as to who would be promoted to Supreme Commander when war in the Pacific inevitably broke out. It was suggested that “Eastern Ike” would be awarded overall authority over the American land, sea, and air forces in the Pacific, as recommended by Gen. George Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff, to Secretary Stimson.
Marshall’s proposal was rejected outright by the bluff and ornery Admiral Earnest J. King, the chief of U.S. Naval Operations. King argued that the navy had been preparing for two decades to wage war against Japan, and unlike the great land battles certain to be fought against the Nazis in North Africa and Europe, combat in the Pacific Theater would be primarily a naval and air campaign. He was also quick to point out that the inevitable sacrifices to be made by U.S. Marines during rolling D-Days on unpronounceable specks of coral from Tarawa to Kwajalein to Eniwetok to Tinian to Peleliu had one common goal – MacArthur’s retaking of the Philippines as a springboard from which to launch the invasion of Japan.
And with that he drew a metaphorical line against an army general dictating orders to his admirals. Instead he proposed that Admiral Chester Nimitz take overall charge of the Pacific Theater. Nimitz, the commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, represented everything MacArthur disliked about the Navy – despite the fact that the two men, in physical resemblance, might have been mirror images. Tall, courtly, and strikingly handsome, with an aristocratic mien that lent an air of confident gravitas to his office, Nimitz was a map hobbyist whose profound interest in military literature was reflected in his approach to taking what he called only “calculated risks.” He recognized that it would take time, probably at least a year, for America’s factories to achieve a war footing that would render those island-hopping invasions realistic. Until then he was prepared only to execute a two-fold battle plan: surprise and confuse the enemy with quick and stealthy strikes against their holdings while also overburdening the Imperial Navy’s ability to protect its lengthening supply lines and shipping lanes.
As Secretary of War, the decision was ultimately Stimson’s, and he recognized the efficacy of King’s recommendation. The appointment of Nimitz as Supreme Commander, however, raised an immediate concern: MacArthur outranked Nimitz. Thus a compromise was struck in Washington. Nimitz was designated Commander in Chief of the Pacific Ocean Areas east of the 160th meridian of longitude, a region that included the South Pacific, New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji, and most of Oceania including Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons. The area west of the meridian – incorporating Australia, New Guinea, and most important to MacArthur, the Philippines – was ceded to the general.
In military shorthand, MacArthur’s command was referred to as the Southwest Pacific Force, Nimitz’s as the Central Pacific Force. MacArthur was also vaguely promised his own fleet, its vessels to be siphoned from Nimitz’s various task forces at some hazy future date.
So it was that the war against Imperial Japan became a divided responsibility, with MacArthur’s initial offensive challenge to be driving the enemy from New Guinea. Since he had scant ground forces – of the 25,000 American troops in Australia, the vast majority were airmen – for the moment this objective would have to be accomplished with air power. But this presented another major dilemma. MacArthur had no use for the officer whom the War Department had recently placed in charge of the Army’s Far East Air Force, General George Brett.
In his post-war memoirs, General George Kenney, the man who eventually replaced Brett as the Allied Air Commander in the Southwest Pacific Theater, admitted that his predecessor, “had not had much to work with, and his luck had been mostly bad.” Kenney had served under Brett between the World Wars, and had reason to be tactful. MacArthur, however, was nowhere near as solicitous, proclaiming that he was “disgusted with the unaggresiveness [sic] and disharmony manifest in the leadership of the American-Australian air organization in the Southwest Pacific Area.”
Further, MacArthur was well aware that Brett was a member of the Army’s aviation contingent who were critical of the way he had handled both the Philippines debacle and his subsequent ignominious escape. This “insult” to the Supreme Commander festered into a full-blown feud when MacArthur discovered that while he was stranded on Corregidor, Brett had argued against sending any more supplies to his fighters on Bataan, considering the peninsula campaign a lost cause.
Brett, in turn, held his own longstanding grudge against his new boss. Brett had been a protégé of General Billy Mitchell, the outspoken combat aviation pioneer whose scathing public criticism of the War Department led to his 1925 court-martial for insubordination. MacArthur had been a member of the panel of judges at Mitchell’s trial, and Brett never forgave him for voting to convict. Brett also made no effort to hide his feelings that MacArthur, an infantryman at heart, was the wrong officer to command an air war against the Japanese. He even hinted to associates that MacArthur was terrified of flying.
The mutual enmity reached its breaking point when MacArthur learned that Brett had thoroughly ingratiated himself with Australia’s politicians and service chiefs, who had unanimously recommended that Brett, and not MacArthur, be chosen to lead the Southwest Pacific Force. To the vainglorious general this was tantamount to treason. Thereafter, MacArthur snubbed most of Brett’s frequent requests for strategic and operational meetings, while instructing his chief of staff to fire off derogatory, “eyes-only” memos to Washington questioning the competence of his air force chief.
As we now know, aided by the carefully choreographed photo ops, MacArthur did indeed return to the Philippines, in 1944. And he did become supreme commander of all he surveyed (even from a plane). But in the years since, history has not been kind to Dugout Doug. To learn more, check out Lucky 666.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including, most recently, “Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell.” The next collaboration with Bob Drury, “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” will be published in April by St. Martin’s Press. Please go to your local bookstore or to Amazon/bn.com to pre-order.