The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (23 page)

MacArthur, his family, and his staff made the ten-hour journey to Australia without incident. Even a last-minute diversion (caused by a nearby Japanese air attack) could not keep him from celebrating. After he landed at a sun-drenched airfield near Darwin on March 18, he made a quick statement for the waiting press before accosting the nearest American in uniform. “Where are all the troops?” he asked. The American, shocked that he was face-to-face with his new commander, shrugged. “So far as I know, sir,” he said, “there are very few troops here.”

On the day that Douglas MacArthur arrived at Australia’s Batchelor Field, fifty miles south of Darwin, Lieutenant General George Brett, the new head of the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, telephoned John Curtin with the news. “The President of the United States has directed that I present his compliments to you and inform you that General Douglas MacArthur, United States Army, has today arrived in Australia from the Philippine Islands,” he said. Brett told Curtin that Roosevelt would find it “highly acceptable to him and pleasing to the American people for the Australian government to nominate General MacArthur as the Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific.” Curtin was surprised and pleased, but before he could say anything, Brett apologized for telling him of MacArthur’s arrival after the fact, adding that Roosevelt hoped Curtin would understand that MacArthur’s “safety during the voyage from the Philippine Islands required the highest order of secrecy.” Curtin said that he understood. Where exactly was MacArthur now? he asked. Brett hesitated. “I don’t really know,” he said.

MacArthur was in Alice Springs, a dusty, fly-infested town in the middle of Australia, his next stopping point after being told that Japanese
fighters were on their way to bomb Darwin. Alice Springs was not what MacArthur had expected; there was a hotel of sorts where he, Jean, Arthur, and his staff stretched out on hastily arranged cots while awaiting the Australian government’s dispatch of a special train for their use. Jean wouldn’t have it any other way—when told that another aircraft would take them to Melbourne, she had refused. “We are going by train,” she insisted, even though their destination, Melbourne, was 1,403 miles to the southeast, a seventy-hour train journey across half a continent. MacArthur was sympathetic. The flight from Mindanao had taken them over Japanese-held territory, the pilot dodging and plunging to evade detection as Jean and Arthur held air-sickness bags to their mouths. They had flown through downdrafts and thunderstorms and, in the end, had been forced to dodge an attack of swarming Japanese Zeros along Australia’s northern coast.

Jean had had enough of such aerial perils. MacArthur and his entourage took in a movie at Alice Spring’s theater, sipped coffee in the hotel, then went up to bed—a somewhat ridiculous start for the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific.

The train arrived the next day, but it was as rickety as the town itself. Nonetheless, MacArthur and his immediate family boarded it for the journey south while some of his staff, eyeing the locomotive suspiciously, decided to fly. The trip might have gone down as romantic, but the ride was agonizingly slow, the passenger accommodations uncomfortable (the only way to get to the dining car was to stop the train and walk back to it), and the lay of the tracks uncertain. The antiquated nineteenth-century train rocked and swayed as much as the B-17 that had flown the MacArthurs south from Mindanao. With the shock of the risky journey and the worry about his son now subsiding a bit, MacArthur was finally able to sleep. This was good therapy, as it was now apparent that there was no army in Australia, no special troops designated for his arrival, no munitions or planes or navy, and no way back to Luzon. He had had his first intimation of this at twenty thousand feet over the Celebes Sea, when the B-17 carrying him rocked its way through a thunderstorm that, for the white-knuckled pilot, was preferable to dodging Japanese fighters. The Empire of Japan was triumphant: Its carriers ruled the seas, its
planes owned the air, and its soldiers had rolled south all the way to Australia’s doorstep. Staff aide Richard Marshall, who had preceded MacArthur and joined the party north of Adelaide, briefed his commander on the bad news: There were just over thirty thousand Allied troops in Australia, he said, perhaps five score planes, and no navy to speak of. MacArthur listened in silence before nodding. “God have mercy on us,” he said.

MacArthur arrived in Adelaide on Friday, March 20. He was 953 miles from Alice Springs, 1,840 miles from New Guinea, 3,614 miles from Manila, and 4,786 miles from Tokyo Bay (about the distance from New York to Los Angeles—and back again). When the train chugged into Adelaide Station, MacArthur steeled himself to face the gaggle of reporters who were expecting a statement. Anticipating this, he pulled a crumpled envelope with some scribbled words from his pocket. He had brought a speech all the way from Corregidor. He wanted to send a message, though not simply to the Australians; he also wanted to address the people of the Philippines and his besieged soldiers on Bataan. For while he had escaped Bataan and Corregidor, they had not. He was safe and sound, while they continued fighting for their lives. He was filled with guilt and had shared his anguish with Sid Huff during their time on PT-41. It was one of the few times in his life that he had confided to anyone. Huff wrote about that long night with MacArthur years later, in a series of articles for the
Saturday Evening Post
:

    
What had happened, I soon realized, was that he had had time to think back over our defeat in the Philippines and he was now trying to analyze it and get it all straight in his mind. And to do that, he wanted to think out loud. . . . Occasionally, I remembered something that had slipped his mind, but most of the time MacArthur just talked, his voice slow and deliberate and barely distinguishable above the high whine of the engines. I was soon wide-awake, especially when his voice choked up as he expressed his chagrin at being ordered to leave Corregidor.

         
It was a little uncanny. But it was bitterly dramatic, too, and gravely sad. I thought then that on this bouncing voyage to Mindanao, on this rough passage that brought us not only mental but physical
wretchedness, he had been thrust downward from the crest as far as a man could go.

         
I was wrong, of course. I was wrong because we could not realize the greater trouble that lay ahead. But I was wrong, if I thought that MacArthur was merely looking back at what might have been. He was in the trough of the wave at the moment, but he had no intentions of staying there. His jaw was set. His face was grim. When he said he would return to the Philippines, he meant it, and he was already planning how he could do it.

Now, at Adelaide Station, MacArthur scribbled some additional words on the back of the envelope, then opened the door to the train’s rear platform and greeted the crowd. The face that Huff saw on PT-41 was then evident. MacArthur’s jaw was set, his face was grim, and although he was “in the trough of the wave at the moment,” he was already plotting his return. He neither waved nor smiled, but had prepared himself for this moment, so his voice was strong and authoritative: “The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines.” He paused and looked up from his notes: “I came through and I shall return.”

M
acArthur’s pledge brought an ovation from the throngs in Adelaide, reassured Curtin, and cheered the people of the Philippines. But it caused consternation at the War Department and bitter mutterings among MacArthur’s colleagues. It seemed inappropriately personal, even self-centered. MacArthur wasn’t going to whip the Japanese alone, his critics pointed out; tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen would have to do it. Shouldn’t he have said “
we
shall return”? Other voices joined this chorus, with American columnists dismissing MacArthur’s speech as “silly,” “pompous,” and even “stupid.” George Marshall ignored the grumbling. MacArthur couldn’t be expected to change his statement now, he said, and the American public loved it. The news of his rescue had electrified the nation and reinforced the view that he
remained the nation’s greatest soldier. Then too, MacArthur’s “I shall return” pledge was not simply a spur-of-the-moment reflection of his outsized ego, but was the purposeful outcome of discussions he had had with Philippine journalist Carlos Romulo and the MacArthur staff back on Corregidor. Even then, there were strong objections: Richard Sutherland argued that MacArthur shouldn’t personalize the war or draw attention from the sacrifices made by his soldiers on Bataan. Romulo disagreed. The statement would be believed by Filipinos, he said, precisely
because
it was personal. “America has let us down and won’t be trusted,” he told Sutherland. “But the people still have confidence in MacArthur. If
he
says he is coming back,
he
will be believed.”

As Romulo foresaw, MacArthur’s statement not only became a political asset, but also fit well with Franklin Roosevelt’s war strategy: As soldiers and airmen were being shipped to Great Britain, the president had to show the people of the Philippines
something
—and MacArthur was it. Roosevelt himself had said as much during a White House press conference just days before MacArthur arrived in Adelaide. The president told reporters that MacArthur’s escape from the Philippines was the result of a calculation that the general could more capably defeat the Japanese from Australia than from the Philippines. “Every American admires, with me, General MacArthur’s determination to fight to the finish with his men in the Philippines,” Roosevelt said, but then pointedly added that there was little doubt that MacArthur could be “more useful in Supreme Command of the whole Southwest Pacific than if he had stayed on Bataan.” This was good politics: MacArthur might not be worth an army, but he could serve as a useful stand-in until one was created.

This sobering fact was now apparent to the new Southwest Pacific commander, whose welcome in Melbourne (three days and four hundred miles southeast of Adelaide) was accompanied by a patched-together American color guard, many of whom had last held a rifle during basic training. “No band!” MacArthur insisted to his aides, which was a good thing, because there wasn’t one. This esteemed soldier and celebrated war hero deployed words instead of soldiers, his artillery salvos consisting of soaring pledges. He now understood the truth of Marshall’s brazen buck-’em-up cables: There was no army awaiting him in Australia—it was still being trained, in the United States. Of course,
the one man who didn’t need reminding of this was George Marshall himself, who, back in Washington, was ensnaring MacArthur for his own purposes. The army chief of staff needed to keep MacArthur happy, if only to stave off increasingly public complaints that while America was fighting to save England, its colonial wards in the Philippines were left to fight for themselves.

For this reason, and because Marshall admired him (though MacArthur himself could never bring himself to admit this), the army chief forwarded a paper to Roosevelt recommending that MacArthur be given the Medal of Honor. Awarding the medal would transform MacArthur’s flight from Corregidor into an act of courage and silence wary Republicans. Then too, as Marshall knew, it was long overdue: MacArthur had deserved it in World War One, but hadn’t received it, in part because of his poor relations with Pershing’s “Chaumont crowd.” And while the award would confirm MacArthur’s place as the army’s man in the Pacific, it would also (as Marshall believed) counter Japanese claims that MacArthur’s Pacific hegira symbolized U.S. cowardice. Soon enough, the Japanese did exactly what Marshall had anticipated, broadcasting that MacArthur was a “deserter”—a word they knew would erode the morale of Bataan’s defenders. The Medal of Honor citation, written by Marshall and reviewed by Roosevelt, was a single paragraph that focused on his personal courage. “His utter disregard of personal danger under heavy fire and aerial bombardment, his calm judgment in each crisis, inspired his troops, galvanized the spirit of resistance of the Filipino people, and confirmed the faith of the American people in their armed forces.”

Aside from the obvious domestic political benefits that Roosevelt accrued by agreeing to MacArthur’s award, the honor reinforced the president’s commitment to Churchill to help resolve England’s Australia problems. Despite agreeing to transfer three Australian divisions to Curtin, Churchill had hesitated (again) when Japanese troops overran northern Burma—an offensive that threatened India, the jewel in England’s colonial crown. The promised troops were not on the way to Australia after all, Churchill wrote to Curtin, then added that he was certain the Australian prime minister could understand why.

Actually, Curtin couldn’t. Churchill’s proposed diversion, taken even as the Japanese were beginning their occupation of northeastern New
Guinea, was yet another betrayal (as Curtin believed), worse even than the sacrifice of some fifteen thousand Australians imprisoned when Singapore fell. Was India more important than Australia? Or was it that a Japanese victory would trigger (as Churchill noted) a pan-Asiatic anticolonial movement of “the brown and yellow races,” which would “complicate our situation there.” Curtin didn’t need a translator: By “our,” Churchill meant England; by “there,” he meant India. While Churchill eventually decided that diverting Australia’s troops wouldn’t be necessary after all, the damage was done. But now, with MacArthur greeting throngs of Australians in Melbourne and shaking the hands of parliamentarians in Canberra, Churchill could at least claim that he had met Australian fears by giving them America’s greatest soldier, and one who had received its highest honor. For Roosevelt, transforming MacArthur from “Dugout Doug” to “Choco Doug” (a “chocolate soldier”—an affectionate Australian moniker) was easier than any political sleight of hand: The Australians were happy, Churchill was happy, the American people were happy, Roosevelt’s Republican critics were happy—and so too was Douglas MacArthur.