The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (25 page)

Of these officers, Casey would prove the most influential, for he was charged with determining not simply how MacArthur would take on the Japanese, but also where he would do so. MacArthur and Casey didn’t need to study their maps to know that New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the Solomons, and the Bismarck Archipelago contained few roads, only one or two ports, and almost no airfields: It was immediately obvious that Casey would have to build and maintain them. As MacArthur told Casey, it was going to be “an engineer’s war,” a statement that Casey would proudly quote again and again as the war went on. For Casey, the “engineer’s war” was unprecedented, as his construction crews were forced to double as soldiers throughout the years ahead. In innumerable cases, the unsung Casey could be found directing jungle-clearing bulldozers while MacArthur’s soldiers were busy killing Japanese snipers just yards away.

On April 4, MacArthur’s staff and Australia’s senior military leaders concluded their initial assessment of the military situation. The Japanese had undisputed control of the sea from Tokyo south past the Philippines to the northern coast of New Guinea, with the Imperial Japanese Navy
ranging as far east as Hawaii and as far west as the Indian Ocean. The Imperial Japanese Army, meanwhile, was building its fortress at Rabaul, from which it could somersault forward into northern New Guinea and then across the razor-sharp Owen Stanley Mountains to Port Moresby, threatening Australia. From Rabaul, the Japanese could also slip down into the Solomon Islands, build airfields from which their Zeros and Betty bombers could cut the American supply line to Australia, then surround it, isolate it, and kill it. To stop them, MacArthur needed aircraft, a navy, and divisions of American soldiers. But to get
them
, he knew, he would have to push Marshall—and play politics with Franklin Roosevelt.

O
n April 6, in the Philippines, General Masaharu Homma, reinforced by thousands of fresh Japanese soldiers and hundreds of massive artillery pieces, opened his offensive against General Jonathan Wainwright’s Orion-Bagac line. Homma told Tokyo that it might take him all of April to storm Wainwright’s position, but as he pledged, he would do it or sacrifice himself in the process. In fact, it took him only three days. The starving American and Filipino defenders fought gamely for twenty-four hours, then disintegrated. “Lines were formed and abandoned, before they could be fully occupied,” the official army history notes. “Communications broke down and higher headquarters often did not know the situation in the front lines. Orders were issued and revoked because they were impossible of execution. Stragglers poured to the rear in increasingly large numbers until they clogged all roads and disrupted all movement forward. Units disappeared into the jungle never to be heard from again. In two days an army evaporated into thin air.” On the night of April 7, Wainwright cabled Washington that he doubted his forces could hold out for long, but that he had formed a new defensive line, further south, along the Alangan River. “Fighting is intense,” he wrote, “casualties on both sides heavy.”

By the afternoon of April 8, the American and Filipino defenses had been breached, with soldiers streaming south or collapsing, exhausted and emaciated, along Bataan’s jungle trails. The newly occupied defensive line was now in danger of being overrun. The Japanese increased the pressure, using their command of the air to pummel the American defenders with incendiary bombs. “The infantrymen turned fire fighters
to avoid being burned out of their positions,” the official history notes. Late on the night of the eighth, Wainwright ordered his forces to counterattack. His next message went to MacArthur, in Australia. “It is with deep regret,” he wrote from Corregidor, “that I am forced to report that the troops on Bataan are fast folding up.” MacArthur, in Melbourne, despaired. He had hoped that somehow a surrender wouldn’t be necessary, and had cabled Wainwright’s chief of staff that if the Bataan garrison were to be destroyed, “it should be upon the actual field of battle taking full toll from the enemy.” MacArthur was not alone in advocating a fight to the last man. Back on February 9, Franklin Roosevelt had penned his own orders. There would be “no surrender,” he had said then.

But things had changed since Wainwright succeeded MacArthur. Wainwright was convinced that while a surrender would be shameful, a last effusion of lives would be unconscionable. No useful purpose could thereby be gained, and much would be lost, including thousands of American soldiers who might one day be able to fight on. Thankfully, Wainwright and his soldiers won a desperately needed reprieve. During the early afternoon hours of April 8, in Washington, General Joseph McNarney—acting for Marshall in his absence—recommended that Roosevelt allow Wainwright to determine when further resistance would be useless. “It is possible,” McNarney wrote, “that in the literal execution of these orders General Wainwright may be tempted to carry them through to an illogical extreme. I think there should be no doubt that his resolution and sense of duty will preclude any untoward or precipitous action, but on the other hand, it is possible that greater latitude in the final decision should be allowed him.” Roosevelt got the message and cabled Wainwright that he was free to make any decision he deemed necessary. “I . . . have every confidence that whatever decision you may sooner or later be forced to make will be dictated only by the best interests of your country and your magnificent troops.” The message was not sent directly to Wainwright, however, but to MacArthur, who angrily failed to forward it. In the end, that didn’t matter: By the time the message reached Melbourne, Wainwright’s forces on Bataan had surrendered. After the surrender, Roosevelt reiterated his views directly to Wainwright on Corregidor, bypassing MacArthur in Australia. He reemphasized that he was giving Wainwright “complete freedom of action.”

At 7:00 on the morning of April 9, on Corregidor, Wainwright directed his staff to broadcast on Radio Freedom the news of Bataan’s surrender. “Bataan has fallen,” the announcer said. “The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy.” Corregidor continued to hold out, but it would only do so for another thirty days, as Homma launched an all-out attack, with thousands of his soldiers storming Corregidor’s beaches.

With the end near, Roosevelt wrote to Wainwright: “In every camp and on every naval vessel, soldiers, sailors and marines are inspired by the gallant struggle of their comrades in the Philippines. The workmen in our shipyards and munitions plants redouble their efforts because of your example. You and your devoted followers have become the living symbols of our war aims and guarantee of victory.” Wainwright responded graciously, then had Roosevelt’s message broadcast throughout the Philippines and passed from soldier to soldier. The message lifted morale, but it didn’t change the outcome of the battle. After a courageous defense, waged for another three weeks, Wainwright surrendered the Corregidor garrison on May 6. He met directly with Homma, seated opposite him on the porch of a home in southern Bataan, where a Japanese escort had deposited him. Gaunt (he was over six feet tall but weighed only 160 pounds) and wearing simple khaki, Wainwright refused to surrender all American forces on the other islands of the Philippines, despite Homma’s insistence. But two days later, his own command now surrounded, Wainwright relented. In addition to agreeing to an “unconditional surrender,” Wainwright was forced to announce its terms by radio from Manila. While humiliated, Wainwright believed that had he not followed the Japanese instructions, the 11,000-plus men who were still on Corregidor would have been executed.

The Japanese celebrated, but the fight for the Philippines had been a near disaster for the Imperial Japanese Army. At one point, Homma, in Manila, hearing of the final battle for Corregidor, was convinced that his force was wiped out and that he would be sent home in disgrace. “I have failed miserably on the assault,” he wrote in his diary. Indeed, Homma’s breakthrough was more the result of overwhelming force than fighting
prowess. The sheer tenacity of the American defense was certainly a part of the reason why, within twenty-four hours of Bataan’s surrender the month before, a brutal retribution was carried out against the surviving Americans and their Filipino allies.

The Bataan Death March, one of the most shameful episodes in Japanese history, began on the afternoon of April 12, as 75,000 American and Filipino soldiers (the exact numbers are uncertain) were forcibly walked from Bataan northward to Balanga (a distance of twenty-five miles) and then north again to San Fernando, another thirty-one miles. The march started with the summary execution of between 350 and 400 Filipinos, some dispatched by sword-wielding Japanese officers. In the days ahead, those who collapsed during the march were executed and those who were overcome by exhaustion were driven over by Japanese trucks. Bayoneting of weak soldiers was common; executions by a single bullet to the back of the skull were an hourly occurrence. The Americans and Filipinos were forced to drink stagnant water from puddles or roadside buffalo wallows. Of the 78,000 who made the march, between 7,000 and 10,000 Filipinos died or were murdered, as were between 500 and 700 Americans.

One of those who marched was Harold K. Johnson, who would later become army chief of staff. “I saw my first Jap atrocity that [first] morning,” he later remembered. “Not far off, in a field, a Filipino was on his knees pleading with a Jap officer. You could see the man’s arms in the air, imploring the soldiers to spare his life. The Jap laughed and shot him through the chest.” The Americans were forbidden to get out of line to find water, so some tried to sneak away. If caught, they were killed. Those who couldn’t walk were put on trucks in a journey to an assembly point where they were thrown by the side of the road. A young American, Major Henry Lee, survived the march, but not the war. He was interred at Babanatyuan Prison Camp, where, for two years, he speared fish for food, adding frogs from nearby swamps to his meals. He was eventually transferred to Cabanatuan Camp, and then, in October 1944, he was moved to Bilibad Prison in Manila, a fetid, dank, and overcrowded dungeon. In December, Lee and more than 1,500 other Americans were packed into the
Oryoku Maru
, a “hell ship” bound for Formosa. Lee was killed when the ship was sunk by American bombers in Formosa Harbor on January 9, 1945.

When Cabanatuan Camp was liberated that same January, Lieutenant John W. Lueddeke was told by inmates about a diary kept by one of its prisoners and hidden under a barracks in Ward 11 in the camp. Lueddeke didn’t find the diary, but he unearthed a book of poems, buried under the barracks and written by Henry Lee. Bound by canvas, the poems had been secretly composed by Lee during the Battle of Bataan and then during his imprisonment. Lee had buried the book in the soft earth under his barracks before he left for Formosa. Inmates remembered Lee reading his poems to them during their stay in the camp. The title of Lee’s book of verse,
Nothing but Praise
, came from a statement made by Henry Stimson: “We have nothing but praise for the men of Bataan.” Lee even added an author’s preface, and his corrections to his poems were meticulously marked out in a red pencil. The poems were passed on to Lee’s parents and later published. Very few soldiers leave poems of such quality, but Lee’s are celebrated for their restrained and remarkable beauty. One, “Abucay Withdrawal,” talks of the dust of Bataan and the unmet promises made to America’s soldiers by Roosevelt, Marshall, and MacArthur. “Abucay Withdrawal” sprawls for over two hundred lines. It concludes:

    
Rifles splatter, machine guns spray

    
As the weary doughboys take up the fray

    
Bataan is saved for another day

    
Saved for hunger and wounds and heat

    
For slow exhaustion and grim retreat

    
For a wasted hope and a sure defeat

    
“MacArthur’s Forces,” home papers whine,

    
“Strategic withdrawal”—a better line,

    
“The rear displacement proceeds as planned

    
And the situation is well in hand.”

N
early eleven thousand Americans entered Japanese captivity in the Philippines, the largest number of U.S. soldiers to be taken prisoner since the American Civil War. Following the capitulation, Marshall went out of his way to ease the troubles of the families of those surrendered, ordering his staff to send them regular reassurances on their men’s plight. At first, the details of the Bataan Death March
were kept from the public to save the families the pain of such knowledge. Wainwright’s surrender inaugurated a season of finger-pointing in Washington, akin to what had followed the debacle at Pearl Harbor, as policy makers assessed blame for the defeat. MacArthur himself felt the sting of criticism, though not publicly. A small but influential number of administration officials, including MacArthur’s constant critic, Harold Ickes, were outspoken in their criticism of him. Ickes opposed awarding the Medal of Honor to MacArthur, because he had “stayed under cover” in Corregidor. Now, in the wake of Wainwright’s surrender, Ickes weighed in again, telling Roosevelt that MacArthur should be dismissed—and calling him a coward.

Ickes might have been surprised to learn that the criticisms he leveled at MacArthur were being leveled by military officers against Roosevelt. While the criticism of the president never led to open denunciations, senior officers on Marshall’s staff regularly drew comparisons between the funding they now enjoyed and the paucity of funds in the days before Pearl Harbor. Senior army officers remarked that before the war, when isolationist sentiment was at its height, they had been criticized by officials as “warmongers” for asking for more money. Now they were being criticized by the same officials for not having been prepared. While Marshall dismissed those who spent time rethinking the past, he was not immune to such resentments. “In 1940, they were saying I was leading the country into war,” he told an interviewer at the end of the conflict. “A year later, the same people were saying I wasn’t building up defenses fast enough. The criticism went on all the time. It has never stopped.”