The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (26 page)

Not surprisingly, the most disenchanted officers were those who bore the brunt of the fighting. In Tarlac, in Luzon, where Wainwright and his staff were imprisoned in a bare, wooden, two-story building, there was bitter contempt for the navy, for the air force, and for MacArthur and Roosevelt. The American defenders of the Philippines, it was said, had been sold down the river. Who was it, the prisoners asked, who decided that the Philippine Army should not be funded? That the navy should abandon the islands? That MacArthur’s troops lacked bombers and fighters? That MacArthur should be ordered south? Much of this could have been predicted, for in the wake of a major defeat, nearly every military turns in on itself, just as, in the aftermath of a victory, the old feuds are quickly forgotten.
Within weeks of their detention, Wainwright’s officers were involved in a series of ugly disputes, with fistfights breaking out over food distribution and sleeping accommodations. Wainwright intervened, finally, by calling together his senior officers. “You gentlemen have had an easy life for some years,” he said. “Now you taste some hardship and it is apparent that some of you cannot take it well. I want no more behavior of the sort that has occurred recently.”

What happened in Washington and Tarlac was repeated in Melbourne, where an already sullen MacArthur lashed out at Roosevelt and Marshall—and at Wainwright—telling his staff that if he had been in command in the Philippines, he would have fought to the last man. MacArthur also angrily criticized Wainwright for arranging the surrender of troops in the rest of the archipelago, dismissing claims that Wainwright feared for the lives of American prisoners. If Washington had listened to him, MacArthur told his staff, Wainwright could have told Homma that only MacArthur, in Australia, could surrender his command. MacArthur’s Melbourne staff rallied behind him, sparking an animus that marked their headquarters as distinctly anti-Roosevelt. “Roosevelt had wanted only the appearance of the Alamo,” staff aide Paul Rogers later commented. “MacArthur had been willing to give him the reality.” Finally, when George Marshall cabled his intention of awarding Wainwright the Medal of Honor, MacArthur stridently disagreed. Wainwright did not deserve the award, he said, and those who recommended him for it were not in a position to know what he had done in the Philippines. Marshall was stunned by MacArthur’s response and took his concerns to his deputy, Joseph McNarney, and to Henry Stimson. Both men told Marshall to let the matter drop—at least for the time being. Marshall reluctantly agreed, though he was convinced that given enough victories, the poisonous recriminations that seeped their way into MacArthur’s Melbourne command would pass.

MacArthur’s treatment of Wainwright reflected poorly on him, but it was not unpredictable. The Bataan collapse and Corregidor surrender remained a raw subject for MacArthur’s staff in Australia, particularly after a number of anti-MacArthur screeds coming from Tarlac and other prison camps (and transmitted by escaping Allied prisoners who made their way south) became known at his headquarters. A particularly ugly
criticism came from General William Brougher, one of Wainwright’s commanders: “A foul trick of deception has been played on a large group of Americans by a Commander in Chief and a small staff who are now eating steak and eggs in Australia. God Damn them!” MacArthur could ignore the statement, but he couldn’t ignore the sentiment, so he built a command in which the plight of Wainwright and his men became a consuming goal. He made certain that Bataan was in everyone’s mind. “The switchboard in GHQ was the ‘Bataan’ switchboard,” MacArthur chronicler Paul Rogers later wrote. “‘Bataan’ was given as a name to MacArthur’s staff planes, one after the other. Always Bataan, never to be forgotten. Those who had never been in the Philippines were constantly reminded that others had been, and that we all shared the same calling—we must return!”

In the months that followed Wainwright’s surrender and as the tide of Japanese victories was stemmed, the pain of America’s defeat in the Philippines faded, as did the recriminations that had followed in its wake. In this, George Marshall was prescient: The suffering of the Bataan Death March and Wainwright’s humiliation at the hands of Homma became a rallying point and steeled the nation for the sacrifices that lay ahead. Slowly, America began to view MacArthur’s defense of the Philippines as a kind of victory, a fight against overwhelming odds that had so bloodied the enemy that it had nearly succeeded. Among the first to understand this was George Kenney, soon to become MacArthur’s air commander. Kenney reflected that “the extra effort expended by Japanese in the Philippines” not only set the stage for America’s later triumphs, but also kept the Japanese from carrying out “the next phase of their plan, which was an invasion of Australia itself.”

None of this was a mystery in Tokyo, where Hideki Tojo, Japan’s army chief and prime minister, pointedly refused to join the saki-fueled celebrations of his staff when Wainwright’s surrender was announced. Instead, he recalled Homma and cashiered him. Bataan and Corregidor might be tallied as a Japanese victory, but MacArthur and Wainwright’s defense was a stunning repudiation of his nation’s belief that America was soft. Just the opposite was the case, for even as the Japanese celebrated, MacArthur was plotting his return, telling his staff that his first step would be to reinforce and secure Port Moresby, in southern New Guinea.

Douglas MacArthur was not worried that Japan would invade Australia. The Japanese, he calculated, were too busy digesting what they had already conquered to take on the challenge of subduing a continent. But MacArthur’s confidence was not shared by the Australian people, who, after December 7, realized that their country was virtually undefended. So it was with a distinct sigh of relief that Australia welcomed home its 7th Infantry Division, which arrived in Adelaide from Syria at the end of March 1942. One week later, the 41st U.S. Infantry Division disembarked at Melbourne. On April 9, back in the United States, the 32nd Infantry Division was told that it would join the 41st. The U.S. Army Air Force in Australia was reinforced in April, and as the navy’s official history relates, the navy’s strength there was increased to include “three heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, fifteen destroyers, twenty modern submarines, eleven old submarines, six or seven sloops, and some smaller craft.” The numbers of naval vessels sounded impressive, but MacArthur knew they weren’t enough. The ships were old, the sailors needed training, and MacArthur remained short of men and transports. All of this would be essential if Port Moresby, on Papua New Guinea’s southern coast, was to be defended. Then too, Port Moresby’s
harbor, a natural anchorage, was inadequate, and its two airfields were small. MacArthur’s chief engineer, Hugh Casey, reported that three more airfields would have to be built to support Port Moresby’s defenses, and the harbor would have to be improved. In spite of the port’s limitations, American B-17s and B-25s were ordered north from Australia to Port Moresby at the end of April. From Port Moresby, their bombing raids took them over the imposing Owen Stanley Mountains, to Lae and Salamaua, on Papua New Guinea’s northern coast. The operations lifted morale in Australia, but were easily slapped aside by the Japanese.

From the moment MacArthur landed in Australia, George Marshall had made it clear that MacArthur’s command would be last on the list to receive support—everything of importance was going to Europe. The army chief fixed limits on what MacArthur would get: Two divisions would be assigned to help him, air units already in Australia would be brought up to strength (but no more would be added), and the navy was directed to secure his supply route with whatever resources it already had. In fact, however, the situation was worse than MacArthur knew. The Southwest Pacific Command was not only last on the list of American commands to receive reinforcements, but also last on the list behind Russia, whose armies were still reeling before the German onslaught. Reinforcing Russia, even at the cost of American lives in the Pacific, Marshall calculated, was essential.

Not surprisingly, Chief of Naval Operations Ernie King, who had the president’s ear, argued against making the Pacific a lower priority. He told Roosevelt that without a deployment of additional ships to Hawaii and aircraft to Australia, the Japanese offensive would continue to roll on. Australia, he said, was in grave danger, and the tenuous American lifeline to MacArthur might be severed. In a memorandum written to the president in March, King appealed to Roosevelt’s fighting instincts. What was needed now, he told the president, was the kind of fearless leadership that would allow his sailors to go over to the offensive. “No fighter ever won his fight by covering up—by merely fending off the other fellow’s blows,” he argued. “The winner hits and keeps on hitting even though he has to take some stiff blows in order to be able to keep on hitting.”

This, then, was King’s gambit: to argue that the trucks, tanks, and munitions earmarked for Russia would be “better employed in war areas
where we are actively engaged.” With American lives at stake, he implied, Russia should have to fend for itself. The one sure way to help the Red Army, he added, was for Americans to start killing the enemy. Then too, Russia could hardly be helped if the United States was losing the war in the Pacific.

Back at the War Department, Marshall reflected on King’s views but held his temper. While he would never say so publicly (and in the interest of interservice comity, rarely said so to his staff), he was convinced that King’s motives were self-serving. King, he thought, wanted to draw down shipments to Russia, not because that was the best way to defend America, but rather because a Russian drawdown would help the navy. The army chief gathered his views and struck back at King with an argument that mimicked the one being made by Winston Churchill and which would thus be more to Roosevelt’s liking: Reinforcing the Pacific wouldn’t matter if Russia were defeated, he told Roosevelt, because if that happened, the war could not be won. The Americans could stand alone against the Japanese, but couldn’t stand alone against the Germans. “The most pressing need, in the opinion of the Army General Staff,” he wrote, “is to sustain Russia as an active, effective participant in the war. That issue will probably be decided this summer or fall. Every possible effort, we think, must be made to draw off German forces from the Russian front.” The priority of keeping the Red Army in the field was crucial, as was the plan to build up American ground and air forces in England. “The increases in U.S. Army Air Force suggested for Australia and South Pacific Islands, if executed this summer, would have the effect of postponing, by more than two months, the initiation of American air offensive in Western Europe,” he pointed out.

MacArthur, in Melbourne, learned of the King-Marshall debate from his friends at the top of the army’s command and decided that now would be the perfect time for him to intervene—on the side of Ernie King. MacArthur weighed in with both fists, requesting that a single aircraft carrier be deployed to Australia for his use. When that didn’t work (all aircraft carriers were elsewhere, on “indispensable missions,” as Marshall curtly informed him), the Southwest Pacific commander approached Australian Prime Minister Curtin, complaining about the “entirely inadequate” strength of his forces. The situation was grim,
MacArthur said. The Japanese were moving south from New Guinea, and he had no way to stop them. Curtin listened with mounting alarm to MacArthur and agreed: Reinforcements needed to be rushed to Australia immediately, he said. He suggested that MacArthur write to Churchill, who could bring pressure to bear on Roosevelt to send him more soldiers. MacArthur nodded vigorously—that was an excellent idea. But what he really needed, MacArthur reiterated, was an aircraft carrier. That way, he could take the fight to the Japanese. On April 28, Curtin cabled Churchill, requesting that the British prime minister deploy an American carrier and two British divisions to Australia. Curtin then requested that Churchill ask Roosevelt to increase the number of convoys the Americans were sending his way. He added that he was sending the request at MacArthur’s direction.

Churchill read Curtin’s cable at 10 Downing Street on the morning of April 29 and immediately set to raving about Curtin and, especially, about Douglas MacArthur and the audacity of military commanders who believed they had the right to go outside accepted channels. Churchill visualized the scene almost exactly as it had happened: The worrisome MacArthur seated as a supplicant in the office of the easily swayed Aussie prime minister—the guileless Curtin gulled by the ribbon-laden American war hero. That afternoon, Churchill passed Curtin’s cable on to Roosevelt, adding his own comment. “I should be glad to know,” he huffed, “whether these requirements have been approved by you, and whether General MacArthur has any authority from the United States for taking such a line.” That same afternoon, Roosevelt (we do not know if he was angered or, more likely, bemused by MacArthur’s stratagem) directed Marshall to tell MacArthur that in the future, he should follow the chain of command. Marshall passed the message on to MacArthur, who feigned hurt surprise and, in a response sent on May 3, pleaded his innocence. He was in a delicate position in Australia, he said, because he was being asked not only to defend the country, but also to give Curtin his best military advice. Curtin had asked his opinion, and MacArthur had given it. He, MacArthur, could not be held responsible if Curtin had passed on that opinion to Churchill.

All this was so much eyewash, of course (as both MacArthur and Marshall knew), but the issue was joined: MacArthur thus not only
notched a small political victory by focusing Washington’s attention on his command in Australia, but also had inserted himself into the debate on American war strategy. MacArthur’s appointment as commander in Australia might have reassured Curtin, and the general’s Medal of Honor might have salved Franklin Roosevelt’s Republican critics, but it wasn’t enough to please MacArthur, who wasn’t going to be satisfied with sitting in Melbourne while Marshall, King, and Nimitz fought the Japanese. Then too, as MacArthur calculated, the British weren’t the only ones who could pressure Roosevelt for more and more support. If they could do it, so could he.

Marshall took MacArthur’s innocence-pleading cable into the Oval Office and showed it to the president, who thought that at least this once, he would respond to MacArthur personally. It was a unique moment and a concession by the president that his relationship with MacArthur was different from his relationship with any of his other military leaders. He rarely wrote to any American senior military officers, leaving that to Marshall and King. But on May 6, Roosevelt penned a detailed personal message to his former chief of staff. He didn’t want the resupply of the British slowed down, he told MacArthur, because he didn’t like it that the Russians were “killing more Axis personnel and destroying more Axis matériel than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.” The United States, he argued, must help the Russians “in every way that we possibly can, and develop plans aimed at diverting German land and air forces from the Russian front.” MacArthur would not be forgotten, Roosevelt said reassuringly, but then closed his note with a pointed piece of advice: “I see no reason why you should not continue discussing military matters with the Australian Prime Minister, but I hope you will try to have him treat them as confidential matters, and not use them as appeals to Churchill and me.”

The personal message should have ended the matter, but MacArthur was only getting started. He ignored Roosevelt’s “leave me alone” response, sallying forth with another of his own. He acknowledged the importance of Russia’s fight against Germany, but argued that a “second front” against the Axis could be opened as usefully in the Pacific as in Europe. Doing so, he said, would have “the enthusiastic psychological support of the American nation” and (not least) force the Japanese
to end their attempted conquest of India (a well-aimed fillip for Churchill). Then too, if Churchill (as MacArthur implied) was really concerned about the fate of the “brown and yellow people,” the best way to reassure them was to attack their oppressors. Twenty-five nations might be fighting the Germans just then, but the United States had been attacked by Japan, not Germany. Oh, and by the way, he added, what he needed to defend Australia were
two
aircraft carriers (and not just one), as well as one thousand planes and three newly trained divisions.

John Curtin, meanwhile, joined MacArthur’s mini-offensive by directing Australia’s London-based minister for external affairs, H. V. Evart, to make Australia’s views known to Churchill in person. Buffeted by Curtin, assailed by MacArthur, and worried about India, Churchill remained as patient as he could, but he conceded a bit, perhaps in the hope of ending the exasperating squabble. After meeting with Evart, Churchill fired off yet another cable to Curtin. In the case of an invasion of Australia, he told Curtin, he would respond “immediately” by sending everything he could to its defense. He finished his message with an apology of sorts, noting, for the record, that he preferred the “defence of Australia” to the defense of India. In mid-May, George Marshall reentered the fray with a cable to Australia’s prime minister that restated the Allied strategy: “The directive to General MacArthur definitely assigns a defensive mission with the task of preparing an offensive. The measures General MacArthur advocates would be highly desirable if we were at war with Japan only. In our opinion the Pacific should not be the principal theatre.” With this, the contentious back-and-forth on strategy was finally settled: The Germany-first strategy was confirmed, Churchill was satisfied, Curtin was reassured, King was routed, and MacArthur would have to wait his turn—at the back of the line.

Watching all of this from Melbourne’s Menzies Hotel, MacArthur responded with a mental shrug, deciding that if his own government couldn’t give him the aircraft carriers and men he needed, he would make do with what he had. He would follow Marshall’s directive and stand on the defense, but he would do so in his own way while (in Marshall’s memorable phrase) “preparing an offensive.” In short, MacArthur decided that instead of waiting for the enemy to attack him in Australia, he would deploy his two newly arrived divisions to New Guinea, where
they could take on Japan’s highly vaunted South Seas Detachment. Then too, though MacArthur didn’t know it at the time, his messages to Marshall and Roosevelt had a far-reaching impact. While Marshall’s cable insisted that MacArthur end his requests for reinforcements, Marshall and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even Franklin Roosevelt, weren’t entirely convinced that MacArthur was wrong. In arguing that Germany was not America’s primary enemy, MacArthur had helped Marshall, King, and Roosevelt persuade Churchill and the British chiefs to stop dragging their feet on taking on the Germans in France, a confrontation the Americans knew that the British wanted to postpone as long as possible.

T
he year 1942 was a bad one for Franklin Roosevelt. Although he remained immensely popular, his first eight years as president had taken their toll. The gaunt look that would mark his last years was now becoming visible; he fought a series of debilitating bronchial infections, his heart was weakened by a minor attack, and his aides noticed that he was slowing down. Though only sixty, he was weakened by the breakneck pace that had marked his first two terms, and he was dogged by the surfeit of cables detailing a roll of defeats. So while he remained outwardly optimistic about America’s war effort, he was much less so in private. The nation was simply not prepared to fight a two-front war, he had told his wife Eleanor after Pearl Harbor. Moreover, the country would have “to take a good many defeats” before it built enough ships and aircraft and trained enough soldiers, sailors, and airmen to defeat Germany and Japan. His son, James, could tell that his father was worried. “I could see right away that we were in deep trouble,” he said.