The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (44 page)

Yamashita was, in fact, surprised by the landings. After the war, American intelligence officers discovered that “the Tiger of Malaya” had calculated that MacArthur would land on the eastern side of Lingayen Gulf to keep his forces clear of the currents and winds on the southern beaches. He had guessed wrong. “It was apparent that our landing in the Lingayen-Mabilao area had taken the enemy completely by surprise,” Krueger wrote after the war. “He had probably assumed that the rivers, estuaries, swamps and fish ponds in that area, to say nothing of the high surf, would make a landing there impossible, or at least very unlikely.” Yamashita had gathered his forces in the east, near San Fernando, naming the La Union area as MacArthur’s likely landing zone. The result was that the Japanese were now in the mountains on Krueger’s left flank and nearly in his left rear, where the 43rd Division scraped against them. As Krueger’s army leaped ahead to the Agno River, his 24th Division (on the American left) fought off Japanese lunges from the heights overlooking Rosario. When the 24th counterattacked, it was met by Japanese burrowed into Luzon’s rocks. Unable to pry the Japanese from their positions, the infantry burned the Japanese out of their defenses with flamethrowers.

Three days after the landings, Krueger went aboard the USS
Boise
to meet with MacArthur, who congratulated him on his successes, then suggested that an additional two divisions be landed at Subic Bay, in the Japanese rear. His logic was impeccable, if predictable: Having lived through the cauldron of Leyte, with his soldiers pinned into the razor-sharp ravines of Breakneck Ridge, MacArthur longed to open a campaign of maneuver that had eluded him since his leaps through New Guinea. He pushed Krueger to move faster, arguing that the defensive lines that faced him were lightly manned. Yamashita was making his stand elsewhere, he said, leaving the central valleys of the Philippines lightly defended. Krueger agreed with the need for the Subic Bay landings but stubbornly rejected MacArthur’s argument that the push to Manila be accelerated. Krueger suspected that his commander was simply hoping to parade in Manila for MacArthur’s birthday, on January 26, which was, coincidentally, Krueger’s birthday as well. “He emphasized repeatedly that our losses so far had been small,” Krueger remembered. “He expressed the view that the advance would encounter little opposition and that the
Japanese would not attempt to defend Manila but would evacuate it.” This was MacArthur reading Yamashita’s mind. The Japanese, MacArthur said, would take advantage of Luzon’s terrain to wage a war of attrition, going down to defeat while killing as many Americans as possible. Krueger disagreed. An advance on Manila, he argued, would expose his 24th Division to a counterstroke from his left, adding that “an all-out drive to Manila would not be feasible until the 32nd Division and the 1st Cavalry” were ashore. Clyde Eddleman, Krueger’s chief of staff, praised his commander. “The old man stuck to his guns,” he said.

The meeting on the
Boise
set the pattern of Krueger’s relationship with MacArthur on Luzon. Krueger, MacArthur complained, was being too careful. Krueger pushed back, standing up to his commander in conference after conference. As the tensions radiated outward, MacArthur chafed at Krueger’s glacial pace and, at one point, placed his Luzon field headquarters in advance of Krueger’s, hoping to embarrass him. He scribbled pointed criticisms, saying that Krueger was not moving quickly enough. “Where are your casualties? Why are you holding I Corps back? It ought to be moving south.” After MacArthur visited the 37th Division, he wrote Krueger a hurried warning, urging him to accelerate his operations. Finally, MacArthur baited Krueger, hinting again that Eichelberger might replace him. Krueger dismissed the threat, but his staff could tell he was worried: His pack-a-day cigarette habit (he smoked filterless Camels) was now at two packs, supplemented by specially ordered cigars and pipes. Still, he would not be bullied. In fact, Krueger’s lack of speed was the result of his lack of supplies. Earlier, he had not had enough of anything, but now had plenty of everything—but no way to bring it to the front. “Our advance toward the south was slower than desirable,” he later wrote, “but its pace depended upon reconstruction of the many destroyed bridges, some very large ones, rehabilitation of the roads and the Manila-Dagupan Railroad. Shortage of vital bridge material, lack of locomotive[s], and limited rolling stock complicated matters.”

The differences between MacArthur and Krueger also flowed from their estimates of Yamashita’s strength. Intelligence chief Charles Willoughby claimed that Yamashita could call on no more than 152,500 troops, whereas Colonel Horton White, Krueger’s chief of intelligence,
estimated that there were 234,500 Japanese on Luzon. In fact, Yamashita could call on some 275,000 soldiers, whom he had organized into three defensive groups: the northern Luzon Shobu Group (152,000 soldiers), the Kembu Group (30,000) guarding Manila’s approaches, and a mixed complement of 80,000 infantrymen and naval marines guarding Manila’s eastern approaches. Yamashita had prepared well, for although his Fourteenth Area Army was short on munitions, medical supplies, fuel, and food, the largest portion of his troops was dug in along a large and easily defended triangle north of San Fabian. Yamashita calculated that his defense, laid out in a tangled morass of mountainous terrain, would cut MacArthur to pieces.

Back in Hawaii, an impatient Nimitz angrily followed the news on Luzon. He had pushed MacArthur to set back his timetable for the Luzon invasion, then had set back his own for the landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Now, with Krueger grinding forward, the schedule for the return of Halsey’s fleet to Nimitz was slipping. Nimitz and MacArthur traded strained messages on the subject, and while the two eventually agreed that Kinkaid could keep some of Halsey’s forces (four battleships, two cruisers, and twenty-six destroyers), Nimitz worried that the kamikaze attacks that had hit Kinkaid would be repeated at Iwo Jima. Then too, the Japanese were deeply entrenched on the island, a volcanic moonscape pockmarked with deep caves. Nimitz, King, and Spruance grew increasingly embittered by MacArthur’s stubbornness, as he seemed unconcerned with any problems but his own. Later, Marine General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, one of the toughest American combat commanders, claimed that MacArthur’s Manila obsession cost him lives. Spruance’s comments were as pointed: Luzon forced Spruance to reduce the number of ships he could use at Iwo Jima, he said, which cost the Marines cover. MacArthur issued no apology, told Kinkaid to deal with Nimitz, kept what he could from Halsey, and pressed Krueger.

But if MacArthur shrugged off the controversy, it was because he was convinced that the only way to meet Nimitz’s schedule was to push quickly on to Clark Field, with its paved runways. Major General Oscar “Gris” Griswold (Halsey’s New Georgia and Bougainville “fireman”) agreed—and disagreed: Taking Clark was the key, but it couldn’t be done by simply demanding it.

Finally, on January 21, Krueger directed Griswold to accelerate his push south. As one of the army’s best tacticians, Griswold intensely disliked MacArthur’s antinavy views and defended Krueger’s methodical pace. Griswold did everything he could to protect his soldiers from impetuous commanders, adopting tactics that included massing artillery fire to save his men from the close-support rifle and grenade brawls that decimated American battalions. He moved the 40th Division toward Clark on the twenty-second and reached the air base the next day, with his GIs grappling with the Japanese across the same tarmacs once marked by the charred fuselages of Lewis Brereton’s air force. The 160th Infantry Regiment ran into heavy resistance from the Japanese at Bamban, northeast of Clark, but captured the town on the twenty-fifth. The firefight was a withering back-and-forth affair that continued into the twenty-sixth, when the 160th attacked across the Bamban River. The Japanese defended the river crossing and rooted themselves along a series of ridges to the west, where they defended their “cave positions in the hills to the last man.” This was good progress, but MacArthur was nearly frantic. Walking now over the old battlefields that marked “Skinny” Wainwright’s 1942 defense of Luzon, MacArthur prodded and pushed. He brought Robert Eichelberger back into the fight, landing his 38th Division at San Narciso to bring pressure on the Japanese from the south and to keep them from slithering, MacArthur-like, into Bataan.

On January 28, two days after his sixty-fifth birthday, MacArthur visited the 25th (“Tropic Lightning”) Division on Griswold’s left and became involved in a chaotic firefight when Japanese armor surged through San Manuel towards the 161st Regiment. “Our lines reeled,” he later wrote, “and I became so concerned over a possible penetration that I personally hastened to the scene of action of the 161st Infantry. Its colonel, James Dalton II, was one of its finest commanders. I joined him in steadying the ranks.” The next day, MacArthur headed east, and the day after that, he walked the tarmac of Clark Field. He then drove south, toward the front lines, but stopped at San Fernando to issue a rebuke. “There was a noticeable lack of drive and aggressive initiative today in the movement to Calumpit,” he wrote Krueger. In fact, Krueger’s offensive was now clicking elegantly into place. The 32nd and 1st Cavalry Divisions were ashore and moving south, the 6th and 43rd
Infantry Divisions were driving northeast against Yamashita, two regiments of Swing’s 11th Airborne Division were ashore at Nasugba southwest of Manila, the 25th Division was fighting its way east through San Manuel, and Griswold’s men were poised above the capital.

On February 1, Krueger—who had methodically arranged his offensive so that everyone could leap forward at once—ordered his commanders to storm Manila. Verne Mudge’s newly arrived 1st Cavalry formed a flying column and struck south, meeting minor opposition, before hooking up with the 37th Division, which had overrun Marilao. Meanwhile, a unit of Mudge’s 1st Cav launched a raid into Manila to free more than thirty-five hundred prisoners held at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. MacArthur had ordered the raid, fearing that the Japanese would slaughter the prisoners as the Americans approached. “Go to Manila,” MacArthur told Mudge. “Go over the Japs, go around the Japs, bounce off the Japs, but go to Manila. Free the prisoners at Santo Tomas and capture Malacanang Palace and the legislative buildings.”

Mudge put together a column from the 5th and 8th Regiments, the 44th Tank Battalion, a Marine covering force, and demolition experts and sent it barreling south. The raid covered one hundred miles in sixty-eight hours, brushing aside Japanese units in two firefights, before arriving at the gates of Santo Tomas on the late afternoon of February 3. A tank knocked down the front gate as infantrymen took on a squad of surprised guards. Mudge’s soldiers, as one of his officers testified, were greeted “amid scenes of pathos and joy none of the participating troops will ever forget.” The 37th Division, meanwhile, was just one day behind, its forward units probing through Grace Park, north of the city. By the night of February 4, elements of the 37th were in the city, and the next day, Griswold divided the city in half, ordering the 1st Cavalry to sweep in a wide arc through Manila’s eastern suburbs, while the 37th occupied Manila itself.

“Our forces are rapidly clearing the enemy from Manila,” MacArthur announced on February 6. That wasn’t true. Events would show that the Japanese had not given up on Manila, despite MacArthur’s prediction that General Yamashita would not fight for the city and despite a Yamashita directive that Japanese units should abandon it. In the end, the clearing of Manila would prove anything but rapid. But MacArthur
couldn’t help himself from boasting about his operations, so he announced that the battle was almost over. The next day, and steeling himself for what he knew he would see, he visited the prisoners at Santo Tomas. It was his most emotional experience of the war. He walked through the front gate of Santo Tomas and into a barracks, trailing his staff, who then hung back as he looked around, stunned. He had prepared himself, but not for this. The prisoners tried to stand; a few saluted. Many were too weak to even do that. He walked down the line of gaunt faces, shaking the hands of each man. “You made it,” one of them murmured. He nodded. “I’m a little late,” he said, his voice catching, “but we finally came.”

T
he day that MacArthur entered Manila, Franklin Roosevelt was at Yalta, in the Crimea. When word reached him that MacArthur had entered the city, he sent the general a cable congratulating him.

The trip to Yalta was a strenuous journey for Roosevelt, whose doctors worried about the effect of air travel on his health. He therefore took the USS
Quincy
from Newport News, Virginia, directly to the Mediterranean on January 22. While on board, he celebrated his birthday with five cakes—four representing his four national election victories, and a fifth with “1948?” etched in red icing. Churchill came aboard the
Quincy
at Malta, writing to his wife that Roosevelt looked “in the best of health and spirits.” This was a nodding reassurance, for Churchill didn’t believe it, commenting later that Roosevelt struck him as “frail and ill.” In fact, over the previous three months, Roosevelt had suffered through a number of moments when he was ashen and distant, as if suffering the effects of a stroke. On one occasion, seated in the Oval Office, his eyes were glazed, his hands shook, and his lips turned blue. He recovered a moment later, acting as if nothing had happened.