The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur

by Perry, Mark

  In fact, Kinkaid was an excellent choice. He knew the army well (having served with Army General Simon Bolivar Buckner in Alaska, when the Japanese occupied Attu), and it helped that he was escorted to Brisbane by Bill Halsey, who gave Kinkaid his back-slapping blessing. Kinkaid followed Halsey’s lead, pledging his loyalty to his new commander—and standing up to him. When MacArthur harangued the new naval head about his need for aircraft carriers, Kinkaid responded that MacArthur didn’t actually need them. Carriers were vulnerable in the Southwest Pacific, he argued, and useless when docked in Melbourne. We will win without them, he added. MacArthur thought about this for a minute and then harrumphed—he had never heard that before, but it made sense. “My door is always open,” he told Kinkaid. Within days, the new head of the U.S. Seventh Fleet (“MacArthur’s Navy,” as War Department planners called it) had taken an office at the AMP Building and decided that MacArthur’s problem was not the navy, or King, or Nimitz. The problem was that MacArthur feared that Nimitz’s Central Pacific offensive meant that his own pledge to return to the Philippines would be forgotten. The only way to make sure this didn’t happen, Kinkaid decided, was for MacArthur to win, which was something that Kinkaid knew how to do.

  Kinkaid arrived in Brisbane three days after the beginning of Chester Nimitz’s Central Pacific campaign, which envisioned the capture of the Gilbert and Marshall Atolls, the neutralization of the Japanese naval base at Truk Island, and the seizure of the Mariana and Palau Islands. The Japanese remained a formidable opponent, even after their losses at Midway and Guadalcanal, with tens of thousands of their soldiers dug in along the arc of Nimitz’s advance. The Allies’ seizure of Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, was the step-off for a series of vaults northwest through the Marshalls and Marianas—coral atolls that would provide airfields for the increasingly lethal American bomber force. Nimitz planned well for Tarawa, sending an overwhelming force to protect the Marines ashore: six aircraft carriers, twelve battleships, twelve cruisers, and sixty-six destroyers. But the naval force did little to root out the Japanese. Tarawa was a replay of Buna, with Marines charging headlong against Japanese emplacements until after three horrific days, the guns fell silent. The Marines suffered more than a thousand killed and two thousand wounded in what Marine commander Holland Smith called “a terrible waste of life and effort.”

  Tarawa more deeply rooted the antinavy animus in Brisbane, but Kinkaid shrugged off these slights and went to work in breaking MacArthur’s planning logjam. He resolved a festering dispute between Barbey and Kenney over the lack of air cover during an assault phase of an operation, then ironed out a problem between Barbey and Krueger over who would command an assault force between ship and shore. Krueger believed his soldiers should be under his command from the moment they entered a landing craft, while Barbey thought the idea ludicrous. Kinkaid mediated the dispute, telling MacArthur that Barbey should have command of the troops until the ground commander had set up his headquarters, and MacArthur agreed. Finally, Kinkaid weighed in on MacArthur’s next steps, supporting the 1st Marine Division’s view that Krueger’s plan for a parachute drop on Cape Gloucester, the far western headland of New Britain Island, was too risky. The resulting compromise (Operation Dexterity) was far simpler: Before the Marines seized Cape Gloucester, Krueger’s 112th Cavalry Regiment would storm Arawe, along New Britain’s southern coast, and as the Japanese turned to fight Krueger, they would find the 1st Marine Division in their rear.

  And that’s exactly the way it happened, or nearly so. On December 15, Texans from the 112th Cavalry Regiment of Alamo Force were brought ashore by Uncle Dan’s “webbed feet” at Arawe on New Britain Island. At the same time, Kenney’s fighters and bombers roared overhead and ships from Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet blanketed the Japanese beach defenses with salvos of screaming shells. The 112th met little opposition, but over the next two days, the Japanese struck back in force, sending groups of reinforcements south to contest Krueger’s landings. The Japanese defense of Arawe was not as intense as Krueger had predicted, however, because they refused to divert their forces south, believing that MacArthur’s main effort would come elsewhere. Even so, the fight for Arawe went on through the next month. With Krueger ashore at Arawe, Rupertus prepared two Marine regimental combat teams for the landings on New Britain’s north coast, where a Japanese division awaited them. Rupertus’s targets, two airfields near Cape Gloucester, would bring Kenney’s bombers within easy range of Japan’s Rabaul anchorage.

  On Christmas Day, one day before the Marines were scheduled to go ashore, MacArthur visited them at their staging area on Goodenough Island. His visit was risky: The 1st Marines had left hundreds of dead on Guadalcanal, while the navy that he had criticized traded murderous salvos with the Japanese in the Slot. And what had MacArthur and the army done? They’d “skirmished” with “starving Japs” at “bloody Buna.” Still, MacArthur did the best he could, smiling and shaking hands with Rupertus and his troopers in the midst of a downpour. Finishing his visit, MacArthur wisely dispensed with his usual morale boosting send-off, turning instead to speak with Rupertus. “I know what the Marines think of me,” he said, “but I also know that when they go into a fight they can be counted upon to do an outstanding job. Good luck.” The Marines landed the next day at Cape Gloucester, on Yellow Beaches (1 and 2) and Green Beach. The Japanese didn’t contest the landings, saving their fight for the high ground behind the landing zones. But the real enemy was the monsoon, as the Marines slogged forward under fire to secure the airfields MacArthur needed. “It never quit raining at Cape Gloucester,” one Marine remembered. “You never could get dried out. You were wet all day, every day.”

  To secure what he had gained on New Britain, MacArthur pushed his planners to put together a third landing, this time at Saidor, in northern New Guinea. Walter Krueger thought the operation unnecessary, but MacArthur argued that capturing Saidor would protect the Marines on Cape Gloucester and spring a surprise on the already reeling Japanese. It was time, he said, “to put the cork in the bottle”—to cut off Rabaul from the south and west, leaving only the Admiralty Islands, to Rabaul’s north, and New Ireland, to its east, to be stormed. MacArthur’s decision was so sudden that it did not leave time for Krueger to put his elite Alamo Scouts, his small but highly trained intelligence unit, onto Saidor before the operation. The operation was a “reconnaissance in force” that emphasized MacArthur’s obsession with “operational tempo” of moving quickly, and constantly, to keep the enemy off balance. He had struggled with this on Luzon, against Homma, but now had a chance to turn the tables. The very idea of stopping to rest and refit was abhorrent to MacArthur, as it contravened what he had learned as a young officer in France, where the surest way to die was to dig in. And yet, MacArthur’s insistence that Saidor be seized was so hastily planned that it is difficult to shake the suspicion that its conquest had more to do with his race with Nimitz than it did with reducing Rabaul.

  When seven thousand GIs of his newly refurbished and rested 32nd Division came ashore at Saidor on January 2, MacArthur was ahead of Nimitz, one leap away from Mindanao, and one step away from his pledge to return to the Philippines. But what MacArthur didn’t know was that the path to the Philippines didn’t run through Arawe or Saidor, or even Rabaul. The path to the Philippines ran through Franklin Roosevelt.

  CHAPTER 12

  Honolulu

  We have a great national obligation to discharge.

  —Douglas MacArthur

  In September 1943, Roosevelt wrote to MacArthur that his wife Eleanor would be coming to Australia to tour military hospitals: “I am delighted that she will be able to see you.” But MacArthur railed at the distraction. “I don’t like that woman coming here to spy on my personal life and carry gossip back to Washington,” he told his staff. “I cannot have her here.” He fobbed her off on Bob Eichelberger and then onto his wife Jean, who hosted a luncheon for her in Brisbane. MacArthur’s discourtesy was self-defeating—he came off as narrow-minded
and boorish. He defended himself by saying that he was “at the front” and that her visit to Port Moresby would be “too dangerous.” The president remained silent: game, set, match.

  Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to Australia looms large in the Roosevelt-MacArthur narrative, primarily because MacArthur was being mentioned in Republican circles as a candidate for president in the next year’s election. He had met with visiting Republican senators and Washington VIPs in Port Moresby throughout 1943 (remarkably, it wasn’t “too dangerous” for them to be near the front) and maintained a lively correspondence with Republican funders. Sitting in the Oval Office, Franklin Roosevelt neither underestimated MacArthur nor dismissed the general’s candidacy. He wasn’t taking any chances, so, as 1943 waned, the president directed his staff to gather the statements his Southwest Pacific commander had made before Pearl Harbor, when MacArthur had said the Japanese wouldn’t dare attack the Philippines. MacArthur certainly knew he was vulnerable politically, but with Rabaul no longer an objective, his eyes were set more firmly on the Philippines than on the White House.

  MacArthur’s lack of presidential aspirations was confirmed in the aftermath of Kenney’s second visit to Washington in January 1944. Upon his return, he met with MacArthur to review his meetings. Kenney didn’t think MacArthur had much of a chance at Roosevelt’s job, but couldn’t find a way to introduce the subject. The air chief told MacArthur that he looked forward to the day when Kenney could ride with him through the streets of Tokyo instead of “wondering what had happened to the man who lost to Roosevelt in 1944.” MacArthur laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I have no desire to get mixed up in politics. The first mission that I want to carry out is to liberate the Philippines and fulfill America’s pledge to that people.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to MacArthur’s theater was important for political reasons, but it pales in comparison to George Marshall’s visit to MacArthur three months later, in December 1943. In the wake of Allied conferences in Cairo and Tehran, Marshall had decided he needed to see for himself what MacArthur was doing in Port Moresby. He flew from Egypt via Ceylon and arrived in Australia on December 15. He had been at Roosevelt’s side nearly every minute of the president’s meetings with Churchill and Stalin, but was disappointed at not being named commander of the invasion of France. Roosevelt had appointed Dwight Eisenhower in his stead, telling Marshall, “I didn’t feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington.” Marshall didn’t look forward to the visit with MacArthur. His relationship with the Southwest Pacific commander remained cool, despite a certain growing respect between the two since December 7, 1941: MacArthur never publicly criticized Marshall, and Marshall consistently defended the former army chief from his detractors.

  Marshall arrived in Brisbane after a dangerous flight that took him over 3,136 miles of Japanese-held territory. After landing in Brisbane, he was flown to Goodenough Island, just north of the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea, where MacArthur was overseeing Walter Krueger’s operations against Cape Gloucester. Elements of Krueger’s Alamo Force had just landed on Arawe, and Krueger briefed Marshall on the operation. Marshall then gave MacArthur and his staff a detailed account of the European war and the Cairo and Tehran meetings. The next morning, in a downpour, Marshall accompanied Krueger on an inspection of American troops, then flew with MacArthur back to Port Moresby, where he was given a summary of the last stages of Operation Cartwheel. There was one off-tune note during MacArthur’s presentation, when Rear Admiral Charles Cooke (sent by Ernie King to report every word that was said) interrupted MacArthur’s briefing to point out that the main effort against Japan would come in the Central Pacific. George Kenney just as pointedly disagreed, saying there were two offensives in the Pacific, and not just one. Marshall glared at Cooke and agreed with Kenney.

  The MacArthur-Marshall exchange was friendly, if blunt. MacArthur blamed the navy for his lack of resources, said that King resented him, and complained that Kenney needed more aircraft. Marshall was impatient with this laundry list of complaints, so when MacArthur praised his staff, the army chief interrupted him: “You don’t have a staff, General, you have a court.” We don’t know MacArthur’s response, but Marshall’s offhand comment must have irritated the commander. During one of MacArthur’s outbursts against King, Marshall again showed his frustration, pointing out that MacArthur’s constant “navaphobia” was counterproductive. But Marshall agreed that King was the reason that MacArthur couldn’t get what he wanted, adding that while he “regretted” the “imbalance,” he couldn’t do much about it. “We had a long and frank discussion,” MacArthur later wrote, and he left it at that. “I didn’t see any evidence of any conflict between Marshall and MacArthur,” Marshall’s deputy Thomas Handy later remarked. “I figured it this way: MacArthur had been Chief of Staff of the Army, and he wasn’t going to degrade that position. In other words, his talk and attitude toward General Marshall, regardless of what his personal feelings might have been, were quite proper. . . . Marshall now had the office, and I think General MacArthur respected that.”

  When Marshall returned to Washington, he fired off a note praising MacArthur for the “admirable organization and fighting force you have under development there” and told him that more supplies would be coming his way. Within two months, three new bombardment groups would be dispatched to Brisbane, along with the 1st Cavalry Division. Then the spigots opened: The 1st Cav was supplemented by the arrival of the 6th, 28th, 31st, 40th, and 43rd Infantry Divisions. Toward the end of 1944, additional support arrived with the dispatch of the 38th, 81st, and 96th Divisions, the 11th Airborne Division; and the “Americal” Division, which had fought on Guadalcanal. By mid-1944, MacArthur would have enough fighting men to build two armies and enough divisions to invade the Philippines. MacArthur not only was buoyed by Marshall’s visit, but was now convinced that he had an ally in Washington. “Your trip here was an inspiration to all ranks and its effects were immediate,” MacArthur wrote him. “You have no more loyal and faithful followers than here.”

  The exchange of notes was to be expected, for Marshall was a pillar of military courtesy. But Marshall was also impressed by the astonishing amount of construction he observed in MacArthur’s command: new docks, barracks, airfields, warehouses, aerodromes, depots—and construction battalions building more. Port Moresby’s harbor was filled with transports, and Brisbane with American troops. Morale among MacArthur’s men was good, and his senior commanders—the triumvirate of Krueger, Kenney, and Kinkaid (“my three ‘K’s,’” as MacArthur called them), as well as Daniel Barbey and Robert Eichelberger—numbered among the best combat officers in the American military. This was a relief for Marshall and Roosevelt, who summarized Marshall’s views in a Christmas Eve fireside chat: What MacArthur had in store, he told the American people, would spell “plenty of bad news for the Japs in the not too far distant future.”

  On February 21, 1944, a group of pilots told General Ennis “Whitey” Whitehead (“the Murderer of Moresby,” as the Japanese dubbed him) that they had spent two days over the Admiralty Islands without seeing a single enemy fighter. Whitehead, a MacArthur favorite, flew to Brisbane to report the information to Kenney. Los Negros, the third-largest island of the Admiralties, he said, “is ripe for the plucking.” Early on the morning of February 24, Kenney rushed into MacArthur’s office with the news. Capturing Momote Airfield at Los Negros, Kenney said, would outflank Rabaul from the north. MacArthur, who had been pacing, whirled on Kenney. “That will put the cork in the bottle,” he proclaimed. MacArthur ordered that a task force of fifteen hundred soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division land on Los Negros’s southern coast at the end of the month, just days away. While the army’s official history later praised MacArthur for his “self-confidence,” the Los Negros landings might have been a second Tarawa. For while Kenney was convinced that the Japanese had abandoned Los Negros, Charles Willoughby wasn’t: There were over four thousand Japanese soldiers on the island, he said, lying in wai
t.

  Willoughby was right, and Kenney wrong—the Japanese were on Los Negros; they just couldn’t be seen. Their commander, Colonel Yoshio Ezaki, had given them orders to remain hidden along the island’s northern coast, where he thought the Americans would land. Willoughby frantically attempted to sidetrack the operation, telling MacArthur it wasn’t possible to plan a landing in just four days. But MacArthur brushed aside the warnings and peremptorily announced that he would oversee the landings as a guest aboard the USS Phoenix, Thomas Kinkaid’s command ship. Krueger confronted MacArthur, telling him that a commander’s place was in the rear, adding that a detachment of Alamo Scouts had gone onto the island and reported that it was “lousy with Japs.” MacArthur remained undeterred—the landings would go forward as planned, and he would be there to watch. Krueger thought about this and decided that MacArthur’s stubbornness was not a sign of his confidence, but of his insecurity: If the Japanese attacked, he wanted to be on hand to decide whether to “continue the assault or withdraw.” Then too, MacArthur wanted to see for himself how Kinkaid performed, and Los Negros gave him that opportunity.

  For Kinkaid, working diligently to satisfy both MacArthur and King, the challenges he had faced in the three months since taking command of the Seventh Fleet proved difficult to overcome. He had pushed himself on MacArthur, contended with the sullen Krueger, and barely tolerated Kenney, who described the navy as “the god-damned Navy.” Astonished that MacArthur, Krueger, and Kenney had little idea of what he actually did, he set out to educate them. His ships weren’t merely transports, he told them, they killed Japanese; his sailors weren’t chauffeurs, they were fighters. Now, with MacArthur being piped aboard the Phoenix at Oro Bay (east of Buna on New Guinea’s coast), Kinkaid squired MacArthur through the ship, introduced him to his crew, and settled him in quarters that were purposely claustrophobic. When the Phoenix arrived off Los Negros, Kinkaid put MacArthur on the bridge, then watched him closely as the cruiser’s guns opened fire. Feeling the power of a ship like the Phoenix, Kinkaid knew, was awe-inspiring. As Kinkaid had planned and hoped, the Los Negros operation was MacArthur’s Damascus moment. MacArthur nodded approvingly when the Phoenix pumped shell after shell from its 150-mm guns onto Japanese positions, then nodded again when the nearby Mahan opened fire. From that moment on, Kinkaid reported, MacArthur “became more royalist than the king.”