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

by Perry, Mark

  “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.”

  The 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.

  Roosevelt and Churchill talked for a short time in Malta, then flew in a flotilla of twenty aircraft, arriving in Saky on February 3 in the midst of a chilling drizzle. Roosevelt, hatless, was placed in an open jeep and driven a short distance to a ceremonial review of Red Army troops. Churchill and Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov flanked his jeep as the Russians passed in review. Churchill grumbled about the weather and worried about Roosevelt, and the prime minister was pleased when the weather warmed and the sun appeared. Stalin, expansive, warm, and smiling, arrived in a motorcade, calling on Churchill and then on Roosevelt. The Soviet leader enjoyed being on the world stage, but remained modest about his wartime victories. The Red Army faced weeks of conflict, he told Roosevelt, though the end of Hitler’s regime was in sight. The first full session involving the three leaders and their aides took place on the afternoon of February 4. During the meeting, the Russians provided a detailed briefing on the war in the east, followed by George Marshall’s summary of Allied gains in the west—including Eisenhower’s response to the German winter offensive through the Ardennes.

  Roosevelt was particularly anxious to bring Russia into the war against the Japanese. On February 8, he met privately with Stalin to determine when this would be possible. Roosevelt told Stalin that while MacArthur’s capture of Manila was a great victory, the United States needed bases in eastern Russia for its bombers. Stalin agreed to this, then praised the president for his lend-lease program, calling it a “brilliant idea” because it had helped build trust and provided badly needed war matériel. Roosevelt took the compliment graciously but knew that Stalin’s remarks were aimed at softening him to accept Russia’s price for entering the Pacific War. Stalin got to the point: Russia wanted to redress the gains made by Japan in 1905—southern Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands, and control of the port of Dairen in northern Manchuria and Manchuria’s railways. Roosevelt thought the price was too high. He had no objections to any of the proposals, he said, but he didn’t want Chinese territory peeled away. The Russian proposal sounded like another version of colonialism. Eventually, Stalin gave way, instructing Molotov to agree that Dairen be internationalized, while Manchuria’s railways could be under joint control. But Stalin had won his major point, with control of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands.

  Roosevelt’s concessions to Stalin weighed heavily in the divisive Cold War debates that followed. It was initially believed that Roosevelt gave Stalin Sakhalin and the Kuriles under pressure from members of the JCS, who, it was said, feared the enormous casualties that might result from an invasion of Japan’s home islands. Russia’s entry into the war would tie down Japanese troops in China, making the invasion less costly. In fact, the Joint Chiefs had always believed that Russia would enter the Pacific War, and they welcomed its participation—as did MacArthur, who later said he believed Russia should send sixty divisions into Manchuria to keep the Japanese from reinforcing their homeland units. His views reflected the grim reality facing the American high command, even as Krueger’s army was entering Manila: The Japanese were defeated in the Pacific and were now fighting to the last man on Luzon. But while Japan’s capacity to win the war was ended, its borders had not been breached, and millions of its soldiers remained poised for an American invasion, which was still months away. Victory itself, coming with the reduction of Japan’s last line of defense, on the broad and verdant Kanto plain somewhere east of Tokyo, might not come until sometime in late 1946.

  What Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs did not know, of course, was that key senior Japanese officers had, for the past year, been pushing for an end to the war. Malnutrition stalked Japan’s villages, and the regimented population had grown restive with the endless calls to sacrifice. “On this battle rests the fate of our nation,” they had been told on December 7, 1941. The Japanese people were then told it again when three of their divisions were destroyed at Imphal in Burma in April 1944, with the Japanese commander mouthing the clichéd prescription for salvation. “The struggle has developed into a fight between the material strength of the enemy and our spiritual strength,” he said. “Continue in the task till all your ammunition is expended. If your hands are broken fight with your feet. If your hands and feet are broken use your teeth. If there is no breath left in your body, fight with your spirit. Lack of weapons is no excuse for defeat.” This, then, was the strategy: To save itself from total defeat, Japan committed itself to an orgasm of savagery and sacrifice so total that the ferocity and viciousness would strain the conscience of the soft Americans, who, recoiling from the bloodletting, would turn away from victory and choose peace. But this strategic result was not to be.

  MacArthur was right; Yamashita did not want to fight for Manila. The Japanese general believed his forces in the city could more effectively defend the rugged terrain to the east. But MacArthur was also wrong, for Yamashita’s views were not convincing to Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, who was charged with leading a Manila force of some 17,000 men, 12,500 of whom were naval marines. While not as strong as General Oscar Griswold’s two-division XIV corps, Iwabuchi’s men knew how to use the warrens and alleys that constituted the city’s industrial and port areas, as well as Intramuros, Manila’s walled city. At the very least, Iwabuchi believed, the Japanese could hold up the American advance and bloody the American units before he slid east. On the evening of February 5, a part of Iwabuchi’s force destroyed U.S. military stores north of the Pasig River, which divides Manila, before the Japanese fled over the river’s bridges. The demolitions sparked a conflagration in a residential district north of the Pasig, which brought elements of the 37th Division into a sharp fight with retreating Japanese detachments. By February 10, the fires were out and the 37th had cleared Manila north of the Pasig. The commander of the 37th, Major General Robert Beightler (pronounced “Bite-ler”), ordered his units south across the river. Over th
e next three days, Beightler cleared Manila’s crowded Pacadan District and captured Provisor Island, an industrial area honeycombed with a large power plant and industrial warehouses.

  The ferocity of the Japanese defenses on Provisor Island had surprised Beightler and Corps Commander Griswold. The Japanese burrowed into the industrial complex, using the island’s power plant, coal piles, boilers, and warehouses for cover. While battalions of Beightler’s 129th Infantry Regiment cleared the island by blanketing it with mortar and heavy-weapons fire, the battle ended with the Americans playing “a macabre game of hide and seek” with Japanese defenders through the island’s largest plant. This was murderous going—and a sign of things to come. Griswold knew that even counting the reinforcements from “the Angels”—Joseph Swing’s 11th Airborne Division positioned south of the city—if the Americans suffered the same number of casualties in taking the rest of Manila that they had in storming Provisor Island, the 37th and 1st Cav would be swept out of existence.

  Iwabuchi and Shimbu Group commander Shizuo Yokoyama, meanwhile, plotted how their modest forces might unravel Griswold’s advance by isolating and annihilating the 37th Division. But on February 13, Yokoyama determined that this was impossible and ordered Iwabuchi’s forces to withdraw and head east. Unfortunately, the decision came too late: It took four days for Iwabuchi to receive Yokoyama’s message, and by that time, Beightler and Mudge had cut him off, with Iwabuchi’s way south blocked by Swing’s 11th Airborne. The events that followed charted a course faced by American troops fighting block to block in European cities, with this exception—with no hope of victory, the Japanese turned their guns on the innocent, murdering thousands of Manila’s citizens. In the process, the city itself was laid to waste: Its government buildings were destroyed, along with police stations and hospitals and, finally, Intramuros itself. That the Japanese purposely engaged in the slaughter is not in doubt, as their plans were widely distributed. “The Americans who have penetrated into Manila have about 1000 troops,” one circular read, “and there are several thousand Filipino guerrillas. Even women and children have become guerrillas. All people on the battlefield with the exception of Japanese military personnel, Japanese civilians, Special Construction Units, will be put to death.”

  The destruction of Manila might have been avoided had Griswold known that Iwabuchi was on his way out of the city, but the American general didn’t know this. Nevertheless, MacArthur attempted to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population, directing Griswold to refrain from the use of artillery fire to reduce Japanese positions. Griswold chafed at the order, and when it became apparent that the Japanese would not surrender, he insisted the order be lifted. When it was, Griswold ordered his men forward. The 37th and elements of the 1st Cav then fought from building to building against suicidal Japanese units. The Japanese used human shields, ushering terrified women and children into the line of fire to protect their positions. Those who survived were then slaughtered.

  The fighting was unrelenting, with American GIs moving house to house and stepping around the piles of bodies to get at the last Japanese. American soldiers regularly came upon a smoking pile of decapitated corpses that had been executed or set afire as the Americans advanced. At one point, the 5th Cavalry Regiment stormed the grounds of the baseball field at Rizal Park, taking three hours to pulverize Japanese positions near home plate. The 1st Cavalry then fought along Dewey Boulevard, heading west toward the Elks Club, before using 105 mm artillery to destroy Japanese positions at the Manila Hotel, which was taken in a three-day room-by-room fight. The 129th Infantry, paralleling this advance, stormed the New Police Station before moving on to wrest control of a shattered shoe factory and the grounds of Santa Teresita College. The city hall and post office were next, followed by Manila Hospital and the University of the Philippines.

  By February 15, Beightler and Mudge’s units had arrived at the walls of Intramuros. Griswold, stepping through the battlefield’s carnage, eyed the situation. “I am going to have to breach walls at several places,” he told George Decker, Krueger’s intelligence officer. “I think it is a military necessity. You know how these things are, and I am just wondering if General Krueger or yourself have any advice.” Decker, a future army chief of staff, didn’t hesitate. “General Krueger’s advice is to take Manila,” he said. “I think insofar as he is concerned, you can use such means as necessary.” Griswold knew that using artillery fire to batter Intramuros might not be enough, however, so he asked Krueger for the use of aircraft to reduce Japanese strongpoints. Krueger passed the message to MacArthur, who objected. The already soaring death toll would get worse if Kenney’s bombers were used. “The use of air on a part of a city occupied by a friendly and allied population is unthinkable,” he wrote to Krueger. “The inaccuracy of this type of bombardment would result beyond question in the death of thousands of innocent civilians. It is not believed moreover that this would appreciably lower our own casualty rate although it would unquestionably hasten the conclusion of the operations. For these reasons I do not approve the use of air bombardment on the Intramuros district.”

  No comment came from Griswold or Beightler, but they resented the order—and compensated for it. Beginning on February 17, they mounted a six-day artillery barrage on the old city, sighting 155 mm and 240 mm shells on Japanese strongpoints. On February 23, on the north shore of the Pasig, Griswold and Krueger looked on as a battalion of the 129th made its way by assault boat to the northeast corner of Intramuros, whose 25-foot-thick walls were then battered down by high explosives. The follow-on 145th Regiment then fought to the center of Intramuros. The final attack came on the morning of March 3 on the Finance Building, when a final squad of Japanese holdouts was killed by GIs on the building’s top floor.

  The capture of Bataan had begun as Beightler’s and Mudge’s men were in the midst of their melee with Iwabuchi’s fanatics. It was concluded only on February 21, when the 6th Division announced the end of all resistance on the peninsula. The conquest of Corregidor followed, with air and naval bombings beginning on February 14 and a stunning drop of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment on Topside on the sixteenth. The drop coincided with a seaborne assault near Bottomside. The 503rd moved forward step by step, reducing Japanese defenses until, by February 25, the enemy’s positions had been reduced to a small circle near Monkey Point. The final act in the bloody drama came on February 26, when Japanese holdouts detonated an underground arsenal that killed fifty-five American soldiers and immolated two thousand Japanese. One medic, picking through the area, was sickened by the bloodshed. “As soon as I got all the casualties off,” he later recalled, “I sat down on a rock and burst out crying. I couldn’t stop myself and didn’t even want to. I had seen more than a man could stand and still stay normal. . . . I had the cases to care for, that kept me going; but after that it was too much.”

  And it was too much for Douglas MacArthur. When the Japanese guns were finally silenced, he walked down Dewey Boulevard and then along the waterfront and was overcome by the sight of corpses yet to be buried. Addressing the Philippine legislature several months later, MacArthur was still haunted by what he had seen, and he stopped midsentence during his speech. His voice quivering with emotion, he adopted the expedient of asking the legislators to join him in reciting the Lord’s Prayer while he composed himself. The final campaign for Luzon was far bloodier than he had anticipated: The fight cost 8,310 American lives, with another 30,000 wounded—but that seemed modest when compared with the price paid by the Philippine people. The Japanese had attacked civilians huddled in shelters, in city buildings, and in schools, churches, convents, and hospitals. The closer the Americans edged to victory, the greater the slaughter. “On one street in Pasay, all the inhabitants, including women and children were murdered,” a resident noted. “The men were wired together, drenched in gasoline, and set afire with grenades.”

  The slaughter in Manila is not mentioned in MacArthur’s postwar Reminiscences, though the lo
ss of life took an emotional toll on him. At the end of February, with the fight for Manila reaching a climax, MacArthur broke down in front of his staff. He was, as Paul Rogers noted, “shattered by the holocaust.” Later, when MacArthur established his headquarters in downtown Manila and even after Jean and Arthur arrived to calm him, his mood remained dour. “This was not Manila,” Rogers later commented. “This was simply hell.” But while MacArthur searched for ways to right himself, Walter Krueger—shifting his troops back to the northeast to take on Yamashita—masked his inner turmoil by presenting an antiseptic outward calm, as did Robert Eichelberger. And although Krueger and Eichelberger continued to snipe at each other, they never forgot the brutal fight for Manila. In the end, both agreed: Yamashita should be hanged.

  Seated at his desk in Washington, Ernie King read the casualty figures from Manila and shook his head. “I tried to tell them, I tried to tell them,” he muttered. “Six months ago I told them that ‘Reno’ would make a London out of Manila. MacArthur’s liberation has destroyed a city and has cost an innocent population one hundred thousand dead.” If MacArthur heard of King’s views, he refrained from countering them. The decision to fight for Manila had not been his or even Yamashita’s; it had been an orgy of death authored by the Japanese.

  Then too, MacArthur had little regard for King, or anyone in Washington who might control his actions, let alone criticize them. This became all too apparent in the wake of the Manila slaughter, when the president asked playwright Robert Sherwood, a close friend, to visit MacArthur to get his views on the governance of postwar Japan. Sherwood met with MacArthur in “the awful, heartrending desolation of Manila” and was surprised by his liberal views. MacArthur told Sherwood that he thought Japan should be turned into a democracy, complete with labor unions and the ensuring of women’s rights. But MacArthur’s views on Japan were a sidelight to what Sherwood learned about the general’s views on Roosevelt—views that Sherwood found shocking and duly reported to the president in writing. “There are unmistakable evidences of an acute persecution complex at work,” Sherwood wrote. “To hear some of the staff officers talk, one would think that the War Department, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—and, possibly even the White House itself—are under domination of ‘Communists and British Imperialists.’ This strange misapprehension produces an obviously unhealthy state of mind, and also the most unfortunate public relations policy that I have seen in any theatre of war.”