by Perry, Mark
Operation Oboe One began on May 1, when Australian assault forces landed on Tarakan, off Borneo’s northeastern shore. The Australians moved quickly inland, where they engaged Japanese defenders in a bloody fight for Tarakan city before pushing them into the island’s mountains. “Uncle Dan the Amphibious Man” Barbey oversaw the operation, later issuing criticisms that Australia’s troops were “behind the times” and unskilled. His words set off a furor in Australia. Caught now by his own promises, MacArthur pointedly defended the Australians.
“I am entirely at a loss to account for any criticism of the Tarakan operation,” he wrote to the Australian cabinet. “It has been completely successful and has been accomplished without the slightest hitch.” With Australian troops ashore, Australian government leader Chifley now followed MacArthur’s lead: He “deplored” the criticisms as “unfair to the Supreme Commander, in whom the Government has entire confidence.” On June 3, as if to underscore his concern for his troops, MacArthur embarked on a “grand tour,” as Eichelberger dubbed it, of the central Philippines and Borneo, like a latter-day Hadrian touring his conquests. He ladled out praise, promotions, and decorations wherever he went, alighting from the USS Boise to splash ashore at Mindanao, Cebu City, Palawan, and, finally, Brunei Bay, where he watched the Australians make their assault. The next day, he waded through the surf at Brunei Bluff, then traveled overland to the front lines. He stood over two Japanese corpses, a replay of his Los Negros landing, as nearby Japanese snipers targeted him. Four days later, after a visit to Zamboanga, he ordered the Boise back to Manila—then changed his mind. On July 1, he witnessed what turned out to be the final amphibious assault of the war, at Balikpapan, where, with Daniel Barbey in tow, he inspected Australian fighting units. Barbey later recalled the episode:
With his party he climbed a small shale hill, dotted with Australian foxholes, which was less than 200 yards from the enemy front lines. An Aussie major came running up and warned everybody to take cover as there was a machine-gun nest in a nearby hilltop. Before he had finished, there was the rat-tat-tat of machine gun bullets. In a few seconds the firing had stopped, apparently smothered by the Australians, but not before all of us had dropped. But not MacArthur. He was still standing there looking over his map, quite unperturbed as I and the others took a more upright position.
MacArthur returned to the Boise and ordered it back to Manila, where it arrived on July 3.
The next day, at his headquarters, MacArthur reviewed his staff’s work on Operation Downfall, the plan for the invasion of Japan. Plans had first taken form in August 1942, when a JCS committee produced a working paper that detailed six “phases” leading to Japan’s surrender, one option of which recommended a blockade of the islands. An October 1943 plan envisioned an invasion, but only of the northern island of Hokkaido, followed by a second invasion of the main Japanese island of Honshu. But it was not until George Marshall took matters in hand that a more detailed approach emerged, the result of work done by General Charles Bonesteel and General George A. Lincoln of the Pentagon’s Strategy Policy Committee.
In April 1945, Marshall had asked MacArthur his views on three options: whether to encircle Japan and strike westward, securing air bases in China; whether to rely for victory on an “accelerated” campaign of strategic bombings coupled with a naval blockade; or whether to defeat Japan through a direct invasion. Although months earlier MacArthur had told his staff that he thought Japan would surrender without an invasion, by April he had changed his mind. He told Marshall that moving westward would embroil the United States in the war in China, whereas relying solely on strategic bombing and a blockade might lengthen the war. Marshall agreed, and in May, MacArthur’s and Nimitz’s staffs submitted to Washington their plans for an invasion. Shortly thereafter, on May 25, the JCS issued its directive: Downfall would target Japan’s southern island of Kyushu in Operation Olympic, followed by Operation Coronet—the invasion of Honshu—with a final drive west to Tokyo. Kyushu would be invaded no later than December 1, with the invasion of Honshu slated for March 1, 1946. Twenty-four hours later, a cable from the JCS gave MacArthur the “primary responsibility for the conduct of the operation Olympic including control, in case of exigencies, of the actual amphibious assault through the appropriate naval commander.”
The May directive accelerated the schedule of MacArthur’s planners, who huddled with other planners sent to Manila by Nimitz and the JCS. The final plan for Olympic, so quickly put together that it was bound in cardboard, called for a massive amphibious assault involving fourteen army and Marine divisions—nearly 350,000 men who would come ashore on thirty-five beaches in three locations on X-Day, November 1, 1945. Raymond Spruance’s Fifth Fleet would carry the troops to the beaches and provide them with covering naval gunfire, while William Halsey’s Third Fleet would provide close air support. The Coronet landings—on Y-Day, March 1, 1946—would be even more complex and would include 500,000 men supplemented by three divisions from the United Kingdom and British commonwealth. The invasion of Kyushu was placed under the operational control of Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army, while the invasion of Honshu would be under the operational control of Eichelberger’s Eighth Army and a new First Army, composed of units brought to the Pacific from Europe.
But the planning process wasn’t seamless. Marshall wanted MacArthur to consider appointing a host of officers from the European theater to commands in both operations, singling out the Twelfth Army Group’s Omar Bradley for special consideration. MacArthur agreed in principle, but then argued that he didn’t want to appoint an officer to Downfall who outranked either Krueger or Eichelberger. “The absorption of the highest officer of the European front presents certain difficulties,” he told the army chief, “because of their rank and because the size of the force here will be smaller than that which existed in Europe and hence there will be a scarcity of posts.” This was true, but it was only partly true. MacArthur thought that Krueger and Eichelberger had earned the right to lead armies in the invasion, and he didn’t want them overawed by someone like Bradley, who not only outranked them, but would be viewed as an interloper.
Marshall attempted to bludgeon his way through this issue, sending MacArthur a peremptory cable that said he was dispatching Bradley along with an army-level headquarters unit as well as “special troops” from Europe. MacArthur shot back. Krueger, he said, “in my opinion, is not repeat not only the more competent officer of the two but is entirely familiar with this theater and its personnel.” Faced with this response, and to keep the disagreement from becoming a controversy, Marshall suggested that Bradley be given a position comparable to Krueger’s, as commander of an army—a step below the army group commander slot he’d had in Europe. MacArthur agreed, but Eisenhower vetoed the idea, implying that Bradley would not settle for being brought down to Krueger’s level. Marshall drew back, dropping the idea that Bradley could serve as a Pacific commander, but insisting that the experience of European commanders would prove useful. The compromise he suggested to MacArthur was accepted: Courtney Hodges, one of Eisenhower’s better combat commanders, would be brought to the Pacific to command the First Army.
While MacArthur and Marshall skirmished over Bradley, their disagreement over who would lead the U.S. Tenth Army, slotted to go ashore during Olympic, nearly led to a falling out. The Tenth Army had fought on Okinawa, and Nimitz argued that he should retain it under his command. MacArthur was infuriated: Not only had the command decision on Downfall already been made, but the idea that Nimitz would control an army in combat was preposterous. A flurry of messages passed between Honolulu, Washington, and Manila as Nimitz haggled away, with King cheering him on. MacArthur participated gamely, but then became so frustrated that he told his staff that he would strip the Tenth Army of its troops and assign his own commander. Nimitz could have Tenth Army—and command nothing.
While Nimitz eventually lost his point, with Marshall reiterating his earlier decision that MacArthur would lead all of the army un
its deployed in the Pacific, the battle had only begun. In a message to MacArthur in mid-June, Marshall suggested that MacArthur appoint Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell as commander of the Tenth Army. Stilwell had done a good job in Burma and China under trying circumstances, Marshall said, and had also done a lot of thinking about Downfall. As chance would have it, Stilwell was then visiting MacArthur in Manila. The two respected each other, and MacArthur asked him whether he would agree to be his chief of staff, supplanting Sutherland. Stilwell shook his head. “I fancy myself as a field commander,” he said. MacArthur tried again. Would he head up a field army? Stilwell said he would do anything to be with the troops, even if it meant commanding a division. “Pooh, pooh,” MacArthur said, “if you would take an Army I would rather have you than anyone else.”
What MacArthur meant to say was that he would prefer Stilwell to anyone but Oscar Griswold, which is what he told Marshall in a return cable. Griswold had earned the slot, he said, and “is eminently qualified in every respect.” Marshall was irritated: No matter what the army chief suggested, MacArthur didn’t like it. He was reaching the end of his rope. He had put up with Sutherland, pushed back against King, defended MacArthur to the JCS, and supported him with Roosevelt. Marshall needed to put his own stamp on the war—to bring into battle not only those whom MacArthur trusted, but also those he trusted. Stilwell was a good commander and a close friend and had served in Burma and China when he could have commanded an entire American army. And so, for the first time in the war, Marshall issued MacArthur a direct order, unilaterally assigning Stilwell to command the Tenth Army. MacArthur noted the order, remained silent, and (as always) had the last word. When Stilwell took over the Tenth Army, on August 4, 1945, he found that most of its divisions had been stripped away and assigned to other units in Hodges’s and Eichelberger’s combat forces. Stilwell commanded nothing.
During the first week of August 1945, MacArthur told George Kenney that the Japanese would surrender by September 1, “and perhaps even sooner,” and then passed on his opinion to Sutherland. “Dick, don’t spend too much time planning Olympic and Coronet,” he said. “If you can find a way to drag your feet, do so, because we are never going to have to invade Japan.” But MacArthur was not being prescient: The week before these pronouncements, he had been visited by Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, who briefed MacArthur on the Manhattan Project and informed him that two atomic bombs would be dropped on Japanese cities. One week later, on August 5, MacArthur held an off-the-record press conference with a group of journalists in Manila and, while seated in a comfortable leather chair, talked of Japan’s coming surrender, of how the global conflict had spurred military technology, and of the existence of “atomic disintegration bombs.” Within hours of this interview, on August 6, the Enola Gay—an American B-29—dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. Two days later, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and one day after that, on August 9, another atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito told his people that Japan would surrender.
While it now seems clear that the Soviet declaration of war was the final straw that spurred Japan’s capitulation, MacArthur remained convinced that the use of the atom bomb was the deciding factor. In one respect, MacArthur’s response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was out of character, for he did not rail against the mass deaths the bombs caused, but turned inward. With the war now ending, his reflections were filled with a mix of black humor and nostalgia. He had a feeling, he said, that his time had passed. “Men like me are obsolete,” he told journalist Theodore White. “There will be no more wars, White, no more wars.” Of course, what MacArthur intended to say was that there would be no more wars of the kind that he had fought, a view he made clear to George Kenney. “The winner of the next war is going to be some 2nd Lieutenant who pulls the string on the A-bomb,” he said, “and he should be made a full general immediately. The winner of a war deserves four stars.” In truth, MacArthur had little time for reflection. On the same day that Japan surrendered, he received a directive from President Truman appointing him “Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers for the purpose of enforcing the surrender of Japan” and instructing him to “take such steps as you deem proper to effectuate the surrender terms.” MacArthur was taken by surprise. “I am deeply grateful for the confidence you have so generously bestowed upon me in my appointment of Supreme Commander,” he told Truman.
MacArthur and Nimitz had drawn up separate plans for the possibility of a sudden Japanese capitulation, and they now sent the plans on to Washington. Nimitz’s plan, Operation Campus, called for the navy to occupy Tokyo Bay and seize military assets ashore. MacArthur's plan, Blacklist, was far more detailed, calling for the coordinated deployment of ground, naval, and air units to seize key installations in the Japanese homeland, including the immediate dispatch of twenty-two army divisions to occupy the country. What followed was a flurry of radio communications with the Japanese government and an August 19 meeting in Manila with a sixteen-member delegation of Japanese officials. MacArthur assigned Sutherland to handle the talks. The Japanese, at MacArthur’s direction, brought maps and charts detailing military assets and installations in Japan, and the location of prison camps. The talks went on without incident into the early morning hours of August 20, and at their end, the Japanese agreed to a formal surrender, in Tokyo, on September 2.
For the next two weeks, MacArthur spent eighteen-hour days overseeing planning for the occupation and working out the logistics of his arrival for the surrender ceremonies. He struggled to end the continuing fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops, but was helpless to stop the Red Army’s sweep south through Manchuria and southern Korea. Here and there, in China and Southeast Asia, angry and bloody reprisals greeted news of the Japanese capitulation. American aircraft, meanwhile, identified prisoner of war camps in China and throughout the Pacific, and B-29s launched emergency relief missions, dropping food and medicine for the prisoners. Eichelberger and Krueger organized “mercy teams” to identify and free captives and provide them with food and medical care. But the most knotty problem facing MacArthur was how to manage Japan’s occupation. He was operating in the dark, with only a July 26 Potsdam Declaration as a guide: It called for Japan’s disarmament, the trial of war criminals, and the occupation of Japanese territory “designated by the Allies.” MacArthur plunged ahead, assuming that he could run the occupation as he saw fit. He dispatched Eichelberger to Okinawa on August 25 to take control of the 11th Airborne Division, which would be the first American unit ashore in the Tokyo-Yokohama area. MacArthur, meanwhile, would take command of all U.S. troops in Japan after landing at Atsugi Airbase, outside Yokohama.
Eichelberger’s initial plan was to land the entire XI Corps in Japan to forcibly seize military assets and to put down potential uprisings by recalcitrant Japanese units. But after Sutherland’s Manila discussions, he hoped that this action might not be necessary. In Manila, the Japanese had pledged to disarm themselves under American guidance, so instead of sending an onslaught of heavily armed American troops into Japan, MacArthur decided that the military occupation would be gradual. “Our gamble was a straightforward one,” Eichelberger later wrote. “We wagered that the Japanese meant what they said.” While Eichelberger pleaded that he precede MacArthur to Atsugi Airbase by a full day to ensure his commander’s safety, MacArthur gave him two hours. Eichelberger left Okinawa at dawn on August 30 and landed in Yokohama five hours later. Among the first things he noticed were a line of Japanese kamikaze fighters—all with their propellers removed. The Japanese military had been forced to put down a small uprising, just days before, and were worried that rebellious fliers would use the fighters in an attempt to continue the war. “From the air, Atsugi Field, with two long runways and scattered hangars and barracks, looked like a deserted Ohio fairgrounds the day after the big show has departed,” Eichelberger later wrote. “But at Atsugi the big show was just beginning. The C-54s came in by the clock—one every three minutes—and th
e policing was so disciplined and efficient that there were no operational casualties.”
MacArthur, aboard the Bataan, arrived that afternoon. He appeared at the door of his plane in an open shirt and with his signature corncob pipe. “Bob, this is the payoff,” he said when he spotted Eichelberger. MacArthur and his staff piled into a Japanese-organized motorcade to run what Eichelberger called “the gauntlet”—the twenty-mile trip to downtown Yokohama. Eichelberger was still worried: While the Japanese had provided a group of automobiles “of doubtful vintage” for MacArthur, there was no assurance that his arrival would not be greeted with gunfire. MacArthur’s staff had insisted that he be accompanied by an armed guard, but he waved them off. He wanted the Japanese to know that he was “their friend,” he said. Later, Winston Churchill would call this decision one of the bravest acts of the war, but MacArthur knew the Japanese and, like Eichelberger, thought they would keep their word. It took two hours for MacArthur to travel through the rubble of Yokohama to his offices at the New Grand Hotel in Tokyo. On the sides of the road, Japanese soldiers and citizens turned their backs to him—a sign of respect accorded only to the emperor. As MacArthur picked out his suite, five hundred troopers of the 11th Airborne fanned out around the hotel for protection.
