Killing the Rising Sun

by Bill O'Reilly

* * *

  It seems an eternity, but it is only an hour before Corporal Bausell and a few of his fellow marines manage to get off the sand. Bausell’s smile has been replaced by a tight-lipped glare. His instincts sharpened by his many previous landings, Bausell searches the tree line for signs of hidden enemy machine-gun emplacements targeting the invasion force. Suddenly, a burst of light gets Corporal Bausell’s attention. The Japanese machine guns fire tracer bullets to help them zero in on a target, but these illuminated rounds can also help the marines pinpoint the shooter’s precise location. Bausell sees a stream of tracers emerging from a small cave with a commanding view of the beach. The entrance is concealed by scrub plants and thick brush.

  Taking charge of the squad, he motions for his men to follow him toward the cave’s location. Reaching the cave first, he fires into a small opening. Lieutenant Jack Kimble of Greenville, Mississippi, arrives with a two-man flamethrower team; a stream of fire is launched into the Japanese position in the hope of forcing the enemy to come out. Corporal Bausell, meanwhile, stands ready to shoot them as they emerge.

  The first Japanese to run screaming from the cave is carrying a grenade. He pulls the pin before Bausell can fire his M1 carbine. Not only does the explosion kill the Japanese soldier but shrapnel slices into several nearby marines.

  More flame is shot into the cave. Another Japanese soldier emerges.

  This time, Bausell shoots him dead.

  Yet another Japanese soldier runs out of the cave, choosing the sure death by rifle fire to being roasted alive. He too carries a grenade, hurling it at the Americans as Bausell raises his weapon.

  The grenade is launched before Bausell shoots; it lands near him and several other marines. The blast may kill them all.

  Without hesitation, Corporal Bausell throws his body onto the grenade. His torso rises off the ground as it explodes, smothering the blast. None of his fellow marines is hurt.

  “Get that Jap,” Bausell shouts. Somehow, he is still alive.

  The flamethrower team shoots off a burst of flame, turning the Japanese soldier into a human torch.

  Less than two hours after landing on Peleliu, Corporal Lewis Bausell is put on a stretcher and carried back down the beach. He is loaded aboard an amtrac, then ferried out to the hospital ship Bountiful, where he is immediately taken into surgery.

  But doctors cannot stop the bleeding. The Japanese grenade has sent deadly shards of metal deep into Bausell’s internal organs. On September 18, 1944, three days after the invasion of Peleliu, Corporal Lewis Bausell dies.

  Unlike those of soldiers fighting on World War II’s European front, his body will not be lowered into the ground and marked with a monument so that his family might someday visit. Instead, his corpse is wrapped in sailcloth, tethered to a spent artillery shell, and dropped at sea.

  Corporal Lewis Bausell is the first United States Marine at the Battle of Peleliu whose death will see him awarded America’s highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, for actions above and beyond the call of duty in combat.

  He is not the last.

  2

  LEYTE, VISAYAS ISLANDS

  PHILIPPINES

  OCTOBER 20, 1944

  1300 HOURS

  General Douglas MacArthur is grinning. “As Ripley says, believe it or not, we’re here,” he boasts to his chief of staff.

  Seven hundred miles west of Peleliu, where marines are now mired in their fifth bloody week of combat, the sixty-four-year-old commander of American forces in the Pacific leans over the rail of the USS Nashville.1 He gazes into the distance at his beloved Philippines, which were invaded by more than a hundred thousand US Army troops under his command less than four hours ago. His counterpart in Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower, became famous for the D-Day invasion of France this past June. So MacArthur, well known for his ego, has chosen to call the date of this invasion “A-Day,” for “Attack Day.”2

  As on Peleliu, intelligence reports predicting minimal enemy resistance have proven very wrong. The Japanese are putting up a fierce fight for the Philippines. Even miles out to sea, MacArthur can hear the chatter of automatic-weapons fire coming from groves of palm trees and see the billowing plumes of black smoke from the jungle. Just overhead, American fighter-bombers buzz toward entrenched enemy positions, keeping a sharp eye out for Japanese Zero fighter planes.

  Two years ago, after the fall of the Philippines to the Japanese, the most humiliating defeat of MacArthur’s storied career, the general promised the world that he would one day come back in glory to retake the islands. Now, he is setting out to make good on that vow.

  Douglas MacArthur, who likes to refer to himself in the third person as simply “MacArthur,” is a shade over six feet tall, the son of a Medal of Honor–winning general through whom he has a lifelong connection to the Philippines. Arthur MacArthur Jr. fought in the American Civil War as a teenager and, after the Spanish-American War, served as military governor of the Philippines.3 Douglas graduated at the top of his class at West Point, and to this day is as narrow-waisted and fit as on his commissioning day in 1903.

  MacArthur clambers down a ladder hanging over the Nashville’s side and into a waiting landing craft. As he does every day, the general wears a freshly pressed khaki uniform that bears no insignia or ribbons. He fastidiously maintains the creases on his shirtsleeves and trousers by changing clothes frequently, and has just donned a fresh uniform for the landing. In case the landing goes horribly wrong and MacArthur is at risk of being taken prisoner, a loaded derringer that once belonged to his father rests in his hip pocket.

  Sweat stains seep into the gold braid encircling MacArthur’s weathered field marshal’s cap; his dark brown eyes are shielded from the ocean’s glare by wire-rimmed Ray-Ban sunglasses. Completing these trademark aspects of his appearance, all of which have made the general an iconic figure worldwide, is the unlit corncob pipe clenched firmly between his teeth.4

  Chief of Staff Richard Sutherland, a lieutenant general, follows MacArthur down the ladder. After the remainder of MacArthur’s “Bataan Gang” descend into the landing craft, a select group of war correspondents joins them. Douglas MacArthur knows the value of good publicity and has carefully choreographed his landing so that images of this great moment will soon be splashed across front pages around the world. The plan is to land not on the beach but at a dock. The photographers will step out of the boat first, then turn around to capture the immaculately starched and pressed general once again setting foot on Philippine soil.

  Like many a scripted moment, however, the actual event will unfold in a quite different fashion.

  Almost one thousand days after fleeing the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur orders the landing craft to sail for shore.

  He has returned.

  * * *

  Douglas MacArthur well knows that this landing in the Philippines is a vital step toward the eventual invasion of Japan. Though plans are still in the conceptual phase, and such an assault is at least a year away, it promises to be the greatest amphibious landing in history. It is expected that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, marines, pilots, and sailors will take part, on a scale dwarfing that of the D-Day landings in Normandy. The cost will be extreme—loss of life is expected to approach one million on both sides. As the most revered general in the Pacific, MacArthur will most assuredly be called upon to lead this devastating invasion.

  Yet were it not for a direct order four years ago from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man whom MacArthur tolerates rather than admires, the general wouldn’t be under consideration for such a glorious command.5 Indeed, he would most likely be starving to death in a prisoner-of-war camp.

  It was December 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American fleet moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Blindsided by violence on this “date which will live in infamy,” America declared war on Japan and its ally, Germany.

  Following the sneak attack, the Japanese quickly struck again one day
later and more than five thousand miles west across the open Pacific. Shortly after noon, a flight of Japanese fighter-bombers from the Eleventh Air Fleet destroyed the American air base at Clark Field in the Philippines. Two days later, two more waves of Japanese aircraft flew unopposed over the Cavite Navy Yard, laying waste to the docks. The US destroyers Pillsbury and Peary barely escaped, and the submarine Sealion was bombed in her berth. As with the attack on Clark Field, the Japanese chose to drop their bombs on Cavite just after noon. Incredibly, two short days after the shock of Pearl Harbor, many of America’s defenders were still not on full alert and were at lunch as the raids began.

  But the Philippine Islands were different than Pearl Harbor. Their location is much closer to Japan, making possession of them a much more urgent tactical necessity. Capturing the Philippines would effectively give Japan control of the western Pacific. Rather than conduct a savage aerial bombardment, the forces of Dai Nippon—or “Great Japan”—aimed to seize control of the entire country.6 The invasion was planned for almost a decade, beginning with an influx of Japanese soldiers disguised as immigrants, a systematic mapping of the Philippines’ more than seven thousand islands, and spying on Philippine coastal defenses. “Only later,” Filipino president Manuel Quezon will remember, “did I discover that my gardener was a Japanese major and my masseur a Japanese colonel.”

  At the apex of American leadership in the Philippines at the time was Douglas MacArthur. He and his wife, Jean, lived with their three-year-old son, Arthur, in an opulent penthouse atop the Manila Hotel. MacArthur had left the US Army in 1937 after a brilliant career, then accepted a high-paying position as a field marshal in the Philippine Army. But he was recalled in July 1941, as war began to appear imminent, and named commander of American forces in the Far East. He was the obvious choice for the position: not only had he lived in the strategically vital Philippines during the 1920s and 1930s, he had overseen the creation of the Philippine Army.7

  Within a matter of months, after Japanese bombing destroyed his air force on the ground, MacArthur’s small army was powerless against invasion. Fleeing Manila, MacArthur retreated to fortified positions on the Bataan Peninsula, where he assured his men that reinforcements were on the way.

  But this was not true. American and British policy dictated that most resources be spent on defeating Germany before Japan.8 Even if that were not the case, the remote location of the Philippines and the Japanese naval domination of the Pacific meant that reinforcements wouldn’t get through in time. President Roosevelt, upon hearing MacArthur’s promise, called his words “criminal.”

  For the next two months, the Japanese continued their advance. The small American and Filipino forces under MacArthur’s command were pushed back to the tip of the Bataan Peninsula, where many took refuge in a fortress on an island known as Corregidor. Even when it became clear that Bataan and Corregidor would soon fall, MacArthur directed the resistance from the safety of his underground bunker in the bombproof Malinta Tunnel. His desperate battle became a symbol of resistance to the Japanese onslaught throughout the Pacific, and MacArthur was largely portrayed as a hero in the media, making him world famous.

  It soon became clear to President Roosevelt that he had to rescue MacArthur. He had no choice: America was stunned by its sudden immersion into war. The Japanese seemed unbeatable. Allowing Douglas MacArthur to become a prisoner of war would have devastated national morale.

  On February 22, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to flee. The navy spirited his family and twenty of his staff, along with his son’s Chinese nanny, out of the Philippines on swift patrol torpedo (PT) boats. Some felt that the nanny, with the unlikely name of Ah Cheu, should be replaced by an army nurse, but MacArthur was adamant that she come along. All told, the group, allowed one suitcase each, would undertake a six-hundred-mile voyage in four PT boats, traveling over the open ocean in hopes of making it to the island of Mindanao.

  The remainder of MacArthur’s American and Filipino soldiers on Bataan and Corregidor were left behind under the command of Lieutenant General Jonathan “Skinny” Wainwright.

  Thus two parallel odysseys began. The defenders of Bataan and Corregidor endured a descent into hell. Bataan fell first, in April 1942. In what would become known as the Bataan Death March, seventy-six thousand captured American and Filipino soldiers were stripped of their valuables and force-marched sixty-five miles to a prison camp. Their hands were bound the entire way; those unable to keep pace in the brutal heat and humidity were shot, bayoneted, or beheaded by their captors. Japanese trucks rolled right over those who collapsed. In all, more than seven thousand men perished.

  Corregidor fell one month later. General Wainwright and his remaining men were placed in prison camps, where the ritual abuse and murder of Americans by the Japanese army would continue for the next three and a half years. Throughout the war, the forces of the emperor would turn their American prisoners into slaves. Living conditions in their concentration camps were deplorable, and men died from dysentery, beriberi, and starvation. General Wainwright, already a very thin man at the outset of the war, became skeletal during his captivity. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor while still in a Japanese prison camp, but Douglas MacArthur objected to the request, stating that Wainwright should never have surrendered.9

  Meanwhile, MacArthur’s journey eventually led him to Australia, where he assumed command of all forces in the Pacific. Many Americans saw his escape from Corregidor as an act of daring, but some considered the desertion of his men an act of cowardice. MacArthur explained his actions to reporters while in Australia: “The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary objective of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return.”

  On April 1, 1942, Douglas MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for “conspicuous leadership” in his heroic defense of the Philippines, making MacArthur and General Arthur MacArthur Jr. the first father-son Medal of Honor winners in American history.10

  So it is that island by island, men under MacArthur’s command are retaking control of the Pacific as the general works his way back to the Philippines. His desire to redeem himself trumps all other motives and has drawn critique from navy commanders.11 The devastating battle for Peleliu, which has already incurred four thousand American casualties, is taking place only because MacArthur fears that Japanese planes will launch from its runways and harass his Philippine invasion force. In truth, the American navy now controls the sea and the skies and would have little trouble stopping an aerial attack.

  * * *

  It has taken MacArthur almost three years, but his landing craft finally arrives at Red Beach on Leyte. The general’s face hardens as he steps off the boat into knee-deep ocean water, the razor-sharp creases in his pants disappearing in an instant.

  “Let ’em walk,” barked the navy officer in charge of directing the traffic of landing barges moving on and off of Red Beach when he heard that MacArthur wanted a special dock on which to land. A “beachmaster,” as this officer is known, enjoys supreme authority over the landing zone; not even the great Douglas MacArthur receives special treatment.

  It is forty paces from the landing craft to shore. MacArthur glares at the impertinent young officer as he wades through the flat surf. His personal photographer, Captain Gaetano Faillace, captures the moment for posterity, even as the Japanese snipers roped high up in the palm trees could very well be taking aim at the sixty-four-year-old general standing tall on the white sand.

  Once on land, MacArthur is handed a microphone.

  “People of the Philippines,” he proclaims, “I have returned!”

  General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore on Leyte, fulfilling his promise to return

  In his excitement, the normally imperturbable general’s hands shake.

  Soon after, General Douglas MacArthur
turns around and wades back to his landing craft, which quickly returns him to the shelter and safety of the USS Nashville.

  3

  KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

  NOVEMBER 3, 1944

  9:00 P.M.

  “I have long since become immune to mudslinging and find the best tactics are to ignore it,” Harry Truman writes in a letter to his friend J. L. Naylor as his campaign train pulls into Kansas City. The sixty-year-old Truman drains his glass of Old Grand-Dad bourbon and sets it on the writing table. The great locomotive that has pulled him around America glides into the city’s Union Station, bringing the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s monthlong barnstorming tour to an end.

  Despite Truman’s hard work, the war has garnered more front-page news than his speeches and rallies—and with good reason. Almost eight thousand miles away in the Pacific, Peleliu has become a ghastly mess, with thousands of marines killed and wounded. In the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur’s hopes for an easy victory have been dashed by a determined enemy, poor strategic planning, and something new: the kamikaze—Japanese suicide pilots dropping out of the sky to sink American ships by deliberately flying their planes into the hulls.

  Tonight, Harry Truman will sleep in a luxury hotel rather than the train’s cramped berth, knowing that he has done all he can to help elect President Franklin Roosevelt to a fourth term in office. In the morning, as he sometimes prefers, Truman may toast the journey’s end with a breakfast shot of Old Grand-Dad.

  The night air is chill and smells of rain. Truman, his wife, Bess, and their daughter, Margaret, step down onto the platform. The vice presidential candidate adores Bess and proves it by writing long love letters to her when he is away. On June 28, they celebrated twenty-five years of marriage.

  Margaret Truman is a student at George Washington University who aspires to a singing career. She is the couple’s only child. Margaret is not exceptionally beautiful but possesses an honesty and intelligence common among those secure in their own skin. In these ways, she is much like her father.