“Then we’re done,” King growled. “You report to Nimitz, and then there will be only one theater.”
MacArthur laughed and shifted his attention to Roosevelt. “But we haven’t determined who is better to lead this theater, nor whether the navy or the army is better suited to furnish the supreme commander.”
King argued back immediately. “The Pacific, Mr. President, belongs to the navy. Just look at the battlefield. It’s ninety-nine percent water. The supreme commander of the Pacific Theater will be primarily directing ship operations, Marine Corps landings, and naval air operations. The Army Air Force is the only army force that will matter. We’ll capture landing bases as we move forward on the shortest, most direct route to Japan. We’ll extend the reach of American bombers until Tojo and his gang receive an American welcome card right through the ceiling.”
“Au contraire, mon Admiral” replied MacArthur. He stood up and began orating as he paced. “Douglas MacArthur does not pretend to be an admiral. As for King’s skill at being an army general—” He paused and smiled, shrugging his shoulders slightly. “But the good admiral is completely in error about the nature of the terrain. Yes, MacArthur needs ships in order to land troops, but every inch of enemy-held soil will have to be wrested from the Jap with the skills of the common infantryman. Ground must always be won the hard way, I’m afraid. A ship cannot take and hold land. Nor can a bomber. What difference does it make how much water is in the Pacific Ocean? No, Mr. President, I don’t envy you this decision, but as much respect as I have for Admiral King, I still would argue to my last breath that the army’s work in this theater is as great as that of the navy—nay, greater. For the navy man takes his cot and mess hall along into battle. The soldier carries only his weapon.” MacArthur paused dramatically.
“Now wait just a goddamn minute, MacArthur!” sputtered King. “Don’t you tell me that sailors don’t take risks! Have you ever been on a ship that’s been hit and is starting to sink? Have you? Well, if you haven’t, then you don’t know the first goddamn thing about who’s got it tougher.”
MacArthur drew himself up stiffly. “I had no intention whatsoever of disparaging the terrible risks sailors routinely encounter, any more than you were trying to disparage my brave comrades on Bataan and Corregidor.” He paused and then added, “Or are you?”
King stared at MacArthur through narrowed eyes. Both men stood stonily for a long minute. Then King grudgingly said, “No, I wasn’t.”
“Now gentlemen—” said FDR, pushing his wheelchair in between the two men. “Let us turn our attention back to the real problem. Why don’t we start by having each of you tell me what you would do as supreme commander?” He looked back and forth between the two men. “Well, would one of you prefer to go first?”
“I’m ready now,” said King forcefully.
“Then if Douglas has no objection …,” said FDR.
“None whatsoever, Mr. President,” said MacArthur. “Go ahead, Admiral. I’ll be interested to hear what you have to say.”
King looked angrily at MacArthur for a moment and then began to talk. “First, the objective is Japan. Not the Philippines.”
“My dear King!” exploded MacArthur, hands flying out dramatically. “Of course the objective is Japan. The road to Japan, however, lies through the Philippines, for we must redeem this nation’s honor.”
“Mr. President!” King barked.
“You’re right,” said FDR. “Now, Douglas, you’ll get your turn in a few minutes. For now, I want us both to listen carefully to what he says, and then we’ll listen to you.”
MacArthur wore an innocent expression. “I was simply helping to lay the groundwork for this discussion.”
FDR looked sharply at MacArthur for a second, then he chuckled. “Go ahead, Ernie. I’ll keep Douglas quiet.”
“Silent as a mouse,” agreed MacArthur, just as King opened his mouth again.
“As I was saying,” said King, “the objective is Japan. Now, what’s the best way to get there and end this work? Air power. What does air power need? Bases.” He walked to his easel, a map of the South Pacific.
“What we need are air bases. We’ll take them away from the Japanese, island by island, using each captured base to stage the next attack. It’s the direct route. We’ll bypass the Gilberts but take the key Jap bases in the Marshalls. Then it’s on to the Marianas, where we’ll have bomber bases to strike the Home Islands. From there we’re ready for Okinawa. We won’t have entire countries to take, just small islands.”
“How about the Southwest Pacific?” asked Roosevelt. “What would you do with Douglas and his forces?”
“We outgun their navy now, and get farther ahead every week. Soon, we’ll have the resources to go in both directions at once, catching Japan in a squeeze play. Then we’ll be able to transport MacArthur’s army, defend it, and get it onto shore.”
“Let me see if I understand,” purred MacArthur. “I should send word to my brave, loyal soldiers in Bataan and elsewhere that they can sit and wait another year because the navy wants to take all the ships and attack Kwajalein and Saipan, for example, targets with minuscule military value. Is that right? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“No, you know damned well that’s not what I’m suggesting. The road to the Philippines is through Tokyo. We’ll rescue the Bataan survivors, MacArthur. But it’ll be because the Japs have surrendered.”
“So your proposal is to liberate Manila by conquering Kwajalein Island?” asked MacArthur. “I’m afraid I don’t see how that—”
“You can’t just dismiss this out of—”
“Dismiss it?” said MacArthur with a look of incredulity and innocence. “Dismiss it? No, Mr. President. My respect for the navy is boundless, truly boundless. In fact, Mr. President, let me say once again that MacArthur would sooner you give the supreme command to the navy rather than allow us to continue with this absurd split of forces. We need a unified campaign against Japan. Anything else is a waste. Admiral King recommends pushing through the Marshall Island chain at God only knows what costs, then on to the Marianas, simply to allow bombers to attack mainland Japan and its most closely held possessions. It’s madness! Why go to all that terrible and tragic waste when a liberated Philippines can provide every air advantage and more!”
King rounded on his adversary. “The Philippines. Always the Philippines. Just because you want to repair your failure—”
“My failure?” MacArthur’s face flushed. “My dear Admiral King. With the precious few resources I had available, and only a fraction of the supplies that were promised me, my brave men of Bataan and Corregidor held out against the Jap invaders longer and better than any other force in the Pacific. If you want to talk about failure, shall we look at the navy record?” His smile was cold.
King charged back. “Those twisted rumors and accusations you keep spreading are reprehensible, MacArthur. You don’t give a damn about American armed forces; you just want to satisfy your Philippine obsession. Got another a mistress stashed there?” King said with heavy sarcasm, referring to MacArthur’s long-ago affair with “Dimples” Cooper.
MacArthur’s eyes narrowed. “It is a good thing for you, Admiral, that the day of dueling is past. You have attacked my honor, sir.”
Roosevelt looked from MacArthur to King and back. “Boys, boys,” he pleaded. “Let’s be civil. We have a problem to solve, and name-calling won’t help.” The men looked like two boxers being kept apart by the referee. Roosevelt tried again. “Ernie, you want to hop up this island chain, bomb the Japanese enough to soften them up, then gain Okinawa as a base for invading the main islands if they don’t surrender. Is that about right?”
King nodded. “Essentially, Mr. President,” he agreed.
“And Douglas, you want to liberate the Philippines and then use those islands as a staging area for bombing and an invasion. Right?”
MacArthur waved his hand airily. “In a nutshell,” he said, “but there’s so much more th
at needs to be said. We have already secured eastern New Guinea. In January we will launch a bold operation—an amphibious assault against Hollandia that will carry us four hundred miles to the west in one stroke.”
“Are you forgetting about Wewak?” King challenged aggressively, jabbing. “There’s a hundred thousand Japs there, and it’s a helluva lot closer to you than Hollandia!”
“I am pleased to see that the admiral, like the General, has done his homework,” MacArthur said with a twinkle in his eye. “You are right—there are a hundred thousand enemy troops at Wewak, and at Wewak they will stay. We will simply pass them by.”
As King digested this bit of audacious planning, the General swept on. “From western New Guinea we are splendidly positioned to reclaim the Philippines—I believe, Mr. President, that my men can be in Manila sometime in the middle of 1944.”
“Look at the size of those islands!” King protested. “New Guinea! Luzon! Think of all the ground that you have to take, compared to Saipan, or Guam.”
“Spoken like a true admiral of the high seas,” MacArthur noted. “But therein lies the advantage of my route to Japan. The very size of those islands means that the enemy cannot fortify every beach, every little village and sheltered cove. We will get our forces ashore with minimal losses and then win a battle of maneuver. On Saipan, on the other hand, our brave marines would have to charge ashore under a veritable storm of steel and cordite! The costs of those landings—”
“All right,” interrupted FDR. “There are three choices I see. First, take Douglas’s route, in which case it makes sense that he be supreme commander. Second, go with Ernie’s route, and it would make sense for a navy man to be supreme commander. So far, so good, gentlemen?”
King nodded grudgingly. MacArthur opened his mouth, ready to argue again, but Roosevelt kept talking. “Or I can reaffirm the division of the Pacific and let each of you take your own route to Japan. Make it a race, so to speak, army against the navy.”
FDR rolled his chair close to King’s easel and looked at the map. “Ernie, as I see it, if we had started these approaches to Japan simultaneously, or if you’d started first, it would be absolutely clear that the approach should continue. But that didn’t happen. The Solomons took priority, and Douglas is getting close to taking control of all of New Guinea. He’s ahead of you.”
“Because of his scurrilous attacks on the navy!” King said, his voice rising in volume.
“That’s not entirely true. His troops have performed splendidly, you must admit. Besides, it doesn’t matter why,” replied Roosevelt. “Not anymore.”
MacArthur spread his arms in a welcoming gesture. “I agree. Let’s let bygones be bygones. But the President is right, Admiral. I am ahead. If you do some sort of abbreviated campaign, you can distract some of the Japanese navy, but the main action is the road through the Philippines and Okinawa into the underbelly of Japan.”
“‘Bygones,’” snarled King. “You sound like the boy who murdered his parents and then asked for mercy because he was an orphan.”
MacArthur laughed. “That’s pretty clever. I shall have to remember it.”
Roosevelt chuckled as well. “That was said by my most distinguished predecessor, Abraham Lincoln.” King grinned at MacArthur’s discomfiture at not knowing the quote. FDR turned back toward King with a serious expression. “But Ernie, even if I agree that Douglas was a bad boy, that doesn’t change the facts. He is ahead, and the other campaign is going to look like a sideshow.”
“All right,” growled King. “Let MacArthur plan his little battles, and I’ll make sure the navy helps him—but under central command from here at Pearl. Nimitz is your man, in spite of MacArthur’s attempts to ruin him.”
“That’s outrageous,” MacArthur snapped. “I rehabilitated the man. To say I somehow—”
“Oh, shove it up your ass, MacArthur,” replied King. “You make pretty speeches, but I can see exactly what you’re trying to do. You want the entire Pacific, and you’ll say or do anything, even at the cost of the war effort, to get what you want. Well, I’m on to you. It’s not going to work this time.”
The two standing men looked daggers at one another. The President looked back and forth between his two senior officers. Finally, he sighed.
“Ernie, I’d like to talk with you privately for a moment,” the President said. “Douglas, do you mind?”
MacArthur had a look of suspicion on his face. “I think it would be better to say everything in this group.”
“And I disagree, Douglas,” said the President. “Ernie, come with me.” Roosevelt began to wheel his chair away from MacArthur.
When the two men were out of MacArthur’s earshot, FDR turned to his chief of naval operations. “Ernie, he’s right. I know what he did to get it, and I wish there were something I could do to even the score. But he’s right.”
“That bastard is not getting my navy!” King growled forcefully. “I won’t stand for it.”
FDR shook his head sadly. “Ernie, it’s galling to lose to that man, I know. But you are going to have to. Can you do it with good grace?
King stood mute.
The President looked at him. “Ernie, the last time you offered to resign, I talked you out of it. Now it’s your turn to talk me out of asking for your resignation. If you can’t do this, I have to get another chief of naval operations.”
King, eyes narrowed, looked across the deck at his nemesis MacArthur. There was a long pause. Finally, he spoke. “I won’t preside over destroying the navy’s Pacific Fleet, Mr. President.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ernie. Very well.” FDR looked visibly older. “Would you like to be supreme commander of the Atlantic navy? You’d have to do what Ike wants, but you might find it easier to work with him. And you will have to run the navy’s end of the invasion of the European continent next year.”
“What I want is for that bastard to keep his hands off my navy. Hasn’t he done enough already?
“He’s done enough and more, Ernie,” the President said. “But on this, he’s right. He’s made himself right.” FDR paused. “Who would you recommend to succeed you?”
King spoke without hesitation. “Chester Nimitz,” he said.
“Nimitz. That’s a fine recommendation. I’ll take it. And Ernie, believe me, I tried to keep this from happening.”
“Very well, Mr. President,” King said stiffly. “Do you need me here any longer?”
“No, Ernie,” said FDR sadly. “You are dismissed.”
The President of the United States began rolling his wheelchair back toward the new supreme commander of FORPAC, the U.S. Forces Pacific Theater, leaving the demoted admiral standing still, his normally furious expression clouded by an aura of stunned disbelief.
MacArthur had been pacing back and forth. He stopped when the President came toward him.
“I’ve made my decision, Douglas,” Roosevelt said.
MacArthur looked at the President warily, ready to argue. “Sir?”
FDR went on tiredly. “You won, Douglas. You get the Pacific. Ernie will take the Atlantic.”
MacArthur paused, nonplussed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Chester Nimitz will become the new chief of naval operations. Ernie King will be commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet.”
“I—well, I’m sorry to hear that, but—”
“Douglas, be quiet,” FDR said, his own voice soft. “For once, be quiet. Your little games have cost me enough.”
“Games? Mr. President, I must—”
“I said be quiet. Douglas, you get what you want, this time. Your maneuvers have worked. But you did me a serious disservice. You have made me angry, and you may have weakened the war effort. Watch yourself, Douglas. This affair has cost you, too. Don’t give me an excuse to get rid of you.”
MacArthur put on his most gracious expression. “Mr. President, I’m very sorry that you perceive the situation in this manner. MacArthur only wants to be of service, and he serves
at the President’s pleasure. If recalling me is good for the nation, then—”
“It’s not good for the nation, and you know it,” interrupted FDR. “Cross me again, though, and you’ll be through. I mean it, Douglas.”
The man in the wheelchair looked calmly at his Pacific supreme commander, and the new CINCFORPAC looked back. After a few moments, MacArthur looked away. FDR turned his wheelchair around and rolled off the deck. King, still looking daggers, swiveled on his heel and followed the President.
MacArthur stood alone on the deck overlooking his Pacific Ocean.
ELEVEN
Philippines; new Mexico, Japan
• THURSDAY, 11 MAY 1944 •
BILIBID PRISON, MANILA, PHILIPPINES, 1320 HOURS
Carrying his battered tin cup carefully in both hands so as not to slosh any of his precious water over the rim, Johnny Halverson stepped out into the painfully bright sunlight. The dirt burned his bare feet. When he reached the shady area on the far side of the compound, he stepped gingerly around and over the sprawling bodies. No one offered to move. That took energy.
The prisoners had been moved to Bilibid, an ancient Spanish dungeon, some weeks earlier. The guards had been quiet as to the reason for the change, but the Filipinos had whispered the truth: MacArthur was coming! His armies had landed in the Philippines, and the liberation of the archipelago was well under way. For the prisoners of war, it was now a race: would liberation come first, or death?
Johnny reached the wall and squatted down in front of one of the men. “I brought you some water, Jerry,” he said, handing him the tin cup. “It’s even sort of clean.”
Lieutenant Jerry Rocker had a coughing spasm, after which he spit out some blood. He took the cup with both of his shaking hands and slowly drank about half of the warm, brackish water. Then he leaned his head back against the concrete and closed his eyes, as if the effort had exhausted him. “What’s the latest?” he asked in a voice not much above a whisper.
“There’s a helluva battle on Leyte right now. The Jap navy is finished,” Johnny said. “It can’t be too long before Mac gets up here to Luzon. Hold on for another month or two, and you’ll sleep in a real hospital bed with sheets and everything.”
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