MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

by Douglas Niles

  “First, we’re going to stop trying to wipe them all out. One strategy that General MacArthur has followed with great success up till now is just going around large concentrations of enemy soldiers and leaving them to wither on the vine. They don’t have the transportation to be able to move, so they’re out of the war. No casualties—on either side. When it comes down to it, all we need on Kyushu is an air base large enough to let General Kenney’s fighters do their jobs. The Japanese can have the rest of the island; we don’t need it. We have medium bomber bases on Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukus and plenty of space on Luzon for LeMay’s B-29s.”

  “Won’t the Japs just come after you?” asked Truman. He started walking over to the doors that led from the Oval Office to the garden.

  “Probably. But it’s easier and safer to fortify a position than it would be to go clean out a thousand caves one at a time when those caves are filled with soldiers who are determined to take at least one of our boys with them,” said Marshall, following him. “The Japanese counterattack on Okinawa caused some three thousand Aussie casualties, but the enemy lost more than ten times that many men KIA.”

  “Makes sense, I guess. But if I understand what you’re saying, the fewer Japs we kill, the better?” Truman started pacing.

  “There’s an Oriental writer on war named Sun Tzu. He says, ‘What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.’ If it’s what they want, then we don’t want them to have it.”

  “‘Attack the enemy’s strategy.’” Truman laughed. “Hell, that sounds like a Mark Twain joke. You know, I think everyone in this town must be using a corkscrew as a straightedge, the way things get twisted up. But I guess that’s what it’s like in the big leagues.”

  “I understand what you mean, sir. I feel the same way myself sometimes. Well, this plan is MacArthur’s recommendation, and I basically agree with it, Mr. President.

  “MacArthur’s Johnny-on-the-spot, and I guess I’d better respect that. But General—tell me, just between us, what do you think about MacArthur? I get the impression that half the military thinks he’s the greatest soldier since Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the other half think he’s the most overrated, puffed-up SOB that ever walked the Earth. Now, I remember General MacArthur from my days with the 129th in France. Somebody was always talking about MacArthur. He was with the Rainbow Division, right? Chief of staff, wasn’t he? How many silver stars did he win?”

  “Six, sir.”

  “And I remember that damned scarf of his. It was in every picture.”

  Marshall laughed. “It was his trademark, the way that hat and pipe are for him now.”

  Truman walked over to the windows that looked out onto the South Lawn. He looked at the threadbare material and a place where part of the frame had broken off.

  The President pointed to the broken frame. “Look at this, General. Just look at it. Rotten all the way through.”

  “I can see that, Mr. President. That’s terrible.”

  Truman turned to look directly at Marshall. “Go on, go on. I just spend all my day sitting still, and that’s not natural.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the chief of staff.

  Truman let the curtains fall back into place and walked back toward the sofas, with Marshall following again. The President stopped suddenly in the middle of the office and turned around. “But if he’s such a big hero, why did his troops start calling him the ‘Coward of Corregidor’? Never understood that one.”

  “It’s because he visited his men on Bataan only once during the entire siege. I don’t think it was because he was a coward—well, a physical coward, anyway. I don’t think he could face them after the mistakes he’d made.”

  “What mistakes were those? All I ever read made it seem like there was nothing MacArthur could have done.” Truman sat down in the armchair nearest his desk.

  The army chief of staff sat on the sofa to Truman’s right. “There was no way to win. But there were lots of ways to lose. MacArthur can’t bear losing, so he persuaded himself he could beat the Japanese at the beaches, and that they were going to wait another six months for him to get ready. When they arrived, he woke up and realized he’d left the food and ammunition where it was vulnerable. He led a brilliant retreat. It’ll be taught as a textbook lesson someday. But he lost the food and ammunition he was supposed to have stored up on Bataan.”

  “Hell, no wonder he couldn’t face them. They probably would have shot him.”

  “Douglas MacArthur is in many ways the finest military man the United States of America has ever produced. He’s a visionary, a leader of men, and a genius at the art of war. On the other hand, he’s got an ego that gets him into trouble over and over again.” Marshall picked up his coffee cup and drank.

  “I sort of figured out the ego problem all by my lonesome. I’ve known a few people like that myself,” Truman said. “More than one of them since I came to Washington, if you want to know the truth.”

  “You know, Mr. President, I don’t know how much you remember about Roman history, but he reminds me of Pompey the Great.”

  “Pompey. About all I remember, to tell the truth, is Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres from Latin class. Oh, and amo, amas, amat. Wasn’t my best subject. By the way, what made Pompey so great, anyway? Never met anybody who could answer that.”

  “It was a nickname. Pompey made his own nickname up and insisted people use it.”

  “He named himself ’the Great’?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s why MacArthur reminds me of him.”

  Truman chuckled. “Got it. When they were passing out ego, Mac went around a second time.”

  “Or maybe a third. It gets him into trouble. Nobody can praise him because he’s already vacuumed up all the credit.”

  “Should we keep him? Has he made a big mistake in this Kyushu mess?”

  “Some overconfidence, I suppose. But whoever took us into Kyushu would have run into the same problem. I think MacArthur’s recommendations are sound, and I endorse them.” Marshall finished his coffee and set the cup down on its saucer.

  “If you do, I do. Okay. Let’s change the subject. Well, sort of change the subject. Looks like George Patton is in trouble again.”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. President.”

  “What is it with these generals? You think it’s something in the water?”

  Marshall laughed. “No, sir. But there is something about senior command that attracts people with outsized egos…and mouths. If we’re in a war, there’s no one I’d sooner have leading my tanks than George Patton. But in peacetime, well, a man like Patton has a bit of trouble fitting in. Ike is moving him over to command the Fifteenth Army, which is responsible for documenting the history of the war.”

  “You’re going to turn Patton into a historian!”

  “He’s done it before, and he’s surprisingly good at it.”

  “Now wait a minute, wait a minute.” Truman stood up again and started pacing back and forth. “Didn’t you tell me you were sending General Hodges over to command MacArthur’s armored corps when he invades the main island of Japan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is he as good as Patton?”

  “He’s a very competent officer.”

  Truman looked at him sharply. “I guess I’ll take that as no. Why not send Patton over instead? That’ll get him out of Europe altogether. Kill two birds with the same stone that way.”

  “Well, the major difficulty with that idea, Mr. President, is that MacArthur doesn’t like subordinate officers who get as much press coverage as he does.”

  “In that case, General, I definitely want you to send Patton to Japan. Maybe he can get things moving over there. If that upsets MacArthur, then you just tell him you’re following the orders of your commander in chief. I do get to make decisions like this, don’t I?”

  “When you want to, yes, sir.”

  “Good. It’s settled.” Truman stopped pacing. “Anything else we
need to take care of this morning?”

  “No, sir, Mr. President. Thank you for your time.” Marshall stood up to shake hands.

  “Always glad to see you, General Marshall. Tomorrow morning, same time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You send Patton over there, all right? Unless you think of a very good reason not to, in which case we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “I’ll think about it, Mr. President, but I don’t see a problem,” Marshall said. Those two—Mac and Patton—deserve each other, he thought.

  As the army chief of staff left, he looked back to see the President of the United States pick up the broom handle again.

  • MONDAY, 9 JULY 1945 •

  HALSEY FIELD, SWPA FORWARD HEADQUARTERS, OKINAWA,

  0947 HOURS (OPERATION OLYMPIC, X-DAY + 112)

  General George S. Patton, fourth star still new on his shoulder—a booby prize for being kicked upstairs, he thought bitterly—asked specifically for no honors upon his arrival in Okinawa. Presidential order or no presidential order, he couldn’t afford to take MacArthur for granted.

  Nevertheless, when the final propeller on the four-engine C-54 stopped spinning and as the aircrew ran the mobile stairs up to the front hatch, he looked out to see a brigadier general waiting for him along with a small honor guard. Well, he couldn’t blame the one-star. Generals had been known to request “no honors” and throw a goddamn shit fit when their orders weren’t disobeyed.

  The hatch opened and the general’s aide-de-camp, a lieutenant colonel, bounded up the stairs. “Welcome to Okinawa, General Patton!” he said in a voice just a little too loud, in case any of the other passengers had missed the fact that they were traveling with Old Blood and Guts himself. This was particularly useless because the entire passenger list consisted of members of Patton’s headquarters organization, ranging from his chief of staff General Hobart Gay to his personal driver Sergeant John Mims.

  “If you’d be so kind, General…,” he said, then waved his hand in a gracious arc to the open hatch.

  Patton got up, back and hips aching from the long flight, and stretched. “Give me a moment, son,” he said. The sergeant serving as flight attendant handed him his helmet and helped him on with his jacket, and then he preceded the ADC out of the plane.

  He did a cursory inspection of the troops, paid a small compliment to the one-star, who was the base commander, and accepted a ride to his temporary quarters. He had just enough time to shower, shave, and change before his lunch meeting with MacArthur. Mims would have just enough time to press his pinks and greens. He planned to wear a normal barracks cap—it would look too obviously like sucking up to make it grommetless like Mac’s—and leave his ivory-handled revolvers behind.

  It had been a very long time since he’d been this nervous.

  Patton could see the scars of the kamikaze attacks throughout Bataan House as he entered. One whole wing had been demolished, and even now carpenters were at work, framing in stud walls for the new construction. Within the existing building, the teak paneling was patched in places with plywood, and sections of the remaining paneling were charred. A balcony facing the bay was closed off with a big DANGER sign. He sniffed. The smell of smoke persisted everywhere—smoke smell was damned hard to get rid of.

  MacArthur’s secretarial pool was located in the open center of the floor, with offices around the perimeter. The warrant officer who spotted him shouted, “Atten-SHUN!” There was a brief sound of chairs scraping wood, as everyone simultaneously stood.

  “As you were,” Patton said mildly.

  “General MacArthur’s compliments, General Patton,” the warrant officer said. “Coffee, sir?”

  Patton nodded. “Black.”

  It was obvious to him which office was MacArthur’s. It was the best corner office. It faced the bay on one side and a garden on the other.

  The door of the office immediately to MacArthur’s right and around the corner opened, and a one-star came out. “General Patton? Richard Marshall. I’m acting chief of staff.”

  “I heard about Sutherland,” Patton replied. He didn’t bother to add, “What a shame.”

  The warrant officer was bringing coffee as Marshall said, “General Patton, I’m sorry, but General MacArthur has been unavoidably detained and will be a little late for lunch. He hoped you’d feel free to use his office as a resting place in the meantime. You’ve come a long way from Europe.”

  “That will be just fine. From what I see it’s a shame I can’t sit out on that balcony.”

  “I wish you could, sir, but the structural engineers are still telling us it’s not yet safe.” Marshall opened the door to MacArthur’s office and ushered Patton inside.

  MacArthur’s desk was to the left, angled into the room but placed so both views were always available. There were two leather chairs in front of the desk, both on the overstuffed side, and there was a little conversation area with a sofa and two more chairs, all covered in a light brown fabric. A single bookcase mostly had pictures of MacArthur’s young son Arthur MacArthur IV, with a few actual books for decoration. There were a few pictures of MacArthur himself with various dignitaries and receiving various honors.

  Patton knew MacArthur was planning to play cat-and-mouse with him.

  Five-star generals who command entire theaters of operation got to pick their own senior subordinates, for the most part. Even though the army chief of staff theoretically was in charge, in the real world, individual skills, alliances, track record, and office politics had a lot more impact on personal power than hierarchical position. Patton knew—Ike had told him—that he owed his current situation to a presidential order. Even so, he didn’t discount Mac’s political skills. If he didn’t kiss Mac’s five-star asshole in just the right way, he’d be out, president or no president.

  Mac made him wait for a good twenty minutes before deigning to show up, then finally breezed in with the most clearly insincere apology Patton had ever heard. “How are you, George? Welcome to the final chapter of the war,” MacArthur said, shaking hands with every appearance of friendliness. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Whenever Mac wasn’t being a pompous, puffed-up asshole, he turned on what he evidently thought was “charm.” As far as Patton was concerned, that overly familiar fake warmth just made him a patronizing asshole instead of a puffed-up one.

  “Great to see you again,” Patton said, wearing the most sincere-looking smile he could fake.

  As MacArthur sat down behind his desk, Patton sat down in one of the leather chairs and only too late realized the trap: he was sinking so far into the chair he couldn’t easily maneuver. For an armor officer, that was worse than anything.

  MacArthur picked up a folder, obviously Patton’s service jacket, and opened it up, all with the appearance of a man who’d never looked at it before. He turned the pages one at a time, his face deepening into somewhat of a frown, until he finally put the file down. He leaned forward, steepled his fingers, and said, “A lot of the work’s already been done for this operation, and a lot was done with Courtney Hodges in mind.” General Courtney Hodges had commanded the First Army in Europe.

  “I’ve worked with Courtney, as you know. I can work with his plans.” They’ll fit me like a straitjacket.

  MacArthur continued to look at Patton over his steepled fingers. “As you must have expected, George, the Operation Coronet plans have been changed substantially based on our Kyushu experience during Olympic.”

  “Of course. I’d expect to work with that.” I’ll crawl over ground glass if I have to. I want this command. I want it so bad I can taste it.

  Again MacArthur paused, his eyes not leaving Patton, the rest of him still. “George, you were kicked out of Europe.”

  Not technically, he thought, but it was essentially true. “Yep.”

  “Because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson this time.” Don’t think you’re the only one in this room who
thinks about strategy, Mac. You think you’ve got me pinned. Wait.

  MacArthur shook his head sadly. “George, George. That’s not good enough. That’s not good enough at all. Tell me a single reason the Commanding General should believe that.”

  “I want as close to a total news blackout as possible. No press, no press conferences, no photos, no nothing. I’ll find an antipublic relations officer.” You really want to make sure I don’t get any credit. Okay. If that’s what it takes for me to command.

  MacArthur leaned back in his chair. He’s considering it, Patton thought.

  “The Pacific isn’t Europe, George. We don’t go for grandstanding here. From the lowliest recruit to the most senior flag officer, individual names and identities mean nothing. We’re the United States Army Forces, Far East, and we’re a team. We do it together and everybody shares equally.”

  MacArthur actually looked sincere, Patton thought. He probably believes it, too.

  “That suits me fine. It really does. What you said when I came in, ‘Welcome to the end of the war’—”

  “—‘final chapter of the war,’” MacArthur corrected.

  “—‘final chapter of the war.’ You’re right. This is it. It may be it for the rest of my life. I’ve got to be in it. Believe me, I’ve seen my name in the newspapers enough to be sick and tired of it.”

  At that, MacArthur smiled slightly. Then he leaned forward again. “I was talking about changes in the Operation Coronet plans earlier. Now that you’re here, I think you may be just the man for the job.”

  “I’m all ears.” Did I win this easily? Hell no, the son of a bitch has something else up his sleeve.

  “I want another FUSAG diversion.”

  In the run-up to D-day, George Patton, having been relieved of command of Seventh Army after the infamous soldier-slapping incidents, was given responsibility for the largest deception of the war. He commanded an imaginary First United States Army Group in planning an imaginary invasion of Calais, a deception good enough to trick eighteen German divisions into waiting for that invasion for nearly two months after D-day in Normandy.