What might have been accomplished along these lines had a daring admiral like William F. Halsey been Chief of Naval Operations will forever be a matter of conjecture. Historical events later seem to have been inevitable, but the fall of all Allied outposts in the Pacific that winter was far from being that. It is generally agreed, for example, that Wake Island could have been relieved. Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher led a formidable task force which was dispatched to Wake with that as his mission, but Fletcher, a timid seaman, made excuses and turned back. Once the Japanese were dug in on Wake, Guam, and the Gilberts, however, their eastern flank was secure and they could tighten their hold on the Philippines. As late as mid-January little vessels could reach Corregidor at night, but by the end of February, with the navy still unwilling to risk a single sailor on convoys, only submarines, light planes, and, occasionally, a small, lucky craft, were able to bring MacArthur supplies.
During the five-month investment of Luzon not a single American soldier, warplane, or warship reached the Rock. Of six freighters chartered by Hurley, none docked north of Cebu Island. The General cabled Brett that, negotiating by radio, he had engaged the Anakan Lumber Company, a Philippine contractor, to unload cargo in Gingoog. This was a considerable achievement for a commander under siege, but it was unavailing. Though boats with such exotic names as the Don Isidro and the Dona Nati were standing by to ferry a half-million rations and nearly four million rounds of bullets to Luzon, they waited in vain. The connection could not be made. Probably they would have been sunk anyway. Brett radioed back that two blockade-runners were on their way to Gingoog, but both captains, intimidated by the enemy’s naval might, turned away. The only vessels MacArthur could rely upon were those which traveled underwater. Five subs made seven safe voyages to him in these months. One of them, the Seawolf, brought him thirty-seven tons of ammunition. The General considered loading the Philippines’ bullion on the Seawolf, for her return trip, but decided to send army and navy aviators instead. (He told them that they were “literally” worth their “weight in gold.”) Later, when some of the bullion was shipped out on the Trout, it was because the skipper needed ballast.94
One of the last ships to slip southward through the blockade and reach Brisbane carried war correspondents who had covered the struggle until they themselves had little chance of escaping the embattled island. The Australians, they discovered on arrival, were as frightened by the Japanese onslaught as the inhabitants of Corregidor. Hurley thought their terror justified; in a long memorandum to Marshall he cabled that the country was “extremely vulnerable” to an enemy drive because of “the present state of preparations for the defense of Australia.” Eisenhower, though he agreed that Germany must be defeated before a serious offensive could be mounted against Japan, believed that Australia and New Zealand would be doomed if the enemy captured New Caledonia and the Fijis, cutting the supply lines of the lands down under. Responding to this threat, transports bearing troops and planes turned their prows that way, but none of them headed toward Manila. The basic Allied strategy remained unchanged. Hitler was still the prime target. Since the beginning of the stand on Corregidor, German U-boats had sunk 206 ships—1,205,583 tons—off the East Coast of the United States, yet convoys were leaving daily for Egypt and England; a bridge of bombers was being thrown across the Atlantic; American GIs had begun landing in Northern Ireland on January 26; and despite the loss of sixty-nine vessels on the Murmansk run, the grim effort to supply the Soviet Union with tanks and munitions was accelerating.95
None of this was lost on Manuel Quezon. Upon leaving his capital on Christmas Eve, he writes in his memoirs, he and his cabinet had been “very hopeful that before Bataan and Corregidor were forced to surrender, sufficient help would come for the American and Filipino forces to take the offensive and drive the enemy out of the land.” But now his doubts were growing. Each time he had mentioned them to MacArthur, the General had reassured him, “I will bring you in triumph on the points of my bayonets to Manila.” Quezon had replied submissively, “I am willing to do what the government of the United States may think will be most helpful.” Now, however, he was growing mutinous. On January 22, while he was sitting under a canvas canopy outside the tunnel entrance and swatting at passing flies, his radio set picked up a Roosevelt fireside chat. The President spoke vehemently of the Allied determination to defeat Berlin and Rome first; Tokyo’s turn would come later. As the broadcast continued with no mention of the Philippines, its president’s face grew redder and redder. Finally he shouted to everyone within earshot: “Come, listen to this scoundrel! Que demonio! How typical of America to writhe in anguish at the fate of a distant cousin, Europe, while a daughter, the Philippines, is being raped in the back room!” He summoned MacArthur and asked him, “Why don’t I go to Manila and become a prisoner of war?” 96
The General predicted that the Japanese would imprison Quezon in Malacarian Palace, make a puppet of him, and forge his name on proclamations. He also hinted that the Filipinos fighting on Bataan would look upon their president as a turncoat. Quezon’s rage subsided, but without consulting MacArthur further he sent FDR a wire. “This war is not of our making,” he reminded Roosevelt. No government, he said, “has the right to demand loyalty from its citizens beyond its willingness or ability to render actual protection.” He said, “It seems that Washington does not fully realize our situation nor the feelings which the apparent neglect of our safety and welfare have engendered in the hearts of the people here,” and he pleaded for help.97
FDR’s answer to this eloquent appeal is hard to comprehend, let alone defend. Roosevelt said: “Although I cannot at this time state the day that help will arrive in the Philippines . . . vessels . . . have been filled with cargo of necessary supplies and have been dispatched to Manila. Our arms, together with those of our allies, have dealt heavy blows to enemy transports and naval vessels . . . . A continuous stream of fighter and pursuit planes is traversing the Pacific. . . . Extensive arrivals of troops are being guarded by adequate protective elements of our Navy.” It would be difficult to frame a statement more at odds with the truth, or one surer to boomerang. Ten days later the President radioed the defenders that no more could be done for them. At the end of this singular about-face he told MacArthur: “I . . . give you this most difficult mission in full understanding of the desperate situation to which you may shortly be reduced.”98
Quezon was livid, and before he could respond he heard another broadcast. This time the station was much closer. It was in occupied Manila, just across the bay, and the speaker, old General Emilio Aguinaldo, was urging MacArthur to yield to superior force and lay down his arms. After he had finished, a Japanese official came on and announced, in English and Tagalog, that Prime Minister Hideki Tojo had decided to grant independence to the islands in the near future. The president of the commonwealth dictated a message to Roosevelt, charging that he and his people had been “abandoned” by the United States and declaring it “my duty, as well as my right, to cease fighting.” MacArthur talked him out of sending it, but the General was worried; he radioed Marshall that the Aguinaldo broadcast should be counterbalanced by U.S. propaganda whose purpose would be “the glorification of Filipino loyalty and heroism.”99
Quezon’s bitterness was growing, however. To Carlos Romulo he said: “We must try to save ourselves, and to hell with America. I tell you our . . . country is being destroyed. The fight between the United States and Japan is not our fight.” After two days of brooding, he assembled his Filipino cabinet and asked its members to join him in demanding that Washington grant the Philippines immediate independence, with neutralization and the evacuation of all American and Japanese troops to follow. Osmeña and Manuel Roxas, the president’s favorite Filipino politician, were troubled, but they reluctantly agreed. The Quezon message to Roosevelt was sent through War Department channels on February 8. In it he pointed out that “after nine weeks of fighting not even a small amount of aid has reached us from the United States
. Help and assistance have been sent to other belligerent nations, . . . but seemingly no attempt has been made to transport anything here. . . . Consequently, while perfectly safe itself, the United States has practically doomed the Philippines to almost total extinction to secure a breathing space.” He said that “conditions being what they are we should initiate measures to save the Filipinos and the Philippines from further disaster.” The only way to do that, he concluded, was to realize MacArthur’s dream of 1935—to transform the Philippines into a “Pacific Switzerland.” 100
This historic communication—the first peal of the Third World’s liberty bell—was accompanied by cables to FDR from the two ranking Americans on Corregidor. High Commissioner Sayre said: “If the premise of President Quezon is correct that American help cannot or will not arrive here in time to be availing, I believe his proposal for immediate independence and neutralization of [the] Philippines is the sound course to follow.” It says much about the true power structure in the archipelago that this political opinion, coming from a high government official, was virtually ignored by Washington, while the judgment of General MacArthur was considered immensely important. MacArthur, for once, understated his views. After a careful description of his precarious position on Luzon, he warned:
Since I have no air or sea protection, you must be prepared at any time to figure on the complete destruction of this command. You must determine whether the mission of delay would be better furthered by the temporizing plan of Quezon, or by my continued battle effort. The temper of the Filipinos is one of almost violent resentment against the United States. Every one of them expected help and . . . they believe they have been betrayed in favor of others. . . . So far as the military angle is concerned, the problem presents itself as to whether the plan of President Quezon might offer the best possible solution of what is about to be a disastrous debacle. It would not affect the ultimate situation in the Philippines, for that would be determined by the results in other theaters. If the Japanese government rejects President Quezon’s proposition it would psychologically strengthen our hold because of their Prime Minister’s public statement offering independence. If it accepts it, we lose no military advantage because we would still secure at least equal delay. Please advise me.101
If the men on Corregidor meant to shock Washington, and they probably did, they succeeded. Eisenhower called the memoranda “a bombshell.” Stimson’s reaction to the first paragraphs of Quezon’s decoded message, the secretary wrote in his diary, was: “I don’t blame him, although his telegram brought forward a number of alleged instances of failure to help on our part which were not true.” The next day, however, Stimson decided the full cable was “most disappointing . . . wholly unreal.” What was “worse,” he wrote, was MacArthur’s “very somber picture of the Army’s situation” and his going “more than halfway towards supporting Quezon’s position.” He, Roosevelt, and Marshall conferred in the oval office, and they found that they were in complete accord. “The central problem here was moral,” Stimson wrote. “It was a part of the necessary tragedy of war that this moral issue must be met by a command to other men to die.” The Philippines, they agreed, was a possession of the United States. Yielding to Quezon on this point would be like the French giving up Indochina, the Dutch parting with Indonesia, the British freeing Burma and India.102
In his reply to Quezon, which Stimson drafted, Roosevelt said that the proposal from Corregidor was unacceptable. However, he added, “so long as the flag of the United States flies on Filipino soil as a pledge of our duty to your people, it will be defended by our own men to the death. Whatever happens to [the] present American garrison, we shall not relax our efforts until the forces which are now marshalling outside the Philippines return to the Philippines and drive out the last remnant of the invaders from your soil.” Quezon, infuriated, rose from his wheelchair outside Malinta and told those around him that he had been “misled into believing that reinforcements would arrive in time to save the Philippines.” He asked rhetorically: “Who is in a better position, Roosevelt or myself, to judge what is best for my people?” Exhausted, he sank into the wheelchair, called for his secretary, dictated his resignation as president of the commonwealth, and said he would sign it in the morning. At daybreak, however, he encountered Osmeña when both were on their way to the latrine. Osmeña told Quezon that he was making a mistake, that if he persisted in resigning, history might judge him as a coward and a traitor. Moreover, he said, if he took his family to Manila, his daughters might be raped by Japanese soldiers. Squatting on the crude wooden seat, Quezon brooded. At last he said: “Compadre, perhaps you are right. I shall think it over.” Romulo came up a few minutes later on a similar errand. Osmeña said to him: “I believe our president has changed his mind.” And so he had. The matter was never mentioned again. The old patriot’s fiery spirit was broken. When he was told that he and his family would be evacuated to Australia and then to America, he assented almost meekly.103
The answer to MacArthur, also signed by FDR, was drawn by Marshall and Eisenhower. He was told to continue the struggle “so long as there remains any possibility of resistance.” After that, capitulation was permissible, but the neutralization of the islands was out of the question. Then, like a death knell: “The duty and the necessity of resisting Japanese aggression to the last transcends any other obligation now facing us in the Philippines. I particularly request that you proceed rapidly to the organization of your forces and your defenses so as to make your resistance as effective as circumstances will permit and as prolonged as humanly possible.” MacArthur replied: “My plans have already been outlined in previous radios; they consist in fighting [on] my present battle position in Bataan to destruction and then holding Corregidor in a similar manner. I have not the slightest intention in the world of surrendering or capitulating the Filipino elements of my command. . . . There has never been the slightest wavering among the troops. I count upon them equally with the Americans to hold steadfast to the end.” Acknowledging this, Stimson wired back: “The superb courage and fidelity of you and Quezon are fully recognized by the President and every one of us.”104
It was at this point that MacArthur decided that he must die. There seemed to be no other way out. For one mad moment he thought once more that Stalin might come to his rescue. He issued a florid communique declaring that “the world situation at the present time indicates that the hopes of civilization rest on the worthy banners of the courageous Russian Army.” He wrote that “the scale and grandeur” of the Soviets’ “smashing counterattack,” which crushed the Nazis in the very outskirts of the Russian capital, “marks [sic] it as the greatest military achievement in all history. “ Then he waited. And waited. Tass broadcast his judgment in all the languages of Asia and Europe, and Robert E. Sherwood observed that “from then on, the Russian propagandists were much more favorably disposed toward American fighting men,” but Red Army transports didn’t appear off the coast of Luzon. Stalin felt that his allies should create a second front for him.105
On Corregidor there was a tacit agreement that the possibility of defeat would not be discussed. Colonel Warren Clear, a general staff officer who had been trapped in Manila on December 8, broke this by telling MacArthur that he thought Roosevelt and the War Department had been lying all along. No one in Washington had ever contemplated reinforcing the Rock, Clear said; all they expected of MacArthur was that he hold out as long as possible, tie up Homma’s troops, and delay the Japanese drive southward. The pledges of aid to MacArthur and Quezon, and FDR’s broadcast to the Philippine people, Clear believed, had been meant to encourage the Filipinos so that they would continue their stubborn resistance. After a long pause the General said bitingly: “If you are correct, then never in history was so large and gallant an army written off so callously!” Like many of his superlatives, this one crumbles under examination—Napoleon left equally courageous troops in Egypt and Russia—but under the circumstances some license with the truth is understan
dable. He had reason to feel that he had been betrayed. In the words of D. Clayton James: “Like the false encouragement given by physicians to some dying patients, the hopeful words of Roosevelt and Marshall perhaps were intended to brace MacArthur and his men to fight longer than they would have if told the truth. If so, these words were an insult to the garrison’s bravery and determination.”106
Roosevelt had approved of capitulation, but there was never any possibility that MacArthur might surrender to Homma. One historian has called the General “a warrior straight out of medieval times,” and in the Middle Ages knights fought to the death. He had said of Marshal Petain that Petain “should have cut off his hand” rather than negotiate the Rethondes armistice. He had no intention of following the marshal’s example. Shaking hands with two war correspondents who were leaving on a small freighter, he said: “Even if you don’t make it, even if you are drowning at sea or being machine-gunned in a lifeboat, or starving on a raft, don’t regret having tried, for if we don’t get reinforcements, the end here will be brutal and bloody.” He had no doubt that some of the blood would be his own. He believed, he said, that he had “reached the end of the road.” The only question was whether his wife and son should stay with him. Marshall radioed that he would send a submarine for them, and Dona Aurora suggested to Jean that she and her boy leave with the Quezons on the Swordfish. Jean didn’t even discuss the question with her husband. “We have drunk from the same cup,” she told Mrs. Quezon; “we three shall stay together.” Then she scribbled a note to the General, explaining her decision. Sergeant Adversario carried it into the tunnel. MacArthur came out and talked to her about it. The others, who had withdrawn to leave them alone, noticed that he was speaking earnestly and she kept shaking her head. Then he returned to his lateral and radioed Marshall that his little family preferred to remain on the island and share “the rigors of war with me.” To an aide he said, “Jean is my finest soldier.” Another aide hesitated and then asked about Arthur’s fate. The General said crisply: “He is a soldier’s son.”107
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