Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  At USAFFE headquarters, a stocky grim-faced lieutenant colonel summoned Rogers into his office. It was MacArthur’s new chief of staff, Richard K. Sutherland, who explained to the awed Rogers that he would be working for “one of the biggest men in the United States Army,” and then dictated a long dispatch that Rogers transcribed. Sutherland examined the memo, and nodded. By the time Private Rogers went back to his barracks, he had secured the job he would hold for the next four years.2

  It was a stunning turnaround for the young man from Iowa, and a stunning turnaround for Douglas MacArthur. Just five months earlier, in June 1941, the military advisor to the Philippine Commonwealth and field marshal of the Philippine Army had seemed more forlorn and forgotten than ever. Now MacArthur had become, as his chief of staff Sutherland noted, one of the most important men in the U.S. Army. The reinstated MacArthur was commander in chief of all army forces in the Far East, and the man Roosevelt had personally appointed to turn the Philippines into the first line of defense against a Japanese attack that both Washington and Manila now believed was inevitable.

  This turnaround was in part a reflection of MacArthur’s undaunted belief that destiny had not meant for him to be sidelined in “these monumentally momentous days,” as he had put it in a letter to President Roosevelt the previous April. But it was also a reflection of events first in Europe, then in Asia, that improbably put Douglas MacArthur back in the spotlight—and back in command.

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  Indeed, by the spring of 1941 even MacArthur’s confidence in the value of his mission in the Philippines had been shaken. When rumors circulated that Commissioner Francis Sayre might soon be returning to the States, MacArthur fired off a letter to Washington asking for the job. “I will probably close out my work with the Philippine Army within the year,” he explained to one of Roosevelt’s aides, and even claimed that the mission had been a great success (MacArthur himself knew otherwise). He even added a brief encomium to Roosevelt as “our greatest statesman…our greatest military strategist”—a clear sign of how desperate he was.3

  The rumors were wrong. Sayre was not leaving Manila. But MacArthur did get back a letter from Roosevelt’s chief military aide, Brigadier General Edwin Watson. It was short, but in the circumstances, sweet. “The President asked me to write,” it read. “[H]e wished me to tell you that he wants you there in your military capacity rather than any other.”

  To the approval-starved MacArthur, the request was manna from heaven. He wrote back that he was “delighted that the President desires to utilize my services…I shall therefore plan to continue to develop the Philippine Army for an emergency.”4

  He had already sent a note to Roosevelt press secretary Steve Early (they had known each other when Early worked for the AP and MacArthur was the army’s media spokesman). Now he suggested that Early suggest to the president that MacArthur would be the man for the job of uniting the Filipino and American commands, if war came. He had already told another American correspondent, John Hersey, that “if Japan entered the war, the Americans, the British and the Dutch could handle her with about half the forces they now have deployed in the Far East”—especially if his twelve Filipino divisions were thrown into the mix, and particularly (it was implied) if the Allies had the right general in charge, namely, himself.5

  He waited for several weeks; there were no further messages from the White House. Tired of the delays, MacArthur made plans to shut down the advisory office and even ordered his chief of staff to book passage back to the States. He sent a copy of the order to Steve Early, hoping it would prompt some action on Washington’s part. And indeed this time the wheels began to turn.

  Ironically, it was the Nazi blitzkrieg victories in Europe that swiveled the attention of first Roosevelt, then the War Department, back to the Pacific. The serial defeats of France and Holland had left the fate of their Asian colonial possessions in serious doubt. The Japanese were now poised to help themselves to French Indochina and particularly the Dutch East Indies, which were a valuable source of rubber as well as oil. If they did, a war for control of Europe’s Asian empires would be almost certain—and the United States and Philippines would be caught in the middle of a Pacific-wide conflict.

  The United States might not have a battle-ready army in the Philippines, but it did have a battle-ready general, one only recently retired. Washington seized on MacArthur like a drowning man grabbing on to a spar. On May 21 Henry Stimson noted in his diary, “[George] Marshall told me that in case of trouble out there, they intended to recall General MacArthur into service again and place him in command.”6 The “they” in this case included not just the army but the president himself. Marshall himself then composed a letter to MacArthur on June 20, 1941, stating that closing the Advisory Mission might be premature, to say the least.

  Both the Secretary of War and I are much concerned about the situation in the Far East. During one of our discussions about three months ago it was decided that your outstanding qualifications and vast experience in the Philippines makes you the logical selection for the Army Commander in the Far East should the situation approach a crisis….It is my impression that the President will approve his recommendation.7

  So MacArthur was coming back; his career in the army was about to restart. Marshall warned it was too early to make the appointment “as he does not feel the time has arrived for such an action.” But all MacArthur had to do was to wait until something broke loose on the international scene, to make that time arrive.

  That something came two days later. On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s armies invaded Russia. For the Russians it was a disaster, as one city after another was buried in the German onslaught, and Red Army groups began surrendering en masse. But for Japan, it was a hell-sent opportunity. The war with Germany relieved Tokyo of the possibility of Russia interfering with its imperial ambitions across Asia.

  On July 21 the emperor’s new prime minister, Hideki Tojo, penned a note to the French Vichy government, demanding access to its airfields in Indochina and to Cam Ranh Bay, the best natural harbor on the South China Sea. American observation planes flying from Clark Field in the Philippines had already spotted Japanese troop transports en route south.8 On July 23 Vichy gave way. In a matter of twenty hours 50,000 Japanese soldiers were disembarking at Cam Ranh, and Japanese fighters and bombers were landing on airfields that were now French in name only—and were only a few hours’ flight from Manila.

  Roosevelt’s usual response to a crisis was to avoid any quick decision, preferring to wait until either the problem went away on its own accord or until a decision could no longer be put off without inviting disaster. This time, however, the president’s response to the news from Indochina was immediate. He ordered a freezing of Japanese assets in the United States. It was a major, even decisive step, since it meant that Japan could not tap American sources to buy the oil and natural gas it needed to keep the war machine humming.

  He also sent an urgent message to Manila. MacArthur was having breakfast when two aides burst in and presented him with the decoded version.

  “You are hereby designated as Commanding General, United States Army Forces in the Far East,” it read, a command consisting of both American and Philippine Commonwealth forces on air, land, and sea. “You are also designated as General Officer United States Army…effective July 26, 1941. Report assumption of command by radio.”9

  MacArthur glanced at the calendar on his desk. It was July 27. He had now been back in the United States Army for almost twenty-four hours (later that same day a bulletin came in confirming his appointment as temporary lieutenant general). He sent a message to his chief of staff, Richard Sutherland, who was about to tee off for a morning golf game, and ordered him back to the office.

  Sutherland had had the difficult job of replacing Jimmy Ord, the able and lovable major who had been MacArthur’s aide and Eisenhower’s best friend. No one had ever called Sutherland lovable. Hard-faced and emotionally distant with an abrasive temper, he was a g
raduate of Yale, where he won a second lieutenant’s commission by competitive examination and served in the AEF during the war before making the army his permanent profession. He had first met MacArthur at the War College in 1932–33, and was serving in China with the Fifteenth Infantry when MacArthur called him to the Philippines in March 1938.

  Sutherland sailed with his wife and daughter on a ship filled with Japanese soldiers and officers coming from Shanghai. It was a miserable trip. “Our room was next to two Japanese girls,” his daughter, Natalie, remembered. “Every night the Japanese officers got drunk” and one night [they] tried to assault the two Japanese girls, banging on their door and yelling, while the two girls cowered inside and sobbed. Sutherland didn’t dare intervene for fear of causing an international incident. But it was a glimpse at the dark underside of the Japanese warrior code, bushido, that he would not soon forget.10

  Sutherland’s timing was good. Jimmy Ord was dead; Eisenhower was about to embark on his tour of the States. When Ike returned on November 5, he found that Sutherland had largely displaced him as MacArthur’s chief of staff. MacArthur had written a glowing report to an officer-friend: “Sutherland has proven himself a real find. Concise, energetic and able, he has been invaluable in helping me clarify and crystallize the situation.”11

  Sutherland was helpful in two other ways as well. The first was an instinct for understanding MacArthur’s thinking down to the last nuance, even when it went unstated, which he could communicate to others with unambiguous clarity. The second was a willingness to be disliked, even hated, by subordinates in order to get the job done. This allowed him to play “bad cop” to his boss’s “good cop.” MacArthur hated personal confrontations or berating members of his staff in public. He was now able to leave that unpleasant task to Sutherland, who thrived on it.

  In any case, over the next seven years Sutherland would become closer to MacArthur than any other human being, with the exception of Jean. Sutherland’s rising status almost certainly encouraged Eisenhower’s decision to leave the Philippines and return to the States for good, leaving Sutherland a vast area of responsibility when MacArthur took on his new role as commander in chief.

  That same afternoon of July 27, 1941, they immediately set to work, studying every way to integrate the army of the Philippine Commonwealth, which MacArthur had built up from nothing, with the American forces of the Philippine Department, including naval and air assets—and do it all in time to ready the Philippines for an eventual Japanese invasion.

  At one point Sutherland looked up from the piles of papers on the desk and said, “You know, General, it adds up to an almost unsurmountable task.”

  MacArthur was examining a map. He looked up at Sutherland over his reading glasses and said, “These islands must and will be defended. I can but do my best.”12

  It was an insurmountable task. But as commander in chief MacArthur had certain advantages that he had never had as a mere military advisor.

  The first was the full faith and confidence of his superiors in Washington, who now bowed to the fact that Douglas MacArthur was America’s top soldier. In the final analysis, in fact, there really was no other choice for USAFFE commander general. No one else had the seniority of rank: the current chief of staff, George Marshall, who was the same age as MacArthur, had received his first star as brigadier general almost twenty years after MacArthur won his. No one else had the depth of experience, not just in the Philippines and Asia but also both in combat and behind a desk as army chief of staff.

  Also, no other serving general had his political clout on Capitol Hill, built over years and particularly with Republicans, on whom Franklin Roosevelt had to keep a wary eye as he readied the nation for the possibility of war. Finally, no one else in the army had the kind of personality that would allow him to take a job that any other officer would say was impossible and then say not only that it could be done, but that it will be done—and then devote every atom of energy and determination toward completing the task.

  Certainly MacArthur was thrilled with the appointment, and with returning to the institution to which both he and his father had dedicated their lives. “I feel like an old dog in a new uniform,” he shyly confessed to Jean. In public he was more strident. “I am glad to be able to serve my country at this critical time,” he told the press. “This action of the American government in establishing this new command can only mean that it intends to maintain, at any cost and effort, its full rights in the Far East….To this end both the American and Filipino soldiery can be expected to give their utmost.”13

  It was a commitment that in MacArthur’s own case was total and unbreakable. “I will not be taken alive,” he later said, speaking of what would happen if the Japanese took the Philippines—and he meant it.

  His second advantage was the renewed support of President Quezon, as well as other political parties in Parliament, including the Communists. The mercurial president who had been ignoring MacArthur and undermining his authority only months before now began calling him “my brother” again, and penned a personal note of congratulations: “I am fully confident that you will attain in this difficult assignment the same success that has crowned your every endeavor in the past.”14

  The appointment proved to Quezon’s satisfaction that now the United States would not abandon him or the Philippines, and that this was just the first step in a major buildup of U.S. military and financial support for the islands. All thought of neutrality, or striking a deal with the Japanese, vanished. “All we have, all that we are, is yours,” he jubilantly told MacArthur.15

  But MacArthur’s single biggest advantage was the American Regular Army troops he now commanded in the Philippines and their facilities, especially Clark Field. They were just over 22,000 men, manning barracks in Intramuros; Corregidor and the Manila Harbor defense system; Fort Stotsenburg near Clark Field; and a handful of fighter airfields on Luzon (only token forces were scattered on the other islands). “American troops” was something of a misnomer, since more than half of them were actually Philippine Scouts grouped into two regiments, the Forty-fifth and MacArthur’s old favorite, the Fifty-seventh.

  Indeed, the only completely American infantry unit in the entire Philippines was the Thirty-first Infantry, consisting of just 1,729 men. But all of them were solid professionals, men serving long enlistments with the discipline and training to match. The Thirty-first and the two Scouts regiments, plus some field artillery battalions, constituted the Philippine Department’s core unit, the Philippine Division. It was 10,000 strong when MacArthur assumed command, and was led by a tall, lean, tough-as-hardtack brigadier general named James Wainwright.

  MacArthur and Wainwright hit it off immediately when they met to discuss the future, and MacArthur explained his plans. He told Wainwright he was assuming command of all U.S. troops in the Philippine Department, including the Philippine Division, coastal defense units, the Twenty-sixth Philippine Scout Cavalry regiment, and other field artillery and military police units, as part of a single unified command, dubbed United States Army Forces Far East or USAFFE. All operational control of American units would pass on to his USAFFE staff, just as his staff would exercise all operational control over the army of the Philippine Commonwealth.

  In short, the Philippine Department of the U.S. Army was now transformed into a service command, MacArthur explained, “an administrative echelon analogous to a Corps area.”16 Its principal task would now be training and supplying the Philippine Army.

  That was going to be an enormous task. Over the last four years MacArthur had put together on paper a Philippine army of 4,000 regular troops and officers with 616 Reserve officers on active duty, and ten Reserve divisions of 7,600 men each.17 In reality, almost none of these men had proper training, let alone modern weapons. The American regular officers who were training the Filipinos found it a tough challenge. Colonel Glen Townsend, commander of the Philippine Eleventh Infantry Regiment, soon found out that about half his force consisted
of Christian Filipinos, mostly from the Ilocos provinces and the Cagayan Valley, and half were pagans from the mountains.

  “There were representatives of nearly all the former headhunting tribes, including Bontocs, Hugaos, Kalingas, Ilongots, Beuguets, and Lepantos,” he remembered. None of them spoke the others’ languages, which meant that every order had to be translated into a dozen different dialects before it could be obeyed.18 Most had no boots or even shoes; there were no blankets or mosquito nets; disease and poor hygiene were rampant.

  Yet somehow MacArthur expected his officers to pull this polyglot horde together into a fighting army in a matter of months, not years. He was still confident that he had time: MacArthur believed Japan could not possibly attack before the spring of 1942. In those precious months he believed he could build up a Filipino defense force, backed by more U.S. reinforcements, that would be sufficient for him to hold Luzon and the capital, Manila, against all comers, starting from the beachhead.

  This beachhead defense strategy would be the most controversial, and most criticized, aspect of MacArthur’s plan to hold the Philippines as it unfolded over the hot late summer and early fall of 1941. His biographer Clayton James has even said that MacArthur “must bear a large share of the blame” for events “that would soon lead to military disaster.”19 In retrospect, it’s hard to disagree. But at the time no one had tried to meet a seaborne invasion of islands like the Philippines, or thought about how to repel such an invasion. It was impossible for any commander to predict how a military operation that had no precedent, and that involved the engagement of forces that had never been tested in combat, would turn out—unless he was confident he would have the men and resources to do it.