He spoke of being forced into retirement in 1937; of his efforts to arm the Philippines in time for the country’s independence in 1946 and to protect it from the growing Japanese danger. He spoke of the failed campaign just past, trying to analyze what had gone wrong and why. He spoke of his epic bouts with Washington, including the most recent, over the order to leave Corregidor.
His voice choked as he spoke of that. Huff realized that he was listening to a man who had sunk just about as far down as a man could get; a man who had lost all his possessions not once but twice; a man who had lost the battle and the campaign, and now his command.
A man who had almost lost his own self-respect.
MacArthur may not have used the words he wrote to Bonner Fellers more than a year later: “A merciful God has miraculously brought me through so far, but I am sick at heart at the mistakes and lost opportunities that are so prevalent,” but he certainly felt them that night on PT-41.38
But Huff also realized that although MacArthur “was in the trough of the wave at the moment, he had no intention of staying there. His jaw was set. His face was grim. When he said he was planning to return to the Philippines, he meant it, and he was already planning how to do it.”39
MacArthur made one last pledge. “Sid,” he said, “if we ever get to Australia, the first thing I’m going to do is make you and [Major LeGrand Diller, his aide-de-camp] lieutenant colonels.”
Huff thanked him and then, as the general fell silent, tried to sleep. His mind, however, was racing with all that MacArthur had said—including the fact that Diller was on the PT boat that was still missing. If Diller didn’t make it to Australia, who was to say that any of them would?
And so they sailed on into the night.
—
Cagayan de Misamis was a small settlement, facing onto the sea. In the early morning of March the rector of the tiny Jesuit college there, Father Edward Haggerty, thought he heard aircraft engines passing over as he prepared for Mass. Instead, they were the engines of PT-41 and PT-34 as they limped into Cagayan harbor.40
They had traveled 560 miles through Japanese-controlled waters—with Bulkeley continuously at the helm for thirty-five hours—before sighting landfall shortly before 6:30 A.M. Bulkeley then guided both boats into the harbor to find a Colonel William Morse waiting for him with a hastily assembled honor guard of American soldiers.
The first person Morse saw was MacArthur, standing at the prow looking like “Washington crossing the Delaware,” Morse remembered later. Jean was standing behind him, clutching her belongings in a red bandanna—her purse had been lost overboard—as MacArthur stepped down and helped her off the boat. He returned Morse’s salute and the honor guard’s, and turned back to the captain of PT-41 one last time.
“Bulkeley,” he said, “I’m giving every officer and man here the Silver Star for gallantry. You’ve taken me out of the jaws of death, and I’ll never forget it.”
Then he turned to Morse and asked where he could relieve himself.41
Three hours later he was standing in the office of the commander of the Mindanao garrison, General William Sharp, when Sharp introduced the astonished Father Haggerty. A Japanese air raid started moments later, and after the commander of USAFFE excused himself and took his wife, little Arthur, and Ah Cheu to a bomb dugout, he came back to Haggerty.
“Would you like to go to a shelter, Father? There are only two planes; I never bother about so few.”
“No, your calmness makes me feel brave,” the padre stoutly said.
So they sat in General Sharp’s office as bombs and antiaircraft guns went off outside, and talked.
MacArthur explained that he was going to Australia at President Roosevelt’s order to start an offensive to retake the Philippines. “Bataan cannot be taken if food holds out,” MacArthur affirmed. “The men on Bataan are splendid….They have proven their valor far beyond my expectations—beyond the expectation of friends and, especially, the enemy.”
It took five minutes for the all clear to sound. MacArthur went to find his family. It still wasn’t clear to Haggerty if MacArthur’s mention of “the enemy” referred to the Japanese or to Washington, or both.42
—
Over a breakfast of fresh pineapple—the first fresh fruit any of the group had had since they left Manila—MacArthur learned from General Sharp that their troubles were far from over.
There had been a mix-up on the dates when planes were supposed to arrive from Australia. Four B-17s had taken off on the 12th instead of the 13th to meet them. Two of the planes had developed engine trouble and turned back, while a third had crashed into the sea. The fourth had similar engine difficulties but managed to limp in to Del Monte airfield that evening. But since it couldn’t remain on the ground in the daylight without attracting Japanese bombers and fighters, and had no functioning brakes or superchargers, Sharp had ordered the pilot to take off and head back to Australia that morning. MacArthur had just missed him.
No planes on Del Monte; no planes on the way. MacArthur had to send a sharp order to General Brett summoning three more Flying Fortresses. “This trip is most important and desperate and must be set up with absolutely the greatest of care”—which, the message implied, it had not been so far.43
There were two bits of good news. Around noon the remaining lost PT boat, PT-35, pulled up at Cagayan pier with a tired but relieved group of passengers that included Colonel Willoughby, Diller and Wilson, and newly minted Master Sergeant Rogers. It turned out they had gotten separated from the others during that black night of the 11th and completely missed the assembly point at Tagavayan by several miles. Instead they had tied up alongside a deserted island all day on the 12th, expecting any minute to be spotted by the Japanese.44
The other good news was that eight of the crew of the ditched B-17 had managed to swim to shore, and were now in safekeeping at the plantation. Sutherland spoke to them and introduced the pilot, Henry Godman, to MacArthur.
“Anyone as lucky as you are,” Mac swore, “can serve with me.” And so Godman became the GHQ’s first staff pilot and was added to the list of people headed for Australia.45
Now there was nothing to do but sit and wait.
—
On the day MacArthur arrived in Cagayan, March 12, the commander of Japanese forces on Java accepted the surrender of his British, Australian, and American counterparts and their 60,000 troops—the Dutch army on the island having surrendered days before. It marked the ignominious end of ABDACOM, the first effort to organize joint Allied resistance to Japan—and the last until MacArthur would arrive on the scene.
Meanwhile, on March 8, Japanese soldiers had landed unopposed on the island of New Guinea, at Lae and Salamaua overlooking Huon Bay. Their mission was to build an airfield for launching air attacks on Australia, even as a Japanese submarine, I-25, was using a floatplane to reconnoiter strategic points in New Zealand.
The Japanese noose on the Western powers was tightening—and not just in the Philippines. It would be up to MacArthur to figure out how to loosen it, and reverse the tide of war—that is, if he ever reached Australia.
Because the noose was tightening around Cagayan, as well. Japanese patrols were operating only thirty miles away—while Del Monte’s 500 air force personnel could not have held off a determined attack, had the local Japanese commander known what an incredible prize was just beyond his grasp. Sergeant Rogers was shown a cave where he was told MacArthur and his party could take refuge if the Japanese did attack. Since MacArthur had just escaped one set of underground tunnels, it’s not clear what he would have said about having to hide in another.46
So there really was nothing to do but wait. Quarters were tight—MacArthur’s staff had to find cots and sleep in the plantation clubhouse—and daily Japanese air attacks sent everyone scrambling for bomb shelters. But after the deprivations of Corregidor, Del Monte seemed a veritable paradise. One could walk the fields and pick fresh bananas, pineapples, and oranges; the officers’ cl
ub offered tea, coffee, and other refreshments, “and most of all a great sense of freedom and release.”
Still, there was no denying that every day of delay increased the chances that the Japanese would find out where they were. And as they waited, the Japanese raids intensified.
Then on Monday, March 16, the welcome news came by radio: the Flying Fortresses were coming in that night. The field had no lights, so they used car headlights and flares to guide the planes in just before midnight.
There was still one problem. Only two bombers had made it. If everyone in the party of twenty-one was going, the pilots said, they would have to leave everything, absolutely everything, behind if the B-17s were to take off.
No one was in the mood to argue. All baggage was thrown aside as the group divided in two and hastily boarded the planes. The base ordnance officer found a mattress for the general and his family to sleep on in the navigator’s compartment.47
One by one, the engines came to life—although one of them coughed and sputtered and showed every sign of conking out. As the plane rumbled down the runway, the passengers wondered if they would ever get in the air, but slowly, painfully they did. Then they wheeled east until they were completely clear of the Mindanao coast—and any stray Japanese night air patrols—before heading south for Darwin, Australia.
The miles melted away in the darkness, mile after mile and hour after hour. Passing thousands of feet below them were Japan’s latest conquests. First Java and the Dutch East Indies, then Timor, and finally northern New Guinea.
What was MacArthur thinking as he flew off into the night and left the Philippines, the island he had sworn to defend even to the death of himself and his family?
No eyewitnesses tell us, but just before leaving, MacArthur had penned a long letter to President Quezon that reveals as much about his state of mind as any document from that period.
“An entirely new situation has developed,” it read. “The United States is moving its forces into the southern Pacific area in which is destined to be the great offensive against Japan. The troops are being concentrated in Australia which will be used as a base for the offensive drive to the Philippines. President Roosevelt has designated me to command this offensive and has directed me to proceed to Australia for that purpose….As a matter of fact I had no choice in the matter, being preemptorily ordered by President Roosevelt himself. I understand forces are being rapidly accumulated and hope that the drive can be undertaken before the Bataan-Corregidor situation reaches a climax.”48
In his mind, at least, three points were as bright and clear as the sunrise coming through the cabin windows as they approached Australia.
First, he had not deserted his men on Bataan and Corregidor; he had been ordered to leave by his president, the commander in chief.
Second, on arriving in Australia he would set to work assembling the army he needed to relieve the forces he had left behind in the Philippines, which were still under his command, and to liberate the islands from their Japanese invader.
Third, once the Philippines was liberated, he would devote himself to leading the final great offensive that would crush Japan and set Asia free.
CHAPTER 18
TAKING SUPREME COMMAND
They are strong, I tell you very strong. With it all, we shall have them.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL TO PAUL MAZE, SUMMER 1939
There’s a photograph of Jean and Douglas MacArthur in the dining car of a train to Adelaide, taken hours after they had arrived in Australia from the Philippines. Jean looks well dressed but bleary. Sir Boss is drawn and pensive, with a nervous and subdued smile.
There was reason for them to be subdued: black flies that were swarming throughout the cabin. As MacArthur’s aide Sid Huff snapped pictures for posterity, Jean—who had a horror of flies—had grabbed a piece of toast and popped it into her mouth. She was suddenly frozen in horror: there had been a black fly on the toast she was swallowing.
MacArthur laughed. “It’s all right, Jeannie,” he said. “Just swallow it. A fly won’t kill you.”1
It was but one bizarre incident among many that had befallen them in the last twenty-four hours, hours when they had suddenly passed from being desperate refugees to celebrities and would-be saviors for a nation, namely, Australia, that was hungry for both.
The first incident came as they were approaching Darwin in their B-17, in the growing light of dawn. A radio report warned them that Darwin was under Japanese air attack. Instead they would have to land at an emergency strip called Batchelor Field, fifty miles from Darwin.2
For the passengers, including Sid Huff, being back on land was nothing less than a miracle, as they unwound their weary bodies from the plane’s cramped interior and finally found their feet standing on solid ground.
“Never, never again, will anybody get me on an airplane!” Jean exclaimed with real vehemence. “Not for any reason!” She appealed to Huff to find some way to get them to Melbourne without having to fly.
Huff inquired, but Jean’s wish wasn’t going to happen. Even as the stiff and tired group were finishing a meager breakfast, they heard a new report: Japanese bombers were headed for Batchelor Field next.
Dick Sutherland acted fast. Their bombers would have to refuel and take off for Alice Springs, 800 miles away. It was a two-hour flight at most, Sutherland calculated; then they could find other, non-aerial transport the rest of the way to Melbourne.
“You get Jean on that plane,” Sutherland warned Huff in a voice that brooked no opposition.3
In fact, the commander in chief and his wife were too tired to argue. But as they boarded the plane and stood in the aisle, the plane began to rumble down the runway. MacArthur lost his balance and barked furiously at Huff: “Sid, get that pilot’s name!” It was only then that he learned that the airfield was about to be bombed, and that it was leave now or possibly never leave at all.
They flew over one of the most barren regions in Australia, empty desert punctuated by rows of rugged, impassable mountains—“the end of civilization,” Huff remembered. His dismal thoughts were reinforced as they landed in Alice Springs. A few clapboard houses, a few shops and stores, a blast of stifling heat, and a constant cloud of biting, snarling black flies. But there was also a railroad track that headed out across the horizon toward Melbourne.
Jean finally put her foot down. There would be no more air flights; no more reliance on the resources of the U.S. government. When MacArthur’s old friend Patrick Hurley unexpectedly flew in by chartered plane, and after happy greetings offered his plane’s services to carry everyone to Melbourne, Jean said:
“No, thank you, no. We’re going by train.”4
At that moment, the army finally came through. There was a regular passenger train once a week, but the army had arranged for a special train to leave that afternoon, March 18. It wasn’t much to look at: it was an old-fashioned smokestack engine with a cowcatcher in front and a coal car behind. There were two passenger coaches but no plush seats, only wooden benches on either side of the aisle. Yet once Jean MacArthur walked onto the train, Douglas, little Arthur (who was excited to be on a train for the first time in his life), and the rest of the staff followed.
The moment they left Alice Springs, MacArthur began to relax and unwind. Dinner was tedious, since the engineer had to stop the train, allow everyone to disembark and then board the dining car, where people had to climb over the benches to find their place at the long dining table.
Afterward MacArthur returned to his bench seat and watched the Australian desert landscape slip by with hypnotic monotony. His head began to nod, his eyes to close. Slowly he began to tip in the direction of Jean, who was seated next to him. A few minutes later his head was in her lap and he was fast asleep.
“I knew this train trip would be best,” Jean murmured to Sid Huff. “This is the first time he’s really slept since Pearl Harbor.”5
For more than six hours MacArthur slept the sleep of the dead.
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It took three days to get to Adelaide. Three days in which the outside world—the Philippines, Japan, and the United States—was shut out while the black flies were shut in, and MacArthur could finally sleep, adjust, and become the fearless intrepid commander once more, just as Jean had planned.
Tubs of ice held the food they were to eat on the trip. There was no sleeping car at first, but they picked up one later on the journey—and both Jean and Ah Cheu made up the bunks every morning.6
On the third day they bade goodbye to their old-fashioned train and switched to the governor of South Australia’s special train for the overnight trip to Melbourne. Dick Marshall met them in Adelaide, having made the flight with Hurley that Jean had refused, and he and MacArthur paced the train talking as the reality of their situation settled in.
It was grim. There was no army in Australia to relieve Corregidor. At most there were 25,000 American troops in Australia. Not one was a rifleman. Most were engineers or aircrews and maintenance. There were no tanks and no artillery. There was no navy. There was no air force. There was no way to ferry troops and supplies to the Philippines even if Washington wanted to do so; the majority of the navy’s big ships were still at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and the rest were bracing for a possible Japanese attack on the West Coast.
For MacArthur it was a low moment in a year that had presented him with many low moments. According to Marshall, the color drained from MacArthur’s face and his knees shook. He muttered, “God have mercy on us!” In Marshall’s judgment it was the worst shock MacArthur experienced during the entire war, worse than Pearl Harbor.7 Then afterward he and Jean paced the train almost all night while he sorted out the options, weighed the consequences, thought about the future. When Jean grew tired she would plop down in a chair and rest, while MacArthur continued to pace and talk and think.8
On the platform in Adelaide he had told the crowd of reporters watching him leave that Roosevelt had recalled him from Corregidor for the express purpose “as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, the primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return.”9
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