Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  MacArthur arrived on the beach four hours after the first wave, and found “a scene of immense activity.” Amphtracs, tanks, trucks, and wheeled amphibious “ducks” or DUKWs were swarming across the sand and revving up beyond the shore, as soldiers shouldered rifles, machine guns, and mortars and took off to follow them. “Now and then an enemy Zero would whine down over the beach, but…almost a solid wall of fire would go up, and swarms of fighters from the carriers offshore would dive in to take care of the intruder.” Otherwise, there were still no Japanese in sight.39

  That was a good thing, the Americans were discovering. As they moved only a few yards inland, they found an entangling mass of rice fields, swampy marshes, and fishponds. If the Japanese had set up a line of resistance there, they could have made things very tough going for the men of I and XIV Corps. Instead, apart from having blown up the principal bridges (as MacArthur discovered when he tried to drive his jeep to Dalugan and found the bridge there gone), there was almost no sign the Japanese had been there at all.

  By nightfall on the 9th, some 68,000 men had established a beachhead seventeen miles wide and, at some points, four miles deep.40 After returning to the Boise for the night, MacArthur was back on the beach the next morning, visiting all four divisional sectors. Overnight the Japanese had sent several dozen suicide motorboats on a desperate raid, but they did little damage and were all but wiped out by dawn.41 Otherwise, there was everywhere the same strange lack of any Japanese resistance.

  Strange, that is, to everyone but MacArthur. He sensed that the Japanese would pull back inland to find the best ground for resistance; when he had gone over Krueger’s original invasion plan, he had scoffed at the notion that they would have to fight their way off the beach. “There aren’t many Japanese there,” he declared.

  “Well,” the briefing officer said, “most of this information comes from your headquarters.”

  “Not from me,” Willoughby bellowed back.

  Afterward, MacArthur took the briefing officer aside. “Sit down,” he said. “I want to give you my idea of intelligence officers. There are only three great ones in the history of warfare—and mine isn’t one of them.”42

  If the Japanese didn’t put in an appearance on the Lingayen beach, there were plenty of Filipinos who did. Hundreds had greeted him as he stepped ashore the first time, shouting his title in Tagalog: “Mabulay!” Many more swarmed his jeep when he finally reached Dagupan. “[T]hey would crowd around me, try to kiss my hand, press native wreaths around my neck, touch my clothes, hail me with tears and sobs. It embarrassed me to no end.”43 It also helped to peel away some of the shame of having abandoned them, as well as his own troops, during those dark days in March 1942.

  Now, as he set up his HQ in Dalugan, his mood was optimistic. The situation in the air was also looking up as well, thanks to General Kenney’s chief airstrip engineer, Brigadier General Lief “Jack” Sverdrup. He had bet Kenney a bottle of Scotch he’d have a runway up and working seven days after the landing, but when he arrived at Lingayen a battalion of tanks threatened to roll through the one piece of hard ground his engineers could use.

  Sverdrup leapt from his jeep, pulled out his .45 and threatened the armored battalion’s commander, saying he’d shoot if he didn’t back off. He did, but complaints about the incident wound up in MacArthur’s lap.

  He was unfazed. “I’ll promote Sverdrup,” he told Kenney, “and I’ll give him the DSC.” Sverdrup got his DSC, pinned to his chest by MacArthur personally just as the field was being finished, and he got the Scotch from Kenney. The head of Army Air Forces got a fighter group into Lingayen a day later, and had his B-24s lumbering down the strip a day after that.44

  Then things began to bog down.

  —

  First there was the weather, which had been perfect on January 9th, but began to whip up the next day. The surf off Lingayen turned into eight-foot waves and landing craft and pontoon bridges carrying supplies inland were swamped, as the masterminds of the Sixth Army’s logistics realized that the sooner everyone got down to Manila the better.

  That, too, became more problematic, thanks to General Krueger. He was worried, not elated, about the lack of Japanese resistance. Every step his troops took, he grew more worried. The Japanese passivity defied logic; it defied common sense; it defied the intel—even as MacArthur urged him to press forward while the opportunity was ripe.

  “Where are your casualties?” he asked Krueger in an interview on board the Boise on January 12. “Where are they?” He firmly believed Yamashita would not fight to hold Manila (he was right, as it turned out) and that the city was ripe for the taking.

  Even though “Krueger almost worshiped MacArthur,” in the words of one of his staff officers, he refused to be rushed.45 He had lost 2,888 killed and 9,858 wounded in the fighting on Leyte, and he was in no mood to go unprepared up against a far stronger and more cunning enemy on Luzon—or leave his left flank unprotected as he turned south from the beaches to advance toward Manila. Then as I Corps under General Swift began their move forward, they found themselves running straight into what Krueger had feared—and into the teeth of Yamashita’s defenses.

  Yamashita, meanwhile, had been ready for the Americans. He had split his troops into three regional defense zones, each bounded by mountains and easily defendable terrain, which he figured would make MacArthur’s advance as costly and painful as possible.46 The smallest, the Kembu Group under General Rikichi Tsukada, held the rough mountainous area west of the central plains, overlooking Clark Field, which Yamashita guessed, correctly, would be a key American objective. The second, General Yokoyama’s Shimbu Group with 80,000 men, would be stationed east of Manila controlling the city’s water supply, after it had pulled everything Yamashita needed out of the capital. As MacArthur guessed, Yamashita had no intention of fighting a losing battle for control of Manila.

  The third group, the biggest, under Yamashita’s personal command, extended itself across the rugged wilderness of northern Luzon, and the Cagayan Valley. Consisting of some 150,000 soldiers, Yamashita’s Shobu Group was short on ammunition, heavy equipment, food, and rice—everything except guts and a determination to die for their emperor, and strong defensible positions in which to carry out that wish. It was this force that Swift’s I Corps now brushed up against as they moved inland to guard the Sixth Army’s left flank. Instead of an easy passage, they found their way blocked by miles of intricate tunnels, interconnecting caves, concrete pillboxes, and other fortifications, all of which would be impossible to take out except at close range—which meant days, or possibly weeks, of bloody fighting.47

  This was what Krueger had most feared. What he saw was more than just a formidable defensive line. It was a possible staging area for Japanese counterattack on his left flank as he advanced southward. Krueger decided there could be no significant forward advance until that flank was safe, and so he ordered Swift to pivot and shove the Japanese back.

  To MacArthur, this plan made no sense. The storms on the 9th made it clear that getting to Manila and opening the bay to American shipping was more imperative than ever. Swift’s brief encounter with Yamashita’s stronghold doubly convinced MacArthur that Krueger would meet little resistance if he simply pushed on to the capital. Any Japanese counterattack would have to descend into the western plains, where the Americans’ overwhelming advantage in artillery, armor, and airpower would be devastating.

  Besides, the kamikazes were back, making the landing force on Lingayen more precarious than ever. They had already sunk four ships and damaged 43 others, with 2,100 sailors and soldiers killed or wounded. The longer it took to get to Manila, the longer MacArthur’s logistic lifeline lay exposed to suicide attack from the sky.

  “Go to Manila,” he urged Krueger. “Go around the Nips, bounce off the Nips, but go to Manila!”48

  The more MacArthur pushed, however, the more stubborn Krueger seemed to get. At their conference on board the Boise on the 12th, he told the SWPA chief,
as he later remembered it, “I considered that a precipitate advance toward Manila would probably expose it to a reverse and would in any case cause it to outrun its supply.” MacArthur was unconvinced, but in the end did not interfere with Krueger’s overall plans.49

  But a new idea was germinating in MacArthur’s mind. This was to have the liberation of Manila take place on his birthday, January 26. That, plus a possible victory parade like a Roman triumph, would be the final personal vindication of the humiliation the Japanese had imposed on him and the Philippine people.

  But events, and Krueger, weren’t keeping up with that timetable. Swift and the I Corps continued to take their time pushing up against Yamashita’s line in the Cabaruan Hills. It was the usual bitter, bloody hand-to-hand fighting over rough terrain that the Sixth Army was used to—even though it was a fight that MacArthur considered completely unnecessary.

  As for Griswold’s XIV Corps, his advance couldn’t have gone smoother. By the 17th he was some twenty-seven miles from Lingayen and had crossed the Agno River at Camiling. Huge crowds of Filipinos gathered to cheer the Americans on as they passed into the town. They were now only thirty-some miles from Clark Field, the next big objective for getting Kenney’s air force up and establishing air supremacy over the entire island.50

  There were only nine days until MacArthur’s birthday. Again he urged Krueger forward, with a message on the 17th saying the drive must be speeded up. On the 18th he sent another message. He confided to Krueger that General Marshall had asked him who should be considered for promotion. MacArthur was going to put Krueger’s name down, he said, for promotion to four stars. The flattery may have worked because the next day Krueger told Griswold it was time to take Clark Field without delay.51

  But this time it was Griswold who refused to be rushed. He was more and more worried that he was being drawn into a trap, and when his troops started to run into stiff resistance around the town of Bamban off Highway 3, he pulled up and prepared for a series of short, probing attacks to see what he was up against.

  The army way of fighting the Japanese also took time, compared to the marines or the Australians, who usually rushed any strongly held objective, then let mop-up squads clean out any lingering resistance. Krueger’s men preferred to wait until the artillery came up to blast away anything that stuck out aboveground. Then squads would crawl up any exposed hole, throw in an explosive satchel or a grenade or two, and cut loose with Browning Automatic Rifle fire or M-1 volleys as the charges went off. That might be followed by another grenade; then when the soldiers were convinced there was no one left alive inside they would move on to the next hole.

  “It saved many American lives and got better results although it took longer,” as one American divisional historian put it.52 It also meant that MacArthur was going to have to wait while Swift’s I Corps inched their way forward, as XXIV Corps cautiously advanced on the crucial Clark Field.

  The last hurry-up message to Krueger went out on January 23. By now MacArthur had given up on any victory parade on his birthday. Instead, he had told Krueger he wanted to be in Manila by February 1. The chances of making his timetable for taking Manila were quickly shrinking. Thus far, since landing at Lingayen Gulf the Sixth Army had suffered barely 250 men killed, of which only 30 were XIV Corps. MacArthur couldn’t understand why his generals were so reluctant to push forward: a meeting with Krueger on the 19th hardly went any better than the previous one on the Boise.

  Finally on January 25, the day before his birthday, MacArthur made a desperate change of strategy—not for defeating the Japanese but for dealing with his generals. He shifted his entire SWPA headquarters inland to Hacienda Luisita, miles ahead of Krueger’s own HQ at Calasiao. It was an obvious attempt to make Krueger feel like he had to step up and be more aggressive. The mood at Hacienda Luisita was grim. Sutherland was thoroughly convinced that Krueger should be “sent home” and told his boss as much. MacArthur said he was “very impatient” and “disgusted” with Krueger’s dawdling, but decided to keep him on anyway.53

  Part of his hesitation, perhaps, were his own growing doubts about the man who would have to replace Krueger if he were relieved, Robert Eichelberger.

  Eichelberger had been the hero of the Buna operation and deeply grateful to MacArthur for the Distinguished Service Cross it had earned him (although he never knew how close MacArthur had come to replacing him at the eleventh hour or that MacArthur had vetoed his citation for a Medal of Honor).54 But Buna had made Eichelberger a cautious man in fighting the Japanese, and now the commander of the new Eighth Army was caught off guard when MacArthur suggested revising a plan for sending one of his divisions, the Eleventh Airborne, into action on Luzon as a reconnaissance in force, Los Negros style, at Nasugbu Bay, forty-five miles southwest of Manila.

  Sutherland bluntly told Eichelberger, “General MacArthur would like you to capture Manila if possible.” What the SWPA commander envisioned was a swift and sudden airborne drop on Nichols Field, just three miles from downtown Manila, instead of the Nasugbu Bay operation. And as he had with Krueger, he dangled the possibility of promotion to four stars if Eichelberger signed on.55

  MacArthur had high hopes that Eichelberger would do so. “He told me I’m his Jeb Stuart, his Stonewall Jackson, to MacArthur’s Robert E. Lee,” Eichelberger once eagerly told his wife.56 Now Marse Douglas expected his Stonewall to see that this bold plan could shorten the Luzon campaign by days, even weeks.

  But Eichelberger didn’t sign on. Instead, he saw only the risks, not the opportunities, of an unsurveyed airdrop on Nichols. Instead he opted to stick with Nasugbu Bay, the sort of safe, predictable operation he and his men could handle. MacArthur was bitterly disappointed but said nothing. He was realizing that his top field commanders were careful, methodical men whose reluctance to surge ahead regardless of the casualties, might unintentionally be blazing a path to disaster.

  MacArthur and Krueger had another meeting on the 26th, which also happened to be their joint birthdays, but again MacArthur refused to override his commander on the ground. Instead, he patiently allowed Krueger to move up fresh reinforcements before launching his two-pronged drive on Manila itself on February 1.

  Meanwhile, it was not until the 28th, after several days of probing attacks, that Griswold felt strong enough to launch his XIV Corps into the Clark Field complex. By then, Swift had at last cleared out most threatening positions and was even approaching Yamashita’s HQ at Baguio. MacArthur had personally gone to watch the 161st Infantry—“its commander, Colonel James Dalton II, was one of my finest field commanders”—repel and destroy an enemy tank attack by Yamashita’s Second Armored Division, which ended with what was left of Yamashita’s armor wiped out. Dalton was promoted to brigadier general, and MacArthur won his third Distinguished Service Cross.57

  On the 31st Griswold was able to secure Clark Field and begin the reconstruction for Kenney’s airplanes. There were still plenty of Japanese left in the hills to the west, but now he could move his main force together with First Cavalry to join in the final big push on Manila, with the First Cavalry driving down Highway 5 and the Thirty-seventh Division moving from Clark Field down Highway 3.

  For the next three days MacArthur was everywhere. He had driven up to inspect Clark Field even before the last shots were fired in the battle for the airfield; now his jeep forged ahead of the columns of troops as if he were on point himself in a Sherman tank, instead of in an exposed jeep with a scared driver and an equally scared Doc Egeberg sitting beside a supreme commander whose scrambled eggs cap and corncob pipe made him the most valued sniper target in Asia.

  At one point they drove into the middle of a fierce firefight. “Fifty or sixty yards to our right was a battery of 105 millimeter cannon firing point-blank at three Japanese machine guns emplacements,” a stunned Egeberg remembered. “The Japanese were pouring a heavy fire from both sides. We were literally under fire from both sides.” The driver offered to go forward, but MacArthur had sense enough to
order him to back up into a nearby cane field.58

  Another time MacArthur was scouting ahead as artillery slammed the area around the road ahead. Suddenly MacArthur yelled, “Stop!” Their driver, a large, resolute Swede, slammed on the brakes. MacArthur got out and led Egeberg over to a large block of concrete in which was set an ancient muzzle-loading cannon with worn lettering on its barrel.

  “On that spot, Doc, about forty-five years ago,” MacArthur announced, “my father’s aide-de-camp was killed standing at his side.”

  Behind the Ray-Ban sunglasses, MacArthur’s eyes were full of excitement at the memory. The only excitement Egeberg felt was an intense desire to get back in the jeep and avoid joining Arthur MacArthur’s aide on the roll of the honored dead.

  “I was fighting on ground that witnessed my father’s military triumphs,” MacArthur remembered. “I knew every wrinkle of the terrain, every foot of the topography. I was able to avoid many a pitfall, to circumvent many an enemy trap.” Now the final prize beckoned: Manila.

  “Three years ago I was driven out of there,” he told Egeberg, “made it an open city to save it. I want to be the first to get in there.”59

  He remembered too the thousands of prisoners and civilians still in Japanese hands. “I knew that many of these half-starved and ill-treated people would die unless we rescued them promptly,” he recalled. Stories of their horrible deprivation and horrible treatment by the Japanese had reached GHQ in Brisbane. They were there because of him; they had had to wait while MacArthur pulled together the forces he needed to set them free. The time had come to finally right that wrong.

  By dusk on the 1st, elements of First Cavalry were just ten miles from the outskirts of the city. The Thirty-seventh Division was edging even closer. The day before, Eichelberger’s landing at Nasugbu had gone according to plan. Krueger now ordered Griswold to take the city, while troopers from the Eighth Cavalry were heading down from the north of the city, close to the University of Santo Tomas, where it was known that at least 4,000 internees were being held.60