The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (22 page)

Events moved swiftly. On the day that Roosevelt decided to order MacArthur to Australia, the American commander bid farewell to High Commissioner Francis Sayre and Philippine President Quezón at the nearly destroyed South Dock on Corregidor. A submarine would take Sayre and Quezón south. Standing on the dock with MacArthur, an emotional Quezón slipped his signet ring from his finger and handed it to the general. “When they find your body,” he said, “I want them to know that you fought for my country.” That night, Dwight Eisenhower wrote a draft of the cable ordering MacArthur’s evacuation from Corregidor, carefully editing the message to get it just right. MacArthur was to stop in Mindanao, Eisenhower directed, but for no longer than one week (“to insure a prolonged defense”) before proceeding to Australia, where he would assume command of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific.

At first, MacArthur wanted to refuse the order. He argued that he would resign his commission and join the guerrilla force in Luzon
fighting the Japanese. His staff heard him out but strongly disagreed. He had no choice, they said, but to do what Roosevelt wanted. He could not resign, could not refuse the order, and certainly could not retreat to the mountains of Luzon. MacArthur listened closely, reviewed Roosevelt’s cable, and then—in a return cable the next morning—requested he be allowed to determine the date of his departure. “I know the situation here in the Philippines,” he wrote, “and unless the right moment is chosen for this delicate operation, a sudden collapse might occur. . . . These people are depending on me now and any idea that might develop in their minds that I was being withdrawn for any other purpose than to bring them immediate relief could not be explained.” Marshall took the cable to Roosevelt. “Your No. 358 has been carefully considered by the President,” Marshall responded, “[and] he has directed that full decision as to timing of your departure and details of method be left in your hands.”

M
acArthur wasn’t as concerned about his rescue as he was with the fate of Wainwright and Parker’s soldiers, who gained a much-needed pause from Japanese attacks after their victory at the Battle of the Pockets. The triumph had been sealed by Clint Pierce’s headlong response to the Japanese amphibious landings along Bataan’s west coast—the so-called Battle of the Points. The two victories lifted Allied spirits, provided a needed rest for American and Filipino soldiers manning the Orion-Bagac line, and embarrassed Homma. But there was never much doubt among the Americans and Filipinos that they would be attacked again, and in force. They were on half rations or worse (officers reported that there was often only a single can of salmon for fifteen men), and there was no hope of reinforcement: The Japanese had so tightened control of the shipping lanes into the archipelago that nothing was getting through to the islands. But MacArthur refused to be pessimistic—Wainwright and Parker’s defenses were strong enough (as MacArthur cabled to Marshall) that “we may be approaching the stalemate of positional warfare.”

In fact, that is precisely what the Japanese also believed. The Battle of the Pockets and the Battle of the Points had so embarrassed the Japanese high command that it replaced Homma’s chief of staff with
Lieutenant General Takeji Wachi. After arriving with great fanfare from Tokyo, Wachi talked at length with Homma’s senior subordinates before conducting a tour of Homma’s Bataan positions. Wachi was shocked. Homma’s army was in chaos, his officers demoralized, and his soldiers intimidated by MacArthur’s formidable defenses. “The Japanese Army,” Wachi told his Tokyo superiors, “[has been] severely beaten.” The response in Tokyo was immediate: the high command sent the battle-hardened 11,000-man 4th Division and the 4,000-man Nagano Infantry Regiment to Manila from China, then supplemented them with five artillery regiments from Hong Kong and the 10th Independent Garrison from the home islands.

MacArthur didn’t know of Homma’s reinforcements, but it would have made little difference if he had. By March 10, he had decided to travel to Mindanao by PT boat. In fact, the decision was made for him: The submarine assigned to take him, his staff, and his family off Corregidor was not available, and the claustrophobic MacArthur would have been queasy about making the journey in so confined a space. As a result, Admiral Francis Rockwell (Thomas Hart’s successor) assigned four PT boats commanded by Lieutenant John Bulkeley (in PT-41) to the mission. MacArthur chose twenty-one people to accompany him, including his wife and son; General Richard Sutherland and Army Air Force Brigadier General Harold H. George; a handful of signals, engineer, artillery, and air officers; Sutherland’s assistant; a medical officer; and Ah Cheu, Arthur’s nurse. The mission was to bring MacArthur safely to Mindanao, where four aircraft would be waiting at Del Monte Field to take him and his party to Australia. Bulkeley was to steer his human cargo through hundreds of miles of Japanese waters, dodging sea mines and (Bulkeley hoped) outrunning Japanese destroyers and cruisers. Australia was straight south, some twenty-five hundred miles distant, with nearly every inch of it under the control of the Japanese Empire. Sid Huff was counted among those who would make the trip—an irony because several years earlier, it was Huff who had suggested that deploying PT boats would be an important first step in building a Philippine navy. Now, here they were—four sleek, low-in-the-water seventy-footers, each powered by 4,000-plus horsepower Packard motors. Bulkeley insisted that his passengers comply with his
requirements: Each passenger would be allowed a single suitcase, and no more. The key, he told MacArthur, was to avoid detection, and the only way to do that was to travel light—and fast.

The plan to “rescue” MacArthur was secret and had remained so for several weeks. Not even Australian Prime Minister John Curtin was told of it, for fear that an unintended leak of the information would make the escape impossible. Which it nearly was; the Japanese had increased their patrols outside Manila harbor, tightening the cordon around the archipelago. “It was only too apparent,” Bulkeley remembered, “that the Japanese navy not only expected General MacArthur to leave Corregidor, but would do everything it could to intercept him.” MacArthur, who would be on Bulkeley’s boat, conferred with him about the journey, then ordered an attack by Philippine Q-boats near Subic Bay on the night of his departure to divert the Japanese navy’s attention.

Bulkeley gave his commanders their orders: They would leave Corregidor’s South Dock at sunset on March 11 with Bulkeley’s PT-41 in the lead. The four-boat squadron, in a diamond formation, would head straight south. If all went well, the boats would reach Tagauayan Island, 250 miles away in the Sulu Sea, twelve hours after leaving Corregidor. “Buck tells me we have a chance to get through the blockade of PT boats,” MacArthur told the other passengers. “It won’t be easy. There will be plenty of risks. But four boats are available, and with their machine guns and torpedoes, we could put up a good fight against an enemy warship if necessary. And, of course, the boats have plenty of speed. If we can get to Mindanao by boat, bombers from Australia can pick us up there and fly us the rest of the way.” This sounded simple enough, but Bulkeley was taking no chances. If they were attacked, he told the other three PT boat commanders, he would make a run for it while they fought the Japanese.

MacArthur’s most challenging duty came in his last hours on Corregidor, when he summoned Wainwright from Bataan to the command post on Topside. Sutherland met Wainwright in the main tunnel at Malinta to give him a heads-up on what to expect. “General MacArthur is going to leave here and go to Australia,” Sutherland said. “He’s up at the house now and wants to see you. But I’ll give you a fill-in first.” Sutherland provided Wainwright with details of MacArthur’s escape
plan, then told him that he, Wainwright, would be named commander of the forces in the Philippines after MacArthur’s departure. Sutherland offered Wainwright lunch, but Wainwright declined. Everyone was on short rations, and Wainwright had recently had to kill his horse, his beloved “Joseph Conrad,” for meat. Sutherland then escorted Wainwright to MacArthur’s cottage. The jungle around it was filled with bomb craters, the undergrowth singed and burned. MacArthur, standing in an old khaki coat that hung on him, greeted Wainwright warmly, then motioned him to a chair near the cottage entrance. Wainwright slumped into the chair, gaunt and exhausted.

Wainwright was a good soldier—he never criticized MacArthur and never complained about his troops or questioned an order. But in private, and with his subordinates, he had other opinions. He said that MacArthur should have been seen more on Bataan and should have been more outspoken in insisting that the American government arm the Filipinos. Wainwright also believed that MacArthur had been terribly wrong in ordering a fighting retreat through Luzon, no matter how brilliantly it had been conducted. But he never mentioned any of this to MacArthur, whom he admired. MacArthur had similar complaints. He thought Wainwright was too tentative in his deployments, too careful on the offensive, and too old-fashioned in his military thinking. And MacArthur thought Wainwright drank too much—which had caused problems between them. But MacArthur admired Wainwright as a soldier and never doubted his courage or commitment. The Far East commander trusted his subordinate completely. MacArthur called Wainwright “Jonathan” (“the only person to ever do so,” Wainwright later acknowledged), while Wainwright called MacArthur “Douglas.”

MacArthur got to the point: “Jonathan, I want you to understand my position very plainly. I’m leaving for Australia pursuant to repeated orders of the president. Things have gotten to such a point that I must comply with these orders or get out of the army. I want you to make it known throughout all elements of your command that I am leaving over my repeated protests.”

Wainwright was reassuring. “Of course I will, Douglas,” he said.

MacArthur told Wainwright that he would be in command. Wainwright responded that his goal was to hold Bataan until relieved.

“Yes, yes, I know,” MacArthur said. “But I want to be sure that you’re defending in as great depth as you can. You’re an old cavalryman, Jonathan, and your training has been long, thin, light, quick-hitting lines. The defense of Bataan must be deep. For any prolonged defense, you must have depth.”

The two were silent for a moment. “You’ll get through,” Wainwright said.

MacArthur nodded. “And back,” he responded. MacArthur gave Wainwright a box of cigars and two cans of shaving cream as a farewell gift. “Goodbye, Jonathan,” MacArthur said. “When I get back, if you’re still on Bataan, I’ll make you a lieutenant general.” This was typical of MacArthur, for whom promotions were the ultimate symbol of achievement.

“I’ll be on Bataan if I’m still alive,” Wainwright responded.

The next night, as the sun set, MacArthur and his entourage boarded PT-41 at the South Dock.

MacArthur was the last aboard, turning for one last look at Corregidor. Finally, he nodded: “You may cast off, Buck, when you are ready.” PT-41 met up with the other PT boats, which had picked up their passengers at various locations around the island, and then, with PT-41 in the lead, the group gingerly navigated the mine-filled waters of Manila Bay before Bulkeley turned south. He pushed the engines hard then, leaving Corregidor in his wake. After several hours, a minor compass error brought them close to Cabra Island, and for a moment, Bulkeley was convinced they had been spotted. South of the island, the sea was pitch dark. “Towering waves buffeted our tiny war-weary, blacked-out vessels,” MacArthur remembered. “The flying spray drove against our skin like stinging pellets of birdshot. We would fall off into a trough, then climb up the near slope of the steep water peak, only to slide down the other side. The boat would toss crazily back and forth seeming to hang free in space as though about to breach, and then would break away and go forward with a rush.” Nearly everyone on the boat was sick, with one passenger describing the journey as “murderous.”

The four PT boats were separated in the night, with one of them dumping its fuel to gain speed when it mistook the distant PT-41 for a Japanese vessel. Bulkeley spun his boat in circles, searching for the other PT boats in the darkness, but it was hopeless. At 3:00 a.m., he turned
south again, this time alone, into Mindoro Strait, hoping that the others would somehow make their way to his preplanned rendezvous point. Near dawn, Bulkeley made landfall at an uninhabited island of the Cuyo group, some 250 miles from Corregidor. Two hours later, two other PT boats arrived and the three hid in a cove, their commanders debating whether MacArthur should wait for a submarine to take him to Mindanao, or whether all three boats should wait for the missing PT-32. It wouldn’t be until weeks later that Bulkeley learned that PT-32 had been abandoned by its commander because of a faulty engine. Luckily, the commander and his crew were taken aboard an American submarine, which then sunk the boat.

The run from Corregidor had been rough, and few wanted to endure another night of sickness and danger. Early that afternoon, Bulkeley and MacArthur decided to go on to Mindanao while leaving PT-34 behind to wait for the missing boat. They left during the midafternoon. That night, Bulkeley spotted a Japanese destroyer but eluded it. “I think it was the whitecaps that saved us,” he later speculated. “The Japs didn’t notice our wake, even though we were foaming away at full throttle.” Darkness found them hugging the coastline at Negros Island. “I had no charts,” Bulkeley later remembered. “I’d never been there before.” At daylight, PT-41 was in the Mindanao Sea. As the sun rose, Bulkeley spotted Cagayan—his destination—and he stood at the wheel, squinting to see if the Japanese were tied up in its harbor, waiting for him. MacArthur came up from below, unshaven and weakened from seasickness. The coast of Mindanao, and safety, beckoned. He smiled at Bulkeley. “You’ve taken me out of the jaws of death,” he told him, “and I won’t forget it.”

Bulkeley and his passengers tied up at Cagayan in Mindanao, with the trailing boat that had vainly waited for PT-32 showing up soon thereafter. Three days later, after what seemed like an interminable delay, a single B-17 bomber arrived at Del Monte Airfield, but it was so patched together that MacArthur refused to use it. Exasperated, he fired off a cable to Marshall, requesting that a better-equipped aircraft be sent for him. MacArthur used his time in Mindanao to confer with Brigadier General William F. Sharp, who commanded twenty-five thousand U.S. and Filipino forces on the island. Their situation was better than Wainwright’s:
While isolated and short of ammunition, they had plenty of food. Finally, at midnight on March 16, two B-17s landed at Del Monte and MacArthur and his party boarded them the next morning. The B-17s were nearly as rickety as the first one sent from Australia, but MacArthur, Jean, Arthur, Ah Cheu, and MacArthur’s staff packed themselves into the aircraft, leaving their baggage behind. Huff, seated near the general, shook his head. He couldn’t decide which he preferred: a watery death or a fiery crash. “At this moment our lives are worth something less than a nickel,” he told MacArthur’s logistics chief, Richard Marshall.