It seemed that the flap over Lindbergh’s presence was not so much because he was there as it was over how he got there without MacArthur’s headquarters knowing about it. When that was straightened out (lack of communication), MacArthur asked for Lindbergh’s assessment of aerial operations. He was startled to learn that by manipulating the fuel mixture in the P-38’s engines’ carburetors, the celebrated airman had managed to increase the flying radius of his group’s planes by nearly 600 miles—with no reduction in speed—adding 300 miles to their range. As the fighter group’s commander Colonel Charles H. MacDonald explained later, “It meant the bombers could hit targets three hundred miles farther out [than was previously possible] and still have their ‘little friends’ along. Lindbergh had, in effect, redesigned an airplane.”20
Such news was a godsend to MacArthur, whose advance into the Pacific had been limited to the range that fighters could accompany his bombers. He asked if Lindbergh would return to the combat area and instruct all the fighter groups in his fuel-saving techniques.
“There is nothing [I] would rather do,” Lindbergh replied.‡
THE ALLIED SEIZURE OF THE ADMIRALTY ISLANDS had caught the Japanese off guard, and within three months after the Lindbergh meeting MacArthur had yet another surprise for them—a strike at the huge Imperial Army supply base at Hollandia on the north coast of New Guinea. An Allied invasion fleet comprising two hundred ships and fifty thousand infantrymen sailed northwest on April 21 to deceive the Japanese into thinking the invasion was going to be in the Palau islands, which had been recently bombarded as part of the ruse.
The Allied landing was such a shock that most of the six thousand Japanese ran off into the jungle, leaving behind their still-warm breakfasts and personal belongings. (Their emaciated corpses were later found strung out over the hills and mountains as they tried to reach the nearest supply base over three hundred miles away.) Enormous quantities of supplies fell into Allied hands and Hollandia became the jumping-off place to bomb and launch future invasions at the tip of the Huon Peninsula, where the Japanese 18th Army was now trapped.
What’s more, Hollandia quickly became the principal staging area and supply dump for MacArthur’s planned move toward the Philippines. It also gave rise to the rumor that MacArthur had built himself a million-dollar mansion on Lake Sentani. In fact the building was “a neat-looking structure of rough timber” that became his headquarters. MacArthur’s wife and son soon arrived to share two rooms in the building.21
MacArthur then turned his attention to securing the bulk of New Guinea from the remaining Japanese garrisons on the island’s north coast. This would begin his great leap—or leapfrog—northwestward toward the Philippines, which were still sixteen hundred miles away with approximately 250,000 Japanese soldiers in between.
Some of these troops were stationed at airfields at Aitape, Wakde, and the islands of Biak, Noemfoor, and Sansapor in the Dutch East Indies several hundred miles to the northwest. Because of the danger the Japanese fighter-bombers posed to his shipping and air transport, and the fact that he needed the landing strips for his own planes, MacArthur felt compelled to seize them in what he envisioned as a series of lightning assaults beginning in mid-May 1944.
If MacArthur thought these small bases could be easily rolled over, he received a rude awakening when his 41st Division attacked the little island of Biak. The landings went smoothly but the enemy had dug into a series of ridges honeycombed with interlocking caves, and when army engineers began work on the runway the Japanese unleashed a murderous fire of heavy weapons upon them. What should have taken a week, according to MacArthur’s command schedule, ground on in a bloody shot-for-shot slugging match that lasted into June and cost the Americans nearly 3,000 casualties—plus another 3,400 down from scrub typhus.
Intelligence had underestimated enemy troop strength on the island by more than half, and as it turned out the 12,000 U.S. infantrymen were about evenly matched man for man with their Japanese counterparts. As the fighting continued and the Japanese hung on with Buna-like tenacity, their leaders began, hopefully, to consider Biak as the battle that would stop the Allied advance and turn the war in Japan’s favor.
However, various attempts by the Japanese to reinforce the island were turned back or sunk by Allied air and naval attacks. By the end, which came on July 22, some 10,000 Japanese—virtually the entire garrison—were dead, and 434 captured.
At the end of July MacArthur then launched another succession of assaults on Japanese-held ports and islands on the Vogelkop Peninsula, the “head” of New Guinea’s peacock (or turkey) silhouette. Battles big and small, now largely forgotten, were fought in the steaming malarial jungles as the final phases of MacArthur’s strategy to either destroy or isolate all Japanese garrisons on the island took shape. All the while, he was moving closer to the Philippines, which now lay but some six hundred miles from MacArthur’s forces.
A month later, the final extirpation of the Japanese on New Guinea was accomplished. In the process, by employing methods utilized in the building of the Panama Canal, the army had also conquered malaria in the Allied areas of the island—in itself a Herculean feat—and, with fighter planes, PT boats, and submarines, had, in the bargain, destroyed the Japanese coastal supply fleet, sinking more than eight thousand enemy shipping vessels.22
THE PREVIOUS MONTH, George Marshall had summoned MacArthur to Pearl Harbor for a conference. MacArthur suspected the principal conferee would be President Roosevelt, but he had no way of confirming it. He also divined that the purpose of the conference would involve matters “closely affecting” himself and his future plans, but he took with him to Hawaii no staff officer, plans, or maps. MacArthur was disgruntled at being called away from “[his] war,” when his personal B-17, the Bataan, landed at the Hickam air base, Oahu, some twenty-six hours after it took off.
Roosevelt arrived aboard the navy cruiser Baltimore where he was greeted enthusiastically by fifty high-ranking army and navy officers—but no MacArthur. Instead of joining the other officers to greet the president, he had gone to Fort Shafter where quarters awaited him. Samuel I. Rosenman, one of Roosevelt’s speechwriters, tells what happened next.
After waiting for quite a while for General MacArthur, it was decided that the President and his party would disembark and go to the quarters on shore assigned to them. Just as we were about to go below a terrific automobile siren was heard, and there raced to the dock and screeched to a stop a motorcycle escort and the longest open car I have ever seen. [Belonging, we are told, to the madam of a well-known brothel in Honolulu.]
In the front was a chauffeur in khaki and in the back one lone person—MacArthur. There were no aides or attendants. The car traveled around the open space and stopped at the gangplank. When the applause died down the general strode rapidly to the gangplank all alone. He dashed up the gangplank, stopping halfway up to acknowledge another ovation and soon was on deck greeting the President.
He certainly could be dramatic—at dramatic moments.
“Hello, Doug,” said the commander in chief. “What are you doing with that leather jacket on—it’s darn hot today.” [The leather jacket that MacArthur wore was still nonregulation.]
“Well, I’ve just landed from Australia,” he replied. “It’s pretty cold there,” he told the president. [Australia, in fact, was in the dead of winter.]
Greetings all around—and we proceeded to leave the ship.23
All the next day, Roosevelt toured military facilities in and around Pearl Harbor and that night after dinner he invited three admirals and two army generals into a private conference room where he told them they were there to “determine the next phase of action against Japan.” The admirals included Chester Nimitz, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Pacific; William “Bull” Halsey, commander of the Third U.S. Fleet; and William D. Leahy, a top adviser to Roosevelt. The generals were Robert C. Richardson, who commanded the army forces in Nimitz’s area, and MacArthur.
Ta
king a long bamboo pointer, the president touched the Philippines on a large wall map, turned to MacArthur, and said, “Well, Doug, where do we go from here?”
Speaking strictly extemporaneously, according to Leahy, MacArthur launched into an impressive, well-organized defense of his plan to invade the Philippines, stressing the “moral obligation” to drive the Japanese from the islands, as well as to free American prisoners there. He said that if the Philippines were liberated, “It would enable us to clamp an air and naval blockade on all supplies from the South Pacific to Japan, which would paralyze Japan’s industries and force her to surrender.”
He also expressed the opinion that the American people would have an “adverse reaction” (presumably at the polls in November’s presidential election) if the Philippines were bypassed. Nimitz, however, speaking for the navy, insisted that the next objective should not be Luzon and the Philippines but the Japanese island stronghold of Formosa, which was strategically located for an invasion of Japan.24
The conference lasted until past midnight, with Nimitz and MacArthur parrying with each other on the differing strategies and Roosevelt acting as referee—or “chairman” of the conference, as MacArthur put it. On the whole it was an entirely congenial meeting with Leahy remarking afterward that it was “both pleasant and very informative to have these two men who had been pictured as antagonists calmly presenting their differing views to the commander in chief. Roosevelt felt it was “an excellent lesson in geography,” adding that geography was one of his favorite subjects.
The following morning the meeting resumed. MacArthur reiterated that by capturing Luzon the Allies could deny Japan all of the oil, tin, rubber, and rice that she was siphoning from the conquered territories, when Roosevelt interrupted: “But Douglas, to take Luzon would demand heavier losses than we can stand.”
MacArthur replied with a dictum. “Mr. President,” he said, “my losses won’t be heavy, any more than they have been in the past. The days of the frontal attack should be over. Modern infantry weapons are too deadly, and frontal assault is only for mediocre commanders. Good commanders do not turn in heavy losses.”25
No decision was made by the president when the conference ended and MacArthur boarded the Bataan for the long flight back to Australia. He was “shocked,” he said, at the appearance of Roosevelt, whom he had not seen since 1937. “Physically he was just the shell of the man I had known. It was clearly evident that his days were numbered,” MacArthur wrote.
Two weeks later the president sent MacArthur a personal note saying, “You have been doing a really magnificent job … Personally, I wished much in Honolulu that you and I could swap places, and personally, I have a hunch that you would make much more of a go of it as President than I would as a General retaking the Philippines,” and adding, “Some day there will be a flag-raising in Manila and I want you to do it.” MacArthur had won after all.
THE NEXT LINE OF THE ALLIED ADVANCE up the Pacific was what MacArthur called the Halmahera-Palau Line, a watery axis suspended between the island chains of those two names. He had come north across the southwest Pacific with extremely low casualties compared with those of the navy, which was slamming the marines through the central Pacific. MacArthur was now poised to attack the Netherlands Indies (Indonesia) island of Morotai (about the size of Martinique in the Caribbean), which lay barely three hundred miles from the southernmost Philippines.
It was lightly defended, but a fierce battle raged for a few days between some 57,000 American, Australian, British, and Dutch troops and approximately 500 stubborn Japanese. Only a few weeks prior, a much larger enemy garrison had existed on Morotai. It had been moved to a neighboring island, which the Japanese wrongly believed that MacArthur intended to attack. U.S. intelligence had snatched the message out of the air from Japanese radio traffic, and MacArthur again set in motion his now standard tactic, “Hit ’em where they ain’t.”
Realizing their mistake, the Japanese rapidly began to reinforce Morotai but to no avail. Most of their troop and supply barges were sunk by the U.S. Navy. Though the fighting continued until the following January, organized resistance was finished by September 24 and army engineers began improving Japanese landing strips and building new fields. Allied casualties were 30 dead and 85 wounded—this in contrast to the Battle of Peleliu in the Palau islands, which began around the same time, in which the navy suffered 1,600 marines killed and 6,600 wounded.
From Morotai, General Kenney’s air force B-17s began systematically destroying Japanese airfields and military installations on Leyte in the central Philippines. It was a tremendous gamble, as MacArthur himself pointed out: “The operation to take Leyte without a preliminary landing in Mindanao [the southernmost Philippine island] was a most ambitious and difficult undertaking … I knew it was to be the crucial battle of the war in the Pacific.”
The initial invasion of the Philippines had originally been set no earlier than December, but reconnaissance planes from Admiral Halsey’s fleet of carriers had overflown the area around Leyte in early September and discovered “serious weaknesses” in Japanese air reaction and defense. He recommended to MacArthur that landings be made immediately.
When General Kenney reminded MacArthur that, until Japanese air bases in the Philippines were captured, Leyte was more than five hundred miles from the nearest land-based fighter protection for his big bombers, MacArthur responded, “I tell you I’m going back there this fall if I have to paddle a canoe with you flying cover in your B-17.” Halsey solved the problem by suggesting that his carrier fighters escort the B-24s and B-17s to the enemy stronghold. MacArthur and Halsey cabled their proposal to George Marshall and the Joint Chiefs, who were attending a major war conference at Quebec with both Roosevelt and Churchill in attendance; within ninety minutes they had their answer—“Go ahead.”26
On October 16, 1944, the invasion fleet swung out of Hollandia with MacArthur aboard his flagship cruiser, the USS Nashville, amid “one of the greatest armadas in history … ships as far as the eye could see,” consisting of battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and transport, supply, and landing craft of all description. On board were 200,000 American fighting men, a majority of whom were battle-hardened veterans. The Japanese had twice that many soldiers but they were scattered throughout the Philippine Islands.
Lest anyone doubt MacArthur’s ability to inspire the spirit with dramatic prose, hear him describe the scene with a tinge of purple verbiage:
We came to Leyte just before midnight of a dark and moonless night. The stygian waters below and the black sky above seemed to conspire in wrapping us in an invisible cloak as we lay to and waited for dawn before entering Leyte Gulf … Now and then a ghostly ship would slide quietly by us, looming out of the night and disappearing into the gloom almost before its outlines could be depicted. I knew that on every ship nervous men lined the rails or paced the decks, peering into the darkness and wondering what stood out there beyond the night waiting for the dawn to come. There is a universal sameness in the emotions of men, whether they be admiral or sailor, general or private, at such a time as this.27
MacArthur had dressed snappily that morning, in typical MacArthur fashion—pressed and creased khakis, the matchless “crushed” hat with the gold “scrambled eggs” embroidered on its band and bill, the trademark corncob pipe and sunglasses. “He was as excited,” said an aide, “as a kid going to his first party.”28
As day broke in hazy grays, the big guns roared out from the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers with a din “like rolling thunder”; flashes of red lit the beaches and plumes of smoke billowed above the palm trees. The Nashville had anchored two miles offshore and from its bridge MacArthur could clearly see the invasion taking shape. Landing craft were circling the transports, swarms of airplanes swooped down on the beach areas dropping bombs and strafing, and rockets flashed off from gun decks, leaving their vapor trails in the air.
Through the fiery maelstrom, MacArthur caught a glimp
se of Tacloban, the American army post that had been his first assignment after leaving West Point as a second lieutenant some forty years earlier, in 1903. Then the troop-filled Higgins boats began their run toward the beaches and the naval barrage moved inland. MacArthur went in, he wrote later, with the third assault wave, although one of his biographers, William Manchester, claims it was four hours from the opening of fire. Whatever the case, it took much of the day to get 200,000 soldiers off the ships and into the boats and onto the beach, where enemy sniper fire continued to zing through the air.
MacArthur’s entourage included his old friend the journalist Carlos Romulo—now a general in the Philippine army who had served as an aide to MacArthur on Bataan and Corregidor—and Sergio Osmeña, the new president of the Philippines following the recent death of Manuel Quezon. It was planned to dock the landing craft at a wharf ashore but fifty yards from the beach the boat ran aground.
Impatient, MacArthur ordered the ramp lowered and stepped off into knee-deep water without even allowing its depth to be tested. He then slogged to the shore, which was still smoking and seething from the tremendous naval bombardment. Ahead Japanese machine guns frequently opened and snipers fired from trees or “octopus traps,” the Japanese term for foxholes. From overhead, an unexpectedly large number of Japanese warplanes dived on the still-contested beachhead, followed in hot pursuit by U.S. Navy Corsairs from the carriers.