Next his name was printed on the Wisconsin ballot. Votes would be cast there before Illinois. It was regarded as the key primary that year; it was also MacArthur’s home state, insofar as he had one. The other candidates were campaigning hard there, and the General, because of the high profile his publicity policy had given him, had to win it. He didn’t. Dewey did, followed by Stassen, MacArthur, and Willkie, in that order. Vandenberg, believing his man’s only chance had lain in the possibility of a deadlocked convention, took one look at Dewey’s Wisconsin lead and threw in the towel. “It is all over but the shouting,” he said; “I have written Australia and frankly presented this picture. “ Illinois, ironically, then gave the General his one triumph; he polled 76 percent of the primary vote there, and Time reported that “General MacArthur swamped a political unknown.” But that was precisely the problem. His opponent had been a political anonymity, a Chicago real-estate man whose name meant nothing to anyone except his clients. Dewey, running in the same primary four years earlier, had won it by 86 percent.176
It is just possible that the General’s candidacy might have survived at that point. He was winning military victory after victory that season, and many Republican leaders were unhappy with Dewey. The outcome hung in the balance, when the General fulfilled Roosevelt’s expectations and skidded into political oblivion. He had been writing too many letters. One of his correspondents was a strange Nebraska congressman named A. L. Miller, a former Lions Club leader. Miller had written him that “unless this New Deal can be stopped, our American way of life is forever doomed.” MacArthur had replied, “I do unreservedly agree with the complete wisdom and statesmanship of your comments,” adding that he was deeply troubled by “the sinister drama of our present chaos and confusion.” In another exchange, the congressman had bitterly attacked FDR, predicting that four more years of “this monarchy” would “destroy the rights of the common people.” The General had associated himself with that view, too, and when Miller wrote him that he was needed to “destroy this monstrosity . . . which is engulfing the nation and destroying free enterprise and every right of the individual,” MacArthur had thanked him for his “scholarly letter,” adding that “your description of conditions in the United States is a sober one indeed and is calculated to arouse the thoughtful consideration of every true patriot.” Finally, the General had injected into this highly partisan dialogue an issue which, in a nation at war, should have transcended both parties. “Out here we are doing what we can with what we have,” he wrote. “I will be glad, however, when more substantial forces are placed at my disposition.”177
On April 14 Congressman Miller, without consulting MacArthur, or anyone else, turned all the letters over to the press, apparently in the belief that they would help him. That pricked the General’s bubble. Vandenberg described the release as a “boner” and a “tragic mistake”; as a result of it, he said, his candidate’s position had become “untenable.” In Australia MacArthur fought back desperately, issuing a statement declaring that his letters “were never intended for publication,” which was doubtless true, and adding, less plausibly: “Their perusal will show any fair-minded person that they were neither politically inspired nor intended to convey blanket approval of the congressman’s views. I entirely repudiate the sinister interpretation that they were intended as criticism of any political philosophy or any personages in high office . . . . To construe them otherwise is to misinterpret my intent.”178
Vandenberg gently told him that wasn’t good enough. The incident was no one’s fault, he said—though he sadly remarked to a friend that “if he hadn’t written them, Congressman Miller couldn’t have used them”—but now, because of the General’s prominence, the chapter must be firmly closed. On April 30, with Hollandia secured, MacArthur composed a dignified statement which concluded: “I request that no action be taken that would link my name in any way with the nomination. I do not covet it nor would I accept it. “ At the GOP convention in June, Vandenberg learned that a Wisconsin delegate planned to enter the General’s name anyway. Feeling that it would be, in the senator’s words, “an insufferable humiliation” for America’s most famous soldier “to wind up with only one or two votes,” he persuaded the convention chairman, Joseph W. “Joe” Martin, to steamroller the roll call past Wisconsin. But MacArthur wasn’t even spared that, because another delegate, resenting Martin’s tactic, cast his vote for the General in protest. Thus the final results were: Dewey, 1,056 votes; MacArthur, 1 vote.179
MacArthur was mortified, grateful to Vandenberg, and forgiving toward the Nebraska congressman, although, understandably, he didn’t write him a letter to say so. Some of those around him had the impression that he somehow held Roosevelt accountable for the misadventure. His relationship with the President had always been complicated, and with half the globe between them, misunderstandings were inevitable. Affection was probably impossible anyhow; they were too proud to make the small surrenders necessary for genuine friendship. But they needed each other, and the President, the more flexible of the two, recognized that. Therefore he decided, after MacArthur had dropped out of the presidential race, to meet him in Hawaii. The Joint Chiefs—to their discomfiture—would be left in Washington. Nimitz would represent the navy. The three of them, as power brokers, would hammer out the wisest way to defeat the Japanese, who, despite the vicissitudes of quadrennial politics, were, after all, the real enemy.180
On Friday, July 21, 1944, the day the Democratic National Convention nominated Harry S. Truman for the vice-presidency on the second ballot in Chicago, President Roosevelt boarded the heavy cruiser Baltimore in San Diego and sailed westward, accompanied by six destroyers and a fleet of aircraft overhead. The cruiser was a day’s sailing away from Pearl Harbor when MacArthur’s B-17 took off from the Brisbane airport, four time zones away, and winged its way toward Hawaii’s Hickam Field. The trip took twenty-six hours, much of which the General spent pacing the aisle, complaining about the “humiliation of forcing me to leave my command to fly to Honolulu for a political picture-taking junket.” He said, “In the First War, I never for a moment left my division, even when wounded by gas and ordered to the hospital. I’ve never before had to turn my back on my assignment.” Only three officers accompanied him, and he had brought no documents, for he hadn’t been told the purpose of the conference, or even who the other participants would be. Later he told Red Blaik that he had “radioed ahead as to what the meeting was about” and what staff he should take. The reply had been concise: the meeting was “top secret, no prior information could be given,” and he needed no staff. All he knew, he said, was that two weeks earlier George Marshall had ordered him to meet “Mr. Big” in Honolulu.181
Yet he should have guessed who “Mr. Big” was—who else, in MacArthur’s eyes, was bigger than himself?—and his reference to a “political . . . junket” suggests that he really knew what was afoot, and what would be discussed. The one great Pacific issue confronting American strategists that summer was where to strike next. MacArthur wanted to reconquer the Philippines. King recommended bypassing the archipelago and invading Formosa instead; he saw no reason to risk becoming mired in the great land masses of the islands. The dispute had been almost a year in the making. The previous October Eichelberger had heard in Hawaii that once MacArthur had reached the equator, the admirals wanted the war against Japan to be “their show and no one else’s.” The decision could be deferred no longer. In grumbling about the coming meeting, MacArthur was hardly being consistent; he had earlier requested permission to fly to Washington to plead his case.182
Characteristically, he saw this as a contest between himself and everyone else. Two weeks before sending him to Oahu, Marshall had strengthened this conviction, pointing out that “bypassing is not synonymous with abandonment” and admonishing him for permitting “personal feelings and Philippine political considerations” to cloud his judgment. But in fact Roosevelt’s military advisers were sharply divided on the subject. MacArthur was a
t one end of the spectrum; King at the other. Field commanders of all services in the Pacific tended to agree with the General, while Marshall and Hap Arnold leaned toward King, though individuals changed their minds from week to week. By the week of the Honolulu conference, Marshall was beginning to side with MacArthur. Hap Arnold, eager for B-29 bases on Formosa, continued to support King. Nimitz, wavering, instructed his staff to draw up plans for assaults on all possible objectives, including the Japanese homeland; he had begun to listen to Halsey, who wanted to seize Luzon, ignore Formosa, and pounce on Okinawa. The Joint Chiefs reflected the general confusion. Four months earlier they had favored an invasion of Mindanao in November. Now they were inclined to believe that they didn’t need Mindanao. Yet MacArthur had been told to prepare for an invasion of Luzon in February 1945 and Nimitz for a landing on Formosa that same month.
Roosevelt was a patient man, but this sort of thing couldn’t go on forever. Telling Stimson and Knox that he knew the opinions of the Pentagon, he said he had resolved to have it out face-to-face with his two commanders in chief in the Pacific. The only other senior officer to be present during their Hawaiian talks would be Leahy. The Chiefs were dissatisfied, and justifiably so. It was one thing for the President to confer with Churchill and Stalin, who had to be coaxed into taking this or that course of action, and something else again for him to leave the continental United States for discussions with American officers who had to obey orders. If he was already familiar with the Pentagons views, vacillating as they were, he knew those of MacArthur and Nimitz, too. The General later told Eichelberger that he believed FDR’s motives were “purely political. ” Harry Hopkins and Robert Sherwood agreed with him, and most historians concur. Samuel Eliot Morison, an exception, writes that Roosevelt wished to “exchange ideas with the senior Army and Navy commanders in the Pacific, and if possible to reach an agreement,” but there is every reason to believe that the President had reached his decision before the Baltimore left San Diego. The blunt fact is that he was running for a fourth term, and being photographed with MacArthur and Nimitz would be more impressive to his constituents than pictures of him politicking at the Democratic National Convention. Though the General might not be the first choice of voters in Republican presidential primaries, he was still a national hero. If FDR had shrunk from exploiting that popularity, he would have been a poor politician.183
Roosevelt knew how to make a great entrance; a huge crowd of Hawaiians, who had been alerted to his approach, cheered as the Baltimore docked at 3:00 P.M. on Wednesday, July 26, and fifty high-ranking military officers, led by Nimitz and Lieutenant General Robert C. Richardson, the commander of Nimitz’s ground forces, mounted the gangboard. But MacArthur could be dramatic, too. Though his B-17 had landed an hour earlier, he had stopped at the home of the absent Richardson, who would be his host, to drop off his musette bag and, as he later told Blaik, take a leisurely bath. Of course, an orderly could have delivered the bag, and the bath could have come later. This way, however, he would be the last officer to board the cruiser. According to Samuel I. Rosenman, who was a member of FDR’s party, Roosevelt had just asked Nimitz if he knew the General’s whereabouts when “a terrific automobile siren was heard, and there raced onto the dock and screeched to a stop a motorcycle escort and the longest open car I have ever seen. . . . The car traveled some distance 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, stopped halfway up to acknowledge another ovation, and soon was on deck greeting the President.”184
MacArthur was wearing the leather flying jacket Kenney had given him. Leahy writes in 1 Was There: “I said to him jokingly, ‘Douglas, why don’t you wear the right clothes when you come up here to see us?’ ‘Well, you haven’t been where I came from, and it’s cold up there in the sky,’ MacArthur replied.” The President joined in the banter, and then they all went ashore, agreeing to meet the next morning for a six-hour tour of Oahu’s defenses. FDR said he wanted a convertible, and he wanted it to be bright red. Nimitz found there were only two such cars on the island, one of them belonging to the fire chief and the other to the madam who owned Honolulu’s biggest house of prostitution. The madam begged the officers to use hers, but it would have been quickly identified by the spectators, so they chose the other. Leahy rode beside the driver, and Nimitz was wedged in the back with Roosevelt and MacArthur. The President and the General dominated the conversation. They briefly discussed the Dutch East Indies. The General had been approached by several British officials who wanted recaptured Indonesian islands turned over to them. He didn’t want to do it, because, as Leahy later wrote, he believed “that if they did get control of some Dutch territory, it might be difficult to pry them loose.” Roosevelt told him he was right and that he believed Churchill would think so, too. Subsequently the British prime minister cabled MacArthur that he did.*185
Inevitably the subject of the approaching presidential campaign came up, both then and the following afternoon, when the General, at FDR’s request, accompanied him on a motorcade through downtown Honolulu streets jammed with enthusiastic spectators. MacArthur raised it first, asking Roosevelt what he thought of Dewey’s chances in November. The President said he had been too busy to think of politics. MacArthur threw back his head and laughed, and after a moment Roosevelt laughed, too. He said, “If the war against Germany ends before the election, I won’t be reelected.” Then he seemed to change his mind, saying, “I’ll beat that son of a bitch in Albany if it’s the last thing I do.” The General said that while he knew nothing of the political situation at home, Roosevelt was “an overwhelming favorite with the troops.” Afterward MacArthur said: “This seemed to please him greatly.” When word of it circulated among members of the presidential party, they, too, were pleased, and any doubts in the General’s mind about their preoccupation with the fall election were resolved when, during an inspection of a military hospital, FDR’s army aide, Edwin “Pa” Watson, drew him aside. Watson said abruptly: “Are you for us or against us?” MacArthur replied evasively: “Pa, I always try to do the right thing.” Pressing him, Watson said: “What do you want after the war, to be Governor General of the Philippines?” The General answered, “Pa, that job was cut out ten years ago, “ and then Watson asked: “How about Secretary of War?” MacArthur said, “Let’s drop that until after the war’s over,” and Watson, stepping back, said, “That’s right, that’s what we’ll do.”186
Privately MacArthur thought the exchange pointless, because he was convinced Roosevelt wouldn’t live to see the enemy’s surrender. The President’s gray, wasted appearance shocked him. Back at Lennon’s, he would tell Jean, “He is just a shell of the man I knew,” and in his histrionic way he would stab a forefinger at Egeberg and whisper hoarsely: “Doc, the mark of death is on him! In six months he’ll be in his grave.” That wasn’t far off the mark, but even a dying FDR was formidable. That evening he entertained his flag and general officers at a dinner in a cream-colored stucco mansion, lent by Christopher Holmes, the millionaire, which overlooked Waikikis rolling surf. After dinner he led MacArthur, Nimitz, and Leahy into the next room, one wall of which was covered by a huge map of the Pacific. Picking up a long bamboo pointer, the President touched the islands with it and suddenly spun his wheelchair around to face the General. “Well, Douglas,” he said challengingly, “Where do we go from here?” MacArthur shot back, “Mindanao, Mr. President, then Leyte—and then Luzon.”187
Roosevelt, MacArthur, and Nimitz in Hawaii motorcade
MacArthur wades ashore at Leyte, October 1944
He and Nimitz took turns at the map, arguing their cases forcefully while the President listened intently, interrupting now and then to ask a question or suggest another line of reasoning. Leahy thought he was “at his best as he tactfully steered the discussion from one point to another and narrowed down the areas of disagreement between MacArthur and Nimitz.” Despite his earlier misg
ivings, the General found himself thoroughly enjoying the session. The President, he said afterward, had conducted himself as a “chairman,” and had remained “entirely neutral,” while Nimitz displayed a “fine sense of fair play.” Before they broke up at midnight, with the understanding that they would resume in the morning at ten-thirty, it was evident to Leahy that the crisp, quiet Nimitz was suffering from three handicaps. He lacked the General’s eloquence. He was arguing King’s case, not his own; under FDR’s skillful questioning he conceded that Manila Bay would be useful to him, and admitted that an attack on Formosa, instead of Luzon, would succeed only if anchorages and fighter strips had been established in the central and southern Philippines. Finally, he was unprepared or unwilling to discuss the political problems which would arise if the archipelago were bypassed.188
Here MacArthur was his most trenchant. The Filipinos, he said, felt that they had been betrayed in 1942—he did not add that he had shared the feeling, but FDR knew it—and they would not forgive a second betrayal. “Promises must be kept,” he said forcefully, meaning his own vow to return at the head of an army of liberation, a pledge which, he believed, had committed the United States. He said darkly that a blockade, which was what King was proposing, had a “sinister implication”; Japanese troops would “steal the food and subject the population to misery and starvation.” The “oriental mind” would not understand that. The Filipinos looked upon the United States as their “mother country.” Consigning them to the bayonets of an enraged army of occupation would be “a blot on American honor.” In the postwar world all Asian eyes would be on the emerging Philippine republic. If its people thought they had been sold out, the reputation of the United States would be sullied with a stain that could never be removed.189