On 8 Dec. 1942, despite 6 hours of warning, our planes were still neatly lined up on the runways of Clark airfield, all were destroyed. Despite months of gathering tensions with Japan, there were inadequate stockpiles of food on the Bataan peninsula. As a result, when the defeated American and Philippine POWs began the death march, they were already debilitated and starving. MacArthur postured from the safety of his tunnel on Corrigedor, then abandoned his men. After the war, to distract attention from his own failings, he vindictively pursued the 2 hapless Japanese generals put in charge of the invasion. In short, a piece of feces.

Maybe there is a political motivation behind the glorification of MacArthur. I know he was reviled by many of the vets that made it back. Only anecdotal, and the years are moving along. Ike wasn't all that highly regarded, but not despised. Bradley could have been President, he was respected for military and humanitarian reasons.

Und so, MacArthur was hated by the feet on the ground. They felt like meat heading for the grinder. And yet, he was put in command of the Pacific Theater over the objections of Nimitz and King, who had a superior, cheaper, and easier plan that avoided the massive expense in troops inherent in MacArthur's island-hopping pet tactic, combined amphibious operations.

The "island hopping" was Nimitz's idea. Mac was stuck on the idea of attacking enemy strongpoints and clearing enemy areas before advancing, a fine strategy for a land war, but a foolish one for a naval war. Fortunately, Mac was overruled . . . and he later claimed that "island hopping" had been his idea all along. <link> I am intimately acquainted with these details because my father was an officer of the Third Marine Division, which Mac proposed to throw against the heavily-fortified island of Rabaul. Fortunately, the Navy vetoed this plan, or I probably would not be here. The Marines were generally contemptuous of MacArthur, believing that he wasted their lives in unnecessary operations and took credit for their victories. This became a joke: “With the help of God and a few Marines, MacArthur returned to the Philippines.” <link> Another Marine joke was, "I'm going to the toilet now, but I SHALL RETURN!" My father kept repeating that one decades after the war. As for how Mac got to the Phillipines, that is a story in itself: As Army Chief of Staff, he had been ordered by President Hoover in 1933 to clear the streets for the presidential inauguration of Franklin Rooselvelt. He then took it upon himself to drive out the "Bonus March" protestors from their "Hooverville" encampment and burn the place down. The new President was greeted by a capital full of smoke and ashes. <link> I once saw a newsreel of MacArthur from this time. He was wearing a cape and high leather boots, and strutting around like Mussolini. He clearly imagined that he was the "man of the hour." This cut no ice with Roosevelt, who promptly fired him. Mac's booby prize was to become head of the Phillipine Army, a post he managed with such skill, that it quickly collapsed after being attacked by a smaller Japanese force. In the Army, he was known as "Dugout Doug."

Author William Manchester, who was a Marine in the Pacific, has a much higher opinion of MacArthur in his "American Caesar."

Manchester reports that MacArthur was an advocate of the "island hopping" strategy because he understood the importance of seizing airfields to coordinate air and sea operations. MacArthur also utilized the strategy of "hitting them where they ain't," i.e., cutting off supply lines so that Japanese strongholds could simply be starved out rather than attacked directly.

According to Manchester, MacArthur was extremely economical with the lives of the men under his command. As the title suggests, Manchester -- no right-wing crank -- held MacArthur's personal courage and tactical genius in high regard.

Make that December 8, 1941...just after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Very interesting.

I'll get back to you tomorrow. No time now.

redmanrt:

On 8 Dec. 1942, despite 6 hours of warning, our planes were still neatly lined up on the runways of Clark airfield, all were destroyed.

They most certainly were not "still lined up". They were refueling after earlier (mostly abortive) missions, and as the main Japanese raid was itself delayed, it was pure luck that the latter arrived while the planes were on the ground. The failure to take more active defensive measures has to be laid more at the feet of the air commander as it was largely a technical matter - you couldn't blame flaws in the early damage control procedures in the 7th Fleet on MacArthur either.

redmanrt:

Despite months of gathering tensions with Japan, there were inadequate stockpiles of food on the Bataan peninsula.

That is a valid criticism, but it isn't nearly as stupid as you imply. MacArthur believed he had trained the Philippine Army to be sufficiently effective and his air forces would be sufficiently reinforced that an immediate retreat to a Bataan redoubt was no longer necessary, so he stopped planning for one. That he was wrong was partly ill judgment on his part, but much of it was ill judgment shared by everyone else in the Western world (in their massive underestimation of Japanese military capabilities) and much was also the result of events beyond McArthur's control (no one had or probably could be expected to have imagined the scale, speed, and uniformity of the Japanese success and Allied collapse - even the Japanese hadn't expected it - or the absolute inability of the Navy to come to the relief of the Philippines as had been assumed in all war planning).

redmanrt:

MacArthur postured from the safety of his tunnel on Corrigedor, then abandoned his men.

The first part is true, but the second is really out of line. He wanted to stay - there is absolutely no question about this among any of the people involded - and obeyed the order to leave only under strong protest (of course, with typical Mac style/egotism he couched that in terms of a theatrical threat to resign his commission and enlist as a private. No one ever said he wasn't a prima donna of the first magnitude.) And in fact his greatest strategic error for the rest of the war was partly the result of his desire to erase the shame he felt over his escape by liberating the soldiers and people he was forced to leave behind.

redmanrt:

After the war, to distract attention from his own failings, he vindictively pursued the 2 hapless Japanese generals put in charge of the invasion.

If you think the horrific war crimes of the Japanese military (mainly Army) leadership in the Philippines and elsewhere - mostly committed against the fellow Asians they claimed to be liberating from colonial oppression - were inventions or distractions by MacArthur, you're a very, very ignorant person.

Nimitz and King wanted to devote Naval resources to disrupting Japanese supply lines, the so-called "wither on the vine" strategy. To this end, their principal aim was to blockade strategic passages such as the Straits of Malacca and Formosa. They would engage the enemy as needed on the water and after a suitable passage of time, whatever they would be, they would mop up all the outposts island by island. The main goal was of course to deprive the Japanese of Indonesian oil.

This came clear before it had been decided who would Supreme Commander in the Pacific.

MacArthur's ideas differed from Nimitz, more like what you outlined. It was clear that he also wanted to make good on his promise to return to the Phillipines. To this end, from his sanctuary in Australia he flew to Washington and demanded an audience with FDR. Somehow he convinced FDR of his ideas and got command. Part of it was apparently his plea that the more we deprived the Japanese the more the native peoples under their thumb would be subject to their depredations.

His performance in the bonus Army debacle was nothing short of despotic and would have been even more drastic had his actions not been restrained and tempered by other commanders. He had wanted to advance on the bonus army camps guns drawn and take everyone prisoner.

In response to Manchester's claims, I would simply say that the prosecution of the Pacific Campaign was inherently wasteful of American lives, that the dreadful assaults on places like Saipan and Kwajalein were bloody messes, and that MacArthur misunderstood the nature of that theater, which was naval, and was decided by the aircraft carrier and the superiority of American radar, and its expertise in intelligence.

I believe you have hit on it in your third paragraph, referring to MacArthur's greatest strategic error. Strategy was never his strong suit--like Robert E. Lee, he was a master tactician--but the failure to distance his job as commander from his personal aims and failings was not only an error but also a dereliction of duty that colored the entire conduct of the Pacific Campaign.

There was a reason he was not popular among the rank and file. I don't think they cared how high he held his corn-cob pipe. It was obviously something else.

"They most certainly were not 'still lined up'. They were refueling after earlier (mostly abortive) missions, and as the main Japanese raid was itself delayed, it was pure luck that the latter arrived while the planes were on the ground."

In his memoirs, the Japanese pilot Saburo Sakai recalled how Mac's air force looked to the attacking Japanese on Dec. 8. There was a CAP of three P-40s which failed to spot the incoming Japanese, no other signs of American activity. The other planes were lined up on the runway as if in peacetime. Sakai concluded that the Americans had been completely surprised.

Probably, some of the planes were refueling. Mac had, for reasons best known to himself, cancelled a raid on Formosa. This took place after a visit to headquarters of Manuel Quezon, president of the Phillipines. Quezon had the notion that he could keep the Phillipines neutral, and some historians connect Mac's decision to cancel the raid to a large cash gift he had previously received from Quezon.

The command that Mac succeeded in begging from FDR was Supreme Allied Commander South West Pacific Area, another booby prize. The South West Area (see map) included Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, the Phillipines and Southeast Asia, but excluded the most of the places where combat was actually taking place. These were under the authority of Admiral Nimitz (which may be an indication of how limited was FDR's faith in MacArthur).

The Japanese-held island of Rabaul fell by chance inside the South West Area. It was adjacent to the Solomons, where Nimitz was conducting a successful campaign, and where the bulk of his available forces were concentrated. Mac's plan for invading Rabaul must be seen as an attempt to get authority over Nimitz's troops, the kind of back-biting intrigue that happens often in war, but as a military operation, it was poorly conceived. My father believed that Nimitz's success in cancelling the attack on Rabaul had saved his life.

After the war, Mac and his admirers credited him with the "island hopping" campaign, but in truth, it was not even in his theatre of operations.

Concerning the "Bonus Army" incident, there is an excellent documentary on Youtube.

Good grief, you're make me start digging out books from storage.

I don't have the many volumes of the official U.S. Army history that I used to have because a friend of mine's Dad was one of the editors, since they were destroyed in flood and unbelievably the surviving ones were stolen.

You have to take those with a grain of salt anyway.

Anyway, we agree 98%.