MacArthur left Washington on October 1, 1935, traveling west by rail to San Francisco with his eighty-four-year-old mother and his brother’s widow, Mary, who came along to look after her. An army physician, Howard Hutter, was assigned to Pinky, monitoring her increasingly perilous health. Dwight Eisenhower also made the trip, along with MacArthur’s aide-de-camp (his personal assistant), Major Thomas Jefferson Davis. MacArthur had prevailed on Eisenhower to serve as his chief military aide during his time in the Philippines, and Ike had felt that he couldn’t turn him down. But Eisenhower had hesitated long enough to gain MacArthur’s approval that Ike’s former West Point classmate, Jimmy Ord, would serve as one of MacArthur’s assistants. MacArthur and his entourage planned to sail for Manila on a leisurely voyage, boarding the SS President Hoover in San Francisco.
MacArthur had departed the nation’s capital in an unexpected “blaze of glory,” but it’s unlikely that he felt vindicated by his service with Roosevelt. The general had reached the highest command in the U.S. military, and although he was still too young to retire, he must have thought that the most important days of his military career were now behind him. MacArthur might have yearned for a political career, but he had never taken the steps to organize a campaign or approached Republican leaders for their support. Perhaps MacArthur realized that despite his desire to be president, he was actually ill suited for the job: He didn’t study politics, had never been involved in a political campaign, and had never formed or articulated any clear views on pressing domestic issues. An observer could read MacArthur’s personal papers without once tripping over an opinion on taxes, the economy, or the federal budget—three issues that are the mother’s milk of American politics.
Another reason for MacArthur’s reluctance to throw his hat into the political ring was that the general’s boss, Roosevelt, remained both a popular president and a talented politician. It seemed unlikely that MacArthur would replace him. For his part, while Roosevelt viewed MacArthur as a political competitor, the president wasn’t overly worried about a MacArthur candidacy. And why should he be? It would be not only difficult for MacArthur to criticize the New Deal as candidate MacArthur, but impossible. The general had been a part of the program, which is why Roosevelt had kept him on as chief of staff to begin with. Traveling west to San Francisco with Eisenhower, Davis, Ord, and the MacArthur family, MacArthur would have never admitted that he had been outmaneuvered by Roosevelt—“tamed” by him—but he had.
Clear evidence of this political maneuvering came halfway through his trip across the country, when MacArthur received word that Roosevelt had appointed General Malin Craig as MacArthur’s successor. The information came in a telegram from Assistant Secretary of War Harry Woodring, who added that MacArthur would revert to his former two-star rank. He was now Major General MacArthur.
Reading the telegram, MacArthur exploded. He burst out with “an explosive denunciation of politics, bad manners, bad judgment, broken promises, arrogance, unconstitutionality, insensitivity, and the way the world had gone to hell,” wrote Eisenhower, who witnessed the tantrum. Roosevelt had outfoxed him—appointing Pershing partisan Craig as chief of staff when MacArthur had done everything he could to make certain that George Simonds would be the successor. The appointment of Craig also promoted the candidacy of General Hugh Drum, a Pershing ally who was next in line for the chief of staff position after Craig. MacArthur had it right: When Roosevelt had extended MacArthur’s tour, back in June, it was only to make certain that Simonds was eliminated as a candidate for the chief of staff job. It was all a matter of timing. Had MacArthur been replaced in the spring of 1935, Simonds would have been a leading candidate, but six months later, MacArthur’s protégé was too old.
Roosevelt later explained his maneuver to aide James Farley:
You see, General Douglas MacArthur, during his service as Chief of Staff, had been trying to have all his favorites placed in responsible positions. He was arranging it so that he would be succeeded by Major General George S. Simonds. Last spring Simonds had four years left to go before retirement and could have served out the term of a Chief of Staff. I had to think fast, so I asked MacArthur to stay until October on the representation that I needed him to assist in the formulation of legislation relative to the War Department . . . [Roosevelt hadn’t told Secretary Dern of his plan because] he might have mentioned it, innocently, to someone in the War Department and pressure might have been brought to bear to force the appointment of Simonds while he still had four years to go.
But as it turned out (and as Roosevelt surely knew), there was more to the story than simply making certain that MacArthur wouldn’t be able to dictate his own successor.
Roosevelt’s appointment of Malin Craig as army chief of staff had a profound impact on the American military, supplanting MacArthur’s “gang”—which is how Eisenhower described them—with Pershing’s “Chaumont crowd.” Among those who would benefit was George Marshall. Craig’s promotion crucially shifted Marshall’s career path. Rather than being sidelined, as Marshall had been under MacArthur, Marshall was now being included with the other army colonels who would serve as the next generation of senior officers. None of this was news to MacArthur, but he was nevertheless enraged by Woodring’s telegram. It was not simply that Roosevelt had maneuvered Craig into the chief of staff’s job, but that the president had also cleared the army’s underbrush of MacArthur’s most important disciples. This next generation of leaders would prepare the country for war and lead the military in battles in Europe and the Pacific. MacArthur could not know this at the time, but this new leadership would mark a thoroughgoing transformation in military thinking. It was not Craig or Simonds (or even Drum) who would lead the army, but George Marshall.
MacArthur was therefore not simply moving to Manila to serve as Manuel Quezón’s military advisor, but was also leaving behind an administration that had little use for him or for his followers. The general wasn’t simply heading west; he was heading into exile. And ironically, heading into exile with him was Dwight D. Eisenhower, the officer whom George Marshall would one day pick to lead American soldiers in Europe.
Two weeks after MacArthur boarded the President Hoover, Pinky became ill. MacArthur quickly radioed ahead to Manila to make certain she would receive the best care, but five weeks after his arrival in the Philippine capital, on December 3, 1935, she died. MacArthur was stricken. Eisenhower wrote in his diary that her death “affected the General’s spirit for many months.” MacArthur never wavered from his commitment to his mother and was never embarrassed by her interference in his life. In his Reminiscences, he describes her as the pillar of the MacArthur family, her departure marking the passing of a generation: “Of the four of us who had started from the plains of New Mexico, three now were gone, leaving me in my loneliness only a memory of the households we had shared, so filled with graciousness and old-fashioned living.” There was some compensation, however. While aboard the President Hoover, MacArthur met thirty-seven-year-old Jean Marie Faircloth, a sophisticated and affluent daughter of a Nashville banker.
An immediate friendship, begun as the two talked on the rail of the Hoover, blossomed into a deep but quiet love affair. Jean was to have disembarked in Shanghai (where she was to visit family friends) but stayed on board at MacArthur’s pleading and, arriving in Manila, took up residence near the MacArthur penthouse on the top floor of the spacious Manila Hotel. She was thereafter seen with him every day on his veranda, which had a spectacular view of the harbor, or arriving on his arm at Filipino receptions.
Faircloth was a perfect match for MacArthur. A loving and loyal companion, she was impressed by his command of history and literature and became friendly with members of his staff, who admired her. She called him “General” or “Sir boss,” and he addressed her as “ma’am.” In many ways, Faircloth was evidence that MacArthur’s relationship with women had matured: She never grasped for public attention, and she remained studiously unimpressed by the great and near great. She had nothing in common with Louise Brooks, and certainly not with Isabella Rosario Cooper. No hint of scandal ever touched her.
Sidney “Sid” Huff, who later joined MacArthur’s staff as a naval advisor, was one of her admirers, as well as a friend. He helped her acclimate to Manila social life, advised her on local customs, and, on one occasion, helped arrange a reception that she hosted for Manila socialites. He has shared an impression of her during one such event. A graceful worrier, she had been concerned that the general would arrive before the reception had ended and that the ever-demanding “Sir boss” would expect her to leave, as she and MacArthur went to the movies nearly every night. But she did not want to appear ill-mannered before her friends, as no self-respecting Nashville hostess would ever leave before her guests. “What should I do, Sid?” she asked. Huff told her to leave, but to do so quietly, as every hostess did at one time or another in Manila. So she did, sneaking out a side door and meeting MacArthur at his limousine for their nightly appearance at the local movie house.
But Faircloth rarely joined MacArthur during his work hours or when he paced the floor of his penthouse office, issuing perorations on the future of the Philippines, on military strategy, or on Japanese intentions. Huff remembered these scenes:
He stuck his hands in his hip pockets as he paced, his jaw jutted out a little and he began talking in that deep, resonant voice—thinking out loud. From time to time he paused beside the wide mahogany desk to push the cigarette neatly into line with the edge of the ash tray, and to glance over at me. “Do you follow me, Sid?” he asked, swinging into his pacing stride again. Or sometimes he would stop at the desk to line up a dozen pencils that were already in a neat pattern—or to turn them around and push the points carefully into line. But always he went back to pacing and to thinking out loud.
Air Force Major General Lewis Brereton, who commanded U.S. air assets in the Philippines, described MacArthur as “one of the most beautiful talkers I have ever heard,” adding that “while his manner might be considered a bit on the theatrical side, it is just part of his personality and an expression of his character. There is never any doubt as to what he means and what he wants.” This “thinking out loud” became a MacArthur characteristic—a means of trying on ideas and, later, of testing strategies. At fifty-seven, he did not view himself as old, but remained trim, energetic, and filled with life. He rose early, ate a modest breakfast, then exercised, though not very strenuously—and not for very long.
MacArthur, it turns out, was something of an obsessive, the result perhaps of his West Point training—where uniforms and shirts are neatly arranged, perfectly spaced, and properly buttoned, with shoes shined to a high gloss and where books and pencils and papers are arranged neatly on a desk. Brereton noted this in his diary, which includes a description of MacArthur as “one of the best dressed soldiers in the world.” This obsession with appearance was a carryover from his days in France and was replicated now for the Filipinos: His uniform was unornamented, his face scrubbed, his spine ramrod straight, his pressed khaki trousers with a distinctive crease. He walked with a purpose, chin forward. He never slouched, never put his feet on his desk, never lounged indulgently. He was fastidious; he was never late, never apologetic, never forgetful. He bowed and nodded when meeting someone, exercising a graceful turn to introduce “Miss Faircloth of Nashville,” after which he would smile, nod with interest, or laugh softly. It was a practiced pose, but one as necessary in Philippine society as it had been in Washington. These small obsessions were reflected in his constant editing and reediting of papers and directives, picking just the right word or phrase. He mastered the art of writing his instructions using the sparest prose (“there is never any doubt as to what he means”), so that his orders were clear, explicit, rigorous, and unambiguous. In this, he shared a trait common to America’s great soldiers, who practiced the art of writing precise orders—where may, perhaps, and seems are excised and replaced with will, must, and is.
MacArthur’s arrival in Manila was cause for rejoicing among Filipinos. He was much sought after by Philippine society, whose company he preferred to that of the small in-country American community. He was seen, with Jean, as a regular guest at receptions held by the new commonwealth president, Manuel Quezón, or standing quietly with a group of legislators at Manila’s parliament building. But there was still the sense among his closest associates that when he wasn’t with Jean, he preferred his own company. Unlike the gregarious impression left by Eisenhower (a master bridge and poker player and the head of a movable all-male group called Club Eisenhower), there is no report of MacArthur’s participation in the kinds of raucous, always-alcohol- fueled sessions then preferred by American officers (MacArthur was not a teetotaler, but abstemious). Nevertheless, wherever he went—whether it was on a tour of U.S. installations or to hear a briefing at U.S. military headquarters at No. 1 Calle Victoria in Manila’s Spanish old city—MacArthur was known by every senior military officer. He was easy, relaxed, and approachable.
But MacArthur’s easy manner belied the challenge he faced in building a Philippine army, despite the capable ally he found in Major General Lucius Holbrook, the commander of U.S. troops stationed in the country. The Philippine Department was undermanned and understaffed, the result of Roosevelt’s Depression-era cutbacks. The department consisted of the Philippine Division, a complex organization composed of the U.S. 31st Regiment (a little over ten thousand soldiers) and the combat-capable Philippine Scouts, a unit of three infantry and two artillery regiments of Filipinos under American command. The total strength of the Philippine Division was some twenty thousand soldiers, which is all that Holbrook had to defend an archipelago of seven thousand islands. While both the American garrison and the Philippine Scouts were well trained, they were the only soldiers MacArthur could count on. So even as he exuded confidence about the ability of the Philippines to defend itself, he hedged his statements with cautionary clauses. He would, he said, build an army that would “give pause even to the most ruthless and powerful,” before carefully adding that any defense of the islands would have to be mounted in “the furthermost retreat left available.”
The statement reflected America’s plan for defending the island archipelago. Back in 1934, MacArthur had blustered that if war came, he would immediately “send two divisions from the Atlantic coast to reinforce the Philippines.” He probably meant it, though he must have also known that the current version of War Plan Orange (the name of a series of joint army and navy plans for an anticipated conflict with Japan) presumed that U.S. and Philippine forces would be overwhelmed. The assumption was that the forces would be driven back into Bataan, a wide peninsula to the west of Manila, and thence to the island of Corregidor, at the mouth of Manila Bay. War Plan Orange assumed that despite being surrounded in Bataan and Corregidor, the U.S. Army would hold out, for months if necessary, while the U.S. Navy mounted an operation across the Pacific to rescue it. This was sheer nonsense, and MacArthur knew it. As army chief of staff, he had studied the plan and spoken to the officers assigned to review and update it. Their conclusion was blunt, as one of the plan’s analysts wrote: “To carry out the present Orange Plan—with its provisions for the early dispatch of our fleet to Philippine waters—would be literally an act of madness. In the event of an Orange War, the best that could be hoped for would be that wise counsels would prevail, that our people would acquiesce in the temporary loss of the Philippines, and that the dispatch of our battle fleet would be delayed for two or three years needed for its augmentation.”
Within weeks of MacArthur’s arrival in Manila, he set his staff to work building the Philippine armed forces. He was starting from scratch: from the naming of a general staff to the construction of airfields, from recruiting young Filipinos to training them. But nothing was done quickly, or easily. The work on building a Philippine army had actually begun in Washington, when MacArthur had assigned Jimmy Ord to write a detailed plan based on universal conscription. MacArthur then pulled Eisenhower into the planning, telling him to focus on how a small but highly trained force could protect thousands of miles of coastline. By the time MacArthur departed for Manila, the plan had gone through several drafts. The process had lasted for weeks, with each detail arriving on MacArthur’s desk in neatly bound volumes, before being returned to Ord and Eisenhower with amendments. Once in Manila, MacArthur directed that Ord and Eisenhower cut the budget for his new army to 22 million pesos. “We cut periods of training; cut down on pay and allowances; eliminated particularly costly elements of the army, and substituted conscripts for professionals wherever we considered it safe to do so,” Eisenhower wrote at the time. But after Ord and Eisenhower presented their revised plan, MacArthur cut it again. “We reduced the Regular Force to 930 officers and about 7000 enlisted men,” Eisenhower remembered, “substituting for the enlisted men so eliminated an equal number of conscripts that are to be retained in the service one year; we extended the munitions procurement program to attain fruition in twenty instead of ten years, and made important deferments in the development of an Artillery Corps and so on.”
MacArthur’s problems were exacerbated by his inability to get the War Department to take the defense of the Philippines seriously. For months after arriving in Manila, MacArthur argued with Washington over its providing him with four hundred thousand rifles at a cost of two dollars per weapon. The problem for MacArthur was not only that the rifles were obsolete (they were overstock Lee-Enfield carbines, manufactured in 1914), but also that the White House didn’t think it wise to arm former insurrectos with rifles, no matter how obsolete. The opposition to providing the rifles was led in Manila by High Commissioner Frank Murphy, a pacifist who was privy to MacArthur’s plans and duly passed them on to Harold Ickes, who enjoyed holding up anything MacArthur wanted. The decision on whether to supply the rifles was postponed, then postponed again. Even when Eisenhower convinced War Department officials that there was little likelihood of an insurrection, the administration hesitated. Eisenhower speculated that what was really worrying Washington was that arming Filipinos would “antagonize” the Japanese. That view put MacArthur in an embarrassing situation: He not only had to argue that the weapons were not a threat to the Americans, but also had to argue that the arms weren’t a threat to anyone—a counterintuitive position for a military advisor responsible for building a nation’s defenses. But oddly, the argument was convincing to Washington, which finally agreed to the sale of a hundred thousand outmoded rifles, with another three hundred thousand to follow over eight years.
Now that MacArthur had found weapons for his nascent army, all he needed were soldiers. Eisenhower was skeptical of Filipino recruiting practices, but pleasantly surprised when 150,000 Filipinos volunteered to serve. The bad news was that MacArthur had planned on training just 7,000 recruits. When MacArthur decided to increase the quota to 40,000 conscripts, he also trebled the training budget, which required another rewrite of the Ord-Eisenhower plan. “Disregarding entirely the cost of arms and ammunition for these men after they have been trained,” Eisenhower wrote, “the additional training and maintenance cost involved will be about 10,000,000 pesos.” The money wasn’t available, and the Roosevelt administration wasn’t going to provide it. One year after his arrival, MacArthur was stuck—his new Philippine Army had plenty of soldiers, but they were untrained and armed with outmoded weapons. He needed money. In late 1936, Eisenhower pressed MacArthur and Quezón to travel to Washington to explain the problem, saying that MacArthur’s high regard in the Senate might make a difference. Quezón immediately accepted this idea, noting that the visit would coincide with the swearing-in of Paul McNutt, a former Indiana governor, as the archipelago’s new high commissioner. A trip to Washington, Quezón also calculated, would allow him to make the case for better Philippine defenses directly to Roosevelt and to present his case that the Philippines should be granted its independence at the end of 1938, instead of in 1946.
Quezón departed Manila in mid-January 1937, accompanied by MacArthur, Jean, and MacArthur’s staff. While Washington was the centerpiece of Quezón’s trip, the Philippine president chose to begin his tour with a visit to Japan. Quezón and this large retinue were treated regally in Tokyo, which welcomed him as a head of state before he was solemnly escorted to an audience with Emperor Hirohito. The Hirohito meeting marks the beginning of MacArthur’s estrangement from the Philippine president: Quezón approached the emperor as a supplicant, nearly begging Hirohito to keep the Philippines out of the crosshairs of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Hirohito nodded sagely, smiled when he thought it appropriate—and said nothing. MacArthur had first visited Japan with his father in 1904 and was as impressed now as he had been then. If anything, Japan was stronger, more disciplined, and more militarized than it had been in the early 1900s. “Cooped up within the narrow land mass of their four main islands, the Japanese were barely able to feed their burgeoning population,” MacArthur later observed. “Equipped with a splendid labor force, they lacked the raw materials necessary for increased productivity. They lacked sugar, so they took Formosa. They lacked iron, so they took Manchuria. They lacked hard coal and timber, so they invaded China. They lacked security, so they took Korea. . . . It was easy to see that they intended, by force of arms if necessary, to establish an economic sphere completely under their control.”
The Quezón-MacArthur party arrived in Los Angeles in mid-February and stayed there for several weeks, much to MacArthur’s annoyance—he couldn’t understand why Quezón insisted on visiting the city in the first place. He learned soon enough: The Philippine president spent days in Hollywood, hobnobbing with stars and producers (including actor Clark Gable and producer Louis B. Mayer), before traveling on to New York, where the Philippine president was honored with a parade, a banquet, and a meeting with city and state officials. Quezón then appeared at a high-profile Foreign Policy Association luncheon, arranged with great fanfare by MacArthur. But instead of meeting a sympathetic audience, Quezón was subjected to relentless questioning from a roomful of worried pacifists. He was attacked for provoking Japan, for impoverishing his own people for the sake of self-defense, for teaching Filipino children “to kill.” Angered by his reception, Quezón became irritable and defensive, at one point raising his voice to a near shout during the meeting. “If I believed that the Philippines could not defend itself,” he said, “I would commit suicide this afternoon.” Quezón turned on MacArthur, blaming him for failing to make the reporters understand the threats his people faced. MacArthur, for his part, was increasingly frustrated with the Philippine president, who seemed more interested in glitzy receptions than the hard work of diplomacy.
Thus was seeded Quezón’s disastrous visit to Washington, where, as MacArthur later phrased it, the Filipino was “practically ignored.” By now, both men were getting the message: There would be no additional monies for the archipelago’s defense and no munitions shipped to its new army. To make matters worse, Roosevelt announced that he was too busy to meet with Quezón—an astonishing (and undoubtedly purposeful) insult. Yet, as MacArthur also knew, Roosevelt’s decision was, in some sense, understandable. The president had been carefully following Quezón’s tour, including the flashbulb-popping meetings with stars and starlets. If Quezón was so anxious to defend his countrymen, Roosevelt thought, the man should have made a beeline for Washington instead of stopping in Los Angeles to meet the cast of Parnell.
Roosevelt’s announcement that he would not meet with Quezón sent MacArthur scrambling and pleading. But Roosevelt remained indifferent, telling his aides that he would give MacArthur five minutes of his time. But when the former army chief of staff showed up at the White House for his meeting, the president beamed up at him, eyes twinkling, and the two then sat down for what turned into a five-hour meeting. It was a classic Roosevelt-MacArthur back-and-forth in which MacArthur cajoled the president into doing what the president had already decided to do: Roosevelt would meet with Quezón over lunch and hear him out, he told MacArthur, though he would never consider granting the Philippines independence in 1938. The discussion was typical for the two men; unfailingly polite, they maneuvered, parried, lunged and retreated, then lunged and retreated again, all the while testing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Their discussion was crucial for each of them, for Roosevelt was attempting to assess MacArthur’s thinking on the Pacific, while MacArthur was probing Roosevelt’s political plans.
Roosevelt had his lunch with Quezón the following week. Waving away Quezón’s arguments for Philippine independence, Roosevelt smiled indulgently at MacArthur’s request for more arms for Manila and then affably shook hands with both men as they bid the president farewell. Quezón thought the visit to Washington was a great success, but MacArthur knew otherwise: Their effort to extract weapons from the United States failed miserably. After their meeting at the White House, the Philippine president traveled on to Mexico before departing for Manila, and MacArthur returned to New York. There, on the morning of April 30, at Manhattan’s Municipal Building, MacArthur surprised everyone by marrying Jean Faircloth in a modest civil ceremony. “It was perhaps the smartest thing I have ever done,” he later wrote.
From the moment he returned to Manila in June 1937, America’s man in the Philippines charted an independent course for himself and Quezón’s government. In this, he played the role of an American St. Paul—he was all things to all people, showing a different face to each of his constituents. He told Philippine legislators that their nation was in grave danger; he told Quezón that he doubted the Japanese were dangerous; and he told his staff to accelerate their efforts to recruit and equip Filipinos. Meanwhile, he told Washington that he needed more money to fend off a threat that, he confidently announced to his staff, wasn’t really a threat at all. What did MacArthur really want? He had two goals: His first one was to convince Filipinos that they could create a military strong enough to deter any aggressor. Second, he wanted to convince the Japanese that the price they would pay for an invasion would prove too costly. As events would show, he failed at both.
MacArthur’s hopes were simply hopes. The archipelago couldn’t rely on its own legislature, much less the American Congress, to provide funding for an army. “Though we worked doggedly,” Eisenhower later reflected, “ours was a hopeless venture, in a sense. The Philippine government simply could not afford to build real security from attack.” MacArthur agreed, though he continued to contend that the Philippines would be a match for any invading enemy. He told this to Quezón, to the Philippine national assembly, and to visiting dignitaries. No one believed him. One day, as Eisenhower listened in astonishment, MacArthur told a group of reporters that the Philippines could not be conquered, that any amphibious assault on it would be too risky, and that, in any event, Japan didn’t really covet the Philippines. There were seven thousand islands in the archipelago, he argued, and they could all be defended: “We’re going to make it so very expensive for any nation to attack these islands that no nation will try it.” Eisenhower was aghast. It was as if his boss hadn’t even read the newspapers. “I do not agree with those who predict an imminent war,” MacArthur told a group of visiting American dignitaries. “The complete state of preparedness of practically all nations is the surest preventive of war.”
The claim seems odd, particularly given MacArthur’s pleas for more funds. After returning from Washington, he had trooped off to the Malacanang Palace to ask Quezón to make one last appeal to the Philippine legislature for money. Quezón resisted him because, as he said, the Philippine treasury was empty. But MacArthur pressed him—Quezón had to try. Eventually, Quezón relented and appeared before the legislators, couching his argument in typical Quezón-like legalese: “The annual appropriations will be adjusted each year to the annual revenue, so that all other authorized government services and activities may develop in harmony with the growth of the populations and the expansion of our culture.” This gibberish fell on deaf ears. Most of the legislators thought Quezón and MacArthur were simply out of touch: The best way to keep the Philippines from becoming a Japanese target was to refrain from appearing too inviting, they said—which meant that less money should be appropriated for the military, not more. Of course, the legislators should have known better. That month, July 1937, Japanese and Chinese forces clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing—an incident that sparked a full-scale war in China. Within months, Japanese aggression would account for tens of thousands of Chinese lives.
Japan’s provocations in China sparked war fears in Washington, though MacArthur’s adversaries continued to pooh-pooh the threat. The now retired Frank Murphy, whose time in Manila undergirded his reputation as an expert on all things Asian, channeled the views of Manila legislators, telling the administration that MacArthur’s buildup actually endangered the Philippines. MacArthur, he told Roosevelt, was acting like a dictator. Harold Ickes chimed in, telling Roosevelt that MacArthur’s mere presence in Manila sparked Tokyo’s fears, which, instead of being confronted, should be allayed. MacArthur needed to be recalled to Washington, he said. Murphy and Ickes, a formidable pair, were joined by MacArthur’s traditional White House critics. But in this instance, at least, Murphy and Ickes were animated by more than animus toward MacArthur. Neither Murphy nor Ickes had faith in the Filipinos, and the two men believed that by declaring the Philippines neutral, the United States could remove the commonwealth as a target of Japanese aggression. Doing so, they believed, was a necessary first step in stabilizing the situation in the Far East. But new army chief of staff Malin Craig, Pershing’s acolyte, thought these views were dangerously naive. The Japanese, he told Roosevelt, should be made to fight for the Philippines, and as he surprisingly added, MacArthur was just the man to do it.
In late July, Craig weighed in with Roosevelt over MacArthur’s future. If MacArthur were recalled or relieved, Craig warned, the American military advisor would simply retire and stay on as Quezón’s advisor. Instead, Craig argued, MacArthur should be persuaded to stay in uniform. America needed him. If Roosevelt was surprised by this suggestion, he didn’t show it. He waved Craig off: MacArthur could retire, or not; it was up to him. So in early August, Craig wrote to MacArthur, explaining what Murphy and Ickes were saying about him and warning that Roosevelt wanted him out of Manila. MacArthur might even be ordered to the United States and given command of a corps. MacArthur was shocked. “Your letter has amazed me,” he responded angrily to Craig. “The action suggested would constitute my summary relief.” When, shortly thereafter, Roosevelt heard of MacArthur’s irritation, the president wrote him a personal letter saying that MacArthur need not retire, but could instead fill a senior command position in the United States if he wanted. In truth, the president’s offer was less enticing than it looked: MacArthur would be serving under Malin Craig, his successor as chief of staff. In essence, Roosevelt was inviting MacArthur to retire, and MacArthur accepted the invitation, writing the president that he wanted to be placed on the retired list. Roosevelt responded in kind: “Dear Douglas: Personally, as well as officially, I want to thank you for your outstanding services to your country. Your record in war and peace is a brilliant chapter in American history.” It was all easily done and (one can’t help feeling) elegantly choreographed. And so, on December 31, 1937, the day of MacArthur’s retirement, Manuel Quezón issued an executive order extending MacArthur’s service as his military adviser and naming him field marshal in the Philippine Army.
It is difficult to judge this part of the MacArthur-Roosevelt relationship, for neither man emerges as an insightful political or military thinker. MacArthur misjudged Japanese intentions and overestimated Filipino capabilities. The sure-handed Roosevelt, on the other hand, was strangely susceptible to the arguments of those to whom he rarely gave weight, such as Ickes and Murphy. These were not strategic thinkers with broad experience in international affairs. They had little understanding of the Far East and believed, against all evidence, that Manila might somehow escape Tokyo’s voracious maw. They either could not see what was coming or, seeing it, averted their eyes. So did Roosevelt. So too did MacArthur. Neither MacArthur nor Roosevelt believed that Japan could be appeased or easily defeated, and yet, in 1937, they acted as if the looming war lay somewhere in the far future. The navy-besotted Roosevelt never imagined that the United States might need an army to fight in the Pacific, while MacArthur thought himself somehow able to build one by simply talking it into existence. Both were blinded by what they wanted to be true.
On New Year’s Day 1938, Douglas MacArthur took off the uniform of the U.S. Army and began to design the uniform of a field marshal in the Philippine Army. Shortly thereafter, he presented himself to Eisenhower, proudly preening in his new medal-encrusted trappings. What do you think? he asked. Eisenhower shook his head: He thought MacArthur looked ridiculous.
The sudden change in MacArthur’s role was bound to spark difficulties. His staff members were uncertain of their status and were increasingly alarmed by MacArthur’s mercurial statements. Moreover, they faced a budget crisis exacerbated by intransigent legislatures in Washington and Manila. In the midst of these changes, in February 1938, Jean gave birth to a baby boy. MacArthur was ecstatic. Baby Arthur was immediately coddled and pampered. Although MacArthur spent more time at home, his new son could not divert the general from the crises in the Pacific, and his staff found that their respite was temporary. In early 1938, MacArthur announced that he would bring the Philippine Army’s new recruits to Manila for a national parade, a transparent attempt to convince the Philippine legislature to provide more funding. The trickery was opposed by Eisenhower, who believed the parade would cost more than it would yield. At the same time, MacArthur pressed his staff to build a Philippine navy of fifty patrol boats that, he believed, could sow havoc in Lingayen Gulf, whose beaches provided perfect disembarkation points for a potential invader. U.S. Navy Lieutenant Jerry Lee recalled approaching MacArthur about the subject: “He was still for damn patrol boats to patrol the coastline of the Philippines. . . . Of course, you didn’t get to talk much when you went to see MacArthur. He did the talking. And he called me ‘Commodore’ for some damned reason or other.”
Eisenhower was as exasperated as Lee. MacArthur not only seemed to be getting older, but was growing old, and their relationship was suffering. Noticing that Eisenhower was growing closer to Quezón, MacArthur began to nudge the aide aside, and soon the two crossed swords. This was MacArthur at his worst: narrow-minded, paranoid, envious. MacArthur changed Eisenhower’s responsibilities to give him less access to Quezón. Then, after Jimmy Ord died in a freak air accident in January 1938, MacArthur brought in Richard Sutherland from China, ostensibly to help take on some of Eisenhower’s responsibilities. Sutherland, a vicious infighter, was soon contending with Eisenhower for MacArthur’s time. The slights left Ike simmering: “I must say it is almost incomprehensible that after 8 years of working for him, writing every word he publishes, keeping his secrets . . . he should suddenly turned on me, as he has all others who have ever been around him. He’d like to occupy a throne room surrounded by experts in flattery.”
In the summer of 1938, Eisenhower traveled to Washington in a last-gasp effort to raise funds for the Philippine Army. He succeeded in winning approval for the shipment of guns and mortars to Manila, but the purchases were from outdated stocks kept in army warehouses. Still, his correspondence with MacArthur was upbeat; they were making progress. But when Eisenhower returned to Manila in November, he “found a vastly different situation.” There, seated in MacArthur’s outer office was the obnoxious Sutherland, MacArthur’s new eyes and ears. Sutherland was more pliant than Eisenhower and more in awe of MacArthur’s stature—and an expert flatterer. Eisenhower was now enraged. MacArthur’s purpose, he speculated, was not only to nudge him aside, but to keep him away from Quezón, with whom Ike had formed a strong friendship. Eisenhower and Quezón played bridge nearly every Saturday night, and the general apparently feared that Eisenhower might supplant MacArthur. Sutherland, on the other hand, could deal with Quezón without threatening MacArthur. “Why the man should so patently exhibit a jealousy of a subordinate is beyond me,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary.
The final break came in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Eisenhower had missed out on one war and would not miss out on another, so he asked for a transfer. He needed to get to the United States to make himself available for a combat assignment. But even then, in the midst of his escape, he remained curiously drawn to MacArthur, later waving off questions about their explosive relationship. “Hostility between us has been exaggerated,” he said. “After all, there must be a strong tie for two men to work so closely for seven years.”
On December 12, 1939, MacArthur stood beside Eisenhower on a Manila pier, as the still-young lieutenant colonel waited to board the Cleveland, bound for San Francisco. It was an uncomfortable moment. “We talked of the gloominess of world prospects,” Eisenhower later wrote, “but our foreboding turned toward Europe—not Asia.” This was hindsight, of course, but it was an authentic reflection of the worries that consumed both men. Germany’s invasion of Poland marked the beginning of the conflagration; over the next six months, Germany would overrun Denmark and Norway, then the Low Countries, and finally France. Hitler’s armies would accomplish in a mere thirty days what the kaiser’s could not do in four years.
As Hitler advanced, Roosevelt prepared the nation for war. Most startling about his efforts is how diligently they were opposed, as if the nation could not bring itself to believe it would be involved in yet another global conflict. Roosevelt made the threat of war a centerpiece of an increasing number of his public statements. In September 1939 he proposed suspending the Neutrality Act, so that the United States could ship arms to antifascist nations in Europe. Roosevelt pushed his plan through Congress, but he hesitated on going further when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked for a loan of U.S. destroyers. There was still a strong isolationist lobby in the United States, and it appealed to voters. Roosevelt needed to be careful. Ending the arms embargo was one thing, but Churchill’s request went too far: “I am not certain that it would be wise for that suggestion to be made to Congress at this moment,” Roosevelt wrote to him.
Roosevelt’s hesitations are understandable. Ever attuned to political realities, Roosevelt carefully calculated when he could push the electorate and when he couldn’t. But even in the face of this domestic opposition, Roosevelt began to put in place a team that would prepare the nation for the coming conflict. On the day that Germany invaded Poland, George Marshall was sworn in as the new army chief of staff. It was a way to reward a brilliant career with a position that acknowledged him as the army’s premier strategist and organizer. Then, when France was overrun by Hitler’s tanks, Roosevelt appointed seventy-two-year-old MacArthur admirer Henry Stimson, a Republican and former governor-general of the Philippines, as secretary of war. This was the clearest possible signal that Roosevelt believed the United States would soon be engaged in the global conflict. Stimson put conditions on his appointment: He wanted to speak his mind without White House oversight, and he wanted the administration to push for universal military training. In the midst of his third campaign for the presidency, Roosevelt agreed.
Stimson’s first challenge was to improve War Department morale, which had been sapped by ten years of Depression-induced penury. Stimson rebuilt the staff, then directed Marshall to rebuild the army. Kept apace of these developments in Manila, MacArthur couldn’t have been more pleased. While he was disquieted by the appointment of Marshall, he had a ready ally in Stimson, who admired his service record. Surprisingly, and despite his own experience with MacArthur, Marshall confirmed Stimson’s judgment: There was no other senior officer with MacArthur’s experience, nor anyone who knew the Far East better. Marshall had studied MacArthur’s farewell strategy paper and, like military theorist Liddell Hart, had been impressed with its conclusions. So when the army chief learned that Major General George Grunert, the new commander of the Philippines Department, was discussing the looming Japanese threat with Manuel Quezón, Marshall wrote to Grunert saying that the commander would find MacArthur’s views helpful. Grunert knew an order when he read one, but he lobbied Stimson and Marshall that he be appointed overall commander in the archipelago. Marshall had a better idea—he proposed to Stimson that MacArthur be returned to uniform and put in charge of the Philippines and all American forces in the Far East.
In fact, the suggestion had already been made by MacArthur. In April 1940, MacArthur wrote to Roosevelt press aide Steve Early suggesting that the aide recommend to Roosevelt that he, MacArthur, be returned to active duty. MacArthur added that the Philippine Army he had created should be folded into his new command. At the same time, Stimson approached Marshall to check on reports that there was little cooperation between Grunert, Admiral Thomas Hart, who commanded the U.S. Navy in the Philippines, and MacArthur. Marshall told Stimson that in case of war in the Pacific, the president intended to “recall General MacArthur into service again and place him in command.” This was news to Stimson, and it was news to MacArthur, who was so despairing of the future that he had booked passage from Manila for a return to the states. Two days before France surrendered to Germany—on June 20, 1940 (and with Stimson’s agreement in hand)—Marshall told MacArthur to stay where he was: “Both the Secretary and I are much concerned about the situation in the Far East,” Marshall wrote. “During one of our discussions about three months ago it was decided that your outstanding qualifications and vast experience in the Philippines makes you the logical selection for the Army Commander in the Far East should the situation approach a crisis.” MacArthur was jubilant: “By God,” he announced to his staff, “it was destiny that brought me here.”
In fact, MacArthur was not officially informed of his appointment until July 27, after reading about it in the Manila Tribune. That same day, a telegram arrived confirming Roosevelt’s decision: “You are hereby designated as Commanding General, United States Army Far East.” Days later, word came that the War Department’s plans division had set aside $10 million to mobilize and arm the Philippine military, and shortly thereafter, Secretary Stimson informed MacArthur that he had convinced Roosevelt to approve $32 million in additional funding. By mid-August, MacArthur had established a working headquarters (United States Army Forces Far East, or USAFFE), completed a plan to mobilize and train ten Philippine reserve divisions (totaling some seventy-five thousand men), and reviewed and approved a plan for U.S. reinforcement of the archipelago. He also requested that the War Department ship him 84,500 M1 rifles, hundreds of new .30-caliber machine guns, increased numbers of mortars and artillery pieces, and 8,000 vehicles. New Army Air Forces chief Henry H. “Hap” Arnold dispatched a bomber and fighter package to help MacArthur, and by the end of August, thirty-one new P-40 fighters were on their way to Manila. The P-40s supplemented a group of nine B-17s that pioneered a trans-Pacific route to Manila from the West Coast through Midway and Wake Islands.
MacArthur’s staff was now working around the clock to implement the chief’s war plans. With men and munitions on the way, MacArthur issued his first order as America’s Far East commander. He directed the commander of his North Luzon Force to “take necessary action to insure immediate readiness for any eventuality, but without creating local agitation or more comment than is unavoidable among the civilian population, or in your command.” The North Luzon commander, Major General Jonathan Mayhew “Skinny” Wainwright, immediately complied, setting his forward units (all of them Filipino) the task of surveying the beaches of Lingayen Gulf, the best landing areas for an invading army. Landing at Lingayen, both MacArthur and Wainwright knew, would provide Japanese forces a clear road to Manila, as the beaches led onto a verdant plain—a highway to the Philippine capital. The South Luzon Force, under the command of Major General George Parker, was assigned to defend the beaches near the capital. The Visayan-Mindanao Force, under Brigadier General William F. Sharp, was deployed in the southern Philippines.
Despite the buildup, the strength of the three forces was modest; just over 31,000 American and Filipino troops were listed as combat ready. The addition of troops from the 100,000-man Philippine Army helped, of course, but their numbers were only numbers—only two-thirds of them were trained, and they were armed with World War One–vintage weapons. Then too, MacArthur was woefully short of modern aircraft: Major General Lewis Brereton could put only thirty-five B-17 bombers in the air, in addition to the new P-40s and an assortment of reconnaissance aircraft. MacArthur’s naval assets were in even worse shape, to the point of being negligible—one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, thirteen World War One–vintage destroyers, and seventeen submarines. Even so, the forces in the Philippines were stronger than they had ever been and gave both MacArthur and Washington confidence that the island country would not be overwhelmed. Their confidence showed just how poorly informed they were of Japanese strength.
In September 1940, three months after Hitler’s defeat of France, Japan seized French Indochina. Knowing that their armies in China would soon be starved for fuel, the Japanese now had within their grasp the solution to their resource problems. By striking south and east, the Japanese navy could seize the oil-, tin-, and rubber-rich Dutch East Indies and protect this resource-rich empire by striking against Manila and Singapore—and against the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. “In the first six months of the war with the United States and Britain,” Japanese Minister of War Hideki Tojo predicted, “I will run wild and win victory after victory.” Throughout 1941, the tone of Japanese communications with the United States became insulting and confrontational. In early November 1941, the United States intercepted a Japanese message to the senior commanders of its forces in China. The message declared that Japan would renew its Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy and terminate discussions with the U.S. government aimed at resolving the China crisis. Relations between the two countries deteriorated over the next weeks, with many in the Roosevelt administration saying they believed that war in the Pacific was inevitable.
“These islands must and will be defended,” MacArthur told his skeptical staff. “I can but do my best.” That was MacArthur the heroic commander who believed in his country, in the Philippines, and in himself. But MacArthur the military leader, the realist, the quiet and somber man he rarely allowed anyone to see, had a different view. One observation provides a rare example of his unadorned self, an unusual portrait of MacArthur shorn of oratory. On the eve of the conflict, journalist Clare Boothe Luce visited MacArthur in Manila for a profile on the general for Life magazine. Luce noted MacArthur’s thinning hair, his mottled skin, and the trembling hands of an aging commander, but she noticed, too, the insatiable ambition—to be at the very center of events. MacArthur admired Luce, considered her well informed on Asia, but he never let down his guard. Except for this once, in an offhand moment, when Luce asked him his theory of offensive warfare: “Did you ever hear the baseball expression, ‘hit ’em where they ain’t?’ That’s my formula,” he explained, smiling confidently. But when she then asked him for his formula for defensive warfare, he hesitated—before finally answering. “Defeat.”