Table Of ContentRAMPAGE
MacArthur, Yamashita,
and the Battle of Manila
JAMES M. SCOTT
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
Independent Publishers Since 1923
NEW YORK LONDON
For Carmen Scott,
who makes everything possible.
“These children of this Rising Sun:
Look down, dear God, on all they’ve done.”
—CHARLES BROWN, PRISONER OF WAR
CONTENTS
Prologue
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Note on Sources
Archives and Libraries
Notes
Select Bibliography
Illustrations Insert
Index
RAMPAGE
PROLOGUE
“I consider him an officer of most brilliant attainments.”
—MAJ. GEN. CHARLES T. MENOHER,
EFFICIENCY REPORT ON DOUGLAS MACARTHUR,
AUGUST 28, 1919
G
EN. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR WALKED OUT ONTO THE porch of his cottage on the
battered Philippine island of Corregidor in the early evening of March 11, 1942,
joining his wife Jean and the couple’s four-year-old son, Arthur—all packed for
that night’s perilous escape. The sun had just slipped below the western horizon,
silhouetting the nearby Bataan Peninsula where the dormant volcano Mount
Mariveles towered majestically almost five thousand feet over the South China
Sea. A tropical breeze whipped across Corregidor, one typically filled with the
acrid smell of cordite from Japanese bombings and artillery, which had finally
let up after a long day of attacks along the waterfront. This tadpole-shaped island
that guarded the entrance to Manila Bay had served as MacArthur’s last refuge,
under siege now for ninety-three days by advancing enemy forces.
The toll of the war showed on the sixty-two-year-old general. The five-foot-
ten MacArthur had shed nearly twenty-five pounds on a diet of half rations. His
normally close-cropped and thinning hair, which he often hid under his officer’s
hat, had grown long, and his face was coarse from weeks of shaving with
saltwater. Despite that, MacArthur had still insisted each day on dressing in a
pressed uniform and shined shoes, a small gesture of normalcy in an
environment that deteriorated by the hour. But none of it mattered now as a lone
truck grumbled up the bomb-cratered road to retrieve the general and his family
for the trip down to the dock. MacArthur’s besieged garrison would soon fall.
The promised reinforcements had never arrived, and each day the Japanese
noose tightened. If he did not leave tonight, MacArthur might never escape.
A patrol-torpedo boat was moored alongside Corregidor’s north dock barely
a half mile away, ready come nightfall to take the general, his family, and a few
senior staffers on a high-speed run south to break the Japanese blockade of the
island. Three other navy patrol boats would simultaneously depart Corregidor
and Bataan, carrying additional officers on MacArthur’s staff for a total party of
twenty-one. If successful, this small flotilla would carry the general and his
entourage some five hundred miles south over two days to the lush island of
Mindanao, where B-17 bombers dispatched from Australia would pick them up
at a Del Monte pineapple plantation and fly them to the port city of Darwin. Just
as he had told those who had escaped before him, MacArthur knew that the next
time he saw the sun, he would be in a whole new world.
The half-ton truck rolled to a halt in front of the gray cottage, where blankets
tacked up inside the windows had served as primitive blackout curtains. Only
two days earlier MacArthur had sat in the wicker chairs on this same porch with
Maj. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, his wiry second-in-command who answered to
the nickname Skinny. That afternoon MacArthur had leveled with Wainwright,
informing him that President Franklin Roosevelt had ordered him to evacuate to
Australia, a move designed to rob the enemy of the propaganda victory of
capturing one of America’s most famous generals. Wainwright would remain
behind in charge and fight to the end. “I want you to make it known throughout
all elements of your command that I’m leaving over my repeated protests,”
MacArthur had instructed his subordinate.
“Of course I will, Douglas,” Wainwright had promised.
“We’re alone, Jonathan; you know that as well as I,” he said. “If I get through
to Australia, you know I’ll come back as soon as I can with as much as I can.”
“You’ll get through,” Wainwright assured him.
“And back,” MacArthur had insisted.
The general shot a glance at his watch this muggy Wednesday evening,
which read seven-fifteen p.m. The patrol boat would depart in just fifteen
minutes.
MacArthur could delay no longer.
“Jean,” he finally announced. “It’s time to mount up.”
The general’s escape capped a brutal and frantic three months. In December
1941, after the Japanese wiped out America’s air and sea power, MacArthur had
ordered the evacuation of Manila, hoping to spare the Pearl of the Orient from
destruction. Workers had emptied the capital’s bank vaults of cash, gold, and
securities, while the American high commissioner had pulled down the flag,
broken the official seal, and ordered his new air-conditioned car pushed into the
bay. The general had no choice but to abandon his own luxurious home in the
penthouse atop the Manila Hotel, leaving behind his prized library of some ten
thousand volumes, his family silver valued at more than $30,000, and even
young Arthur’s baby book and birth certificate. MacArthur’s forces had fallen
back to the Bataan Peninsula and the fortified island of Corregidor, where the
general had set up his headquarters in the network of underground tunnels
carved deep into the rock. Japanese bombs and artillery had since reduced the
lush 1,735-acre island to a barren wasteland, where all that survived of most of
the aboveground barracks, offices, and even the hospital were skeletal concrete
remains held together by rebar.
Conditions proved far worse for the majority of MacArthur’s troops fighting
out in the open across the dark waters on Bataan with little more than shallow
foxholes for cover. Hunger had forced soldiers there to slaughter and choke
down the cavalry’s mules and horses, while swarms of mosquitos and flies had
spread everything from dengue fever to dysentery. Exhaustion had felled those
lucky enough to dodge disease. “Malaria and malnutrition,” observed Associated
Press reporter Frank Hewlett, “put more soldiers out of service than Jap bullets.”
Other times Japanese soldiers crept behind Allied lines at night to kill American
and Filipino forces, often disemboweling them. “More frequently, the men’s
genitals were stuffed in their mouths,” wrote Steve Mellnik, a captain and
artilleryman on MacArthur’s headquarters staff. “In one case a victim regained
consciousness and begged for a bullet to end his agony!”
The general’s starved and battle-weary soldiers on the peninsula quipped that
the V chalked on their helmets stood not for “Victory” but for “Victims.”
For months, the enemy had humiliated the impotent MacArthur, dumping
thousands of leaflets on his forces. “Sir, you are well aware that you are doomed.
The end is near,” Japanese Gen. Masaharu Homma wrote in one missive
addressed directly to MacArthur. “The question is how long you will be able to
resist.”
Tokyo Rose likewise had aimed her demoralizing broadcasts at the general’s
troops. “You’re out on the end of a 6,000-mile limb. The Japanese Imperial
Description:Before World War II, Manila was a slice of America in Asia, populated with elegant neoclassical buildings, spacious parks, and home to thousands of U.S. servicemen and business executives who enjoyed the relaxed pace of the tropics. The outbreak of the war, however, brought an end to the good life.
