The legendary McArthur and his 'I Shall Return'

By Noralyn Onto Dudt

"I SHALL RETURN," which was General Douglas MacArthur's personal quest became almost synonymous with the war in the Pacific. And returned he did on Oct. 20, 1944. The whole world watched as he triumphantly waded ashore with his men in the province of Leyte, and in the following months liberated the rest of the Philippines.

General Douglas McArthur, a larger-than-life figure was the American general who presided over the Japanese surrender on board the USS Missouri, bringing an end to World War ll.  It had not been an easy ride. The  US Pacific Fleet in the Philippines had been caught unprepared  on Dec. 8, 1941, just 10 hours after the Pearl Harbor attack and was almost obliterated. It was such a desperate situation that MacArthur and his men had to retreat to the Island of Corregidor, at the entrance of  Manila Bay. The US Army's  Pacific Fleet in the Philippines, lacking air cover as its airplanes were all destroyed in a blitzkrieg by Japan's Imperial Air Force,  withdrew to Java on Dec 12, 1941.

Just six years earlier [1935], the transitional government under President Manuel Quezon was still in its infancy. The Tydings-McDuffy Act provided a 10-year transition period from colonial governance to self-rule, during which the Commonwealth of the Philippines would be established. Even though the US government had been aware of Japan's ambitions in the South Pacific,  it was obviously unprepared. Surely, the U.S. had underestimated Japan's military capabilities and resolve. With Japan having taken over  the Philippines, Philippine Independence from the United States had to be put on hold.

It was a protracted war and both sides fought ferociously. The Philippine Scouts were a military organization of the US Army from 1901 until the end of World War ll. Not all of them were Filipinos—some were farm boys from California and Kansas while the others were Italian-Americans from New Jersey. They were the brave young men who fought America's first battle of World War ll. According to US military history, the Philippine Division was the best trained and possibly the best prepared US Army Division at the outset of the war. What they were not prepared for was the blitz of air attacks by  the Imperial Japanese Navy: the sinking of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the bombing of the U.S. Army's B-17 bomber base at Clark Field in the Philippines, the landing of Japanese troops on the shores of British Malaya, and the attack on British Hong Kong.  These four attacks were coordinated to be simultaneous but due to weather conditions,  the attack on the Pacific Fleet in the Philippines came 10 hours later. With the Japanese Navy having taken control of the Pacific, the routes for supplies and reinforcements to whatever remained of America's Pacific Fleet  were cut off.  Though MacArthur's troops fought gallantly, they were soon subdued.

They ended up in the infamous “Bataan Death March” where most of them succumbed to exhaustion, to the  invaders' cruelty, to hunger and thirst. Those who survived the "march" would later die from diseases in concentration camps.

With their formidable Mitsubishi ZEROs,  the Japanese were militarily superior.  The ZEROs with a speed of 351 mph gained a fearsome reputation with their unsurpassed maneuverability and excellent firepower and were the bane of Allied Airmen. They proved a difficult opponent even for the British  Supermarine Spitfire.  Intelligence about the impressive new fighter reached the US government much earlier. Despite rising tension in the Pacific, the United States somehow chose to ignore this vital information. It was the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 that brought the United States government to its senses. The US suddenly found itself playing "catch-up."

With the absence of uniformed troops,  Filipino men and women  started forming guerilla groups all over the archipelago. They did their work underground and turned out to be a formidable force. Through radio communication, they  supplied MacArthur who was already in Australia sensitive information and detailed intelligence on the whereabouts of Japanese troops. Philippine resistance against the invaders was solidly strong. One group, the Hukbalahap Movement was created during this time. The Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon [literally, People's Army  against the Japanese], better known by its abbreviation Hukbalahap (Huks) was a socialist/communist guerrilla movement formed by the farmers of Central Luzon. They were originally formed to resist the Japanese invaders,  but extended their fight into a rebellion against the Philippine government just after Independence. So effective were these guerilla groups  that out of the 48 provinces, only 12 of them could be fully-controlled by Japan's  military government.

Finally, the time had come for MacArthur to fulfill his promise "I shall return", and did so with an accompanying  force of 700 vessels and 170,000 army and navy personnel. As he landed, his voice boomed over the radio,  "People of the Philippines, I have returned." It was a phrase that would never be forgotten and was written all over history books for many generations of school children to learn.  And to the men he left behind in Corregidor, "I'm a little late, but we finally came."  Sadly, only a third of the men he left behind survived the atrocities of the Battles of Corregidor and  Bataan. Those two battles which culminated in the Bataan Death March left such an indelible mark on the American psyche that two streets in Washington DC, the nation's capital, bear their names—Bataan Street and Corregidor Street. Incidentally, adjacent to their corners along the Embassy Row of Massachusetts Avenue is where the Embassy of the Philippines currently stands.

The war ended but General MacArthur did not "fade away."  Japan's conquest of Southeast Asia left a devastation—Manila was reduced to rubble but Japan was left in ruins as well and in danger of falling into communists hands. Japanese society was ripe for socialistic manipulation. The Allied Powers deemed it necessary that Japan be occupied and be "tutored" in the tenets of democracy. General MacArthur was chosen as the Allied Commander of the Occupation of Japan, and rightly so. His expertise on Asia was well-known. As  he had the wisdom in taking the Japanese people's sentiments into account in every decision he made, the mission of the occupation proceeded smoothly and successfully. He oversaw the successful demobilization of Japan's military forces:  Article 9 of the new Constitution forbade Japan to maintain an army—Japan would never be allowed to wage a war  again. The occupation laid the groundwork for a democratic form of government, and for this to succeed, the  Zaibatsu—the family-owned industrial and financial integrated business conglomerates whose influence and size controlled significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II—had to be dissolved.

The new established Constitution not only gave the right to free speech but also weakened and regulated the powers of the police. Land reforms were efficiently enforced and proved to be the most successful land reform ever launched, a stark difference from the way Gen. MacArthur approached managed  land reforms in the Philippines. Unfortunately, it was not to be the military precision that he employed in his implementation of land reforms in Japan.

It was well-known in Japanese circles that in Occupied Japan, MacArthur did not mingle socially with the Japanese. He  was either  in his office or  in his official residence. It was only in those two places where one would find him which led to speculation among the Japanese that he disliked them.  However,  there was a common belief  that to efficiently overhaul the system especially in land reforms, he wanted to be socially and emotionally detached as much as possible. This was not so in the Philippines—it seemed that his strong social and emotional ties there had become a stumbling  block. He was there as a young man when his father General Arthur MacArthur was the Military Governor of America's new colony, and throughout the years, developed close friendships with Filipinos. He made Manila his home. The land reforms that the central Philippines badly needed were not implemented. Many American business interests would have been in jeopardy had he done so. Standing in the way of complete implementation were his  American and Filipino friends who had profitable land holdings and investments especially in the Benguet Gold Mines.

General MacArthur did return—the Japanese army was routed, the Filipinos rejoiced. But it was just a "return" to  pre-war conditions with the landed gentry in Central Luzon and in the Visayas, and several colonialists  controlling most of the national wealth. It was a "return" that missed a lot of "right turns". It was a "return" that  prompted the Hukbalahap movement to change its course in pursuing its goals: a rebellion against the newly-formed government to demand that it be included in governing and to have  equitable access to the national wealth. Surely, it was a "return" that was crucial. For the Philippines to receive her long-awaited Independence, she had to be liberated first. But the wrong "turn"  turned deadly when it  inspired a  small group of folks to rebel and destabilize a newly-independent Philippines. One wonders had human emotions not been part of the mix, what that "return" would have achieved in the long run. This is not to denigrate the larger-than-life MacArthur,  but one wonders whether another general like Gen. Eisenhower who had no Philippine "connection" had he been tasked  to oversee a land reform program  would have yielded a different outcome.

Douglas MacArthur, the larger-than-life figure was just human after all.  He was very fond of his Philippine home and loved his Philippine friends and in return, they were fond of him. He demonstrated such fondness and loyalty when he refused to leave the Philippines in the thick of battle... when he and his men were about to be overrun in Corregidor.  He was in such precarious position that he had to be ordered out by the President of the United States. He finally agreed to leave but with a heavy heart....a heart whose goal was to "return."

 

Noralyn Onto Dudt  has always been fond of reading History books and loves to write historical narratives when she's not writing about the Corona vaccines.  She lives in North Bethesda, a Washington DC suburb which is  not too far from the former  Walter Reed Army Hospital where General MacArthur spent the final days of his life in 1964.