‘When MacArthur embarked from the fortress known as Corregidor, the Battle of Bataan was two months old and Washington had already essentially written off Quezon’s Commonwealth as indefensible.’
I SENT for General Wainwright, who was to be left in command to tell him goodbye…‘Jim,’ I told him, ‘hold on till I come back for you.’ I was to come back, but it would be too late–too late for those battling men in the foxholes of Bataan, too late for the valiant gunners at the batteries of Corregidor, too late for Jim Wainwright.”
USAFFE C-in-C Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur left the Battling Bastards on the Peninsula of Bataan and the remaining United States and Philippine forces became the US Forces in the Philippines (USFIP), the command responsible for executing War Plan Rainbow 5. “The Commanding General, USFIP, was technically subordinate to the Commanding General, USAFFE, but was ordered to communicate directly with the War Department on all matters relating to the Philippines.” [War Department. U.S. Army Forces Far East. 7/26/1941-5/10/1942; https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10448745]
“It was 7:15 on the evening of March 11th when I walked across the porch to my wife. ‘Jean,’ I said gently, ‘it is time to go.’ We drove in silence to the South Dock, where Bulkeley and PT-41 were waiting; the rest of the party was already aboard. Shelling of the waterfront had continued intermittently all day. I put Jean, Arthur, and Ah Cheu on board, and then turned slowly to look back.”
When MacArthur embarked from the fortress known as Corregidor, the Battle of Bataan was two months old and Washington had already essentially written off Quezon’s Commonwealth as indefensible: “Immediately after this war started, the Japanese forces moved down on either side of the Philippines to numerous points south of them–thereby completely encircling the Philippines from north, south, east, and west. It is that complete encirclement, with control of the air by Japanese land-based aircraft, which has prevented us from sending substantial reinforcements of men and material to the gallant defenders of the Philippines. For 40 years it has always been our strategy–a strategy born of necessity–that in the event of a full-scale attack on the Islands by Japan, we should fight a delaying action, attempting to retire slowly into Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor…We knew that, to attain our objective, many varieties of operations would be necessary in areas other than the Philippines.”
“Now nothing that has occurred in the past two months has caused us to revise this basic strategy of necessity — except that the defense put up by General MacArthur has magnificently exceeded the previous estimates of endurance… your map will show that it would have been a hopeless operation for us to send the fleet to the Philippines through thousands of miles of ocean, while all those island bases were under the sole control of the Japanese.” [Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat, 23 February 1942]
Even if many Filipinos accepted this bitter assessment, not so some Americans: “Could the Philippine Islands have been successfully defended against the Japanese? The military experts say no; President Roosevelt in his radio speech of Feb. 23 said no. All that could be expected, according to them, was a delaying action. This is not true. Nothing else could have happened as long as the masses of the Philippine people were not rallied to the fight.
But if the masses had been rallied, the picture in the Philippines, would be entirely different today from what it is.” [C. Charles, “Why Philippine Masses Have Not Been Rallied to Support of War,” The Militant, Vol. VI, No. 11, 14 March 1942, p. 5]
Roosevelt’s justification is merely a symptom of a wider malaise: “The fall of Singapore has shaken American capitalism more than the fall of France… The crisis of the American bourgeoisie is a product and an integral part of the universal crisis of the imperialist system of world capitalism. Each of the powers is attempting to overcome this crisis at the expense of the others, whether they are antagonists or allies. All together they hope to emerge somehow, sometime, from this bloody mess at the expense of the Soviet Union, the colonial peoples, the working masses.” [William F. Warde, “Roosevelt and the War Crisis,” Fourth International, Vol. 3, No. 3, March 1942, pp. 73-76]
Crisis! Nazis and local collaborationists were massacring 1,900 people in the First Dí¼namí¼nde Action in the BiÄ·ernieki forest near Riga, while the Nipponese won the Battle of Java and completed Operation SR (invasion of Salamaua—Lae) when MacArthur stepped aboard PT-41. “Although the flotilla consisted of only four battle-scarred PT boats, its size was no gauge of the uniqueness of its mission. This was the desperate attempt by a commander-in-chief and his key staff to move thousands of miles through the enemy’s lines to another war theater, to direct a new and intensified assault. Nor did the Japanese themselves underestimate the significance of such a movement. ‘Tokyo Rose’ had announced gleefully that, if captured, I would be publicly hanged on the Imperial Plaza in Tokyo.” [Reminiscences by Douglas Macarthur. McGraw-Hill. 1964]
The retreating commander would bring the Philippine Chief Executive with him: “I accept your plan stop I need the three fast boats in Zamboanguita tomorrow night stop If they are not available send M/V Dumaguete which was at Iligan yesterday and the two fast boats referred to in your radiogram just received.” [https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1942/03/17/telegram-of-president-quezon-to-field-marshal-macarthur-march-17-1942/]
MacArthur was fleeing from a deteriorating situation: “Brigadier General William F. Sharp, commander of the Visayan-Mindanao Force, greeted me on landing, and reported all was well with his troops. Davao was in enemy hands, but if Bataan fell, his plans for intensified guerrilla warfare were well advanced. Four B-17’s from Australia had been scheduled to meet our party. One had crashed in the waters offshore, two never reached Cagayan, and the fourth was so dangerously decrepit that General Sharp had ordered it back empty to Australia before our arrival… We took off from the Del Monte strip shortly after midnight on March 17th, the plane in which I was traveling rattling down the runway with one engine sparking and missing. We would be flying over enemy-held territory, relying on darkness to help us evade Japanese patrols. Over Timor, we were spotted and they came up after us. But we changed course from Darwin.”
The American press coverage remained positive: “WASHINGTON, March 17 — General Douglas MacArthur, who recently became 62 years old, but who looks and acts much younger, has been twice a full general in the American Army, holds the title of Field Marshal of the Filipino forces and has won probably more decorations than any other living American soldier.” [“M’ARTHUR AT 62 HAS GREAT RECORD; Survived Wounds and Gassing in World War I to Become Youngest Chief of Staff WAINWRIGHT IS BRILLIANT New Commander in Philippines Also a World War Hero Who Inherits His Soldiering,” Special to The New York Times, March 18, 1942]
