Shortly after the crippling raid on Clark Field, MacArthur abandoned Manila to the Japanese, declaring it an “Open City,” hoping to prevent an overwhelming loss of both civilian and military lives at the hands of the well-equipped Japanese bombers. This abandonment allowed the Japanese free access to the city. MacArthur then dispatched the balance of the 80,000 men to reinforce the diseased and starving army of General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV on the Bataan Peninsula guarding Manila Bay while he removed his own stables and 4,000 men to his command post on Corregidor, a heavily fortified island the size of New York’s Central Park guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, the finest anchorage in the Pacific.
However, this war was waged from the air, and were it not for the fortified safety of the Malinta tunnel at the US Garrison on Corregidor, MacArthur and his islands would have fallen far sooner. The quarter-mile long tunnel on “The Rock” into which MacArthur and his family withdrew was a ventilated underground fortification with electricity, water, flush latrines, cold storage, and a fully equipped hospital. There were enough rations stacked inside to supply twice the number of men there for 180 days. Joining MacArthur, his family and staff on the well-supplied Rock were Philippine President Manuel Quezon and his wife. Meanwhile, the food rations for General Jonathan Wainwright’s troops commanded to defend the beaches from any Japanese landing had been cut to less than half, as Roosevelt continued to promise MacArthur the necessary reinforcements both in supplies and additional troops.
A scant two weeks after the Japanese had destroyed the US air defense at Clark Field, on December 22nd, backed by 80 Japanese Naval ships, Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma waded ashore with an additional 43,000 fresh troops primed to take the American Island Territory. That the Allies fought against the enemy’s superior war machine until April 9, 1942, demonstrated their extreme courage. They held out while MacArthur played for time, banking on the President’s repeated assurances that supplies and reinforcements were indeed on the way; while Roosevelt had promised Churchill those very resources for the defense of Europe. Not the Philippine Islands.
Stalling, the Allies—both Filipino and American, some Dutch, Australians and British—held out in the jungles, most now ravaged by malnutrition, malaria and dysentery. Still, they managed to stack up large enemy casualties and by early 1942, they were forced to resort to scrounging food, even eating the livestock of the cavalry which reportedly included MacArthur’s prized horses. Hopeful for the promised supplies, they made do equipping themselves by lifting ammo, stashes of tobacco, tins of food and medicine off the bodies of dead Japanese.
In an attempt to spare his people’s lives, Filipino President Quezon proposed to Washington that the Philippine Islands be immediately granted their independence from America and the islands declared neutral. He envisioned that his plan would effectively cause both warring forces to be withdrawn. He could then disband his standing Philippine Army and cause all hostilities to be called off.
Roosevelt rejected Quezon’s proposition outright and insisted he and his people support the “American determination and indomitable will to win.”
Meanwhile, successive waves of Japanese planes battered The Rock where the 4,000 men, Quezon, MacArthur and their families were sheltered sustaining only minor casualties. The Japanese were again reinforced with more troops while the malaria-riddled Americans bivouacked in the jungles on Luzon and the Bataan Peninsula were out of food and quinine. Desperate, they realized there were no supplies on the way and that they had been declared expendable. Wainwright may have seen it before MacArthur had.
By February 22, 1942, the Japanese had taken Burma, Borneo, Guam, Sumatra, Singapore, Java, and Hong Kong. They had invaded Timor and bombed Darwin. Next to fall was the Philippine Islands and without fresh troops and supplies, General Wainwright could no longer hold out against them. Where were the promised supplies?
Then for good measure, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor a second time.
At this point, Roosevelt capitulated. MacArthur was enraged when he received the order for a full surrender to the Japanese—he would never hand over the Islands to the enemy. He vowed to die in the defense of the Philippines. Meanwhile, Quezon and his family together with the Philippine War Cabinet were ordered evacuated, and on February 22nd, the President of the Philippines and his entourage boarded the submarine Swordfish for asylum in Australia. His farewell gesture was to place his signet ring on MacArthur’s finger with these words, “When they find your body, I want them to know that you fought for my country.” His wife, Jean, together with young Arthur MacArthur, insisted upon remaining with him there. So he handed a large package with his valuables to Quezon for safekeeping in Australia. The package was marked for preservation for the MacArthur legal heirs.
The following day, on February 23rd, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to make his escape to Australia rather than be taken as the Emperor’s war prize.
As an officer, he could not refuse an order from his Commander-in-Chief. But his loyalty was to the Islands and believing that he had been given no choice, MacArthur resolved to resign his commission and become a civilian so that he could defend Corregidor as a civilian and a volunteer. While setting about to tender his resignation from the United States Army, Roosevelt notified him that he was to head up the Philippine Relief Force being organized in Australia in order to recapture the Islands from the Japanese.
MacArthur agreed, counting that he would head up an important force. Three weeks later, on March 15, 1942, MacArthur, his wife, his four-year-old son Arthur MacArthur and his Chinese amah joined his staff to follow the Philippine President Manual Quezon to Australia on a dark night in heavy seas. They were given one-in-five odds for survival.
Four worn PT boats were the only available craft since the Swordfish had already departed with Quezon and his party. Well after the photographs and press release with the general’s famous, “I shall return,” the MacArthur party boarded these boats and left in the dark protected from enemy radar by the twenty-foot waves. The Japanese General Homma, seeking the glory of MacArthur’s dead-or-alive capture, dispatched part of a full destroyer division in pursuit.
The day following his escape came the headline news from Tokyo: MacArthur had “fled his post.”
But MacArthur survived causing his men in the field to be openly contemptuous over his leaving them with an Air Force without planes, a Navy without ships and an Army without weapons, food or medicine. They reviled his having come only once on January 15, 1942, to inspect their dire conditions on Bataan, and his having abandoned the hoarded food on Corregidor to the enemy. No longer did anyone believe his continual proclamation, “Help is on the way. Thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched. The exact time of arrival of the reinforcements is unknown…. No further retreat is possible. If we fight, we will win; if we retreat, we will be destroyed.”
A month later President Franklin Roosevelt awarded MacArthur the Medal of Honor, reinstating his status of hero in spite of his inaction and failure to defend the Philippines, not to mention the open contempt of his men.
Newly promoted Lieutenant General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV became the Allied Commander of the Philippines with orders from MacArthur never to capitulate to the enemy. But in order to save lives and stave off starvation and disease, on April 9, Wainwright surrendered his surviving 70,000 troops in Bataan to the Japanese, finally acknowledging that the promised reinforcements and supplies would never arrive.
The Japanese had succeeded. The Empire had over-run the entire Pacific in six months.
By June 1942, the entire 320,000 combined Allied Forces were completely surrendered