Gen. Douglas MacArthur established his place as a World War II icon 80 years ago when he waded onto a Philippine beach on Oct. 20, 1944.
The moment had been two and a half years in the making.
The proud future five-star general had been heartsick when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered him to relinquish his command and escape from the Philippines to Australia in the spring of 1942 to organize the Allied counteroffensive against the Japanese.
MacArthur’s ties to the Philippines went back to his earliest days in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant in 1903. He had returned to the archipelago multiple times throughout his decades-long career.
When he retired from the Army in 1937, he became field marshal of the military of the Philippines, then a commonwealth territory of the United States, slated to receive full independence in 1946.
But with the storm clouds of war with Japan forming, FDR recalled MacArthur to active duty in the U.S. Army in the summer of 1941, naming him commander of the U.S. Forces in the Far East, based in Manila.
On Dec. 8, 1941, the Japanese struck the Philippines only hours after hitting Pearl Harbor and with the same devastating effect, destroying most of the American air power and naval forces stationed there.
Soon thereafter, over 57,000 seasoned Japanese soldiers landed on the main island of Luzon and pushed the combined American forces under MacArthur to retreat into the Bataan Peninsula at the mouth of Manila Bay.
Japanese have cracked through American lines in the Philippines, flooding troops into a “Big Pocket” in the north & landing beachheads on southern coasts of Bataan. Defenders surrounded: pic.twitter.com/cAbzx197J5
— Second World War tweets from 1940 (@RealTimeWWII) February 6, 2020
There, the Americans and Filipinos made a brave stand for four months against the Japanese onslaught, until disease and lack of food, supplies and reinforcements made surrender inevitable.
In March 1942, Roosevelt directed MacArthur to leave the Philippines and go to Australia.
James Zobel, archivist at the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, told The Western Journal in 2019 that Roosevelt did not want the Japanese to score such a major propaganda victory as capturing the general.
“You’ve got [radio propagandist] Tokyo Rose and Japan saying they’re going to hang him in Imperial Plaza” in Tokyo, he said.
The historian pointed out that MacArthur’s forces had been the only Americans holding out anywhere in the world against the Axis powers of Germany, Japan and Italy in early 1942, making the general a folk hero back in the U.S.
Obeying the president, MacArthur left the American fortress island of Corregidor, just off the Bataan Peninsula, on a Navy PT boat the night of March 12, 1942. His wife, Jean, their 3-year-old son Arthur and some members of the general’s staff traveled with him on the perilous journey, slipping through the Japanese naval blockade at the mouth of Manila Bay.
The PT boats traveled hundreds of miles to the south, experiencing a close encounter with the Imperial Japanese Navy along the way. Eventually, they reached an airfield in the southern Philippines, where the MacArthurs boarded a B-17 American bomber, which flew them to Australia.
Battle of Iwo Jima brings American forces closer than ever to mainland Japan- continuing “island hopping” campaign that has built a chain of Allied bases across the Pacific. New York Times map shows the “Roads that lead to Tokyo”: pic.twitter.com/PJGN43C2Gz
— Second World War tweets from 1940 (@RealTimeWWII) February 22, 2023
Australian Prime Minister John Curtain had specifically asked FDR to send MacArthur to his country to take over the Allied war effort in the southwest Pacific.
After arriving on the continent, MacArthur told reporters in Adelaide, “The president of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines…for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through, and I shall return.”
The general later wrote in his 1964 autobiography “Reminiscences,” regarding the statement, “I spoke it casually enough, but the phrase ‘I shall return’ seemed a promise of magic to the Filipinos. It lit a flame that became a symbol which focused the nation’s indomitable will and at whose shrine it finally attained victory and, once again, found freedom.”
“It became the battle cry of a great underground swell that no Japanese bayonet could still,” he added.
MacArthur biographer William Manchester, a World War II Marine Corps veteran, agreed, writing in his acclaimed book “American Caesar,” that “I shall return” became “the most famous [words] spoken during the entire war in the Pacific.”
Within weeks of MacArthur’s arrival in Australia, the Japanese launched a major offensive in Bataan, resulting in the surrender of U.S. and Philippine forces in early April 1942.
The horrific 65-mile Bataan Death March to a prisoner-of-war camp followed.
As many as 10,000 of the 75,000 or so combined American and Filipino troops died on the march due to Japanese brutality, denial of food and water and exhaustion from the months of previous fighting.
This day in 1942, some 70,000 surrendered Filipino and American soldiers began the Bataan Death March to Camp O’Donnell, approx 145 kilometres (90 mi).
Prisoners received little food or water, were beaten, tortured, forced to sit in the sun, sometimes within sight of water. #WW2 pic.twitter.com/sawK9tO6h3
— WWII Pictures (@WWIIpix) April 9, 2022
Thousands more died from the effects of the march within a month of arriving at the prisoner-of-war camps.
News of the fall of Bataan greatly distressed MacArthur and made him all the more determined to begin the counteroffensive that would ultimately take him 3,500 miles back to the Philippines.
“It’s something that he pushes for the whole time,” Zobel said. “It’s almost like he wills himself back there.”
Making it back to the Philippines would take far longer than MacArthur had hoped. He first had to wait for the troops and materials needed to wage an offensive to arrive in the southwest theater, especially with a vast majority of the war effort being directed toward defeating Nazi Germany in Europe.
MacArthur oversaw the island-hopping campaign through New Guinea and back toward the Philippines throughout the latter part of 1942 and into 1943 and 1944.
Finally, on Oct. 20, 1944, MacArthur’s forces stood poised in Leyte Gulf to fulfill the general’s 1942 pledge. The passage of years had brought new hope and new might.
Backed by over 100 warships, including 20 aircraft carriers, and supporting a landing force of 175,000 soldiers, redemption was at hand.
WAR MAP illustrates the first day of the battle of Leyte. Life Magazine, 6 November 1944. #WW2 #WWII #History pic.twitter.com/r12PwNZcCZ
— WWII Front Pages (@WW2frontpages) October 28, 2018
“You’ve got to think it is probably the greatest moment in his life, fulfilling that pledge, redeeming that promise,” Zobel said.
After the first wave of troops took the beach on Leyte Island, MacArthur waded ashore and proceeded to a portable radio microphone from which he would address the commonwealth.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur fulfills pledge to return to WW2 Philippines, 70 years ago tomorrow: #NARA pic.twitter.com/XKM4VPsyF0
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) October 20, 2014
“People of the Philippines: I have returned,” he said. “By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil — soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples.”
“The hour of your redemption is here,” the general said. “Rally to me. Let the indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead on.”
He asked the Filipinos, many of whom had been engaging in guerrilla war against the Japanese, to join even more in the war effort.
“As the lines of battle roll forward to bring you within the zone of operations, rise and strike,” MacArthur said. “Strike at every favorable opportunity. For your homes and hearths, strike! For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! Let no heart be faint. Let every arm be steeled. The guidance of Divine God points the way. Follow in his name to the Holy Grail of righteous victory.”
MacArthur would go on in the months ahead to lead a successful campaign to liberate the Philippines. His troops also freed thousands of American POWs.
Rather than being hung in Imperial Plaza, as Tokyo Rose had predicted, MacArthur oversaw the Japanese surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri battleship in Tokyo Harbor on Sept. 2, 1945.
On this day in 1945, the surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was announced by Emperor Hirohito. The surrender was formally signed on 2 September 1945 on board the USS Missouri, bringing the war’s hostilities to a close. pic.twitter.com/av5XftEdyH
— Klaas Meijer (@klaasm67) August 15, 2024
In a radio address to the American people from the ship afterward, he said, “As I look back on the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that he has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mold victory.”
Portions of this article first appeared in the book “We Hold These Truths” by Randall Norman DeSoto.
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