November 19, 2024 • 21 mins
In this episode, I spoke with author James Ellman about his book "MacArthur Reconsidered". One of America's most controversial generals, Douglas MacArthur’s rise through the U.S. Army’s ranks was meteoric.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Ernie Pyle World War
Two Museum Podcast. Your podcast at Ernie Pile, the Voice
of the American soldier during World War Two. My name
is doug Hess and if you're tuning into the Ernie
Pile World War Two Museum Podcast, what we do on
this podcast is share with you pieces of piles life
from his humble beginning on an Indiana farm to become
(00:36):
an appolite, surprise winning American journalist and war correspondent who
is best known for our stories about ordinary American soldiers
during World War Two. And today we have a very
special guest with us today, James Ellman and his book
MacArthur Reconsidered. First of all, James, welcome to the Ernie
(00:58):
Powe World War Two Museum Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Great, thanks so much for having me today.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, well, thank you for spending a few minutes with
us today. And I guess you know we talked about
Ernie Pywell writing about ordinary American soldiers. I'm not sure
General Douglas MacArthur really fits into that category.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh, he most certainly does not. And just to give
you a quick thumbnail this book, MacArthur Reconsidered, It's not
it's an attempt to understand MacArthur as how good or
bad was he as a battlefield leader, and after all,
that's why he is famous. He's not famous for the
(01:38):
corn cob pipe and the sunglasses and the oratory and
the strutting. He's famous because he was a leader during
World War Two and during the Korean Conflict. As a
battlefield general. My conclusion is that he was a pretty
poor battlefield general, not the worst Americans ever had, but
potentially one of the most dangerous. And of course that
(02:00):
took place more in the Korean War, where he took
on the president, almost caused a constitutional crisis, and he
wanted to be president himself, and he effectively ran for
president three times, lost all three times. He was a
poor general as a military commander, but he was a
masterful pr agent and self promoter. Ernie Pyle would have
(02:24):
hated MacArthur if he had been in his theater Southwest
Pacific area. He would have hated him for the same
reason Pyle hated or expressed extreme dislike, if not hate,
for General George Patten. And it's for the same sort
of reasons that this was a general who strutted around,
(02:44):
who had a perfectly immaculate uniform. He wasn't dirty, he
wasn't down in the dirt. He wasn't a normal guy.
He didn't use normal words and speak like a normal gi.
That's what Pile tried to capture in his writing, and
that's antithesis of patent, or of MacArthur. Harry F. Truman,
(03:06):
who's someone who probably Pile would have been happy to
have a beer with, expressed the same way he said,
I don't understand how is it that the country that
can give us an ike or a grant can also
give us a MacArthur, or a patent or a Custer.
If Kyle had actually gone to the Southwest Specific Area,
(03:29):
of course he did not. Of course, he spent most
of his time in the war in Europe, and then
he ended up in what was known as the Pacific
Ocean Area the POA that was under Nimitz's command, where
unfortunately he was killed near the very near end of
the war. But he never went to the Southwest Specific area,
and had he done so, he would have been expelled
(03:49):
from the area. And the reason is that MacArthur was
in control of that area. He had a very tight
control over the press. He put out a uniquay, effectively
a long tweet. We would call it today every single day,
and that press release exstalled the wonders of Johneral MacArthur brilliance,
(04:12):
and reporters from that area were expected to follow that
party line in all of their reporting, and if they
did not, they would be expelled from the theater. And
multiple reporters were expelled. And it's one of the reasons
why we have so many much famous reporting about the
Gis from Europe and Tunisia, Italy, Sicily Normandy, the rhyme
(04:40):
the Battle of the Bulge, while we have so much
great writing and reporting about the Marines and they're fighting
across the Central Pacific at Tarwa and Okinawan, Ewjima and
i Guam. Even if it wasn't pretty at times and
the opposite of pretor, it made the Marines in the
US Army look porn and then maybe look more at times.
(05:02):
We don't have that from New Guinea and the Philippines
where MacArthur was under sway, and that's for better or worse. Well,
hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and regular GIS fought
in that theater. We know very little about it. The
average American has never heard of the Battle of Baiak,
or the Battle of Alandia, or the Battle of Los Negros,
(05:28):
or a Buna or in Laity. They just don't know
because the reporting was so stilted from that area, and
why there were so many where there was so little
honest reporting. In fact, at one point Senator Vandenberg, who
is a strong Republican leader, wanted to run MacArthur against
(05:52):
FDR in nineteen forty four, and he was surprised that
every soldier he spoke to coming out of the Southwest
Pacific area all the regular gis, and they're almost all gis.
There were no marines there. They were very negative on MacArthur,
on dugout Doug as they called him, that he of
(06:13):
course hung out in a dugout. And it was such
a pernicious attitude and so prevalent that Vandenburgh actually thought
perhaps there was some secret conspiracy going on in the
FDR White House to keep any positive sounding GIS from
(06:35):
MacArthur's theater from coming home, and they were all being
sent somewhere else. And of course that was not the case.
MacArthur presided over arguably the most devastating defeats in US
military history. Certainly the largest defeat or surrender of an
American force ever in the tom and Corregador in nineteen
(06:58):
forty one nineteen forty two, right after Pearl Harbor, and
then of course a terribly embarrassing defeat, a shocking defeat,
one of the greatest military victories of all time Mao's
forces against the UN forces primarily a US force led
by MacArthur in late nineteen fifty early nineteen fifty one,
(07:21):
where effectively a smaller force that was outnumbered the Chinese
using cast off weapons from American surplus and Japanese captured weapons,
with no tanks, with no trucks, with very little artillery,
with no planes, pikon post World War two army, with
(07:42):
all the best equipment that Ernie Powo saw in World
War Two in Europe, and yet they crushed the US
force and caused the largest retreat in US military history.
And we don't talk about it that defeat very often
because it's just so embarrassing. And luckily for US, Matthew Ridgeway,
(08:07):
the general, was sent out after the field commander for
MacArthur was killed in a car crash Whildon, Walker and
Ridgeway pulled off an amazing turnaround, stabilized the line, and
retook Seoul, which led to South Korea being the strong
and vibrant democracy that it is today. And MacArthur's last
(08:32):
real official act was trying to start a nuclear war
against the Chinese, and he wanted to drop a large
number of nukes all across China and literally sowed the
northern border of North Korea and China with radioactive cobalt
so that no one would ever be able to live
there again for generations. Even the Romans when they sowed
(08:57):
the land of Carthage with salt so nothing would grow
there again. They might have glanced at actually creating a
whole strip of a country and making it a radioactive nomadsland,
But that was who MacArthur was, and Ernie Pyle would
have hated it.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
No, And I completely agree with you in terms of that.
I think Powle would have been very disgusted, pretty much
like he was with Patton, thought that they were pretty
much all showboats, and was more interested in themselves than
with the soldier. But what do you think we're still
talking about MacArthur all these years later?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
If he had all these negatives.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
If you will my words in defeats, why is he
still such an iconic figure?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
If you will in military history?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, again I believe well he was truly a master
of public relations and self promotion. He was very good
at it. He may have been in the best in
American history in that. Again, he did suffer the two greatest,
arguably greatest defeats in US history, and it's hard to
(10:10):
come up with another one that's more significant, and yet
we rarely talk about it. And when we think about
the victories he had, we can talk about in Cham
in Korea in nineteen fifty, which many do think about,
which was a huge risk that did pay off. But
the amphibious warfare specialists in the Navy and the Marines
(10:34):
looked at landing at Incham and said, if you came
up with a list of the twenty things about a
site where you should not land in, Chahn's got all
twenty of them. MacArthur said, I'm a gambler. I'm used
to gambling at a million to one odds, and I'm
(10:55):
going to take the risk and I'm going to win.
And Bernie Pilot would have said, hold on, you're taking
those odds, not with yourself. You're taking those odds with
the men of the American public, of a democracy, who
are going to be thrown into this battle. Actually the
landing was one Marine division and one US Army division,
(11:18):
but he did win. And for whatever reason, we rarely
remember the defeat in along the Yallu in Korea. I
never remember many of these men who are fighting. There
were men who had been GI's and might have even
met Ernie Pyle. It was just a few years after.
The reason we don't usually think about it is because
(11:39):
we have turned the fighting retreat of the first Marine
Division from the Chosun Reservoir back to the coast and
being evacuated. We have turned that into this wonderful heroic action.
And so when we think about as Americans about that defeat,
(11:59):
we think about how the Marines they didn't retreat. Of course,
the answer was, heck, we're not retreating, We're just advancing
in a different direction. And of course, for whatever reason,
certainly the garrison on the island of Luzan in the
Philippines and Manila was going to follow the Japanese, and
(12:20):
that had been US policy and expected in any war
between the US and Japan for twenty to thirty years.
The US had a plant called warplant Orange. Orange was
the color designation for Japan and the expectation was you'd
keep a small garrison in the Philippines and you try
and hold Middle of Bay and keep the Japanese from
(12:43):
having control of it for as long as possible. But
that garrison would be written off. There was just no
way to protect it against the strength of the Japanese
with Kawaii and the US mainland being so far away.
But MacArthur was able to convince the powis that in
the military and the government in Washington to massively reinforce
(13:06):
that garrison. And then when the war started, he foolishly
tried to defend the beaches rather than stockpiling food and
supplies medicine in Baton, so and his men were forced
to retreat to Baton. They almost immediately had to be
put on half rations and then quarter rations, and they
literally starved to death during that siege, while he ate
(13:30):
relatively well on Corregador Island, just off the coast, and
eventually he was evacuated. And one thing that Ernie Poe
would have hated is that MacArthur railed against the concept
that that garrison of eighty thousand men would surrender rather
than fight to the last man and have every single
one of them die fighting the Japanese. And when they surrendered,
(13:54):
obviously they were treated abominably by the Japanese. Thet they
had a chance to live versus selling their lives for
no other reason than MacArthur's glory. MacArthur, finally, he did
win quite a few major battles across New Guinea and
(14:17):
then into the Philippines. But again, this was not particularly
strategic territory. It's not territory that we really needed to take.
We should have been focusing our attention on moving across
the Central Pacific, and that had been the US military's
plan for defeating Japan for decades. But yet we had
to move along the South because MacArthur's primary goal was
(14:40):
not defeating Japan. His primary goal was returning to the
Philippines and regaining his honor. And he did return to
the Philippines. He did land on the beach and he said,
people of the Philippines, this is the voice of freedom,
General MacArthur's speaking.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I have returned.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So he actually said he individually was the voice of freedom.
But he did return and the American public loved that.
And the American public in the early days of World
War Two, when we were losing, he put up a
very brave face and he was seen as a hero,
even though many of his communicators were outright falsehoods when
(15:22):
he was losing, but he said he was winning right.
And then of course during the course of the war
he always put forth this very brave face that he
was winning, and America loved that. Similar to Patin, didn't
matter Patten engaged in war crimes and covered them up.
Doesn't matter if he struck and listed men, which is
(15:43):
a court Marster bawl offense. He was this figure of victory,
and the American public ate it up, even though many
of the gis and many of the correspondents thought he
was full of crap.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
James, one last question before we let you go. Know,
I know we're getting short on time, But during the
research and the writing of this book, did anything surprise you?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
What really came out for me is how MacArthur was
a terrible judge of character in terms of the staff
he hired, his staff, such as his two chiefs of
staff during the war and then in Korea, Richard Sutherland
and Ned Almond, we're just terrible people and had very
(16:30):
poor character, and we're very authoritarian, racist people that just
didn't reflect the sort of egalitarianism that America was fighting for.
And Ernie Powell tried to depict in his right. And
then Charles Willoughby his intelligence cheap from the beginning of
(16:50):
World War Two all the way through the end of
the when MacArthur left for the Korean conflict. He was
so such an authoritarian that MacArthur called him his fascist.
Charles Willoughby hero was Generalissimo Francisco Franco, And after MacArthur
got fired, Willoughby actually went and worked for Francisco Franco
(17:12):
in Spain. So, on the other hand, let's get MacArthur's
due for work. He was good besides just being a
pr agent. It was an excellent choice of who was
going to be a good battlefield leader for him. He
had been chief of Staff of the US Army. He
knew everyone in the army, and he brought forward Walter Krueger,
(17:34):
who became the head of his sixth Army, General Robert Eichelberger,
who became the head of the eighth Army in World
War Two. Eckelberger is arguably the greatest general of the
United States in World War Two, if not our entire history,
in terms of his ability to fight on the defensive,
(17:55):
fight on a shoe string, fight quickly, and had he
had the job, for example, of running the Third Army
in Europe, we'd be talking about Eichelberger rather than Patent
and then George Kenney, the general who ran the Fifth
Air Force. The Air Wing under MacArthur was arguably the
(18:16):
best and certainly the most innovative air commander in the
United States in World War Two, if not of all
the air forces in World War Two. He was an
amazingly effective man. He was the right place at the
right time, fighting in jungle areas where you couldn't get
tanks in, you couldn't get artillery in, and the planes
(18:37):
that he operated were used as flying artillery and flying trucks.
And his ability to coordinate close air support with the
gis on the ground was unmatched anywhere else in the war.
So MacArthur had this strange dichotomy. How could he want
to have boot liquors is Eisenhower called his men around
(19:01):
him personally, but out in the field, he was so
willing and so effective at choosing just the right men
to fight his battles for him. Of course, he never
allowed those guys to get any credit in the press
from Martie Piles and in fact, Robert Eichelberger once told
a correspondent from Time magazine, I would rather have you
(19:24):
drop a live rattlesnake down the back of my pants
than mentioned me in one of your one of your articles,
because MacArthur has threatened to bust me back to Colonel
and send me back to the States. And that is
exactly why Michael Berger is almost unknown today in the
United States, despite his excellence in saving American lives and
(19:50):
creating victory for America throughout the course of the war.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, and that's a shame, but unfortunately that was the
way the cards were dealt in that situation.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Absolutely, for better or words, it was. Though one would
hope that sometimes someday, over time, Krueger, Ackelberger, Kenny will
get more due among those who continue to follow you.
World War Two, which continues to be, of course, a
subject area that commands attention and interest across America, even
(20:27):
as we come up on the eighty years after the
end of the war.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Absolutely, that's a great way to end that time.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
James, thank you so much for coming on and spending
some time with us today. To our listeners, please go
ahead and get a copy of James's book, MacArthur Reconsidered.
It's an interesting read and I really enjoyed the conversation
with you today James and kind of giving us a
new look at MacArthur.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Thanks again for having me.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well, Thank you and thank you for listening to this
episode of the Ernie Power World War Two Museum Podcast.
We thank you for listening. We hope the you turnion
for our next episode.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Thank you.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Ernie Pyle World War
Two Museum Podcast. Your podcast at Ernie Pile, the Voice
of the American soldier during World War Two. My name
is doug Hess and if you're tuning into the Ernie
Pile World War Two Museum Podcast, what we do on
this podcast is share with you pieces of piles life
from his humble beginning on an Indiana farm to become
(00:36):
an appolite, surprise winning American journalist and war correspondent who
is best known for our stories about ordinary American soldiers
during World War Two. And today we have a very
special guest with us today, James Ellman and his book
MacArthur Reconsidered. First of all, James, welcome to the Ernie
(00:58):
Powe World War Two Museum Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Great, thanks so much for having me today.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, well, thank you for spending a few minutes with
us today. And I guess you know we talked about
Ernie Pywell writing about ordinary American soldiers. I'm not sure
General Douglas MacArthur really fits into that category.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh, he most certainly does not. And just to give
you a quick thumbnail this book, MacArthur Reconsidered, It's not
it's an attempt to understand MacArthur as how good or
bad was he as a battlefield leader, and after all,
that's why he is famous. He's not famous for the
(01:38):
corn cob pipe and the sunglasses and the oratory and
the strutting. He's famous because he was a leader during
World War Two and during the Korean Conflict. As a
battlefield general. My conclusion is that he was a pretty
poor battlefield general, not the worst Americans ever had, but
potentially one of the most dangerous. And of course that
(02:00):
took place more in the Korean War, where he took
on the president, almost caused a constitutional crisis, and he
wanted to be president himself, and he effectively ran for
president three times, lost all three times. He was a
poor general as a military commander, but he was a
masterful pr agent and self promoter. Ernie Pyle would have
(02:24):
hated MacArthur if he had been in his theater Southwest
Pacific area. He would have hated him for the same
reason Pyle hated or expressed extreme dislike, if not hate,
for General George Patten. And it's for the same sort
of reasons that this was a general who strutted around,
(02:44):
who had a perfectly immaculate uniform. He wasn't dirty, he
wasn't down in the dirt. He wasn't a normal guy.
He didn't use normal words and speak like a normal gi.
That's what Pile tried to capture in his writing, and
that's antithesis of patent, or of MacArthur. Harry F. Truman,
(03:06):
who's someone who probably Pile would have been happy to
have a beer with, expressed the same way he said,
I don't understand how is it that the country that
can give us an ike or a grant can also
give us a MacArthur, or a patent or a Custer.
If Kyle had actually gone to the Southwest Specific Area,
(03:29):
of course he did not. Of course, he spent most
of his time in the war in Europe, and then
he ended up in what was known as the Pacific
Ocean Area the POA that was under Nimitz's command, where
unfortunately he was killed near the very near end of
the war. But he never went to the Southwest Specific area,
and had he done so, he would have been expelled
(03:49):
from the area. And the reason is that MacArthur was
in control of that area. He had a very tight
control over the press. He put out a uniquay, effectively
a long tweet. We would call it today every single day,
and that press release exstalled the wonders of Johneral MacArthur brilliance,
(04:12):
and reporters from that area were expected to follow that
party line in all of their reporting, and if they
did not, they would be expelled from the theater. And
multiple reporters were expelled. And it's one of the reasons
why we have so many much famous reporting about the
Gis from Europe and Tunisia, Italy, Sicily Normandy, the rhyme
(04:40):
the Battle of the Bulge, while we have so much
great writing and reporting about the Marines and they're fighting
across the Central Pacific at Tarwa and Okinawan, Ewjima and
i Guam. Even if it wasn't pretty at times and
the opposite of pretor, it made the Marines in the
US Army look porn and then maybe look more at times.
(05:02):
We don't have that from New Guinea and the Philippines
where MacArthur was under sway, and that's for better or worse. Well,
hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and regular GIS fought
in that theater. We know very little about it. The
average American has never heard of the Battle of Baiak,
or the Battle of Alandia, or the Battle of Los Negros,
(05:28):
or a Buna or in Laity. They just don't know
because the reporting was so stilted from that area, and
why there were so many where there was so little
honest reporting. In fact, at one point Senator Vandenberg, who
is a strong Republican leader, wanted to run MacArthur against
(05:52):
FDR in nineteen forty four, and he was surprised that
every soldier he spoke to coming out of the Southwest
Pacific area all the regular gis, and they're almost all gis.
There were no marines there. They were very negative on MacArthur,
on dugout Doug as they called him, that he of
(06:13):
course hung out in a dugout. And it was such
a pernicious attitude and so prevalent that Vandenburgh actually thought
perhaps there was some secret conspiracy going on in the
FDR White House to keep any positive sounding GIS from
(06:35):
MacArthur's theater from coming home, and they were all being
sent somewhere else. And of course that was not the case.
MacArthur presided over arguably the most devastating defeats in US
military history. Certainly the largest defeat or surrender of an
American force ever in the tom and Corregador in nineteen
(06:58):
forty one nineteen forty two, right after Pearl Harbor, and
then of course a terribly embarrassing defeat, a shocking defeat,
one of the greatest military victories of all time Mao's
forces against the UN forces primarily a US force led
by MacArthur in late nineteen fifty early nineteen fifty one,
(07:21):
where effectively a smaller force that was outnumbered the Chinese
using cast off weapons from American surplus and Japanese captured weapons,
with no tanks, with no trucks, with very little artillery,
with no planes, pikon post World War two army, with
(07:42):
all the best equipment that Ernie Powo saw in World
War Two in Europe, and yet they crushed the US
force and caused the largest retreat in US military history.
And we don't talk about it that defeat very often
because it's just so embarrassing. And luckily for US, Matthew Ridgeway,
(08:07):
the general, was sent out after the field commander for
MacArthur was killed in a car crash Whildon, Walker and
Ridgeway pulled off an amazing turnaround, stabilized the line, and
retook Seoul, which led to South Korea being the strong
and vibrant democracy that it is today. And MacArthur's last
(08:32):
real official act was trying to start a nuclear war
against the Chinese, and he wanted to drop a large
number of nukes all across China and literally sowed the
northern border of North Korea and China with radioactive cobalt
so that no one would ever be able to live
there again for generations. Even the Romans when they sowed
(08:57):
the land of Carthage with salt so nothing would grow
there again. They might have glanced at actually creating a
whole strip of a country and making it a radioactive nomadsland,
But that was who MacArthur was, and Ernie Pyle would
have hated it.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
No, And I completely agree with you in terms of that.
I think Powle would have been very disgusted, pretty much
like he was with Patton, thought that they were pretty
much all showboats, and was more interested in themselves than
with the soldier. But what do you think we're still
talking about MacArthur all these years later?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
If he had all these negatives.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
If you will my words in defeats, why is he
still such an iconic figure?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
If you will in military history?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, again I believe well he was truly a master
of public relations and self promotion. He was very good
at it. He may have been in the best in
American history in that. Again, he did suffer the two greatest,
arguably greatest defeats in US history, and it's hard to
(10:10):
come up with another one that's more significant, and yet
we rarely talk about it. And when we think about
the victories he had, we can talk about in Cham
in Korea in nineteen fifty, which many do think about,
which was a huge risk that did pay off. But
the amphibious warfare specialists in the Navy and the Marines
(10:34):
looked at landing at Incham and said, if you came
up with a list of the twenty things about a
site where you should not land in, Chahn's got all
twenty of them. MacArthur said, I'm a gambler. I'm used
to gambling at a million to one odds, and I'm
(10:55):
going to take the risk and I'm going to win.
And Bernie Pilot would have said, hold on, you're taking
those odds, not with yourself. You're taking those odds with
the men of the American public, of a democracy, who
are going to be thrown into this battle. Actually the
landing was one Marine division and one US Army division,
(11:18):
but he did win. And for whatever reason, we rarely
remember the defeat in along the Yallu in Korea. I
never remember many of these men who are fighting. There
were men who had been GI's and might have even
met Ernie Pyle. It was just a few years after.
The reason we don't usually think about it is because
(11:39):
we have turned the fighting retreat of the first Marine
Division from the Chosun Reservoir back to the coast and
being evacuated. We have turned that into this wonderful heroic action.
And so when we think about as Americans about that defeat,
(11:59):
we think about how the Marines they didn't retreat. Of course,
the answer was, heck, we're not retreating, We're just advancing
in a different direction. And of course, for whatever reason,
certainly the garrison on the island of Luzan in the
Philippines and Manila was going to follow the Japanese, and
(12:20):
that had been US policy and expected in any war
between the US and Japan for twenty to thirty years.
The US had a plant called warplant Orange. Orange was
the color designation for Japan and the expectation was you'd
keep a small garrison in the Philippines and you try
and hold Middle of Bay and keep the Japanese from
(12:43):
having control of it for as long as possible. But
that garrison would be written off. There was just no
way to protect it against the strength of the Japanese
with Kawaii and the US mainland being so far away.
But MacArthur was able to convince the powis that in
the military and the government in Washington to massively reinforce
(13:06):
that garrison. And then when the war started, he foolishly
tried to defend the beaches rather than stockpiling food and
supplies medicine in Baton, so and his men were forced
to retreat to Baton. They almost immediately had to be
put on half rations and then quarter rations, and they
literally starved to death during that siege, while he ate
(13:30):
relatively well on Corregador Island, just off the coast, and
eventually he was evacuated. And one thing that Ernie Poe
would have hated is that MacArthur railed against the concept
that that garrison of eighty thousand men would surrender rather
than fight to the last man and have every single
one of them die fighting the Japanese. And when they surrendered,
(13:54):
obviously they were treated abominably by the Japanese. Thet they
had a chance to live versus selling their lives for
no other reason than MacArthur's glory. MacArthur, finally, he did
win quite a few major battles across New Guinea and
(14:17):
then into the Philippines. But again, this was not particularly
strategic territory. It's not territory that we really needed to take.
We should have been focusing our attention on moving across
the Central Pacific, and that had been the US military's
plan for defeating Japan for decades. But yet we had
to move along the South because MacArthur's primary goal was
(14:40):
not defeating Japan. His primary goal was returning to the
Philippines and regaining his honor. And he did return to
the Philippines. He did land on the beach and he said,
people of the Philippines, this is the voice of freedom,
General MacArthur's speaking.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I have returned.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So he actually said he individually was the voice of freedom.
But he did return and the American public loved that.
And the American public in the early days of World
War Two, when we were losing, he put up a
very brave face and he was seen as a hero,
even though many of his communicators were outright falsehoods when
(15:22):
he was losing, but he said he was winning right.
And then of course during the course of the war
he always put forth this very brave face that he
was winning, and America loved that. Similar to Patin, didn't
matter Patten engaged in war crimes and covered them up.
Doesn't matter if he struck and listed men, which is
(15:43):
a court Marster bawl offense. He was this figure of victory,
and the American public ate it up, even though many
of the gis and many of the correspondents thought he
was full of crap.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
James, one last question before we let you go. Know,
I know we're getting short on time, But during the
research and the writing of this book, did anything surprise you?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
What really came out for me is how MacArthur was
a terrible judge of character in terms of the staff
he hired, his staff, such as his two chiefs of
staff during the war and then in Korea, Richard Sutherland
and Ned Almond, we're just terrible people and had very
(16:30):
poor character, and we're very authoritarian, racist people that just
didn't reflect the sort of egalitarianism that America was fighting for.
And Ernie Powell tried to depict in his right. And
then Charles Willoughby his intelligence cheap from the beginning of
(16:50):
World War Two all the way through the end of
the when MacArthur left for the Korean conflict. He was
so such an authoritarian that MacArthur called him his fascist.
Charles Willoughby hero was Generalissimo Francisco Franco, And after MacArthur
got fired, Willoughby actually went and worked for Francisco Franco
(17:12):
in Spain. So, on the other hand, let's get MacArthur's
due for work. He was good besides just being a
pr agent. It was an excellent choice of who was
going to be a good battlefield leader for him. He
had been chief of Staff of the US Army. He
knew everyone in the army, and he brought forward Walter Krueger,
(17:34):
who became the head of his sixth Army, General Robert Eichelberger,
who became the head of the eighth Army in World
War Two. Eckelberger is arguably the greatest general of the
United States in World War Two, if not our entire history,
in terms of his ability to fight on the defensive,
(17:55):
fight on a shoe string, fight quickly, and had he
had the job, for example, of running the Third Army
in Europe, we'd be talking about Eichelberger rather than Patent
and then George Kenney, the general who ran the Fifth
Air Force. The Air Wing under MacArthur was arguably the
(18:16):
best and certainly the most innovative air commander in the
United States in World War Two, if not of all
the air forces in World War Two. He was an
amazingly effective man. He was the right place at the
right time, fighting in jungle areas where you couldn't get
tanks in, you couldn't get artillery in, and the planes
(18:37):
that he operated were used as flying artillery and flying trucks.
And his ability to coordinate close air support with the
gis on the ground was unmatched anywhere else in the war.
So MacArthur had this strange dichotomy. How could he want
to have boot liquors is Eisenhower called his men around
(19:01):
him personally, but out in the field, he was so
willing and so effective at choosing just the right men
to fight his battles for him. Of course, he never
allowed those guys to get any credit in the press
from Martie Piles and in fact, Robert Eichelberger once told
a correspondent from Time magazine, I would rather have you
(19:24):
drop a live rattlesnake down the back of my pants
than mentioned me in one of your one of your articles,
because MacArthur has threatened to bust me back to Colonel
and send me back to the States. And that is
exactly why Michael Berger is almost unknown today in the
United States, despite his excellence in saving American lives and
(19:50):
creating victory for America throughout the course of the war.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, and that's a shame, but unfortunately that was the
way the cards were dealt in that situation.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Absolutely, for better or words, it was. Though one would
hope that sometimes someday, over time, Krueger, Ackelberger, Kenny will
get more due among those who continue to follow you.
World War Two, which continues to be, of course, a
subject area that commands attention and interest across America, even
(20:27):
as we come up on the eighty years after the
end of the war.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Absolutely, that's a great way to end that time.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
James, thank you so much for coming on and spending
some time with us today. To our listeners, please go
ahead and get a copy of James's book, MacArthur Reconsidered.
It's an interesting read and I really enjoyed the conversation
with you today James and kind of giving us a
new look at MacArthur.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Thanks again for having me.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well, Thank you and thank you for listening to this
episode of the Ernie Power World War Two Museum Podcast.
We thank you for listening. We hope the you turnion
for our next episode.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.