Ep 188: Jonathan Horn on MacArthur and the Battle for the Philippines

Johnathan Horn, former White House speechwriter and author of The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines

Aaron MacLean:

Hi, I'm Aaron MacLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today, Jonathan Horn, who's an author and a former White House presidential speechwriter. He's written books including Washington's End and a Robert E. Lee biography called The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which is a Washington Post bestseller. And he is the author most recently of the Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining the show.

Johnathan Horn:

Thanks so much for having me.

Aaron MacLean:

So tell us a bit about yourself and how you went from speechwriting to history writing, and why you've now written a book about World War II in the Philippines. And I have to say, for the benefit of listeners, it's a really nicely executed and really thoughtfully conceived book. It has a bit of a Plutarchian kind of Parallel Lives kind of quality to it, even though unlike in Plutarch, these guys of course know each other. And it is a fascinating comparison to reflect upon.

Johnathan Horn:

Well, thanks for those kind words about the book. I, as you mentioned, had worked as a White House speechwriter, and one of the great honors that you have as a White House speechwriter on occasion is there's no more moving speech to write than when awarding the Medal of Honor, which is our highest military honor. And I had that privilege to write remarks for that two times, both times for Navy SEALs who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of fire. And as you look at the story of Douglas MacArthur, he won the medal... He received the Medal of Honor, I should say, too, but he received it only after doing something that seemed almost the antithesis of the medal.

Instead of facing the danger that the medal salutes soldiers were facing, he left the Philippines under orders from the President of the United States, it's important to say, and went to Australia, where there was safety, and abandoned his army there to starvation and surrender. And of course, he made that famous vow, "I shall return." Well, that got me interested in the story of another general who also received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the beginning of World War II in the Philippines. And he also made a vow. His name was Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV, and he vowed to stay with his troops in the Philippines and to share their fate even when it meant becoming the highest ranking prisoner of war of World War II.

Aaron MacLean:

So both of these guys, as is the case, it turns out for a lot of the very senior officers in this war, have family stories that tie back to the Civil War. And I want to start by asking you about Arthur MacArthur. I keep forgetting this, it's one of only two, I think, cases where you have a father-son Medal of Honor pairing. There is one more, right?

Johnathan Horn:

It's the Roosevelts.

Aaron MacLean:

That's right. And I've been corrected on this exact question within the last year and I keep failing. Tell us about Arthur MacArthur and your account of his receipt of the Medal of Honor, had all sorts of details that I did not know. I had just taken it as a given that it was a somewhat... Let's just say more straightforward story. Your account will probably upset some Wisconsinite listeners, but so it goes.

Johnathan Horn:

Well, I don't mean to take anything away from Arthur MacArthur's courage. He was at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863 and basically there was an order to charge up Missionary Ridge. And if you've ever been to Chattanooga and looked at Missionary Ridge, at the time, it was fortified by the Confederates on the crest and it looked like a suicide mission, if ever any mission looked like one. But the Union soldiers actually didn't succeed in storming the ridge. And at one point, Arthur MacArthur, who was a very young man at the time, picked up the flag for his regiment and carried it to the crest. And as Douglas MacArthur told the story many years later, basically he was the only person to accomplish this feat and everyone was looking at him on the battlefield.

But in truth, there were many incidents during this charge. It was one of the most improbable charges of the Civil War. But there were numerous officers who had feats of courage similar to Arthur MacArthur's. It doesn't take anything away from him to say that, who also carried their flags to the crest. And many years later, when Arthur MacArthur remained in the Army, he petitioned and played some role in lobbying the War Department to look back at acts of courage that had happened during the Civil War and he was able to receive the Medal of Honor for what he had done on Missionary Ridge. And by the way, I should say also, that wasn't that unusual too. It was a period of time when many officers were looking back at events during the Civil War and hoping to receive recognition for what had happened.

Aaron MacLean:

That's a very generous recounting of the story. And of course I agree completely. He did a very courageous thing. Every account of the story is consistent on that front and the fact that others did things that were comparably courageous and did not receive the Medal of Honor. Well, that's the nature of these things. It was a very healthy attitude. I think it's Karl Marlantes who probably wrote some of the... Do you know his work? This guy wrote a novel called Matterhorn. He wrote a very good collection of essays called This is What It Is Like to Go to War. He has a brilliant essay in there about decorations. Are you familiar with that at all?

Johnathan Horn:

I haven't seen that.

Aaron MacLean:

Oh, I commend it to you. I remember when the book came out, it kind of came out with a splash, the essay book, and the chapter on medals and bravery was excerpted in the Wall Street Journal. And I hadn't met Marlantes at this point. I knew that he had received the Navy Cross in real life as a Vietnam veteran himself. And I saw this article, and I kind of rolled my eyes, and I thought, "Oh, my God, I don't think I can survive 3000 words on, 'Why I deserve the Navy Cross.' Surely that can't be what this is."

And indeed it was not. It was a fascinating kind of harrowing account of how he had gone to Vietnam dedicated to winning a medal, as a lot of young lieutenants are. And he gets his first medal, which is the Bronze Star. And as he tells the story, you sort of realize he's telling the story of how he very possibly, obviously accidentally killed one of his own marines in the course of trying to be a hero, and still got the Bronze Star as an outcome of the broader action. And that's prior to the Navy Cross itself. And it is a harrowing, moving, beautiful essay written with real self-knowledge, which concludes as all of these things are in the end, all of these decorations are attempts to interpret a chaotic reality. So the fact that other people did the brave thing too, I would never hold against Arthur. I will say the lobbying that you described in the book... A bit like I did have the reflection a bit like father like son, fathers get sons that reflect them in some ways. And Arthur MacArthur was dedicated on receiving some recognition.

Johnathan Horn:

I think that's fair. And I think that also Douglas MacArthur was at a particularly impressionable age when his father was carrying out this latter campaign to receive the Medal of Honor for what he had done all those years earlier during the Civil War. And it must've seemed to him at the time that everyone in Washington was reliving Arthur MacArthur's charge. And I think it probably contributed to an attitude that MacArthur himself, Douglas MacArthur, had that this medal was something of a birthright for his family and his military career would not be complete unless he found a way to receive it. And you can see that in some of the risks that Douglas MacArthur takes, especially as a young officer. Some of the risks when they're being evaluated by the War Department seem to have basically served no purpose other than to perhaps try to receive the Medal of Honor. And so I think that contributes to how he looks at the medal and the fact that his career will not be complete unless he receives it.

Aaron MacLean:

I want to get to Wainwright eventually, but just sticking with MacArthur for the moment, speaking of birthrights, of course the Philippines is a kind of MacArthur family joint, if you will. Say a bit about how Arthur and the MacArthur family's story intersects with the Philippines and the origins of the American interest in the Philippines. I'm sure every listener is up on their Spanish-American War history, but in case any of us need a refresher, I'd be open to some top lines.

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah, Arthur MacArthur, his role during the Civil War was much smaller than his role during the Spanish-American War when he was a general. And very quickly when America and Spain go to war or when it looks like they're going to go to war in 1898, it's Theodore Roosevelt who puts out this, "If in event of war, immediately go to Manila Bay." And of course you have the Battle of Manila Bay with Admiral Dewey, and then you have U.S. Army soldiers who eventually come. And it is actually Arthur MacArthur who leads the first American troops inside the walled city of Manila. He is there when the American flag is raised over the city. And of course William McKinley will basically make the decision to keep the Philippines and make them into an American colony and Arthur MacArthur will play a role as serving as military governor of the Philippines.

And he really has a view of America as a Pacific power and he views the Philippines as the most important position in achieving this vision of America as a Pacific power. And he also views the Philippines as the secret to spreading democracy and to other goals that you'll hear echoed into the years of World War II. And I think that belief really is also another birthright, as you put it, of Douglas MacArthur. He grows up hearing this and he also comes to see the Philippines as a sacred cause and also one that his father helped begin.

Aaron MacLean:

I get it. And we'll get into the sacred quality of it and what role that may play in his decision making in the war. But prior to that, it's fascinating to look back at some of these debates over the Philippines and should we keep it? There are so many parallels to debates you encounter today about American forward presence in places like the Philippines. For as much as has changed, some things remain the same. And Arthur takes part in these debates and has a strong view, because the obvious problem becomes... It's obvious from the start that it will be difficult to defend the Philippines in a lot of scenarios. And then of course, as we get closer and closer to war with Japan, that becomes even more obvious, and yet the decision is taken to stay. And Arthur is a strong proponent of this. Tell us a bit about that debate and the stakes of all of this.

Johnathan Horn:

Well, Arthur MacArthur does believe that the possession of the Philippines as a colony of the United States is essential to its future as a Pacific-facing power. He of course, was interested in Asia even before this. His interest really begins with China and in some sense, the Philippines is seen as America's door to China as well and to just broader power in the Pacific. And I think as you look at this and Arthur MacArthur's role in this, he himself isn't totally correct. He thinks that if America has the Philippines, it's going to serve as a Pacific shield for American interests. And it really becomes exactly the opposite and it becomes clearer.

And Theodore Roosevelt himself comes to acknowledge that the Philippines are our heel of Achilles, as he puts it, because in the event of war with Japan, Japan becomes a rising power around this time itself. If you just look at the geography, the Japanese would be able to bring large numbers of troops to the Philippines far faster than the United States could send reinforcements across the Pacific and across what probably would be multiple Japanese-controlled island chains on the way to the Philippines. And so you end up with a problem that the Philippines actually is a rather indefensible position for the United States, unless the United States is willing to accept the burdens of being a great military power, which really was not in the cards for the United States, at least in the years before World War II.

Aaron MacLean:

Right. And it's worth emphasizing, the strategic situation for the Philippines in the lead up to World War II is much worse, frankly. Plenty of reasonable questions about our own perils in the Western Pacific, but today we have significant forces in Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Guam. We basically, much to the chagrin of the Chinese, control that first island chain and much of the second island chain as well. But as you just pointed out, it's actually the Japanese who after World War I, have what we would call the second island chain or much of it. So they're behind the Philippines, they're to the north of the Philippines. The Brits are to the south of the Philippines, but that's obviously only going to be so helpful in the final analysis. So it's dicey. And then another thing is they won't fortify, right? They won't do the investments that would have made it slightly more...

Johnathan Horn:

We also reached an agreement with Japan. And one of the agreements is basically they will limit fortifications, especially on the little island of Corregidor, which will become very important to this story, off the coast of a peninsula called Bataan, which I'm sure we'll talk about more. And it does limit their ability. But even without that, it would have been very difficult to hold this position for the United States at this time in the event of war with Japan. So what do strategists do? They come up with something called War Plan Orange. And basically instead of trying to attempt to hold the entire, and there's the book, hold the entire 7,000 islands of the Philippines and not even attempt to hold the entire big island of Luzon, which is the most important island in the Philippines. In the event of war with Japan, in the event of Japan invading the Philippines, American forces are supposed to immediately retreat to Bataan and Corregidor.

Bataan is a peninsula, it's a stubby piece of land that shields the western side of Manila Bay. And Corregidor is an island just off the tip of Bataan in the middle of the mouth of Manila Bay. And if you hold these two positions, you can control Manila Bay. And the hope was that American forces there could hold out long enough for reinforcements to come from either the West Coast or Hawaii. But the math never really worked out. There was always a feeling that the forces would not be able to hold out as long as it would take for these reinforcements to come. And those questions were really never answered very well in the years leading up to World War II.

Aaron MacLean:

So we'll come back to all that, but let's shift gears for a moment. Tell us about Wainwright. Who was Jonathan Wainwright? What are his own deep running connections to the American military legacy and how does he come onto the stage here?

Johnathan Horn:

Well, Wainwright, like MacArthur, was also the son of an Army officer. Wainwright grew up in cavalry posts in the Great Plains. In fact, he spent probably the most formative years of his childhood at Fort Custer, which was near the site of the Little Bighorn Battlefield. So that involved making lots of visits to visit the memorial there. And by the way, it wasn't very far after Custer had made his famous last stand at the Little Bighorn either. So this was all recent memory. And Wainwright as a child becomes somewhat obsessed with the Battle of Little Bighorn, a little bit ironically so, given that he will ultimately have to wage a far larger last stand in the Philippines. He ends up going to West Point. He is naturally nicknamed Skinny, because he is very skinny, but he's also tough. He's skinny in a tough way. He loves horses. He is a tough guy. He's got a dry sense of humor. And he's going to also end up in the Philippines on the eve of World War II.

Aaron MacLean:

So let's talk about the eve of World War II in the Philippines, and MacArthur's return, and everything. So as you suggested, well, it will sound crazy to a lot of listeners, I guess, but by the lights of the planners of the day and very defensively, War Plan Orange, the U.S. plan to fight Japan in the Pacific, basically the planners had come to the consensus that phase one is we're going to lose the Philippines amongst some other things. Phase two is we're going to come back to the Western Pacific and defeat the Japanese. And then phase three we'll deal with Japan. But phase one basically begins with the planners accepting the loss and managing it, because they've concluded that it's inevitable essentially, given the balance of power and what we've been willing to invest in the Philippines, et cetera. What happens when MacArthur is recalled to service and what is his relationship to the execution of War Plan Orange?

Johnathan Horn:

Well, this is 1941, Douglas MacArthur is in the Philippines. He's already been chief of staff for the United States Army. He has been serving as a military advisor to the Philippines. And he is then recalled into active service of the United States as it looks more likely we're headed into World War II. And Douglas MacArthur has never liked War Plan Orange. He sees it as a defeatist plan. And he has been preparing the Philippines for an alternative plan, which is he has been training large numbers of conscripts, he's been sending them to training schools. And the idea is in the event of war, he would be able to mobilize the Philippine population. And instead of having to just retreat and guard the mouth of Manila Bay, his idea is that the Philippine Army would be able to hold all positions in the Philippines and meet the Japanese wherever they land and send them back into the sea.

This is the plan and it's going to actually be accepted by Washington on the eve of World War II. He's able to convince them to go along with the plan. And no small part of what convinces them to go along with it is the fact that 35 B-17 bombers are brought to the Philippines and it is thought that these B-17s could play a very important role in stopping an invasion of the islands and potentially even turning the Philippines into an offensive asset.

Aaron MacLean:

Yeah, all 35 of them.

Johnathan Horn:

All 35, exactly.

Aaron MacLean:

It's funny, again, these echoes of today, that must have sounded impressive at the time. A few years later you wouldn't send 35 B-17s on anything. That would be a fraction of one mission.

Johnathan Horn:

Right. But back then that was a lot of B-17s and there were very unrealistic views of what the B-17 could do. I'm not sure Douglas MacArthur himself bought into it as much as some other people did. But there was this irrational sense of excitement about what the B-17 could transform the Philippines into.

Aaron MacLean:

And just to stick with this for just a second, so you sort of have MacArthur's standing, and force of character, and obviously emotional connection to the Philippines and these sort of fantasies of indigenous forces, and the B-17, and so forth on the one side of the ledger. You do have on the other side of the ledger, all these planners and officers who had come through the planning process and were in senior positions themselves on the other side of the argument, how do they fail to persuade? Are there just other aspects like the Brits or the French are somehow going to play a bigger role here? Or I guess just the Brits at this point in '41?

Johnathan Horn:

No, I think there are people even at the time who think it is absolutely crazy to shift from a plan that had been worked on, really, for a generation to this idea that you are going to defend all of the beaches in the Philippines. And it becomes even a crazier notion to the other officers in the Philippines when they look at the Philippine conscripts who are called into service. These are men who come wearing shorts, they have no helmets, they're wearing canvas shoes. Many of them have never even fired a gun. There is no way to communicate across large numbers of troops because of all the different dialects that are spoken. Even giving the simplest order will require six or seven different translations.

This is an impossible situation and Wainwright is going to see that because he's going to take command of something called the North Luzon Force. And I told you, Luzon is the most important island in the Philippines. It is the one with Manila Bay and Manila, and everybody expects that the Japanese do land, they will land at a place called Lingayen Gulf. And that is in fact where the Japanese are going to land somewhere after Pearl Harbor.

Aaron MacLean:

So talk about that. What is the Japanese concept of operations here? What happens beginning in December of '41? And talk a bit about Wainwright's role. What is his actual job in the defense of the Philippines?

Johnathan Horn:

So Wainwright asks MacArthur, he says, "Where is the most important place?" He's the second-highest ranking officer in the Philippines. So he asked MacArthur, "I want to have the second most important place, the place where I can have the greatest honor." And MacArthur says, "It's the North Luzon Force, because the Japanese are likely to land at Lingayen Gulf." And Wainwright himself believes that too, and so he accepts that role. And basically if in the event of war, his job will be to immediately proceed to mobilize Philippine troops around the area of Lingayen Gulf in the anticipation of the Japanese landing. And that is in fact where the Japanese do land with a slight twist.

But what happens before that, the Japanese... Just hours after Pearl Harbor or news of Pearl Harbor comes to the Philippines, it is now December 8th, 1941, Japanese planes from the island of Taiwan will fly over Clark Field, which is the only field on the island of Luzon that can land the B-17 and destroy Douglas MacArthur's little air force or what was not then considered to be a little air force, but it would just wipe out half the B-17s and the dream that the B-17 could really turn the tide in the war in the Philippines.

Aaron MacLean:

And you worked on this book, you say, because of your ability to use all of these primary source materials from Wainwright's career. And it is interesting, I think probably almost every listener will have some idea of who Douglas MacArthur is. I'll bet quite a few more and I would include myself in this column. We're not that familiar with the career of Wainwright, though he was famous and at the end of the war, is feted for his bravery. But what did you learn diving back in to Wainwright's life and career through these materials? What kind of color about these months did you come across?

Johnathan Horn:

Well, it's interesting you say that, because I do think today Wainwright is a largely forgotten figure. At the time of World War II, he became quite famous. He became famous especially when MacArthur left the Philippines. He was given command of the islands after MacArthur left. And he did become known in the newspapers, and then he became known as the highest ranking prisoner of war. And it was quite a big scene when he finally does return to the United States in September 1945, and we're jumping ahead here, and receives the Medal of Honor. And he is at that point, quite well-known. But he does sort of slip into obscurity in the years since, he's basically become a footnote to the life of Douglas MacArthur. And it's been more than 40 years since anyone has written a biography of Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright.

And in that time we've had his diary deposited in military archives, we've had his letters with his family deposited in military archives, all that stuff had really never been fully examined before. And it couldn't, because in a sense, we didn't really have Wainwright's side of the story beyond what he wrote in a memoir afterwards. And so when you look at his diary, the most important entry in the diary is what he writes on April 2nd in 1942, which is he says, "I'm going to stay in the Philippines and share the fate of my men on Corregidor. There's no other honorable course for me." And we'll get into this, there were some other options for him. He could have potentially avoided capture as that begins to happen. And that is the most important diary entry.

In some sense, all the things that happen to him afterwards come from that diary entry. And of course in the diary you get to see what it's like to be a prisoner of the Japanese. You get to see his rationalizations that he's trying to make when he has to surrender the Philippines to the Japanese. He realizes that Douglas MacArthur is going to be very angry at him in a sense. He is writing his explanation for why he made his decision. And it's really fascinating to be able to have that perspective on him finally.

Aaron MacLean:

So let's talk about the respective decisions of MacArthur and Wainwright and the options available to them. So we're now in early 1942, B-17s haven't really worked out. The Filipino forces haven't really worked out. The noose is tightening on Manila and everything shifts over to the west of Manila Bay, the peninsula there. Ultimately, Corregidor. Talk a bit about this defensive scheme and Wainwright and MacArthur's placement within it. For MacArthur, it's just acute. I take your point, he's ordered. He departs under orders. Nevertheless, he is the man who decided that they were going to stand and fight here. Contrary to at this point, two generations worth of planning.

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah. No, it's interesting is basically within 48 hours of the Japanese landing, MacArthur's plan is thrown out. It hasn't worked and they're going to have to fall back on War Plan Orange. But the problem is War Plan Orange wasn't a very good plan to start with and now it's an even worse plan because you don't have time to collect the food you're going to need in Bataan. And it was already going to be a problem and now it's going to be a crisis. And so by the time Wainwright leads his troops into Bataan, and very skilled delaying move and retreat, because he can't just run to Bataan as fast as he wants, he has to hold the Japanese so forces can slip behind into Bataan.

He managed to get about 80,000 troops into Bataan, which is a stubby piece of land, and that doesn't even include the civilians. And so food is an immediate problem in Bataan and troops very quickly have to go in half rations and then on quarter rations. And meanwhile, as part of this, MacArthur is going to abandon the city of Manila. He's going to declare it an open city. He's going to get on a boat with his wife and son, who have managed to stay in the Philippines, despite almost all other army officers having sent their families back to the United States. They're going to go to the island of Corregidor where MacArthur is going to eventually, after having tried to establish his headquarters in the wide open, establish his headquarters in the Manila Tunnel, which is a fortified tunnel running through Corregidor, and that's going to become the base of operations.

Aaron MacLean:

And talk a bit about the final dilemmas of MacArthur, and Wainwright, in staying and going.

Johnathan Horn:

So eventually the Japanese basically have the forces in Bataan under siege and MacArthur keeps saying, "Help is on the way. Help is on the way." But he knows the help is not really on the way, because he's reading the letters from Washington and the Navy is refusing to try to break the blockade the Japanese have essentially established around the Philippines, and very little aid is going to get through. And so eventually there, of course, is the famous quote from the Secretary of War who says, "There are times when men have to die," and that's in reference to the Philippine Garrison. But that doesn't apply to Douglas MacArthur, because he is no longer just a man. He is a symbol of hope for Americans, because all across the Pacific region, the United States and his allies who are suffering defeats at the hands of the Japanese, Hong Kong has surrendered, Singapore is going to surrender, the Dutch East Indies are going to surrender. Guam is going to surrender. Wake Island is going to surrender. Only in the Philippines can people find evidence that they're fighting back.

And Douglas MacArthur's name is top of those efforts, even though he's not on Bataan himself, because he has control of the radio, and almost every headline that comes out from the Philippines is, "MacArthur fights. MacArthur fights on." So President Roosevelt is going to order Douglas MacArthur to leave Corregidor with his family and to go to Australia. There's much debate about this, you could say. MacArthur himself said that he basically would have been court-martialed if he didn't accept that offer. I think you can be skeptical of that. Political considerations of removing MacArthur were high on the minds of lots of people in Washington and they realized it didn't look good to bring the captain off a sinking ship. And it would have looked even worse to court-martial the captain for refusing to abandon the sinking ship. So I think that's unlikely.

The other justification MacArthur says is the only other factor that convinced him to finally go was that he was told that if he went to Australia, he would find there immediately, the Army and resources he needed to return immediately to the Philippines. Now, if MacArthur really did believe that, he had deluded himself, because he knew better, he knew those forces were not in Australia. He knew the Navy was not willing to transport an army at this point from Australia immediately back to the Philippines. But MacArthur does convince himself of this or he says he convinces himself of this. He makes this very dangerous escape from the Philippines, he reaches Australia, and of course he issues that famous vow, "I shall return."

Aaron MacLean:

With his family right? That's one of the craziest parts of the story.

Johnathan Horn:

With his family. They are on a PT boat heading out from Corregidor. They have to get down to the bottom island in the Philippines called Mindanao. And from there they're going to take a B-17. I think being in a PT boat has been compared to tobogganing on rocks or being in a cement truck. It is not a pleasant way to travel, especially when the Japanese have control of the sea, it is exceedingly dangerous. But he had been running dangerous risks with his family from the very beginning. Corregidor had been under air bombardment and his son, who's four years old, had been living on the island.

Aaron MacLean:

Astonishing. Okay. Well, we'll leave Wainwright for a moment, we'll come back to him. What does MacArthur discover when he gets to Australia and how does he come to terms with the fact that he's not heading back to the Philippines? And what I am interested in, and we discussed this actually not that long ago on the show, is the way in which the allies settle on a strategy of Europe first and Japan is going to be dealt with second. And in a broad sense, that ends up being kind of more or less sort of true. But in a more immediate sense, MacArthur's presence down there in Australia and the sort of political need to do something ends up scrambling that pretty significantly. So talk about that and about what's to come in Guadalcanal and things like that.

Johnathan Horn:

Well, I think it's important to say also that George Marshall and Franklin Roosevelt are very concerned that the enemy might have a propaganda field day with MacArthur leaving the Philippines, because it is the captain deserting the sinking ship. But they prepared a response to what the Japanese are going to say and the response is to give MacArthur the Medal of Honor when he gets to Australia. And that's when he does finally receive the Medal of Honor. And there is no specific act that you can really point to. He did expose himself when he was in the Philippines to Japanese bombs and other things, but it's not enough to... Even George Marshall conceded it's not enough to have actually earned the Medal of Honor. It really is, and it's admittedly so, a Medal of Honor that is presented for propaganda reasons. And it's very unique, I think, in the history for that reason.

And so, yeah, MacArthur will get to Australia and then he says he has what's the greatest surprise of the war, which is there is not an army waiting for him there for him to lead back to the Philippines. And it's rather hard to believe, as I said, that he really did believe that. One thing I do want to say is it's often said, why does he say, "I shall return," instead of saying, "We shall return"? And this is a critical point, because he's often criticized for being an egomaniac. And to be fair to MacArthur, it would have made absolutely no sense at that time to say, "We shall return." Because unless he was talking about his son, or his wife, or his chief of staff, or some other staff members, America had not yet left the Philippines. We were still there. We were still there on Corregidor and on Bataan, and we were still fighting on, and Washington had put Wainwright in charge of the full Philippine islands.

Aaron MacLean:

What is MacArthur's attitude towards receiving the Medal of Honor under those circumstances?

Johnathan Horn:

Well, he accepts the Medal of Honor. I think even he had to realize this was not exactly the circumstance that he hoped to win the Medal of Honor. It still receives, of course, a mention in his memoirs. It didn't deter him from later objecting to Wainwright receiving the Medal of Honor after Wainwright had become a prisoner of war. So I think that gives you an indication that he still held the Medal of Honor. He did not consider his own Medal of Honor to be a propaganda tool.

Aaron MacLean:

Yeah, so back to Wainwright then, what are the factors that are on his mind as we go from March into April and May, he had the situation in Bataan and Corregidor? Well, Bataan of course goes, and then the situation in Corregidor, which is this sort of one heavily fortified spot, is worsening. What is his thought process as surrender approaches?

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah, so Bataan will surrender on April 9th, 1942. That is the largest surrender of American troops in history. Wainwright by this time has moved to Corregidor where he is still in command of all the Philippines, even though the forces of Bataan have surrendered. And the planners of War Plan Orange had always known it would be impossible to hold Corregidor Island without Bataan, because once you lose Bataan, you lose the high ground, and the Japanese could put artillery, and have a field day against Corregidor, which is exactly what happens. Corregidor comes under intense assault. Wainwright is basically forced to live in the tunnel. There is dust and rock falling everywhere. The tunnel is going to hold, but it's constantly shaking. The water system on the island is breaking down. They're running out of drinking water. People are using the same water to wash their clothes and to wash their bodies afterwards. The tunnel is filling up with sick refugees from Bataan, people who managed to escape the surrender.

And eventually the Japanese make their landing on the island of Corregidor and Wainwright will try to make a desperate stand to stop them. But Japanese tanks are approaching the tunnel entrance and at this point, it's a very desperate situation. Wainwright knows that MacArthur did not want the forces in the Philippines, the whole islands to surrender. He wanted to keep at least a guerrilla movement afoot and to have soldiers scattered. He didn't even want the soldiers of Bataan to surrender. He said rather than surrender, they should try to break out of Bataan and fight on his grills in a worst-case scenario. That had upset him and he held that against Wainwright. And Wainwright knew that, that MacArthur was upset about that.

And so then Wainwright faces... Basically, he has full command of the Philippines, but he tries to give up command of the other islands and says he's reduced his command to just the harbored forts and Luzon. He then raises the white flag over Corregidor and says basically, rather than have everyone massacred inside the tunnel, which includes women, female nurses, he is going to surrender the position to the Japanese general, General Homma. But that negotiation does not go very well, which we can discuss.

Aaron MacLean:

Say more.

Johnathan Horn:

Well, so Wainwright goes to meet General Homma on Bataan. And when they meet, Homma says basically, "I want you to surrender all the Philippines." And Wainwright says, "I no longer command all the Philippines, I only command the harbor forts and Luzon." And Homma says, "I don't believe you. I know from the American radio, you have full command of the Philippines." And this is actually something that Wainwright's aides and he himself had foreseen a problem, that if one person had command of the full Philippines, then they could be forced to surrender the full Philippines. And that's why there were those who wanted Wainwright to abandon Corregidor and to escape to Mindanao, and then maybe try even to get to Australia as MacArthur had done. And that's why the diary entry that Wainwright makes is so important, that diary entry, that there's no other honorable course but to stay on Corregidor with my men and to share their fate if necessary and become a prisoner.

And that's exactly what ends up happening, Wainwright is faced with his choice. Is he going to have the 12 or 13,000 people who are hiding in the tunnel in Corregidor be massacred by the Japanese or is he going to surrender the full Philippines in defiance of Douglas MacArthur's orders? And he basically reasons that Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall would not have given him full command of the Philippines unless they thought in this situation he should exercise it to surrender the full forces of America on the islands. And I think even MacArthur himself, he won't admit this later, but would admit it at the time, that the guerrilla forces could not have accomplished all that much on the lower islands. And so he does surrender the full islands and he will become a prisoner of the Japanese.

Aaron MacLean:

And this surrender, amongst other factors, is the basis of MacArthur's objection to him later receiving the Medal of Honor?

Johnathan Horn:

It's that. It's the fact that Bataan surrendered too on April 9th. Even as Corregidor is under this massive assault by artillery and air power, Douglas MacArthur is sending Wainwright radio messages saying, "I need you to justify what happened on Bataan." So Wainwright, in a sense, is revisiting what happened on Bataan as he's fighting this desperate battle on Corregidor because MacArthur is so upset over what happened. And I think there's something else too, which is for MacArthur, the Medal of Honor always was, in a sense, the image of his father carrying the flag up Missionary Ridge. The idea that the Medal of Honor would go to somebody who stayed to see the flag go down, to see the flag be burned, and the white flag go up was something that MacArthur could not abide. And in a sense, he will threaten Wainwright's reputation when George Marshall sends him a message saying that George Marshall thinks MacArthur will approve this. And he's very surprised, I think, to get a very angry message from MacArthur saying, "You proceed with giving Wainwright the Medal of Honor, I will have to come out and bad revelations about Wainwright will too."

It's pretty clear what MacArthur is insinuating, is that he's going to imply that Wainwright was an alcoholic, and we can talk a little bit about that. And he said basically it would be embarrassing to the Army, and it does force George Marshall to basically shelve plans to give the Medal of Honor to Wainwright. Which is a shame because Wainwright will spend so much of his time in prison worrying that the American people will not forgive him for what he has done. The Philippines will not understand the decision he has made, even though in fact he is a hero in America and Franklin Roosevelt and others really do see him that way.

Aaron MacLean:

MacArthur's case would seem to me to have been a stronger one if he had not himself just received the Medal of Honor under, we'll just say highly political circumstances.

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah, I think it's quite audacious to object to the Medal of Honor going to Wainwright when you have just won the Medal of Honor and what the chief of staff himself has admitted was to offset enemy propaganda. So it really is quite an audacious thing for MacArthur to do, but he does do it. And George Marshall realizes how explosive this issue is. He'll only keep one copy of this letter that MacArthur sends and he basically puts it in a file labeled super secret, and it's not going to be revisited again until the end of the war.

Aaron MacLean:

Not just that, but MacArthur, of course, has put Wainwright in the position that Wainwright is in with a series of decisions. Wainwright is fighting MacArthur's battle.

Johnathan Horn:

Yes.

Aaron MacLean:

Not MacArthur's liking, okay? Nevertheless.

Johnathan Horn:

No, that's true. And it is also true that the things that MacArthur kept saying, "More food will come to Bataan. Help is on the way." The situation in Bataan would have been... It would have been a disaster anyway, but it certainly was even more of a disaster because they initially tried MacArthur's defense of the Philippines rather than immediately going to War Plan Orange.

Aaron MacLean:

Let's talk about Wainwright's time in captivity, which obviously, if anything, massively strengthens the case for his heroism and honorable conduct. It's a rough few years.

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah, so he's moved around quite a bit. He is taken from the Philippines, to Taiwan, to various different prisons on that island, and ultimately to Manchuria. Along the way, he is beaten, he is tortured, and he's left to wonder whether anyone will ever understand the decision he made and he's very worried about it. And certainly it doesn't help being a prisoner of the Japanese, because the Japanese themselves don't believe in surrender, as many American commanders will discover in the Pacific. So they have even less respect for their prisoners of war, and especially for a general who has surrendered. And you can see a sense of despair. Among other forms of torture, there is not enough food. There's a systematic system of starvation. Wainwright will lose huge amounts of weight. By December 1942, he's down to 125 pounds. He is beaten by a Japanese private. He's not even beaten by a Japanese officer, he's being beaten by a Japanese private, he's a lieutenant general. So yeah, it's a very, very tough thing for Wainwright.

And even into 1945, he is so cut off from the outside world, he expects he may be a prisoner until 1947. He has no idea what's happening in the world and he gets very sick. And there's this very moving entry in his diary that I found really moving, where he said, basically when he's on his bed and he's very close to death, he says, "Nobody called me yellow in Bataan or Corregidor. I fought for life then and I'm going to fight for life now." And he does fight on and he does ultimately survive this experience to emerge and discover that he in fact is a hero in the United States.

Aaron MacLean:

How does he conceive of his obligations to other American prisoners as the most senior American officer in captivity? Not only there, but anywhere in the world?

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah, this is another crushing blow, in a sense. He is getting reports of what's happening. Wainwright was tortured, but he wasn't tortured nearly as badly as the soldiers who had to go on the Bataan Death March and end up at Camp O'Donnell in the Philippines and then Camp Cabanatuan. They suffered even far worse than Wainwright. Wainwright is... At times he gets the benefit, and I hate to use the word, benefit, but the Japanese tried to use him for propaganda purposes almost as a tool to write letters to your president to say, "You understand that Japan should be the leading force in Asia and that there's no defeating Japan," or, "Tell your president that he needs to negotiate with Japan." So he is used that way.

And at first, and all throughout, I think Wainwright does understand that he is still the commander. He's still the highest ranking American. His example matters. He has to try to negotiate with the Japanese with no power, of course. And there's this one moving scene where he is basically beaten in his cell. He is bleeding from his... And he basically walks by all of his other officers who are staring out from their cells and they see the trail of blood coming from him as he heads out to face discipline. It's a very, very difficult period.

Aaron MacLean:

So MacArthur of course does return. He takes the Philippines. What is his attitude to the treatment of Americans in captivity by the Japanese? To the treatment of the Philippines itself? And how does he think of dealing with the Japanese at the end of the war as a consequence of these things?

Johnathan Horn:

And that's a great question, because the Bataan Death March is not immediately known to Americans. MacArthur will receive word of it at some point during the war. And at first, the War Department will try to keep it secret, but it does eventually become public. But when MacArthur hears it, he says, "The Japanese are going to pay for this." And in fact, they do pay for this. General Homma will be put to death as a war criminal. He will face a firing squad. Which is important to say, Wainwright thought was too good for General Homma. He thought he should have been hanged and not faced a firing squad.

In Homma's defense, and I hate even using those words, Homma's defense, but he didn't actually order a Bataan Death March, he just basically failed to make plans for how to transport a large number of starving American and Filipino prisoners off Bataan. And the reason the Japanese needed to get them off so quickly was so they could continue their operations against Corregidor. And what ends up happening is a system of cruelty, of beatings, of forced marches of starving men, and it really is one of the great atrocities of the war.

Aaron MacLean:

Talk a bit about the post-war period for both these men. MacArthur's story is pretty well-known, of course, with Korea and his continuing political role, really, in American life. Wainwright less so and it's a difficult story. So talk about the Medal of Honor, and the drinking, and everything else.

Johnathan Horn:

Yeah, so Wainwright comes home, he receives a hero's welcome. He is reunited with his wife in Washington. He's immediately escorted to the White House, where he receives the Medal of Honor from President Truman, who it's important to say, even at this stage of his life, well before the Korean War, already detests General MacArthur. So he gives Wainwright the Medal of Honor with great pleasure. He says nothing will make him happier. But it is a very difficult homecoming for Wainwright, because what does he discover? He discovers that his wife has become addicted to pills and to alcohol in his absence. He's eventually forced to institutionalize his wife.

And so all of these years, you can see it in his diary, he is planning what their life will be like if they're ever able to be reunited and they aren't really ever reunited. They have almost no time. A couple times he does try to bring her out of various different institutions, and the problem always recurs, and he has to re-institutionalize her. And so they never are really together. And Wainwright's last years, he does drink a lot himself. It doesn't help that they're all... He is a celebrity, in a sense. And that lifestyle is not necessarily what he necessarily needed. He does retire from the Army, he goes into business. The one thing that I found very moving about Wainwright's last years was he stayed very close with his aides who had gone into captivity with him in the Philippines. Those bonds really did stay and remain strong for the rest of their lives.

Aaron MacLean:

So you've played it very straight this whole interview, and you have a nice, balanced, moderate, judicious tone and approach as you talk about these two men. Did you find yourself developing any sympathies or whatever the opposite of sympathies, antipathies as you went along?

Johnathan Horn:

As I look back at World War II and the beginning, I think America needed a General MacArthur and I think we needed a General Wainwright. I say in the book, we needed a general for the front lines and we needed a general for the headlines. And neither one could have done what the other one did. There was no way MacArthur could have made the sacrifice Wainwright did. MacArthur had said many times, "The Japanese will never take me alive." But the Americans needed someone to surrender their forces in the Philippines, to take them, to show that leadership, to lead them when there was no other recourse besides mass slaughter. And Wainwright did it and he lived as a prisoner of war for the sake of his men. It would have been easier, to be honest, to die. To live to die a glorious death, but he didn't do it. And I think that's what MacArthur would have done.

On the other hand, do I think that Wainwright could have played the role in forcing the United States to live up to its moral obligation to return to the Philippines that MacArthur did? No, I don't think so, because it required celebrity, it required being willing to assert your word against the chain of command and to go around the chain of command when necessary. And so, yeah, I think America needed both of these men.

Aaron MacLean:

Anything you've learned as you reflect on the book now that it's done, that you think those of us have spend a lot of our time thinking about the Western Pacific today should have front of mind?

Johnathan Horn:

Well, I go back to the lesson that Wainwright drew from his experiences, which is, you look at this, this is a massive debacle. It's probably the greatest disaster in the history of American arms. Who is at fault, I hate to say it, but I think to a large extent the American people are at fault, because we had a policy that made no sense. We wanted to have the Philippines as a colony, but we didn't want to make the investments necessary to defend that islands and to be a great power. And our goals didn't really make a lot of sense. And so as a result, we were not prepared and we left our soldiers on the Philippines, and Filipinos themselves, to pay the ultimate sacrifice, because we weren't willing to bear the costs of being a great power.

Aaron MacLean:

Well, on that happy note, which has no strong echoes or parallels to the present, Jonathan Horn, author of the... Really, very interesting, The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. Thank you so much for making the time today.

Johnathan Horn:

Thanks for having me.

Aaron MacLean:

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