VIII--INITIAL SHOCKS

If military codenames are supposed to provide a shorthand for discussing matters without revealing  their nature, experts agree the one assigned to the Anglo-American conferences that began in Washington in December 1941--ARCADIA--was certainly apt, Arcadia being a peaceful rural district in ancient Greece, while the conference conidered a series of bloody disasters. The Japanese captured the colonial capitals of Manila and Hong Kong, having earlier obliterated the Repulse and the Prince of Wales,  the squadron Churchill had hoped would protect Singapore. The bumptious prime minister took up quarters in the White House across from Harry Hopkins, only to discover that the war was to be run by committees based in Washington, and, to his amazement, that the Americans attached almost as much importance to the contributions of China as to those of the Empire.(1)

American hopes now centered in MacArthur, who had shouldered aside High Commissioner Sayre, whom he had always disliked, and was running things in the Islands. Despite all his rhetoric about meeting the Japanese invader on the shore, MacArthur kept his American units away from the invasion beaches. This didn't prevent him from claiming that he had bloodily repulsed a Japanese landing attempt when all that had happened was that a half-trained Filipino division had opened up on a single Japanese motorboat reconnoitering in the darkness of Lingayen Gulf. This happened on December 10th and the fictitious victory was taken at face value by an American press hungry for good news. Another exploit given tremendous play was the reported sinking of the Japanese battleship Haruna by a B-17 flown by Captain Colin Kelly, who died in the raid. Instead of sinking a battleship, Kelly's bombs narrowly missed a cruiser. On December 17th MacArthur sent his aide to bring Quezon to the blacked-out Manila Hotel where they talked in the garden while dance music throbbed in the hotel's nightclub. According to Quezon, MacArthur told him that he might have to move to Corregidor at short notice. Quezon said that he protested, that it had never occurred to him that he would have to move, which of course was nonsense. But no doubt the conference was important, because Quezon began organizing a government that would stay behind and deal with the Japanese, one which he may have expected to join after the Japanese captured Corregidor. MacArthur prepared to make Manila an open city after he completed his forces' withdrawal through the capital into the Bataan peninsula. He reverted to the old ORANGE plan and the delaying moves which had been rehearsed time after time, and executed a skillful maneuver which ended with his having eighty thousand souls in Bataan, substantially outnumbering the Japanese invaders who arrived over the Lingayen beaches, and many more than he could feed.

On Christmas Eve MacArthur sailed for Corregidor where he was joined by Sayre, Quezon and his senior military staff, and hundreds of refugees. In Washington, the Navy said bluntly that there was no prospect of driving a relief expedition through to the Philippines, but Roosevelt hoped to prolong resistance by promises of help, and MacArthur relayed these promises to the troops on Bataan. An energetic effort to run the Japanese blockade yielded little in the way of supplies, but periodic visits by submarines gave the authorities a few options. There was a Navy radio on Corregidor which FDR could use to talk to Sayre whose people were concerned about the legitimacy of the government Quezon had left behind, and the prospect of Quezon being successfully wooed by Tokyo. American broadcasts  about the overriding importance of the European theater did nothing for the morale of the hungry  Americans and their Filipino friends trapped in Corregidor and the thickets of Bataan.

MacArthur was not exactly in the good graces of his superiors. On his own he had established contact with John Curtin, the Australian prime minister, who was badgering Churchill about the naked defenses of Australia. Stimson, for one, was for leaving the general on Corregidor.Said the old warrior, sometimes people have to die! But MacArthur's self-serving communiqués, many of which he wrote himself, had elevated him to super-hero status. FDR's critics were soon happily talking about putting him in supreme command of the war effort.(2)

Initial suggestions to evacuate Quezon by submarine were turned aside by MacArthur, who pleaded the adverse effect on the Filipino troops and the danger that he might be killed or captured. Finally a sub took Quezon to the central Philippines, where it was hoped he might gather supplies and  organize defenses. But not before the Filipino had proposed to neutralize the Philippines by agreements with Japan and the United States. The Japanese premier was talking about eventual independence for the Islands and the sick Quezon yearned to return to Manila whose lights he could see glittering across the bay. FDR turned him down. When FDR ordered a reluctant MacArthur to leave for a command in Australia, the general chose a bumpy, risky but dramatic ride in torpedo boats. To the last he believed that FDR, George Marshall, and the Navy were plotting against him.
Before Quezon left he made MacArthur a payment of a half-million dollars from Filipinofunds on deposit in New York. FDR, Stimson, and Harold Ickes all approved. The War Department in 1935 had approved in writing any private financial arrangement MacArthur might negotiate with Quezon. MacArthur as chief of staff had no difficulty in obtaining the  approval. The Philippine government certainly got good value for its money.(3) And despite MacArthur's faults, no American commander could've done better. His cultivation of the Filipinos and refusal to supersede their officials solidified their affection for America. Together Filipino and American  troops destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility.

When MacArthur debarked from his grueling torpedo-boat ride in Mindanao, he discovered that Quezon was in hiding on the island of Negros. Afraid that the Japanese would bag the Filipino president, MacArthur had him bundled up and flown to Australia.

Much of the Philippine story is missing.  Documents were destroyed, MacArthur and Quezon left self-serving accounts, and Sayre was reticent in his reminiscences. FDR planned that Quezon would operate from Australia, and even planned to send Frank Murphy out to help him, but  Quezon eventually came to the United States. He died of his tuberculosis at Saranac Lake in the summer of 1944. His friend MacArthur eventually arrived in Australia in time for Roosevelt to nominate him to John Curtin as commander of allied forces in the southwest Pacific, of which there were mighty few at the time. MacArthur maintained a fierce independence throughout the war. and, despite moves by Ickes, took charge of regaining the Philippines. In the event, Roosevelt was again saddled with the maverick. FDR handled the problem by publicly climbing on the MacArthur bandwagon, ordering Marshall to write him up for the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Privately he thought he should be court-martialed for his performance on opening day and even sent Lyndon Johnson out to the southwest Pacific to check on him. .MacArthur in Australia suited everyone fine. In Washington he would've meant trouble for FDR, Stimson, and Marshall. The Navy distrusted him, and the War Department was resigned to the fact that he had to be " babied along "(4)

The carrier attack on Pearl Harbor caused the Joint Board to warn of thepossibility of a carrier strike against the West Coast where was located much of the country'saircraft industry and, in John DeWitt, one of its most nervous commanders. His headquartersat the Presidio in San Francisco immediately began generating reports of hostile aircraft over the coastal cities, hostile fleets within a few hundred miles of the beaches, and a flock of Fifth Column radios communicating with Japanese subs offshore, which of course turned out to be innocent ham operators.(5) A rumor that San Francisco was being bombed brought  Eleanor Roosevelt and ex-New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia from the Office of Civil Defense flying out from Washington. LaGuardia had been serving as the senior American on the joint Canadian-U.S. defense board and had little sympathy for the West Coast Japanese.(6) Washington was abuzz with rumors that columns of Japanese had suddenly materialized appeared in Mexico and American fliers had to be warned against acting against Mexican regular troops who were moving to the West Coast. The Mexican government was being importuned to admit an American Army detachment to search for secret Japanese installations in Baja California. This was a longtime fixation of the president(7)

When the news came of Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had on his desk Munson's report playing down the possibility of disloyalty in Hawaii, together with a proposal from John Franklin Carter that Munson be allowed to develop a program to cultivate the loyalty of the West Coast Japanese, along the lines of what General Short's people had been doing in Hawaii. This hardly recommended itself to the president. Instead, Attorney General Biddle began to feel the pressure to act against more categories of Japanese. DeWitt began advocating such things as moving all enemy aliens more than twelve years of age to the Zone of the Interior, a proposal  he may have found in an old war plan. New players entered the game such as the Army's Provost Marshal General's Office, the West Coast naval districts, and local politicians, press, and business competitors of the Japanese. Later on, there was a good deal of argument over which groups exercised the most pressure toward the regrettable decision to expel and intern the West Coast Japanese Americans, but there should be no doubt about FDR's part. When the president told Stimson to go ahead with the West Coast internment in February, he said, "Be as reasonable as you can."  It was his way of ducking responsibility. Then and for months thereafter, he and Frank Knox were still trying to uproot and intern the Japanese on Oahu. Delos Emmons  wouldn't hear of it, preferring to evacuate the dependents of service families.(8) American anxieties about the few Japanese in Baja California resulted in some of them being marched into the interior of Mexico Ken Ringle, the Navy's expert on the Japanese-Americans, later aired his dissent with what was going on in an article in Harpers under the pseudonym "An Intelligence Officer."  He wasn't promoted with his Annapolis class. Munson hung around in Washington waiting for a go-ahead and finally gave up after inserting a note in the files that he thought his government was about to emulate the racial policies of the Nazis.(9)

Meanwhile, the president became upset about the morale of Chiang Kai-shek who felt that he had been insulted by the British, skeptical about military cooperation with the Chinese after the latter announced that they had inflicted 15,000 casualties in a battle with the Japanese besieging Hong Kong, especially since no such battle ever took place. The news of Pearl Harbor occasioned a great celebration in Chungking and the Generalissimo moved to convene a conference of the anti-Axis powers to consider joint strategy against Japan. Flying in for the initial conference came General Archibald Wavell, a one-eyed veteran of the Great War, and a poet on the side, who had enjoyed some success against the Italians in the Mediterranean theater, and American General George Brett, who happened to be in Cairo and was sent in by Marshall. Worried by the Japanese advance toward Burma, which threatened the loss of the American Volunteer Group training in Burma as well as the American supplies piled up at the port of Rangoon, Chiang offered two Chinese armies to help defend Burma. Wavell wanted the Empire defended by Empire troops and had other reasons to turn aside the offer, and accepted only one division, infuriating the Generalissimo. When FDR taxed Churchill with Wavell's gaffe, the British Prime Minister reacted strongly. By his reckoning the Chinese weren't worth much, and he told FDR so. At this point, FDR considered that he needed someone to stroke the Generalissimo. With supreme irony, the system threw up Joe Stilwell.(10)

Stilwell had been military attaché in Peking and had formed a low opinion of the Generalissimo, and December 7th had found him in Southern California where he formed anequally low opinion of  DeWitt. Rescued from California by Marshall, of whom he was a favorite,he had been designated American commander for an Anglo-American expedition against French Africa, a move for the moment beyond Allied capabilities. Marshall's and Stimson's choice for the China post was Hugh Drum, who had been repeatedly passed over by FDR for chief of staff, and it is possible  that Marshall thought it a way of getting rid of Drum. Drum claimed to smell a rat, and his lack of enthusiasm converted Stilwell into the leading candidate. Stilwell was willing if  he was to be more than an adviser and actually command Chinese forces, something he should have known the Generalissimo would never grant. In addition, the British and Americans designated Chiang ascommander of his own  China theater to mollify him, and even attached Burma to it. Stilwell had limited talent for working with allies, and could scarcely have performed the role Eisenhower did in Europe. He recorded his impressions of Roosevelt as a "rank amateur in all military matters" and given to "whims, fancy and sudden childish notions."  Drum went back to his East Coast command where he was to irritate Roosevelt by reportedly meditating putting millions of  people into restricted areas and issuing passes to German and Italian aliens. This was not a politically popular move and the president instructed Stimson to be sure that Drum did nothing more than enforce the blackouts "without checking with me first "(11)

The differences between the president and the prime minister that showed up at the Arcadia conference were to trouble their relations throughout the war. In the end the president's flawed policies toward China helped to poison the American political scene after the war. The British had resigned themselves to the loss of their trading positions in China, but had hoped to retain Singapore, Hong Kong and their hold on India, which contributed forces to shore up the Empire in the Middle East. Roosevelt felt that the British, along with the Dutch and the French, were finished in southeast Asia and that India would and should become independent. The stabilizing power in the Far East would have to be China, and to that end every effort should be made to maintain contact with and strengthen the Chungking regime. For this, Burma was crucial in American eyes. Not so for the British. Churchill saw it as a nasty jungle peopled by Japanese and by Burmese who weren't even loyal.(12)

Without previous experience of China, Lauchlin Currie had visited Chungking in January 1941 to report on how the president's desire to help could be implemented. Despite the stifling censorship, and the pervasive police state--Currie said that he could learn nothing if he interviewed more than one Chinese at a time--he believed that Chiang could be nudged toward liberal reforms and consequent reconciliation with the Chinese Communists by an American emissary who could control the flow of Lend-Lease. This represented an astounding leap of faith, enhancing FDR's idiosyncratic views on the subject.(13)

Revenge for Pearl Harbor became a national obsession. Two weeks afterwards, FDR told his military chieftains that American morale required a bombing attack on Tokyo. And even more discouraging defeats were in store. The Japanese captured Singapore in January, surged ahead in Burma, and the end came on Bataan in early April. If Roosevelt had been subject to a vote of confidence like his friend Churchill, he might not have survived that series of disasters. Groups of bombers hurried out from the States with the idea of striking Japan from Chinese bases had to give it up when Burma was lost, but a plan to strike from carriers using mid-range army bombers showed more promise. The idea was that the B-25s, under the famous Jimmy Doolittle, would fly on to China,  the USSR having discouraged the use of its Far Eastern fields. Using the precious carriers on such a mission represented a mighty gamble, but Admiral Halsey took the Hornet and the Enterprise across the north Pacific until they ran into the picket boats of the fishing fleets, forcing a premature launch. The B-25s bombed individually, aappearing over Tokyo in the middle of an air raid drill, flying by and startling Japanese Premier Tojo who was airborne on an inspection, and embarrassing the high command.   Doolittle's fliers arrived over China at night in an overcast and had to bail out. But with the news American morale soared. FDR identified the home base of the raiders as Shangri-La, the mythical land of eternal youth described in a contemporary novel. The sequel wasn't so pretty. Japanese punitive forces scourged the area where the American planes might've landed, and savaged people who might've helped extricate the fliers. To preserve the secret, Chiang Kai-shek wasn't told about the raid until things were well along. He charged that he could have moved troops to protect the airfields and the areas the Japanese overran. The Japanese disgraced themselves by executing some of Doolittle's men who fell into their hands. Executions of other American troops and civilians, and the callousness toward the Americans captured on Bataan and Corregidor, which resulted in thousands of deaths, convinced the Americans that the Japanese had forfeited their pretensions of being a civilized society.(14)