Remembering MacArthur in Corregidor
March 6, 2005 | 12:00am
Without heroes, we’re all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.– Bernard Malamud, The Natural
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. – Winston Churchill
When Sen. Richard Gordon invited me to attend the 60th anniversary of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s flag-raising ceremony in Corregidor, I said yes. I was eager to join the comme-moration rites in that historic place which I’ve never been to before. I’m a history buff, a strong admirer of America’s imperious and greatest ever military hero, five-star general Douglas MacArthur. During the war, MacArthur proclaimed to the world that the recapture of Corregidor was America’s "Holy Grail."
I always badger my elders to tell me war tales. They tell me that many of our relatives were among the ethnic Chinese who died fighting the Japanese invaders. They say that it was only after the Japanese won Corregidor, four months after they occupied Manila, that they started cracking down on ethnic Chinese activists and community leaders who aided the resistance to their military hegemony in Asia.
What is the importance of Corregidor in Philippine history and in America’s war against Japan in World War II? Why was it that during his 1961 sentimental journey to the Philippines, the 84-year-old MacArthur reveled in the unprecedented welcome of two million Filipinos in Manila streets, but when days later his ship neared Corregidor, the old soldier asked that the decks be cleared of people? Why was it that he wanted to be alone as the vessel neared the big, silent rock?
Corregidor was the last bastion of joint US and Philippine resistance to the Japanese military invasion which surrendered on May 6, 1942 – 27 days after the Fall of Bataan, five months after the enemy armies invaded Luzon and four months after they occupied Manila City. After the siege of attrition, 5,000 Japanese soldiers were killed and 3,000 wounded in 15 hours of savage resistance by American and Filipino troops before Corregidor was conquered. A total of 50,000 Japanese troops were deployed to capture Corregidor. Two-thirds of Japanese barges sunk. The politicians in the US government earlier made the mistake of appointing Gen. Jonathan Wainright as commander of all Philippine forces with the power to surrender all American and Filipino soldiers in the archipelago. The Japanese threatened to execute everyone captured in Bataan and Corregidor if Wainright didn’t order the surrender, which he did. It spoiled MacArthur’s plan to coordinate defense of the Philippines from Australia, using 25,000 men in Mindanao and 20,000 Filipino soldiers in Visayas as guerrillas.
What we commemorated 60 years later is the 1945 triumph of US troops over the Japanese forces, after the US heavy bombers dropped 595 tons of explosives on the isle. They won the Rock with only 136 American soldiers killed and 531 wounded compared to 4,000 Japanese defenders killed in their near suicidal defense. Both March 2 flag-raisings, one in 1945 and the other in 2005 were done on the same historic flagpole which used to be the mast of the Reina Cristina, main warship of the Spanish fleet led by Admiral Patricio Montojo, which lost in the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay to the US naval fleet under Commodore George Dewey.
When Japan invaded the Philippines, MacArthur was the field marshall of the Philippine Commonwealth. It was a fledgling American colony with a self-governing regime led by his compadre, President Manuel L. Quezon. MacArthur declared Manila an Open City. He withdrew Filipino and American troops to Bataan peninsula and the fortified isle of Corregidor. Then retired 82-year-old World War I hero General Pershing described the massive strategic retreat as "one of the greatest moves in all military history."
When MacArthur led the inspiring American and Filipino resistance in Corregidor and Bataan despite lack of supplies and munitions in early 1942, the world was in shock of the Axis fascists’ victories – Hitler’s armies were advancing on Egypt and Russia, Japan had smashed America’s Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, conquered Thailand, Burma, Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, Timor, the Bismarcks, the Gilberts, Wake Island, Guam, most of the Solomon Islands, half of New Guinea and their bombers were besieging Australia.
Politicians in Washington praised MacArthur and his troops, pledging reinforcements that were never sent. Historians recorded US War Secretary Henry Stimson as saying: "There are times when men have to die." Despite having been abandoned by the US government, lacking in supplies, arms and foods, the combined Filipino and American resistance brought the powerful Japanese military advance to a standstill, saved Australia and delayed the Japanese timetable for conquest in Southeast Asia by four months.
Despite his pledge to die with his men on the Rock, MacArthur was too valuable a military genius that US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered him to leave for Australia. MacArthur led the resistance from Corregidor for 77 days. In order not to disobey President Roosevelt and face a court martial, he wanted to resign and enlist as a volunteer to stay with his men until death.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was at the White House in December 1941, showing Roosevelt the message by which he ordered Lord Gort out of Dunkirk when the Allied position in France became hopeless and he didn’t want the Germans to kill his able general. Churchill wrote in Their Finest Hour: "I learned from the President and Mr. Stimson of the approaching fate of General MacArthur and the American garrison at Corregidor. I thought it right to show them the way in which we had dealt with the position of a commander-in-chief whose force was reduced to a small fraction of his original command."
Instead of escaping Corregidor and Japanese naval ships using a submarine, General MacArthur used a PT41 speedboat to escape in March 1942 which stunned the world. After he escaped, he announced the most famous words: "I shall return." These words electrified the subjugated but undefeated people of the Philippines with hope, captured the imagination of the American nation, but angered other US military leaders and politicians who wanted him to declare: "We shall return." It was the Filipino journalist Carlos P. Romulo in Corregidor who suggested the seemingly egoistical line to the general. Romulo explained: "America has let us down and shouldn’t be trusted. But the people still have confidence in MacArthur. If he says he is coming back, he will be believed."
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Gen. Efren Abu tells me: "When you come here to places like Corregidor and see all these ruins, you remember all the sacrifices of past heroes who fought for our freedom from the Japanese invaders. My father’s younger brother Pantaleon Abu was a teenage guerrilla fighter who was killed by Japanese soldiers in Mauban, Quezon province. Heroes like them inspired me to enter the military service. I can’t forget his bearing and how millions of Filipinos showed outpouring of love for him."
Gen. Generoso Senga, commanding general of the Philippine Army adds: "I admire the great General MacArthur and the courage of his Filipino and American troops here in Corregidor, also those in Bataan.."
British Ambassador Peter Beckingham says: "This ceremony in Corregidor was very moving for me and my wife. When I heard the key role of parachuters in the recapture of Corregidor, I recall my 88-year-old father Leslie Beckingham who was also a parachuter 60 years ago in the invasion of Normandy. I am honored to be here in Corregidor. Remembering history is very important. My wife’s father, the 87-year-old Jack Trotman, was also a war pilot in the British Air Force in World War II. His plane was shot down near Malta and his co-pilot died. I hope to someday bring my father and my father-in-law here to Corregidor to see this place where heroes fought for freedom."
Gen. Pedro Cabuay Jr. says: "I was saddened when Senator Gordon mentioned in his speech today that the US veteran Major Richard Gordon recently died. I was then head of Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac when Major Gordon visited us three years ago. He said after the capture of Corregidor and Bataan, thousands of Filipino and American soldiers were forced to march for days in extreme heat in April 1942 for over 85 miles without food or water in the Death March. Everybody fought not to be brought in there, because you will die earlier. In the hospital, hundreds of sick soldiers were lying and dying on their own feces and liquids, with thousands of flies entering their noses, mouths and ears. We should not forget those brave Filipino and American soldiers of Corregidor and Bataan."
Whatever horrors of life in the Philippines during the Japanese military occupation, when one million people died and the era was even referred to as "tatlong taong walang Diyos" much of these haunting war memories seemed like the concrete ruins of many unrecognizable former US military buildings in Corregidor now only adorned with stray weeds, gaping cracks and forlorn shadows.
When MacArthur and his family were in Corregidor under siege by Japanese bombardments from Cavite, it was possible that the only ethnic Chinese in the whole isle was his only son Arthur’s Cantonese amah or nursemaid named Ah Cheu. Sixty years later, I was probably the only ethnic Chinese in that historic ceremony on the isle.
When I saw an Oriental man in dark suit arrive seconds later, I half-jokingly asked: "Are you Japanese?" The guy smiled and said he is the new Japanese Ambassador Ryu Yamazaki.
I felt differently from most of the well-meaning dignitaries. Who are we the living – no matter how high our rank or how lofty our intentions – to honor those brave young soldiers whose raw heroism in the bloody fight for freedom at Corregidor and other battlefields was their crowning glory that no speeches, no 21 gun salutes, no amount of glittery medals, no flower wreaths, no monuments, no museums or fancy eulogies can ever equal? Wouldn’t it be best for us to honor heroes and war dead by consecrating our lives to the imperishable ideals of honor, courage, truth and freedom?
A lady US diplomat read a poem discovered by the daughter of one of those US soldiers who helped win Corregidor 60 years ago. The poem was only found recently after the death of its author, Sergeant Gertus H. Jones of Battery B, 462nd Parachute Field Artillery Battalion. It was entitled "Corregidor".
Silver moon softens shattered walls,
Only the ghosts remain,
And the winds howl down the lonely halls
The tales of blood and pain.
And chutes sigh, like long lost souls,
Stranded in lifeless trees,
Death lurks in the cave-like holes
That gape at the lonely seas.
O Lord, consecrate and bless
The loved ones who must rest,
Who bore your cross and gave their all
In this their final test.
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