General's scheme to erase Australians

BACK . . . General Douglas MacArthur (centre) returns

to the Philippines in 1945.

PETER CHARLTON



"THE President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines for the purpose, as I understand it, of organising the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return."

Those words, the last three of which were to assume slogan-like significance, were uttered by General Douglas MacArthur at Adelaide railway station on Friday, March 20, 1942. Three years later, MacArthur did, indeed, return to the Philippines but without the Australian troops who had won the victories for him in Papua and New Guinea.

In July 1944, on the back of those victories, MacArthur flew to Hawaii where he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of all the American forces in the Pacific.

At this meeting or meetings held at Pearl Harbour, more precisely, MacArthur managed to persuade Roosevelt and Nimitz that, by securing the Philippines, Japanese supply lines would be cut. Nimitz agreed that the southern Philippines should be invaded, but not Luzon. The American Joint Chiefs were far from convinced the operation was needed.

At one of these meetings, MacArthur told Roosevelt of his plan to use Australian troops in the East Indies. It was clear he was not taking Australian troops with him to the Philippines, which is not what he was telling the Australian Government.

Indeed, MacArthur's attitude to the Australian troops under his command was insulting. For example, he had directed that any victory by Australian troops should be described as "Allied victory" in the official communiqués issued by his headquarters.

From the middle of 1944 to early January 1945, there had been no mention of Australian troops. Prime Minister John Curtin had agreed to a MacArthur request that had the effect of limiting war correspondents to reporting only from the communiqués. According to MacArthur's most thorough biographer, D. Clayton James, "Sometimes Australian newspapers had to quote American or British newspapers which happened to get information on an operation from news leaks, but all Allied news sources in the Southwest Pacific theatre were supposedly under tight GHQ censorship." Adds James: "To the end of the war the GHQ communiqués never did justice to the Australian forces."

"He did not consider that public opinion in America would countenance the first landing

on the Philippines being shared with the Australians."

MacArthur had met Curtin and General Sir Thomas Blamey in Brisbane on June 27, 1944. After that meeting, Sir Frederick Shedden, then secretary of the Department of Defence wrote that MacArthur had been "somewhat disturbed about the strength of the Australian divisions and the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) Divisions in particular". They had been under strength for some time and the advice that he had received from the Chief of the General Staff was that they could not be brought up to strength for many months.

Though originally he had contemplated that the AIF divisions would be used in his advance on the Philippines, he did not now intend using them until later on, when he proposed to attack Borneo and the Netherlands East Indies. From the information furnished to him, the AIF divisions would not be battle-worthy until after the Philippines campaign.

Yet all three of the AIF divisions were fighting months before MacArthur embarked on his operations in the Philippines.

NO credit for Australians . . . General Douglas MacArthur.

The attitude of Blamey is fascinating. At the time he was thought to favour the use of Australian troops in the Philippines but only if the Australian divisions were employed under the command of an Australian corps commander. The planning coming out of MacArthur's headquarters in mid 1944 was for two Australian divisions to be placed under American Corps commanders. Blamey rejected this plan.

As the Australian historian Dr David Horner has noted: "This was a prospect which MacArthur could not allow as the landings in the Philippines had to be seen to be American. Indeed MacArthur had told (British General Sir Herbert) Lumsden on August 1 that 'he did not consider that public opinion in America would countenance the first landing on the Philippines being shared with the Australians'. "

MacArthur had consistently misled Curtin and Blamey. The American operations in the Philippines were brought forward from November 1944 and January 1945, the original planning dates, to October 1944. MacArthur's communiqués continued to mislead. On October 30, just 10 days after the landings at Leyte, MacArthur proclaimed that two-thirds of Leyte had been secured and enemy resistance had collapsed.

War correspondents, who knew that the real fighting was just starting, protested to MacArthur's headquarters but were told by a PR officer: "The elections are coming up in a few days, and the Philippines must be kept on the front pages back home."

Remarked Clayton James: "The communiqués and this statement suggest that an informal deal was made at Pearl Harbour, probably without explicit verbalisation, where MacArthur's releases would provide great battlefield successes stemming from increased Washington support, and the President's influence on behalf of the Philippines plan would be exerted on the Joint Chiefs. Both Roosevelt and MacArthur were clever schemers of the first order, so such an understanding is not implausible, even if unprovable."

One thing is certain: reports of Australian troops winning victories in the Philippines would not have helped Roosevelt's re-election chances or any future tilt at the presidency by the remorselessly ambitious MacArthur.