Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [157]
At MacArthur’s headquarters at Tacloban, the general and his staff nursed a delusion that the Japanese army in the Philippines had been largely destroyed on Leyte. During a conference before the Luzon operation, Sixth Army intelligence asserted that large Japanese forces remained in the Philippines. MacArthur, sucking on his corncob pipe, interrupted: “Bunk.” Brig.-Gen. Clyde Eddleman, Krueger’s G3, laughed and said, “General, apparently you don’t like our intelligence briefing.” “I don’t,” responded MacArthur. “It’s too strong. There aren’t that many Japanese there.” Eddleman said: “Most of this information came from your headquarters.” Maj.-Gen. “Sir Charles” Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence chief, one of the courtiers least admired by outsiders, leapt angrily from his chair. “Didn’t come from me! Didn’t come from me!” he exclaimed. Eddleman sighed: “General, may I skip the intelligence portion and go on to the basic plan?” “Please do.”
Afterwards, MacArthur called Eddleman to follow him into the bedroom of his quarters in the old Palmer House, almost the only coconut planter’s house still standing in Tacloban. “Sit down,” said the general428. “I want to give you my ideas of intelligence officers. There are only three great ones in history, and mine is not one of them.” Sixth Army asserted that there were 234,000 Japanese troops on Luzon. MacArthur preferred his personal estimate—152,000. Krueger’s officers were much more nearly correct. Nothing, however, including substantial Ultra intelligence, would persuade the commander-in-chief to believe that his forces would face important resistance. Herein lay the seeds of much distress to come.
MacArthur spent hours at Tacloban pacing the verandah in solitary state or with a visitor. “We grew to know his mood429 from the way he walked, how he smoked,” wrote one of his staff. “There would be times we would see him racing back and forth, an aide at his side, talking rapidly, gesticulating with quick nods, sucking his pipe with deep, long draughts.” Those who once questioned the general’s courage—the “dugout Doug” tag—were confounded by the calm with which he endured frequent Japanese bombings, and indeed near misses. His paranoia, however, had worsened. He attributed Washington’s supposed lack of support for his operations to “treason and sabotage430.” He was an unremitting critic of Eisenhower’s campaign in Europe, and indeed of everything done by the supreme commander who once served under him as a colonel. When the U.S. Treasury forwarded a draft of a proposed advertisement promoting War Bond sales on which his own name appeared below Ike’s, he wrote angrily that unless he was listed before his former subordinate, he refused to feature at all. Later, in July 1945, he was enraged to discover that Eisenhower was briefed on the atomic bomb before himself. More seriously, his confidence in his chief of staff had been fatally weakened by the scandal about the presence of Sutherland’s Australian mistress at Tacloban. Sutherland kept his title, but for the Luzon campaign MacArthur relied increasingly on the counsel of Brig.-Gen. Courtney Whitney, an ambitious officer much given to bombast, neither liked nor respected by anyone else.
On 9 January 1945, MacArthur’s Sixth Army landed at Lingayen Gulf, halfway up the western coast of Luzon. Kamikazes provided fierce opposition. MacArthur had reproached Kinkaid for his allegedly excessive fear of suicide planes, but now the admiral’s apprehension was vindicated. Again and again during the days before the assault, suicide pilots struck at the invasion armada. Fortunately for the Americans, the Japanese as usual focused attacks on warships rather than transports crowded with troops. One escort carrier and a destroyer escort were sunk, twenty-three other ships damaged, many severely. The enemy’s pilots seemed more skilful than before, their tactics more sophisticated. They approached at