Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [109]
In spite of this vision, he was reluctant to act when the news of Pearl Harbor came in. His air force people urged an immediate attack on Japanese bases on Formosa, well within range of the B-17. MacArthur hesitated; he had to consider relations with the Philippine government, and he did not want to lose their support by committing the first overt act of war. He did not know that the Japanese had already hit targets here and there in the islands. Later in the morning the big bombers took off, milled around helplessly in the air for a while, and returned to Clark Field. The fighter pilots flying cover over the bare airfields came in for lunch.
Just after noon the Japanese hit them, wave after wave, high-level bombers, dive-bombers, fighters coming low to strafe the neatly parked planes. It was not so much that the Americans were caught napping as that they were psychologically unprepared for what was happening. Up till now they had lived in a fool’s paradise of a world at peace; the reality of war hit them hard. When they could, they fought back with their outclassed fighter planes and their antique anti-aircraft weapons. But when the exuberant Japanese got back to Formosa, they had lost only seven fighters, and no bombers. They had shot down twenty-five fighters and destroyed seventy bombers and fighters on the ground. Mac Arthur no longer had to worry about an “overt act.” All he had to worry about after “little Pearl Harbor” was that he had nothing to hit back with.
The first Japanese landings followed soon after their initial strike. Small detachments landed in the northern part of Luzon. MacArthur’s defense plan called for holding the central part of the island, and then withdrawing into the Bataan Peninsula, where he proposed to hold on until help came. Messages from Washington assured him that help would soon be on the way, though they did not say what it would be or where it would come from. Following his plan, MacArthur refused to be gulled by the first landings. He believed the main landing would come in Lingayen Gulf, and while his smaller units withdrew slowly before the northern advance, he husbanded his main forces for the big battle.
The Japanese came all right. On the morning of the 22nd, 43,000 of them stormed ashore in Lingayen Gulf. Unfortunately, the Americans expected them to land in the south, at the head of the gulf. Instead they landed halfway up it, and met very little serious resistance. They immediately started moving down the central plain that led from Lingayen toward Manila. MacArthur’s commander in the area, General Jonathan Wainwright, had a series of withdrawal positions from which he hoped to inflict successive checks on the Japanese, but none of these held long. Further Japanese troop convoys were sighted converging on Luzon, and MacArthur ordered the Americans and Filipinos to fall back into Bataan in as orderly a fashion as they could manage.
By the day before Christmas the Japanese were landing in Lamon Bay, on the east coast of Luzon, and the American forces were hustling back toward Bataan. Manila was declared an open city, and while the Northern Luzon Force desperately held back the attackers, the southern defenders hurried across their line of communications and into the peninsula. Given the difficulties under which everyone was laboring, it was a very successful movement; its end result was to put the defenders of the islands into a bag, but there was no alternative anyway. By New Year’s the Americans and Filipinos were holding their main battle line on Bataan.
Both sides were now faced with a siege. The Japanese general Homma was actually inferior in numbers to the Americans and Filipinos, but his troops were better trained by far and they also were better supported. They commanded