Posted on 08/04/2013 10:54:44 AM PDT by cutty
According to Soviet intelligence reports, we now know that one of FDR’s top officials, the Treasury Department’s Harry Dexter White, was a Soviet agent, who, among many other deceptions, subverted relations between the US and Japan by inserting “ultimatum” language into the cable flow that actually spurred the Japanese attack. This was language written in Moscow, passed to White by a Soviet handler in Washington, D.C., and dropped into a State Department communiqué sent to Japan.
This brilliantly executed influence operation doesn’t live in infamy – at least not yet.
...
“A continuous stream of fighter and pursuit planes is traversing the Pacific,” FDR cabled MacArthur is early 1942, one of the extravagant lies FDR told to the people and forces under Japanese siege. No planes were on their way. Nothing was coming. .. Truth, John Hersey later wrote, would come “in mean little doses.”
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the US continued to sustain catastrophic losses while shipping Lend Lease supplies to Stalin through the Nazi U-boat-infested North Atlantic.
Could the decision to abandon US forces to death or the horrors of Japanese POW camps by giving uninterrupted priority to the Red Army have had anything to do with the influence of the scores of Soviet agents and assets within reach of the levers of power inside the US government? How about the man driving military supply policy, the man behind Lend Lease?
That man was Harry Hopkins and he was without question FDR’s top wartime advisor. As George Marshall would state in 1957 to his official biographer Forrest Pogue: “Hopkins’s job with the president was to represent the Russian interests. My job was to represent the American interests.”
Was Hopkins representing Russian interests at a time of American need?
Who was Harry Hopkins?
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Available resources were also mismanaged, as they had no competent cadre. And there was no such cadre largely because of social issues. Americans in a similar situation would have self-organized, improvised, developed their own leadership, and in large part taught themselves. Filipinos need a trained experienced cadre far more so as they are not, in that society, self starting self directed and self organizing. The Filipinos have trouble generating their own effective leadership. MacArthur missed that, a gross cultural misunderstanding by a man who was selected largely because he “got” the Filipinos. I think the Filipinos “got” him much more so than he “got” them. Karnow (”In our Image”) has a lot to say on this sort of thing. Karnow gets a lot of stuff badly wrong, but he’s useful on the ways Americans misunderstand Filipinos. That’s why his Rainbow division was very different from Filipino conscripts.
True and that was pretty much the opinion shared by all American soldiers of Filipino troops circa 12/25/41 but many of those same Filipino soldiers who lost their nerve on the beaches regrouped and gave an excellent accounting for themselves on Bataan.
My original comment was a challenge to find a single American serviceman on Bataan in 1942 that had a poor opinion of the Filipino troops that fought on Bataan in 1942.
From wiki answers:
What did Sarah Palin say about seeing Russia from her yard?
Answer:
She never said that. The quote was, "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Which is true. And she meant that Alaska's close proximity to two foreign nations, Russia and Canada, gave her some experience in foreign affairs. Which is true, but more of a stretch.
However, Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live lampooned that interview with the well known catch phrase of, "I can see Russia from my house!"
I never said her yard.
Sadly, there are very few primary sources with testimony from US servicemen in combat in Bataan.
There were very few US combat troops in the field and very few US officers leading Philippine Army units.
And even more unfortunately there were few survivors of Japanese captivity of these few, and even fewer of these survivors wrote a memoir. Mallonee is the best of what there is from people who would be in a position to know and offer candid opinions from the ground level. There are others who avoided Bataan and captivity, who served in the guerilla like Fertig (who was at Bataan btw) and Lapham.
I would be interested in knowing how he obtained such detailed records given how most USAFFE records were destroyed in '41-'42.
He has a very interesting section on sources.
One is an extensive set of debrief interviews conducted by the USAF postwar with the survivors.
Another is the USAFFE records that were flown out in April 1942 and turned up in the McArthur papers in 1960. So a great number of USAFFE records apparently survived, G-2, G-3 and S-3 records, along with the FEAF War Diary.
Besides this he seems to have conducted an extensive set of additional interviews with survivors and their relatives, starting in the 1970’s, also obtaining their wartime and postwar correspondence.
Its a very interesting book.
And MacArthur wept openly when he next saw his old friend. A poignant moment in the story of this much maligned leader.
Should also add that MacArthur was ordered off Corregidor by FDR. He did not want to leave, and his family was with him.
Family escorted (Navy) Filipino guerrillas along with Aussie coastwatchers onto various islands in Phillipines. Said they had never seen such fiercely loyal and quite dangerous fighters, who hated the Japanese, esp. after atrocities on their families. Reminded him of the ghurkas— not to be messed with.
Pearl subs which went out on patrol in October 41 had permission to fire on hostile Jap shipping. Nuff said.
Doubt the Japanese wanted anything to do with a war with the Soviets. The Soviets in August 1939 inflicted a major defeat on the Japanese army along the Mongolian border at Khalkhin Gol. General Zhukov made mince meat out the Japanese. The Japanese planned to counterattack, but before that operation could begin, Tokyo signed an armistice with Moscow. Until August 1945, when Marshal Rokossvasky launched his assault against the Japanese in the far East, the Japanese were quite willing to leave the Soviets alone. This even though they (the Japanese) knew that most of the Soviet troops in the far East had been sent to the West to fight the German.
He transferred over to tank destroyers a few months later, but all they were given were some rinky-dink M6's that were obsolete even before they rolled off the assembly line.
Fortunately they never deployed his unit with this vehicle, mainly due to the 95% vehicle loss suffered by the first TD battalion to deploy with the M6 (Kasserine Pass).
One granduncle was called up from ROTC as a corporal (as he was just a college freshman, and there were no officer slots anyway) in the Philippine 1st Regular Division (who weren’t ‘regular’ in any way). He survived the Death March to die at Capas.
One granduncle was the commander of the “Tulariquin Bolo Battalion” guerillas of northern Palawan Island, 1942-45. He survived a Japanese strafing attack with a bullet in his back that was never removed.
One granduncle was in the Manila resistance and was one of the few survivors of the Kempeitai torture dungeons in Fort Santiago.
One granduncle unofficially joined the US 1st Cavalry Division (they gave him a rifle, and he attached himself to a platoon of the 8th Cavalry, I believe, because so many of them spoke Spanish). He served until he had satisfied himself that he had gotten his revenge on the Japanese.
My grandfather operated a safehouse for American refugees evading Japanese attempts to intern them, and then later for US Naval Intelligence.
etc., many, many more family tales of WW2.
BTW,
I had a look at Louis Morton’s sources, and he specifically mentions missing G2, G3, etc. records. He published his “green book” in 1953. MacArthur’s papers became available in 1960, with a pile of the missing USAFFE records it turns out. Morton’s history badly needs an update, the MacArthur papers can’t be the only new documents available these days.
bump
Probably kept those for National Guard or something
Could the Phillipines have held out if they were adequately supplied?
Better than that, they could have kicked Homma off Luzon.
What they really needed was reinforcements and trained combat units. These could only have been provided if the US and the Philippines had started mobilization much earlier.
They also needed an open, secure supply line to Australia for aircraft replacements.
They also lacked air units appropriate for naval interdiction. The three squadrons of A-24 divebombers that were on the way (the light bomber group ground crew was in the Philippines, but without planes; they were all captured) would have been ideal, but they would also have required time to train, and they would require replacements to stay in the fight. Attrition would quickly exterminate any fixed body of combat planes.
Without good combat units, time to train the Filipinos, or aircraft to retain air superiority and counter Japanese Naval superiority, there was no way to retain control of the strategically vital parts of the country such as the central plain of Luzon (the Philippines ricebowl) or Manila. the only option was to retreat into Bataan.
Bataan fell not due to lack of supplies from the US. They had plenty of ammunition. They mainly lacked food, which could have been sourced directly in the Philippines, plus quinine, of which for the most part they could also have had locally. The core problem at Bataan was that USAFFE had to switch war plans in a hurry the moment it became clear that the mobile warfare/beach defense strategy was not going to work because the Philippine Army was not up to it. So they had to revert to WPO-3, defense of Bataan, with no notice and little time to complete the necessary logistics. The withdrawal was conducted rapidly and brilliantly, but not enough time or transport was available to fully stock Bataan. They managed to gather in just two months rations, if that. With a couple of weeks prep they could have stocked for six months or more.
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