While Pinoys in American service back in the day proved doughty fighters, the Philippines has forever been ruled by one sackless wonder after another. Marcos could end this by invoking the defense treaty, thereby formally requesting American assistance. He hasn’t. This guy is a clone of Manuel Quezon, another silver-tongued moron of the kind Pinoys keep electing to high office.
Quezon had a strong motive to encourage MacArthur to wait to see if Japan attacked. If the Philippines became a battleground, it would mean thousands of Filipino deaths and untold destruction—something Quezon wanted to avoid. Japan had promised friendship to his country and respect for its neutrality upon independence; Quezon seemed to accept these promises. Japan didn’t want to attack the Philippines, he believed, and would do so only if threatened by American forces there. If the United States launched a bombing mission against Formosa, he knew it would kill any chance Japan would leave the Philippines unharmed.
Even after Japan invaded the Philippines in Luzon’s Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941, Quezon clung to the hope that Japan might still be persuaded to spare his country. On February 8, 1942, at a time when Filipino and American forces had fought the Japanese to a standstill on the Bataan Peninsula, Quezon asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt for immediate independence for the Philippines so he could declare the country neutral. Whether Japan would have respected Philippine neutrality seems only a highly remote possibility, but this will never be known because Roosevelt refused to accelerate independence.
After being evacuated from the Philippines in February 1942 to avoid capture by the Japanese, Quezon told Dwight D. Eisenhower—whom he knew from Eisenhower’s days as a MacArthur aide—that MacArthur had waited for Japan to strike out of the hope that it would spare the islands. Then Quezon added a twist: He said it was MacArthur, not he, who believed Japan might bypass the Philippines. That scenario, however, is unlikely. As an experienced military officer, MacArthur knew Japan couldn’t ignore the threat U.S. forces posed there. He was also aware that American radar had detected Japanese planes flying nighttime reconnaissance missions over Clark Field on December 2-5, 1941, a sign Japan intended to attack the Philippines when war came.
But MacArthur had reason to defer to Quezon—something the proud military man would be reluctant to admit. MacArthur commanded fewer than 35,000 American troops, and too few were infantrymen. To defend the islands, he needed the 120,000-man Philippine Army—and the morale and staying power of the Filipino troops hinged on Quezon’s unequivocal support for the war effort.
Quezon was a revered figure in the Philippines. Just a month before the outbreak of war, he had won reelection with more than 80 percent of the popular vote. The U.S. State Department called him “the most important rallying point we have to keep the Filipino people loyal to the United States” and noted that Quezon had “gained the affection of the Filipino masses…as has no other Filipino leader.” The volatile Quezon’s support would be no sure thing if he believed MacArthur had needlessly brought war there.]
Thanks for responding. Certainly, MacArthur never had a problem with ignoring the wall that should have separated military duty from political involvement. As soon as he heard about the Pearl Harbor attack, those B-17s should have been ordered to attack. At least this information provides a supposition of spurious reasoning on his part to what otherwise would seem mere dementia.