Battlefield Diaries: Raid at Cabanatuan (the new Military Channel)

Only eight hours after the Pearl Harbor bombing, Japanese bombs leveled Manila and military targets on the main island of Luzon. After four long months for the under-prepared Allied forces in the Philippines, U.S. forces had no choice but to surrender.

You have a point, but this was a longer term problem.

The Philippines, no matter the will, could never have arranged for its own air and naval defense. Any problems here were purely American.

The points of failure in the defense of the Philippines from 1935-1942 were many and varied.

The Filipino politicians deserve substantial blame. They dithered, as you say.

US politicians deserve even more, not least in that they contributed to Filipino dithering by, 1), being notably ungenerous with respect to the Philippine armed forces from 1935-1940. The spigots for even obsolete US equipment opened far too late, and there were insufficient funds available for training. The Philippines just could not afford an effective military on its own.

And, 2), the US was very shy about making a security commitment to the Philippines in the 1930's - if it was to be on its own, it would be impolitic to inherit Americas enemies without a solid American guarantee.

MacArthur made several major errors, the biggest being that he assumed that the Filipinos would be able to quickly create a reasonably efficient military organization out of raw civilians, like he saw Americans do with his own "Rainbow" division in 1917-1918. This led to the misapprehension that he could use the Filipino conscript army as a mobile counterattack force, and hence meet the Japanese at the beaches. Reality quickly forced him to abandon this idea, and was forced to reinstate WPO3 in a rush.

Acquisition of the Philippines after our victory in the Spanish American War was almost certainly a strategic error. Instead of giving them independence with a qualified American security guarantee in return for basing rights, we set up a colonial administration and fought a nasty guerrilla war to consolidate our control of the country. Even with years of expense and effort by the US, the result was never as we hoped.

In the Cold War years, we necessarily supported useful rogues like Marcos, but his massive and pathological corruption enfeebled the entire country. The Philippines' survival today as a democracy seems to hinge mainly on the general expectation that it is the form of government that assures the widest distribution of corruption and political spoils. There are persistent reports that Philippine police, military, and politicians often take bribes from Islamic terrorists, even splitting the take from ransom payments.

Arguably, the Philippines mostly benefited from their engagement with America -- better us than the Japanese or to be without a major power as a patron -- but we acquired an expensive dependency. When an aggressive Japan came calling on their way to Indonesia's oil fields, our strategic commitment to the Philippines was exposed as exceeding the resources available. At the beginning of World War II, we thus unnecessarily suffered a major defeat and the loss of tens of thousands of experienced military personnel.

So where does MacArthur fit into this? If, as William Manchester found and seems to be true, MacArthur was on the take from a Quisling Philippine government and botched his handling of US forces as a result, then the respect he still receives from conservatives ought to be reevaluated and qualified.

Strategic issues -

You are correct that the Philippines got much more out of the relationship than the US did - in fact, speaking as a Filipino, the outcome of 1898 was the best thing that could have happened.

The Philippine government of 1935-1942 was not a Quisling government. There were many apprehensions about the future and some covering of bases in the face of all this. But in fact the Philippines put a very large proportion of its revenues into defense and there was never any question that it would do all in its power to fight if necessary. Unfortunately, it was and still is a poor country, and its power was very limited, and the psychology of the military and the people were unused to war.

MacArthur was well paid. The effect of his payoff was to keep him as a figurehead for the Filipinos, who lacked self-confidence, and kept them funding a military they could not afford. He was also a bridge to the corridors of power in the US, a sort of insurance against abandonment. I cannot blame MacArthur for Philippine military failings. He tried to do too much with limited means, but if he hadn't done so the disaster would have been little different. A matter of a few weeks maybe. What he was guilty of, mainly, was sentimentality. He did not see Filipinos as they were but as he wanted them to be - it took war itself to make Filipinos warriors. The Filipinos of 1945 would indeed have been formidable defenders of their country.

The US had resources available - they were, as we have seen, latent. It is just that the US, like much of the Free world, took too long to wake up in the 1930's. If the US had begun its military buildup one year earlier, much grief could have been avoided, and not just in the Philippines.

You misunderstand the nature of Philippine politics. Democracy is genuinely well-rooted there, it is part of the culture, as is corruption. What Marcos proved was that a "strongman" government was not the answer. Corruption was independent of Democracy.

I enjoyed your post; but I do not see MacArthur or Quezon's government as absolved.

My recollection is that Manchester's account was that MacArthur was bribed to sit still while the Philippine government covertly negotiated with the Japanese. Consequently, even hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, MacArthur had not properly mobilized defense of his forces and the Philippines, and so they were caught unready when the Japanese attacked. Military historians and MacArthur's defenders still struggle to explain and excuse his inaction. The loss of most of MacArthur's aircraft when caught on the ground, his failure to oppose the landings, and his failure to prepare for a fighting withdrawal doomed his army and the Philippines to a brutal Japanese occupation.

The Philippine government and MacArthur were gulled by the Japanese, who held out the improbable prospect of neutrality on Japanese terms instead of war and occupation, but with negotiations conditional on MacArthur and the Philippines not preparing effective defensive measures. Weakness and folly often go hand in hand, but in this instance, they were compounded by bribery and MacArthur's violation of his oath of loyalty to the United States. Were the facts publicly known at the time, MacArthur would have been cashiered and almost certainly tried and convicted of treason. Arguably, Roosevelt took the better choice by suppressing the episode and giving MacArthur a pass.

Sadly, corruption tends to be both endemic in poor nations and in itself a cause of poverty and lawlessness. Poor nations seem to commonly have three miserable choices in their form of government: corrupt democracy; corrupt strong man rule; or bloody and corrupt revolutionary dictatorship.

Part of the remarkable good fortune of the United States is that the American Revolution was spurred in part by disgust and resentment at corruption in Britain and among colonial officials. Consequently, the Revolutionary generation had a sincere belief that their new country required a strong sense of "Republican virtue," and the concept continues to this day as part of our political culture, if in attenuated form.

Why didn't the US transmit to the Philippines its best sense of governmental integrity and rule of law? Unfortunately, colonial administration offers great temptations, and the founding years of the US possession of the Philippines coincided with an era of exuberant big business corruption. Yet even in the Philippines and in other corrupt governments, there are always honest men and women who are the best hope of their countries and deserving of our support -- even as their efforts are so often unavailing.

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