MacArthur full intended to stay with his command in the Philippines. He was ordered out by President Roosevelt and the Army, and even then MacArthur resisted like an insubordinate junior officer. Ultimately, MacArthur obeyed the orders of his superiors. it was fortunate too, because he was instrumental in keeping the Australians from succumbing to the panic they were already experiencing prior to his arrival and speeches. There was even a group of Australian politicians and civic leaders in contact with Japanese intelligence officers discussing surrender terms and an Australian collaborationist government when MacArthur’s arrival and organization of the Allied defense disrupted.
Australian RINOs , eh? The perspective of history is filled with bias and I admit mine. I see MacArthur as a brave soldier and an egomaniac whose persona became perception in a nation looking for a hero.
As an army officer, MacArthur focused on the ground and even that was more planning than reality. In a sense, this campaign proved the adage of the horseshoe. The Japanese never had adequate logistic support, and the American supplies did not help those stranded on Bataan. The failure to resupply was certainly out of MacArthur’s hands, but the initial failure to stage and employ resources was typical–haphazard staging driven by numerous plans and no final decision until it was too late. In fairness, any transition from peace to war is fraught with uncertainty.
The defense of the Philippines was a debacle, and it was an intractable problem given the political and logistic realities. However, I still believe that not attacking Formosa and not deciding on one course of action set in motion the ultimate result.
MacArthur did focus on retaking the Philippines, but many would say that his motivation was to remove the stain of that defeat. Ultimately, his triumphant return was predicated by the same logistical nightmare that defeated Japanese forces throughout the Pacific. The Japanese had no manufacturing base or transport capability to hold anything.
The Japanese Penny Men spent their lives in wave after wave of suicidal attacks, gaining ground inch by bloodstained inch, only to find themselves abandoned to starve or make that final miserable stand rather than face the shame of surrender. That fanatical devotion, so impenetrable to Western understanding, was the final justification for the mushroom clouds that ended their dreams of empire and released the last of those Philippine captives from slavery on the Japanese islands.