MacArthur Making Good His Promise to Filipinos '
_ ■ . ... — -— .. -.....—--- “ ' »
By RUSSELL BRINES
IAP Correspondent formerly in
the Orient, who was captured by
the Japanese in Manila)
MacArthur is keeping his prom
ise.
A gaunt line of resolute men
was stretched across the jungles
of Bataan, holding a conqueror
at bay . . .
White-faced men and women
crouched in the musty tunnels of
Corregidor, while day and night
the earth rumbled and trembled
from bombs and artillery
Triumphant Japanese were
iooting Manila, with a heavy
hand for the Filipinos and a su
perior grin for interned Occi
dental men, women and children.
Two thousand miles away Gen.
Douglas MacArthur gravely
spoke to other frightened but
still free civilians.
“The President of the United
States,” he said, “has ordered me
to break through the Japanese
lines and proceed from Corregi
dor to Australia for the purpose,
as I understand it, of organizing
an American offensive against
Japan. The primary purpose of
this is the relief of the Philip
pines.
“I came through and I shall
return.”
This was March 17, 1942. The
general and his family had com
pleted a perilous flight from the
1 Philippines, slipping through the
Nipponese naval blockade in a
P-T boat.
J Japanese hordes were pouring
i like lava across the mountains
1 and valleys of New Guinea;
i reaching out toward northern
Australia, which their planes and
t ships already had struck.
\ The general did not say, “first,
I 1 shall save Australia,” as his
v sense of diplomacy might have
g prompted. He did not qualify the
remoteness of his pledge. He
^ spoke from an intense preoccu
V pation which has dominated most
j of his utterances since then,
t Douglas MacArthur wanted to
3 return to lie Philippines as a
strategist; as a friend, and to re
deem a debt of honor.
T{ So intense was his faith that
) Australia, and gradually the rest
l of the democratic world, took
heart. His erect, square-jawed
figure became a symbol of the
distant power that some day
] would dispel the mists then hang.
( ing over Asia.
j This commander of a doomed
army began to form a new strik
ing force with the material at
« hand—one combat division and a
i handful of bombers and fighters.
, Men with courage and daring
| under him curled back the Jap
anese menace in the Papuan
jungles and the Solomon Islands.
Australians honored MacArthur
many times as the savior of
their commonwealth. On one such
occasion this year, the general
deliberately reiterated his pledge
to return to the Philippines.
“On such occasion as this,” he
added, “my thoughts go back to
those men who went on their last
crusade in the jungle thicknesses
to the north where they made the
i fight that saved this continent.”
He was speaking of Bataan, as
he did often. He noted the first
anniversary of the peninsula’s
fall, April 4, 1943, with a prepar
ed statement that outlined some
of the reasons for his impatience
to return:
“Our flag lies crumpled . . .
The wrecks of what were once
our men and women groan and
| sweat in prison toil; our faithful
Filipino wards, 16,000,000 souls,
gasp in the slavery of a conquer
ing soldiery . .
“I was the leader of that lost
cause,” he added, “and, from the
bottom of a seared and stricken
heart, I pray that a merciful God
may not delay too long their re
demption, that the day of salva
tion be not so far removed that
they perish, that it be not again
too late.”
The general acquired sympathy
and confidence in the Filipinos
from his father, Lt. Gen. Arthur
MacArthur, first American mili
tary governor of the Philippines.
He had participated against Fili
pino patriots during the insur
rection.
Douglas MacArthur be^an his
military career as a lieutenant of
engineers in the archipelago in
1903. He later served as district
commander in Manila and as
commander of the department of
the Philippines.
In 1935 he began to groom a
Commonwealth army for the is
land’s forthcoming independence.
As Field Marshal he directed in
4« A »t« A »!> »T« AAA >?■ A
tensive training of Filipino con
scripts.
The general also consistently
viewed the Philippines as a great
strategic stepping stone, both as
a springboard for a jump to
China and as the base of sea and
aerial power which could sever
Japanese communication lines to
the war material regions of the
south.
Gen. MacArthur’s impatience
to return to the islands was re
flected in his efforts to shave
down the New Guinea timetable.
He utilized air power to the full
est. He developed leap-frog land
ings which trapped whole Japan
ese armies and permitted advan
ces without the slow liquidation
of more than 100,000 Japanese
still living within the areas he
controls.
Finally, after 17 months of
back-breaking effort, he inserted
in his communique of July 23,
1944, the first mention of the
| Philippines since the capitulation
of Corregidor, May 6, 1942. He
revealed then that long-range
planes from newly-acquired bas
es were maintaining a consistant
patrol over southern Philippine
waters.
Doubtless that moment brought
back memories which must have
plagued him often during the
past two years . . . the towering
flames which destroyed the Cav
ite naval base, symbol of Amer
ican Far Eastern naval power,
the night he slipped from Man
ila .. . the concentrated hell of
Corregidor and Bataan when his
diseased-weakened men prayed
for help that never came . . . the
gaunt, night-cloaked shadows of
the islands, hunched like compli
ant shoulders, as his tiny escape
boat weaved toward Australia.
Gen. MacArthur has a rendez
vous with ghosts in the Philip
pines.
Until the Spaniards found that
the avacado was edible and in
troduced it into many of their
colonies, ifc was grown only as
an ornamental tree.
MISS MELBA CALL
AND MR. KING WED
In the presence of 35 friends
Miss Melba Call was married to
Eugene King, before the fire
place in the parlor of the Uni
versity Congregational i Church,
in Seattle recently, the Rev.
Clinton Ostrander, officiating.
The bride, an Eskimo, who has
been blind since babyhood, is a
graduate of the State School for
the Blind at Vancouver, Wash.,
and of Eastern Washington Col
lege of Education. She has
taught the blind in Alaska, Wash. »
ington and New Mexico.
Her husband is an Alaskan In
dian, and a graduate of the Shel
don Jackson School at Sitka. He
worked in Juneau until he lost
his sight two years ago.
They are at home at the Len
nox Apartments in Seattle—(Con.
tributed).
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