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Post by EXO on Jun 13, 2014 9:09:49 GMT 8
As to the non-movement of sixteen B-17's to Del Monte:
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Post by joeconnor53 on Jun 15, 2014 5:59:40 GMT 8
You may be right, ExO. The party theory makes sense in light of the peacetime mentality that pervaded the military in the PI right before Pearl Harbor. However, I would like to see the sources that Manchester, Harvey and James relied on. If those sources were after-the-fact statements by MacArthur, Sutherland or Brereton, they are of dubious reliability. They had seen what had happened to Kimmel and Short so they all had a strong motive to point the finger at someone else.
I wonder if any author has made a FOIA request for all orders from MacArthur to Brereton before 12/8/41. While a lot of records were destroyed or lost in the chaos that followed, there's a fair chance that MacArthur would have copied the War Dept. with any such order by radio transmission. The date and wording of that order might solve the mystery for us.
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Post by okla on Jun 15, 2014 10:17:38 GMT 8
Hey Joe....Ain't Manchester the author who mistakenly stated in one of his books that the Corregidor POWs were hauled over to Bataan to begin their trek to Cabanatuan??? If so, his creditability might be legitimately questioned. Whoever that Author might have been, I can't conceive any Editor letting a mistake like that get past "muster" for publication. I may be in error on this, but till I learn differently, it's my story and I will live or die with it. Cheers.
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Post by EXO on Jun 15, 2014 17:35:30 GMT 8
Manchester, Harvey and James each cite their authorities for the episode, however I do not see that my role here extends to parroting each of them. Actually, I recall another historian/biographer who goes into even further detail about the party at the Manila Hotel, but as I am in a position where I am usually some months away from the remainder of my library, I'm danged if I can recall who it was. Maybe it was Clay Blair, whose biography of MacArthur had a portrait of Gregory Peck on the cover (not an auspicious start.)
There are, so I've been told, about fifty biographies about MacArthur.
When it does come to D. Clayton James, though (the "D" stands for Doris, which is a heck of a name if you're a bloke, and it's no wonder he stuck with initializing it and using his middle name) his is generally recognized as being the most authoritative, and the most insightful. It's in three volumes, and I strongly recommend it, even if you know that you hate MacArthur. I understand there's no one worthwhile who departs terribly from what James writes, and usually you find that other authors writing about MacArthur crib from him as one of their main sources - which is a bit less than ideal, but then again, it's an issue of what sells in the market. Blair uses James a lot. James is not uncritical of MacArthur by any means, though tends to "love him on Tuesdays and hate him on Wednesdays" so overall, it's James' biography which is generally taken as being the most authoritative. It is also one of the most readable, Manchester being the most readable though not the most perfect. That doesn't make Manchester unquotable, though. Where do you stop? Do you chuck Manchester's book on MacArthur, and his even greater biography of Churchill as well? I think not. Even Bill Shirer wasn't perfect all the time.
One of the things that people should recognize about the MacArthur Memorial Archives in Norfolk is that they do not see themselves as promoting MacArthur but as a neutral repository of materials about him. So it's a safe place for MacArthur kickers too. Jim Zobel, the archivist there, is a great fellow, and he comments that he cannot understand how it is that there are authors who write about MacArthur without even coming to the archives to get to the original source documentation there. Thus we get books which are essentially based not on the named author's own research but on secondary research and opinion of another author (generally James), yet purporting to be more authoritative. Half of the biographies on MacArthur are pot-boilers, although the $64 question is "Which half?" Given we are dealing with a subject of titanic qualities (both good and bad) and who epitomizes a paradox of stunning success and equally stunning lapse, there's a lot of scholarship required to sort the sheep from the goats. An error doesn't disqualify one from ignoring Manchester's wider insights though. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.
One of the issues which I continue to find galling is that some authors start with the presumption that Administration policy is infallibly right, has always been right, and will persevere through time to righteous ends if only it can be freed of meddlers, detractors, critics and MacArthur. That sort of approach has given us Communist China, the cold war, North Korea as a rogue state nuclear power, Stalin as the greatest dictator beast of the 20th Century, the Vietnam tragedy, and the current middle-east imbroglio as all being inevitable, and not occasioned by any fault of the Administration of the day. Except if the Administration belonged to George W. Bush.
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