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Post by ivytan on May 15, 2024 7:41:16 GMT 8
I just want to preface my question and tell everyone that I have never served nor am I a military historian.
Basically, I’ve been reading a lot of books about the American guerrillas in the Philippines during ww2. I recently finished reading “A rock and a fortress” by Robert H. Arnold among others and it just got me thinking - had MacArthur immediately activated guerrilla resistance the minute the Japanese landed in Lingayen Gulf, would it have made a difference with Bataan?
One of the things Arnold mentioned was they wanted to attack the enemy supply lines going into Bataan and I thought if more than one unit does that, maybe Bataan wouldn’t have surrendered. What do you think?
I understand MacArthur eventually sent Moses, Noble and Thorpe but this already months into the battle of Bataan.
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Post by roland1369 on Jul 26, 2024 23:28:08 GMT 8
At the risk of starting a major Shitstorm I will give my opinion on why there were no prewar guerrilla preparation. The primary reason was MacArthur himself. He was convinced that he could defend the Philippines with his conventional forces. The guerilla is used in occupied territory and to prepare for such warfare would be to admit that when war came at least some if not most of the Philippines would be occupied by the enemy. Neither in public or in private was it possible for a man with his ego to admit.
Secondly Mac and what passed for his staff were what we used to call Regular Army Assholes. They had good conventional military educations but with little to no training in Guerrilla warfare. Despite the fact that some including Mac had actually experienced some in their careers it was little understood and looked down on by Regular Armies. At the time there had been some limited and largely unsuccessful guerrilla operations in the Spanish Civil War but little had been written about them. Thus there was no institutional knowledge or will to prepare for Guerrilla Warfare prior to the war. Mac later in the war refused to allow the OSS to perate within his theater.
A third problem was that Mac was fixed on building the Philippine Army and there were not enough weapons to arm these forces. Thus weapons as well as as well as even more critical trained military leaders would have had to be diverted from the conventional military forces.
A fourth problem is the will of the people to fight a fully armed well trained army with a lightly armed and poorly trained force. At the risk of creating the Shitstorm I mentioned, the populace has to be united in their opposition to the occupying power, and this was not nor was it ever present prior to the occupying power showing its oppressive side. Remember that Japan had some prewar sympathizers, some of which collaborated before and after the Japanese before and after occupation. Most occupied countries populations are content to wait and see how the occupation affects them personally before taking sides in the guerrilla war.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
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Post by EXO on Jul 27, 2024 8:55:02 GMT 8
For some years I have been maintaining there have been at least three factors that mainstream historians have neglected, when it comes to the defense (and loss) of the Philippines.
The first one is the push-me/pull-you CONFUSOPOLY of American policy having regard to whether America's role in the Philippines was to be maintained or withdrawn. The Democrats were not comfortable with staying in the Philippines, as the colony's interests collided with those their major party supporters. Consequently, the Democrat policy was to be rid of the Philippines as soon as, and as cheaply as possible. Thus, they did not warm to investing in the effective defense of the Philippines. The Republicans were at the other end of the scale - they saw in the Philippines an ongoing source of profitable investments, a long term view, that of continued economic development. They supported extensive and long term defense investment, but they were not in power. The politicians (and in the 1930's it was a decade of Democrats) wanted to spend as little as possible. Business and Military interests took the opposite view. The Army naturally were of the view that they were there to win, not to bug out at first sign of problem. The Navy, well, they had other views.
The second factor is that many people, particularly the Monday morning quarterbacks, accord to MacArthur some sort of superpower over the Philippines which he did not have. They fail to appreciate that until the war, the Philippines had its own sovereign, elected government. He was a theater commander of another country, no more. He did not control Philippine foreign policy, it had its own government. He did not control the military budget. Foreign policy was not his to control. He did not make the laws of engagement, nor could he flout them. He had influence, but only by persuasion.
The third factor involves MacArthur being lied to constantly by both Washington and Manila. He was the most lied to of Washington's generals. Washington kept telling him War Plan Orange still was good to go, and that US Forces in the Commonwealth would be built up to the point where there would be sufficient forces & materiel to defend the Philippines in the event of an Orange War. Had they told him "Orange is dead, proceed on the basis there is no Pacific Fleet to send, you will be on your own", things would have been significantly different. Manila (by that time The Philippine Commonwealth) kept on lying to the Army that all its cash flow investments in training, building training facilities etc were being efficiently spent, the various programs were on track ("but just allocate us a little more funding please Joe...").
Recall also that Quezon had made a secret trip to Japan to attempt to obtain a neutrality agreement that would keep the country out of the forthcoming war. Even the Army Air Corps were misleading MacArthur - he had ordered their B-17 fleet down to Del Monte (which was beyond Japanese attack from Taiwan), but no one told him that they had slow-walked the deployment and that a significant part of the B-17 fleet were still in Clark.
This is a vast oversimplification of the state of play, but its purpose is to emphasize that intricate developments of U.S. policy were hiding behind both American conduct and Filipino objectives, AND STILL DO.
(I suggest you read "Face of Empire", United States-Philippine Relations 1898-1946, by Frank Hindman Golay, Ateneo de Manila University Press.)
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Post by beirutvet on Aug 11, 2024 9:19:22 GMT 8
Ivytan That is an interesting question. The short and easy answer is yes, I believe it COULD have at least delayed the Japanese advance until the rainy season making it hard for the Japanese forces to continue until the dry season. At which time I think defeat was still inevitable for USAFFE.
With that being said, look to EXO's and Roland1369's responses. What you are asking requires an enormous amount of armchair quarterbacking/20-20 hindsight. Look especially to EXO's response concerning the political atmosphere at the time. This would have made it extremely difficult if not outright impossible to accomplish. Also, as EXO so eloquently put it, Mac was the most lied to general of all time during this time period. Had he been told the truth, as was stated above, it may have played out in an entirely different way.
Bottom line: It was an interesting idea that had no chance of getting off the ground.
Roland1369 Never be afraid of starting a shitstorm. In my humble opinion it has been far too long since we have had a good shitstorm, so please, don't be shy.
I think your point is correct, these were regular army "assholes" as you referred to them. No training in guerrilla warfare. When your only tool is a hammer, you tend to view every problem as a nail.
You are also correct, as I see it, about the populace. The Japanese had yet to show just how barbaric they could be. Once they did it was much easier to recruit for this purpose, but shock and awe was the order of the day.
EXO Spot on, brother! Half of the entire country wanted to defend the Philippines, the other half wanted to hang it out to dry. This was the lineup not only of the politicians but also the military. MacArthur, having not been in the U.S. military for some time and being half a world away, was not privy to the machinations of DC, HQ and JCS.
Of course MacArthur did not help himself with his initial dalliance with War Plan Rainbow, only going back to War Plan Orange after it was too late. But that is a discussion for another day, another thread.
And of course, as you said, there are the well documented lies. We were trained as officers to never lie to our troops or even try to sugar coat it. If the situation is dire and survival is unlikely, you tell them that, they deserve to know the odds and they will probably fight even harder, like their lives depend on it! MacArthur deserved no less! I feel certain he would have acted accordingly. The treatment of him by the U.S. as a whole during this period, in my opinion, was unconscionable.
I disagree, though, that yours was, as you said, "a vast oversimplification." I think you summed up the situation quite nicely.
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