LYING TO THE TROOPS: AMERICAN LEADERS AND THE DEFENSE OF BATAAN

Abstract

Abstract : Survivors of the failed Philippine campaign quietly languished in squalid prisoner of war camps or, in the case of the few who avoided capture, struck at the Japanese in unpublicized guerrilla raids. Many of these soldiers felt betrayed by both their government and commander. Their grievance went beyond President Roosevelt's order to General MacArthur to depart the Philippines in March 1942. It was rooted in widely disseminated promises MacArthur made to his soldiers beginning in the first weeks of the war. In message after message, the charismatic commander bolstered the hopes of his Filipino-American force by conjuring images of a vast armada steaming to relieve the besieged archipelago. Buoyed by this hope, the half-starved soldiers fought gallantly and continually frustrated the complete victory of the Japanese army. Even before his escape from the Philippines, MacArthur knew that relief of the islands was all but impossible. Although the soldiers stranded on the Philippines cursed MacArthur for deceiving them, it is clear that their commander was initially the victim of lies from his superiors in Washington. The venerable Secretary of War Henry Stimson, revered Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, and the Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt are sullied by half-truths and false denials they conveyed to their field commander in the Pacific. There is no denying that assurances of relief raised the morale of the beleaguered Philippine garrison. But actions taken by American leaders to create false hope were wrong on two counts. First, the practical outcome of the Philippine campaign might have been favorably altered had local commanders been given a truthful assessment of the relief situation. Second and more important, the lies by Roosevelt, Stimson, Marshall, and MacArthur were unethical. Their infidelity was an unconscionable breach of faith that only deepened the final disillusionment of gallant fighters essentially abandoned by the United States.