MacArthur Commands Pacific: Supreme Allied Commander Appointed

He'd promised fifteen thousand Filipino and American soldiers he'd fight to the last man on Corregidor, then Roosevelt ordered him to abandon them. MacArthur slipped away on a PT boat through Japanese naval blockades, leaving behind men who'd hold out another month before the largest surrender in American military history. His wife Jean and four-year-old Arthur came with him. The troops he left endured the Bataan Death March. But MacArthur landed in Australia, told reporters "I shall return," and turned his desertion into the war's most famous vow. Roosevelt needed a hero more than he needed one general dying with his men. MacArthur departed Corregidor on March 11, 1942, aboard PT-41, leading a small flotilla of six torpedo boats through 560 miles of Japanese-controlled waters to Mindanao, then flying to Australia in a B-17 bomber. The escape was authorized by Roosevelt, who feared the propaganda disaster of losing a prominent American general to Japanese captivity. MacArthur had resisted the order for weeks, believing his place was with his men. The troops on Bataan and Corregidor, starving, diseased, and running out of ammunition, surrendered in April and May 1942. Approximately 75,000 prisoners were forced to march sixty miles to Camp O'Donnell in what became the Bataan Death March, during which thousands died from execution, starvation, and disease. MacArthur's "I shall return" became both a rallying cry and a personal obsession. He fulfilled the promise in October 1944, wading ashore at Leyte in the Philippines during the largest naval battle in history. The liberation campaign that followed killed over 200,000 Japanese soldiers and inflicted catastrophic civilian casualties in the battle for Manila.