FIGHTING FOR MACARTHUR: The Navy and Marine Corps’ Desperate Defense of the Philippines.

Day after dire day early in April of 1942, heartbreaking front-page headlines and hourly radio news broadcasts an­nounced the disaster. In the Chicago Sun, for ex­ample, bold black banners riveted readers to “FIERCE BATAAN BATTLE! Japs Break Lines, Yanks Hurled Back—Many Units Trapped” (April 3); “BATAAN’S PLIGHT DESPERATE! U.S. Losses Mount” (April 9); “YANKS DEFY JAPA­NESE FORCES AS BATAAN FALLS” (April 10).

Eyewitness accounts by war correspond­ents followed, detailing stories of intense fighting in oppressive heat, near starvation rations, and wilting dysentery affecting more if not most of the 80,000 brave Ameri­can-Filipino forces retreating from defensive position to defensive position. Suddenly, the whole world sat up, focusing upon the rugged mountainous Bataan pen­insula on the western side of Manila Bay. Only the Doolittle Raid eight days later soothed America’s sagging spirits: “BIG FIRES SET IN TOKYO—Flames Ravage Kobe, Nagoya, Yokohama!”

Now, John Gordon’s “Fighting for Mac­Arthur: The Navy and Marine Corps’ Desperate Defense of the Philippines” provides the epic story of our sea services in concord with the Army, performing some of the most heroic missions in all of World War II. As Gordon noted in his introduction, “As I researched the cam­paign I came to the conclusion that the story of the role of the Navy and Marine Corps had never received adequate attention.”

Not since the publication of Walter Du­maux Edmonds’ “They Fought With What They Had: The Story of the Army Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, 1941-1942” has there been such a thorough, brilliantly researched and written semi-official nar­rative of those dark days when Japanese forces pushed down the Bataan peninsula and eventually captured Corregidor—Ameri­ca’s Gibraltar of the Pacific.

U.S. Navy sailors and aviators were pressed into action at sea in assorted ships and small craft and on shore as infantry­men. Responding brilliantly in coffee-stained whites that provided psychological relief, if little to no real camouflage in the jungles, the Navy fought hard alongside Marines who had mostly come from China, barely escaping the advancing Japanese. But all their efforts were simply delaying the inevitable. Harsh military criticism and judgment are outside the author’s prov­ince, although Gordon doesn’t hesitate to de­lineate the unpreparedness, mismanage­ment, armchair generalship, false claims of destruction by the Army Air Corps, and unabashed failures leading to the ultimate defeat of U.S. and Filipino forces.

From a staggering number of recently unearthed U.S. and Japanese documents, personal interviews, diaries, unit histories, and written statements of survivors, the author shares the viewpoints of both the Japanese and Allied officers and men in the field. American bitterness and con­fusion is sensed while unbelievable heroics are described, from the Clark, Iba and Nichols airfields to the Asiatic Fleet at Cavite, from waiting for the main Japanese attack to settling in for the siege on Cor­regidor, and the Bataan Death March.

“Telling their story became my goal,” writes Gordon, who graduated from The Citadel in 1977, retired as a lieutenant col­onel from the U.S. Army, and currently is a senior analyst in a defense think tank. “I have tried to include an appropriate level of detail regarding the Army’s activities due to the fact that the Army’s successes and failure in the campaign had a direct effect on what happened to the sailors and Marines.”

Where verity is a rarity these days when it comes to depicting genuine American war heroes, the author holds no punches in describing how General Douglas Mac­Arthur created a climate of distrust be­tween himself and senior U.S. Navy of­ficers who deeply affected the joint action against the Japanese. Such is proof that the art of military writing, which is some­times mourned as dead, is indeed very much alive and in good hands, such as those of Gordon.

As for the fall of the Philippines, 16 weeks after Pearl Harbor, Rex Smith, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun, wrote, “Four short months ago, Bataan was un­known to Americans. Like Thermopylae, the Alamo and Verdun, a bit of blooded earth tells of American and Filipino cour­age and endurance beyond description, heroism against hopeless odds, of selfless sacrifice, of devotion so great that Death is cheated of those who died.

“Here was seen the best in man defying the worst, and looking beyond to see once more the best. MacArthur and [Lieutenant General Johnathan] Wainwright, who gained such glory on Bataan, are not alone the ones who make it imperishable. The imperishable is the mingled blood of the men who fought and fell, the strength and dignity of the common soldier and sailor, American and Filipino, white men and brown, fighting and dying side by side.”

Lest we forget their story, John Gordon’s “Fighting for MacArthur” is an absolute must-read.

Editor’s note: Author and historian Don DeNevi is a frequent reviewer for Leatherneck readers.

FIGHTING FOR MACARTHUR: The Navy and Marine Corps’ Desperate Defense of the Philippines.
By John Gordon. Published by Naval Institute Press.
384 pages. Stock #1612510574.
$29.66 MCA Members. $32.95 Regular Price.