The Fate of MacArthur and Wainwright: A WWII Discussion with Historian Jonathan Horn

We discuss Jonathan Horn's Fate of the Generals, a book about Douglas MacArthur, Jonathan Wainwright and the war in the Philippines. 

Transcript

00:03.52
Andy Tippet 
Hello, and welcome again to the Chronicle of American History. Today's episode features historian Jonathan Horn. Jonathan is an author and former White House presidential speechwriter whose books include Washington's End and a Robert E. Lee biography, The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was a Washington Post bestseller.

00:30.51
Andy Tippet 
And this year, on April 15th, 2025, Scribner published his newest book, the one of which will be a focus of this podcast, The Fate of the Generals, MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines.

00:47.04
Andy Tippet 
Jonathan has written for outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, including the Disunion series, which I love that title, New York Post, the Daily Beast, National Review, and Politico.

01:00.56
Andy Tippet 
that's ah that's That's a mouthful. And he has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the PBS NewsHour.

01:11.92
Andy Tippet 
Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.

01:14.80
Jonathan Horn
Thanks so much for having me today.

01:17.55
Andy Tippet 
Excellent. So let's, one of the things which is really interesting about your biography is, is that you were a speechwriter to a president of the United States. So my kind of question becomes, how do you go from sort of that overtly political view to an accomplished historian?

01:38.07
Jonathan Horn
that's That's a great question. um As I look back on my time as a speechwriter for President Bush, I was very young in my career, and in a sense, it was an opportunity to learn and the most high-pressured, but also just an incredible opportunity to learn.

01:47.30
Andy Tippet 
Thank you.

01:57.93
Jonathan Horn
And I was a fly on the wall ah for important decisions ah that I couldn't even really ah fully understand at the at the young age I was at.

02:08.79
Jonathan Horn
um But one of the things about being a speechwriter is it's your job to help the president explain a important decision he needs to make.

02:19.82
Jonathan Horn
um And sometimes the best way to do that is just to be a fly on the wall as the president is going through the steps and deciding what decision to make.

02:30.47
Jonathan Horn
And as in a sense, by helping to write this speech and explain whatever decision the president has made, you get to have a front row seat for history to see history actually being made.

02:43.95
Jonathan Horn
So in that sense, actually being a speechwriter was great preparation for writing books, because at least I found as a biographer that I believe that history turns on the decisions that individuals make.

02:58.04
Jonathan Horn
And i know not everyone believes that. Some people believe they're larger forces and individuals don't matter. That's not my view. I think people do matter or I wouldn't write biographies.

03:08.68
Jonathan Horn
And to get to see a president make important decisions is just incredible training that in some way, even though my biography doesn't necessarily follow the usual ah path a biographer goes, it was the best training I can imagine.

03:25.66
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I couldn't agree with you more. There's a school of thought, ah determinism, that in the course of history, we're sort of feathers on the wind. You know, there's sort of ah ah even a sort of a neo-Marxist view there.

03:40.76
Andy Tippet 
where history is just kind of these waves and we kind of ride along on them. I don't believe that. I believe individuals have the ability to change the course of history and have, and I would cite countless examples, but won't won't go down that rabbit hole for this one. But still, totally agree.

03:58.34
Andy Tippet 
And how exciting that you got to basically kind of sit there and witness history in real time. Something, obviously, some of as myself have never had the opportunity to do so. So that's very exciting.

04:10.95
Andy Tippet 
I do have a ah different question. Now you're a full-time historian. Do you miss anything about your former job?

04:18.59
Jonathan Horn
Well, you know, I always say if you're writing speeches for someone, you better really like the person you're writing speeches for. And I was so honored to work for President Bush. He was—this surprises some people. He wasn't only a great person to watch because I admired his character, but he was also a very, very good editor.

04:39.53
Jonathan Horn
He had a thick Sharpie marker, and when he wrote a speech, And he didn't like something. He wasn't afraid to let you know that you had messed it up. And honestly, I learned so much from the clarity that he brought to the speech writing process. He made me a better writer. he made me a more disciplined writer. And I would say i don't miss writing speeches because I really felt like I got to write for the person I wanted to write for.

05:08.55
Jonathan Horn
and that part of me is now in a sense in the past and I don't miss the fact that I'm not in politics anymore.

05:16.42
Andy Tippet 
That's awesome. they Thanks for sharing that. So you're your first book ah was on Robert E. Lee and the Civil War. And you could comment in on that because this is sort of a two-part question. Your second was on Washington.

05:28.38
Andy Tippet 
Why those choices as your very first works kind of kind of once you had left politics?

05:35.36
Jonathan Horn
You know, the funny part about that is ah i I am from Maryland. I grew up on the banks of the Potomac River. And my interest in Lee was really geographic, which I think is surprising to people.

05:49.15
Jonathan Horn
But Lee had grown up on the other side of the Potomac River. he had been born in West, you know, he had spent his childhood Westmoreland County. spent more of it in Alexandria, um just across the river from Washington. And it was that interest in the Potomac River That sort of led me to the story of Lee. And of course, if you live in the Washington area, as I have much of my life, you have Civil War battlefields all around you.

06:16.58
Jonathan Horn
And if you want to look and open your eyes, you get interested in this history. So it really was that history, that drew that that geography that drew me to Lee. And then having written The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was my Robert E. Lee biography, I ended up being interested in George Washington because so much of the Lee book was a question of how a soldier who was the son of George Washington's most famous eulogist, that's Harry Lee, who wrote those famous words, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

06:49.53
Jonathan Horn
And also, Lee had married the daughter of George Washington's adopted son, in a sense, Martha Washington's grandson. um And I became interested in how a officer made a decision to go to war against Washington's greatest legacy, which Lee himself deemed to be Washington's greatest legacy, the Union.

07:09.26
Jonathan Horn
He had all these connections, and yet he ended up at a war with Washington's greatest legacy, the Union. And that was his own opinion of Washington's greatest legacy. and And so that naturally led me to the story of George Washington, which in some sense is almost a prequel to the story of the man who would not be Washington, Washington's last years.

07:31.36
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned the Potomac because I visited Mount Vernon, and obviously it has these sort of panoramic views of the river. I get why he's sort of Washington sometimes pined to be back at Mount Vernon. It was absolutely beautiful. So it's interesting that Arlington across the Potomac.

07:50.74
Andy Tippet 
And always one of the the the compelling and sometimes troubling aspects of the Civil War wasn't that you just had all of these officers who had served the Union, who had taken oaths to essentially protect the Constitution.

08:06.12
Andy Tippet 
an officer can resign their commission, but that so many of them, Jackson, Longstreet, and of course, more than anybody really, Lee, took up arms then against the union, the the supposed representative of the constitution.

08:20.73
Andy Tippet 
Now, obviously we we could go down a civil war, ah you know dark dark path in which was it constitutional to secede, but we will go there. But I've always, it's interesting you went to that concept of,

08:35.11
Andy Tippet 
Lee, is he, was he kind of, when he took up arms against the Constitution, of which, when it was written, was oversaw and presiding at the Constitutional Convention was Washington.

08:47.09
Andy Tippet 
So, yeah, very,

08:48.35
Jonathan Horn
Right. and and and And what's interesting is when you look at Lee's own papers, his own letters, when he's struggling with what he'll do in the event of civil war, and he's really hoping it won't happen, of course, he's looking back and he believes that people like George Washington at the time would not have allowed, did not create this constitution to condone secession. So whatever our view is, and we can You know, obviously there are many different views. What's interesting for me as a biographer is what it was Lee thinking at the time. And then later in life, after the war, he sort of revises his views and decides that the founders had meant to allow for secession all along.

09:31.03
Jonathan Horn
And that you can understand how that would have happened during the course of a civil war. And he's been fighting for a cause. But he does deem that the war itself has forever settled this question and ruled that secession is not allowed. We have fought a civil war. It is over.

09:44.16
Jonathan Horn
And Lee accepts the outcome of that war.

09:46.98
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, and if he hadn't accepted the outcome, I think things would have been bitter for the next five to 10 years. So I always kind of put that to his credit. um So now, you which is interesting, is what happens with a lot of historians is they do tons of original research, ah primary and secondary sources in a specific time, era, or in your case, geography.

10:14.56
Andy Tippet 
And then they like to kind of stay there. But then there's other historians who will kind of make these these leaps. And you've done this. Because your next book, not only did it advance another 80 years into into history, but you went you went literally halfway around the world. So what then led you to jump not only to World War II in the first place, instead of staying in the early republic, but then ah to go to the Philippines and that's say let's say the Atlantic?

10:45.50
Jonathan Horn
That's a great question. and The truth is it was actually my editor who encouraged me to write about something a little bit more recent than the founding era or the Civil War. He wanted me to move into the 20th century.

10:57.77
Jonathan Horn
um and At first, I was a little bit intimidated by this idea. you know Obviously, i had spent a fair amount of my life in the 20th century. I didn't know how I would feel about writing about it. But as I started looking at World War II,

11:11.70
Jonathan Horn
um It really did feel like a long time ago. It seemed that the character of the American people had changed in some significant ways. um And what's interesting is World War two felt very close to the Civil War in some unexpected ways in the sense that the way we look back at World War II,

11:31.94
Jonathan Horn
was the way that men like Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright looked back at the Civil War. That was sort of the moment they went back to whenever they needed and analogy or a metaphor or for some understanding of what they were facing in their current context.

11:48.85
Jonathan Horn
They looked at the Civil War ah to sort of understand their circumstances. So, and in fact, this book, in a sense, begins with the Civil War. um And Douglas MacArthur's father um then an 18-year-old lieutenant named Arthur MacArthur ah leading a charge up Missionary Ridge in 1863 against, well, if you've ever been to Chattanooga, Tennessee and looked at Missionary Ridge, it is an incredible feat that union the Union, 23,000 Union soldiers managed to take this ridge, which which the Confederates had entrenched in 1863

12:24.73
Jonathan Horn
About halfway up the ridge, Arthur MacArthur, Douglas's father, grabbed his regiment's flag and carried it to the crest and brought his regiment behind him. um And eventually, he would receive the Medal of Honor ah for what he had done.

12:40.27
Jonathan Horn
Now, interestingly enough, ah there had been many other people who had done similar feats of courage that day on Missionary Ridge. And as his son heard of the story many years later, though, he would only know about one story, and that, of course, was his father.

12:56.58
Andy Tippet 
ah the i've been to I've been to those battlefields, and I'm just kind of in awe, especially given um a battle in the same year. Gettysburg sort of demonstrated the ability of fixed fortifications that would become sort of endemic for World War i that if you had fixed fortifications with rapid firing weapons, you should win.

13:18.84
Andy Tippet 
i don't know how that it's, it's, it's interesting because you, you basically begin the book as sort of your, your centerpiece with Arthur MacArthur's charge and well, the charge of the entire union forces. So that was always one of those things where when you're actually there, you're like, I don't understand how they did this.

13:36.77
Jonathan Horn
It is an amazing thing to see when you're there.

13:36.82
Andy Tippet 
So,

13:39.17
Jonathan Horn
But for me, the analogy, why I wanted to start the story there is I felt like something similar had happened with the way we talk about that, ah what the way Douglas MacArthur saw that battle.

13:52.43
Jonathan Horn
He could only see his father carrying out the act of courage, even though there were other flag bearers who did very similar things. And I think something similar has happened about the way we talk about the Philippines during World War II. We remember Douglas MacArthur's famous vow to return to the islands, but we've forgotten about the the general who vowed to stay in the islands, and that is General Jonathan Wainwright, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to write this book.

14:23.74
Andy Tippet 
So the of ah of all the stories in World War II, so i've I've got that part of it. One of the things is, and I hate to use the R word, revisionism, because I think it it's it's funny. Anecdotally, I talked about this book with my 93-year-old father, who was actually alive during World War II.

14:48.54
Andy Tippet 
And he said, it was funny. He just kind of burst out. It was almost like a Truman-esque thing. I don't mean to jump ahead in your book, but Truman, Truman had, we'll just say, ah ah rather a rather acerbic view of MacArthur.

15:01.11
Andy Tippet 
And my, my own father said, oh, MacArthur was an egotist and just kind of burst out of him. That wasn't the MacArthur I sort of grew up with. I grew up with MacArthur as kind of what the the legends were.

15:15.43
Andy Tippet 
You know, there was this this great movie called The the Legend of Liberty Valance, in which one of my favorite lines, um if you're faced with the reality and the legend, print the legend.

15:27.80
Andy Tippet 
And it almost felt like in MacArthur's case, there was this concerted view to print the legend. So when you started the book, Was your view of MacArthur sort of this legendary figure? And then the more you got into it, you kind of come away with a little bit of a different view of him?

15:46.65
Jonathan Horn
You know, it's interesting because I think MacArthur right now, i would say the overall impression of him in the United States is not so positive, I don't think. At least I found that when I've been on a on book tour.

16:01.32
Jonathan Horn
People have very strong emotions about MacArthur. Some people really like him. Some people really don't like him. What you don't find is a lot of middle ground. People have very strong opinions one way or the other. What's interesting, though, is when you're in the Philippines, he seems quite popular still.

16:17.26
Jonathan Horn
People remember that vow to return, and they remember he kept his word to return. And that has resonated down through the generations, it seems to me. um you know I'll admit that what first drew me to MacArthur probably were those three famous words, I shall return.

16:36.04
Jonathan Horn
I'm a former speechwriter, as you mentioned. Those are three of the most famous words in American history. um But as I started digging into the MacArthur story, um I did get interested in Wainwright.

16:48.83
Jonathan Horn
And then it it sort of felt that you couldn't understand the story of Douglas MacArthur and his vow to return unless you understood the story of the general who stayed and took command in his stead and and made this vow of his own on the first page of a diary that he begins in April 1942. And there is this vow here and he says he's going to stay.

17:16.74
Jonathan Horn
and share the fate of his men because no other course of action would be honorable. And then I really found what was a huge break for me. I found just boxes of Wainwright papers in two different military archives that had been um basically totally overlooked. it had been more than 40 years since anyone had written a book about General Wainwright. And in that time, these papers had been deposited.

17:43.67
Jonathan Horn
ah So I had this opportunity to be able to tell Wainwright's story in a way never before possible ah by using these diaries, using these letters, other family correspondence.

17:54.99
Jonathan Horn
And I think there was an opportunity to be able to restore him to his proper place in history. And that's, in my opinion, side by side with Douglas MacArthur.

18:07.07
Andy Tippet 
What are your thoughts on MacArthur's decision to leave the Philippines and Wainwrights to stay?

18:14.74
Jonathan Horn
you know That's a great question. It's important to say, to sort of set the situation here in um, and I think as you look at the situation in March, 1942, when MacArthur does leave the Philippines, um, United States forces are on basically have retreated. and this is American and Filipino is fighting together because the majority of the American army in the Philippines was Filipino.

18:41.04
Jonathan Horn
ah Because the Philippines was a colony of the United States, is which we could talk about. um It was actually Douglas MacArthur's father, Arthur, ah later in his life, after Missionary Ridge, who led the very first American forces into Manila during the Spanish-American War and saw them become a colony of the United States. And I think that's just important.

18:59.85
Jonathan Horn
background because so many people today don't know the Philippines used to be American soil and were American soil during World War II. This wasn't just some set of random islands. This was American soil. This was our colony across the Pacific Ocean.

19:14.45
Jonathan Horn
um And so American forces have been forced back into a peninsula called Bataan. And there's a tadpole shaped island off the tip of Bataan called Corregidor, where Douglas MacArthur has his headquarters.

19:26.96
Jonathan Horn
um And it's clear that the becoming clear that American forces are not going to be able to hold out. The Japanese have landed in the Philippines. um Help is not going to be able. Douglas MacArthur has told the starving soldiers in Bataan that help is on its way, but it's clear that that help is not going to get there in time.

19:49.04
Jonathan Horn
um And the question is the decision Douglas MacArthur made, and it's important to say it wasn't totally his decision. um He was ordered by President Roosevelt to leave the Philippines and set off for Australia.

20:07.66
Jonathan Horn
And i think MacArthur was willing to die in the Philippines. He said he was willing to die. he said the Japanese would never take him alive. And there's every reason to believe that he was willing to make that sacrifice. in fact I think he was also willing to let his wife and his four-year-old son, and this is something that's really hard to believe, he had kept his son with him. Other children had been sent back to the United States before the war, but Douglas MacArthur had kept his son with him.

20:36.36
Jonathan Horn
And I think he was prepared for his son to die. He said, my son is a soldier's son and he will share the fate of the garrison. um But there' in Washington, the decision is made to order MacArthur out. And I think if you look at the situation in March 1942, you can understand why that decision was made all around the Pacific in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Wake Island, Guam.

21:06.01
Jonathan Horn
The Japanese are advancing with very little opposition. Even Australia at this point doesn't look totally safe. Only in the Philippines can Americans find what they so desperately want to see.

21:19.01
Jonathan Horn
evidence that the United States is fighting back. And that fight has become synonymous with the name Douglas MacArthur for a very simple reason. MacArthur has control of the only means of communication with the outside world, the radio.

21:34.38
Jonathan Horn
And the communiquezio issues tend to mention only one guy, Douglas MacArthur. um So the decision is basically made in Washington that MacArthur has become too much of a symbol of hope to be allowed to go down with the ship.

21:48.73
Jonathan Horn
now as for macarthur this is where we get to your question about macarthur's decision did he have to obey that order well there's sort of two arguments put forward the first and is macarthur's argument that he only agreed to go because he was convinced that he would be able to return straight away from australia to the philippines um Now, if he really believed that, he had deluded himself because he knew there were not the forces yet in Australia necessary to return to the Philippines.

22:22.28
Jonathan Horn
And in fact, he knew that the Navy over and again had told them they could not break the blockade the Japanese had formed around the islands. It was amazing that MacArthur and his family were able to escape by PT boat. This is one of the most incredible daring escapes.

22:37.41
Jonathan Horn
ah So the idea that they were going to be able to bring an invasion force back from Australia really is really difficult to believe that a general as wise as MacArthur believed that.

22:48.03
Jonathan Horn
um The other reason that's given is that MacArthur would have been court-martialed had do he not obeyed the order because it came from the President of the United States. Now, again, there's reason to be skeptical about that too.

23:00.64
Jonathan Horn
We know that political considerations were very high on the list of reasons for why they ordered MacArthur out of the Philippines. They were concerned about what it would look like for the general to abandon the sinking ship.

23:16.47
Jonathan Horn
If those considerations were being had in Washington, how much worse would it have looked for the court for the general to refuse to abandon the sinking ship and then to be court-martialed afterwards? So I'm skeptical of that.

23:29.93
Jonathan Horn
But in fairness to MacArthur, it was an order from the president of the United States. um <unk> I'll stop my answer there because I went on a little longer.

23:37.52
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, and then we'll get to Wainwright. But i yeah what you're dealing with is the context of the times that in early 1942, ah The Germans were redoing their advance in Russia.

23:53.80
Andy Tippet 
ah They were advancing in North Africa. El Alamein and Stalingrad were in the future. And the other thing is, is the heroes that we would know from World War two Patton, Eisenhower, Bradley, Halsey, Nimitz, they were all in the future.

24:07.87
Andy Tippet 
Nobody knew their names, but people knew Douglas MacArthur's name. So ah the thought of four-star general, a former chief of staff of the entire United States Army being being put into a Japanese prison camp does sound kind of alarming.

24:24.64
Andy Tippet 
Because I think it's also the context that MacArthur was a known name even before the war began because of because of his his history, including leadership. And he was a hero of World War one leading, ah I think it was a division at the time at an incredibly young age.

24:40.39
Andy Tippet 
So i I understood that. And the other thing is the guy ordering that or who ultimately ordered it was probably one of the most talented politicians of our of our republic.

24:52.95
Andy Tippet 
So if anybody understood public perception better than FDR, I don't know who that would be. So I felt like all that made sense. Before we get to Wainwright, though, you had touched on something. And every one of the great joys of of my life is is when you read books like this, you learn so much.

25:12.91
Andy Tippet 
But the startling piece that I learned that I never knew, never even had an inkling of, was MacArthur's need to keep his wife and child close by. Because MacArthur Personally, my instinct would have been on December 8th, I am telling my staff, get my wife and kid out of here. And famously in your book, you note, no submarines for MacArthur because he had probably claustrophobia.

25:38.56
Andy Tippet 
So he's on this open PT boat where the PT boat captain becomes another of ah many heroes within your book. Sergeant Carroll is another one that stood out for me. But what do you think about MacArthur always keeping his wife and his four-year-old son? like And it wasn't just on the Philippines. He kept bringing them close to him as he went through Australia, New Guinea, and later, even in the Philippines, going into Luzon and the liberation. What did you think about is keeping his wife so close?

26:09.38
Jonathan Horn
you know That's a fabulous question, and it's another one of these controversies that we have. If you look back, ah the context is that Douglas MacArthur had retired from the United States Army ah in the years before World War II.

26:25.49
Jonathan Horn
He was basically serving the Philippines as an advisor to the Philippine government. He had become field marshal of the Philippine Army. That is the role he's playing the years before World War II when he's stationed in the Philippines with his wife and his son, who by the way is born in the Philippines.

26:43.72
Jonathan Horn
So the Philippines really are their home in a sense. And an order in 1941 orders all dependents ah from the United States out of the Philippines. This is before Pearl Harbor because they're seen as a risk of war.

26:58.28
Jonathan Horn
It's always been known in the event of war with Japan, it's going to be very difficult to defend the Philippines. And of course, if you just look at a map, you can see why that would be the case. So other people put their children and their are wives on ships and watch them leave. Wainwright watches his wife, Adele, us ah sail away from the Philippines.

27:21.46
Jonathan Horn
Douglas MacArthur does not put his wife or young son on the boat. And in fairness, he was not then subject to the order because he was not an active member of the army. But when he's recalled into service um by President Roosevelt as tensions really heat up with Japan in 41, he still doesn't put his wife or son on a ship back to the United States.

27:45.13
Jonathan Horn
ah So that's sort of the loophole that you can find is he wasn't actually in active service of the United States when the order was put out. But when he comes into active service, he still doesn't send them home.

27:56.59
Jonathan Horn
And in fairness, it wasn't just MacArthur insisting. I think MacArthur would have been willing maybe to have his wife leave. but his wife was unwilling to leave. She believed her place was with um Douglas MacArthur, and she wanted her son there with him. And it does lead to this really unusual situation on Corregidor um after MacArthur declares Manila an open city in December 1941.

28:23.75
Jonathan Horn
He sets off ah with his family for Corregidor, which is this tadpole-shaped island in the mouth of Manila Bay. And very quickly, the Japanese put Corregidor under aerial assault And here you have three year old Arthur MacArthur who will celebrate his birthday on the tadpole shaped island, turned four.

28:41.97
Jonathan Horn
Really never before in history. It's hard to think of any parallel. Has a child been so isolated from other kids, been in a site where so many bombs are falling and under such a such a tense military situation, such isolation ah than Arthur MacArthur. So it really is a peculiar situation in the realm of history.

29:03.11
Jonathan Horn
Ultimately, they do make this daring an escape with him on a PT boat. And I would say, in fairness, his wife holds up during the PT boat escape better than Douglas MacArthur does. She's better to handle better able to handle those waves than he is. And they do get eventually to the safety of Australia.

29:22.36
Andy Tippet 
Do you think he wanted to keep his wife close because one of the things that's throughout the book um is his sort of remoteness and aloofness. You famously note he visited Bataan, I think once during the battle, which is not the impression again that that eye kind of coming to the material relatively fresh understood.

29:45.41
Andy Tippet 
Do you think he kept her close because of that? Because he was sort of this, almost this lonely figure.

29:52.07
Jonathan Horn
I think MacArthur was a very hard man to get to know. I think Gene, who was his wife, played a very important role and sort of in his life, um almost a maternal role in his life. He had had a very, and don't I don't want to sound Freudian and at all here, that's not my intention, but he had a very domineering mother who famously went to West Point with him.

30:17.38
Jonathan Horn
um you can imagine what that looked like. and But it worked. He graduated first in his class. um And so Gene did play a really extraordinary important role. And that support system was really important for him.

30:31.11
Jonathan Horn
um And as he is making his return to the Philippines, as we're jumping ahead here and fighting his way back to the Philippines later in the war, you can see that Gene really wants to get back to the Philippines too. um she really She's got friends there. She wants to see what's happened.

30:50.91
Jonathan Horn
And so very quickly after he finally does take Manila, and we're really skipping ahead in the story in 1945, he does bring um Gene and little Arthur back to Manila faster than you know probably um many other soldiers with Dean Wise, given that there still is

30:58.24
Andy Tippet 
Thank you.

31:10.34
Jonathan Horn
Japanese resistance in the islands. In fact, Japanese forces will be fighting in the Philippines until the very end of the war.

31:18.42
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, you had General Yamashita was holding out with 50,000 men like and probably better provision than later Wainwright was on Bataan because they they knew it was coming and so could collect supplies.

31:33.83
Andy Tippet 
So let's pivot here. to the other figure of the story and in some ways comes across as kind of the the the genuine hero of the story, though there's many others. I mentioned the PT boat captain, ah Johnny Pugh, Carol. Sergeant Carol is a boss. I just thought if you're in a sticky situation, this is the guy you want on your back.

31:55.54
Andy Tippet 
but and And we'll talk a little bit about him. But what was your impressions going in on Wainwright? And now after having finished the book, what are your impressions now?

32:06.92
Jonathan Horn
Well, you know, for me, this was such a great opportunity because, as I mentioned, not a lot had been written about General Wainwright. There had been one previous biography, but it had been written in the early 1980s before Wainwright's papers had been deposited in military archives. So the biographer didn't have access to these papers. So there was an opportunity to be able to tell his story in a way never before possible.

32:33.66
Jonathan Horn
And you know the his diary was especially important to this project for me because he kept an extensive diary during his time in the Philippines. And so but but what may surprise some of your listeners, he was able to keep a diary as a prisoner of the Japanese um after he surrendered in the Philippines.

32:51.37
Jonathan Horn
So that was especially important. You know, for me, the most important page of this diary is this entry on April 2nd, 1942, where he makes this vow to stay in the Philippines and to share the fate of his men.

33:08.21
Jonathan Horn
And the context for that is there is MacArthur has been ordered out. He has made it safely to Australia. And there are some who are with Wainwright who think he should move his headquarters to the southern island of Mindanao. And if you look at the Philippines, you will see that Mindanao is the large island in the south of the Philippines. ah The main island we're usually talking about Luzon, which is northward toward Taiwan.

33:36.80
Jonathan Horn
And if Wainwright could have moved his headquarters to Mindanao, his command encompassed all the Philippine islands. And it's not too much to think that if he had moved his headquarters to Mindanao, he could have potentially caught B-17 and made it to Australia before the fall of the islands.

33:54.80
Jonathan Horn
But he does make this vow in his diary and he says no other course of action would be honorable but to share the fate of his men on Corregidor. um He holds that vow even when or after April 9th, 1942, this is the day that the Bataan Peninsula will surrender to the Japanese. This is the largest surrender of American forces in here's history, nearly 80,000 Americans and Filipinos laying down their arms to the Japanese.

34:22.96
Jonathan Horn
He'll stick to that vow even after the Japanese bring their big guns to the tip of the baton and put Corregidor under 24-7 artillery assault. ah It had been under aerial bombardment before, but being under artillery assault is far worse.

34:38.21
Jonathan Horn
um He'll stick to that vow even when the Melinda Tunnel—and this is the vast bomb shelter that the Americans have on Corregidor— is shaking and dust is pouring down from the walls and the lights go out and the water system breaks down. They're running out of water.

34:56.34
Jonathan Horn
And a hold to that bow, even when the last submarine pulls up and he knows this is the very last opportunity to leave that island before the Japanese make their main landing, which they assume will do in May 1942.

35:10.85
Jonathan Horn
And he holds that vow really because of what he wrote in that diary entry. No other course of action would be honorable. And I think that gives you a good sense for what kind of man General Wainwright was. He really was a fighting general.

35:23.19
Jonathan Horn
um He was a gritty old cavalry man. He had grown up and on and the cavalry posts of the Old West. He had spent some the formative years of his life.

35:36.42
Jonathan Horn
um As a child, have the sight of Custer's last stand in Montana at the Little Bighorn. And he became obsessed with the story of that battle, never knowing that he would one day have to make a last stand of his own, just as he did in the Philippines.

35:51.99
Andy Tippet 
And there was a critical moment in the book when you talk about that, if you will, Custer-ish last stand, in which one of the Japanese generals, Homo, basically, if he doesn't surrender the entire Philippines— Wainwright believes that the Cregidor, the 13,000 people in Cregidor are going to be massacred, as was Custer.

36:16.81
Andy Tippet 
I always thought that was interesting parallel between the two because he obviously didn't want the fate of Custer. And... Do you, um so his story of encampment, and it sort of reminds me of ah of another great history book I read, Unbreakable, about Louis Zamperini and his time in Japanese prison camps.

36:40.85
Andy Tippet 
Do you think there was any impression that Wainwright knew what was coming when he surrendered? Or did he think that the Japanese were going to sort of adhere to some sort of Geneva code? Yeah.

36:51.99
Jonathan Horn
Well, some clues had emerged during the fighting on Bataan. Wainwright, before being called the Corregidor, when MacArthur left, had command over half the Bataan Peninsula. um And this is where the majority of American forces and Filipino forces are making their stand in the Philippines.

37:08.84
Jonathan Horn
um And just to give a little context, the soldiers there are fighting on half rations and then they have to go down to quarter rations. That's like a thousand calories a day. That's not enough to live healthily in bed all day to say nothing and trying to fight in a foxhole.

37:25.56
Jonathan Horn
And Bataan is a thick jungle where the front really could be anywhere. The Americans form a line and the Filipinos form a line across the width of the peninsula, but the Japanese are able to breach this line and just simply disappear into the jungle. It's sort of hard to fathom.

37:41.15
Jonathan Horn
um And so the front really could be anywhere on Bataan. And, um you know, I think as you as you look at as you look at Wainwright, And I've sort of lost track, I think, of the original question here.

37:55.08
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, well, and I think one of the one of the things I was thinking about was you told a story about a tunnel with these Japanese, and I'll i'll let you tell it.

38:02.51
Jonathan Horn
right, right.

38:07.83
Jonathan Horn
Yeah, no. So I think very quickly it becomes clear and you're right, the Japanese um on Bataan are not there they He realizes even when they're surrounded, even when they have no hope, they keep fighting. They never surrender.

38:25.81
Jonathan Horn
And that's a clue for him that an enemy that never believes in surrender, that would rather be massacred, um the question is how will they treat prisoners of their own?

38:38.15
Jonathan Horn
um And so that's the clue. that Wainwright, in a sense, gets. And he says that that would dawn on other commanders in the Pacific during the course of the war. They were fighting an enemy who really didn't believe in the concept of surrender.

38:51.04
Jonathan Horn
And the Japanese especially didn't believe in the concept of higher ranking officers surrendering. For a man like Wainwright, when he finally does surrender, he becomes something of an oddity for the Japanese.

39:02.55
Jonathan Horn
um In their culture, they believed there really was only one recourse for a man like Wainwright, which was suicide. so in a sense during his years of captivity of the Japanese, this weighs on him. And of course, the Japanese do realize that Westerners will surrender under certain circumstances.

39:20.80
Jonathan Horn
um But the decision Wainwright faces in the Melinta Tunnel is exactly as you said. um The Japanese have made their main landing on Corregidor. They are bringing their tanks toward the entrance of the Melinta Tunnel. Wainwright does everything he can to try to stop them. But he's got 13,000 men and women in that tunnel.

39:39.20
Jonathan Horn
He has no way of stopping a Japanese tank. And if you've ever seen themli the Malinta tunnel, the Japanese tank was, he's imagined it basically just rolling inside that tunnel and the Japanese carrying out a massacre. He's got female nurses in there who he deems as brave as any American pioneers in history.

39:57.48
Jonathan Horn
He's got wounded soldiers who can't get up out of their beds. And he tries to surrender just Corregidor, but the Japanese will not accept that surrender unless he includes all the Philippine islands.

40:09.83
Jonathan Horn
And he basically reasons that Franklin Roosevelt and George Marshall would not have given him command of the full Philippines unless he was to use his discretion at this moment to save lives.

40:25.21
Jonathan Horn
And I think this is an odd thing for audiences in the 21st century to hear. I think it would have been easier for Wainwright to die. I think it would have been easier to go down Custer style.

40:37.14
Jonathan Horn
I think that's what MacArthur would have done.

40:39.65
Andy Tippet 
Thank you.

40:39.75
Jonathan Horn
What really was hard was to surrender for the sake of his men so he could save lives because he realized that the sacrifice would really have accomplished nothing under these circumstances. Now, it's true that meant that surrendering potentially other guerrilla forces elsewhere in the islands would have to also lay down their arms. And he knew that MacArthur wanted these guerrillas to fight on, but he basically reasons that they could not have accomplished enough to compensate for the destruction and massacre of the 13,000 lives in the Malenta Tunnel. And that's the very difficult decision that Wainwright has to make. And what makes it so much harder is knowing that somewhere in Australia, Douglas MacArthur is not going to approve.

41:27.20
Andy Tippet 
MacArthur, in your book, yeah which was really interesting and it only came out later after the war, um basically torpedoed Wainwright in 1942, getting the highest decoration that an American soldier can get, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

41:47.07
Andy Tippet 
And throughout, in different periods and in different circumstances, though, MacArthur did do some very gracious things, such as giving him a pen from the Japanese surrender ceremony and all that, though I can't help but notice that's when the cameras were on him.

42:02.39
Andy Tippet 
ah When the cameras were off, he seemed to almost be resentful of Wainwright. Why do you think that was?

42:08.12
Jonathan Horn
Well, he really was furious at the decision Wainwright had made to surrender the full Philippine Islands. ah He was furious. He had been angry ah even earlier about the surrender on Bataan.

42:19.47
Jonathan Horn
ah He had given orders for those men of Bataan not to surrender, but to try to fight their way out of the peninsula, which, ah you know, like we said MacArthur only made one visit ah to see the forces of Bataan. And Wainwright had spent obviously considerably more time with them because he had been in the command of half the peninsula, and he knew how unrealistic this idea was.

42:39.88
Jonathan Horn
These were men who could barely get out of their foxholes. There was no hope for them to try to fight their way out of Bataan. They were starving and sick. um And so, as you look at this, he's really angry. And so, George Marshall comes up with the idea after Wainwright has made the surrender to award Wainwright our nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor.

43:04.26
Jonathan Horn
and Marshall sends a message to Australia ah proposing that this award will be given to Wainwright. He doesn't expect that MacArthur will have any objections, but MacArthur does have objections, really strong objections.

43:19.91
Jonathan Horn
And he basically threatens to blackball the nomination, and he says if it proceeds, he will go forward with um accusations that will ruin Wainwright's reputation.

43:32.90
Jonathan Horn
And you know i think As to why MacArthur does this, there is the anger over what's happened in the Philippines, but I think it gets to something larger. For Douglas MacArthur, the Medal of Honor always conjured the image of his father carrying the flag up the ridge at Missionary Ridge in 1863. And the idea of the Medal of Honor instead going to an officer who had stayed to see the flag lowered not carried up a ridge, but brought down at the sickening hour of surrender it was somehow unthinkable for MacArthur. Now, if all this sounds audacious to you that MacArthur made this objection, it'll sound even more audacious when you hear that MacArthur had just received his own Medal of Honor in Australia upon reaching the safety of Australia.

44:23.90
Jonathan Horn
And of course, the Medal of Honor salutes soldiers for facing danger um that no one could rightly be expected to face, duty above and beyond the call of um of duty. and And in so many senses, this is why so many soldiers receive the Medal of Honor posthumously, because the actions required to receive it are so dangerous that you're unlikely to survive.

44:48.95
Jonathan Horn
um But the decision is made after In a sense, MacArthur leaves the danger that the so that the medal salutes soldiers for facing to award him the medal when he reaches Australia. And George Marshall himself admits there really are no grounds for awarding Douglas MacArthur the Medal of Honor. It is done to offset Japanese propaganda.

45:10.62
Jonathan Horn
And Marshall basically admits this in private correspondence. There is a concern that the Japanese are going to say the American commander has shown cowardice. So how best to offset?

45:21.65
Jonathan Horn
that charge presents him with our nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. So that makes MacArthur's objection to Wainwright's Medal of Honor even more audacious.

45:34.03
Jonathan Horn
um Wainwright will have to wait until 1945 to receive the Medal of Honor. um As to what it would have meant to him to receive the Medal of Honor during his years as a prisoner of the Japanese, well, again, if you look at his diary, you can get a pretty good sense.

45:48.86
Jonathan Horn
if he had gotten word what it would have meant to him, because he spends so many pages trying to justify the decision he has made to surrender. And you can see how worried he is that Americans back home won't understand the decision he made to surrender for the sake of his men.

46:07.35
Andy Tippet 
yep and And it would be, from his perspective, the fact that there was 80,000 fighting men, actually, i think you had noted was superior to the Japanese forces, but how would you possibly know they were down to 1,500 calories?

46:24.83
Andy Tippet 
ah You know, it it was Napoleon who said an army moves on its stomach, and there was there was no food on Bataan. ah towards the end. So there really wasn't any choice. he was It was either that or massacre. But how was he to know the perceptions of things at that point?

46:41.88
Andy Tippet 
and The other thing that comes out of your book, which I always think is is is fascinating to me, is if MacArthur comes across maybe a little bit worse than the hagiography from like, I don't know, the MacArthur movie with Gregory Peck Manchester's American Caesar,

46:58.48
Andy Tippet 
Then, and Wainwright grows into this heroic figure. The one who was stolid, who was kind of exactly who I thought he was, was Marshall. I kind thought like Marshall was completely put his ego at the door, completely sane, making decisions that were entirely rational, not about Marshall's image, but about how to best to win the war.

47:22.13
Andy Tippet 
So I thought that was interesting that came out of your book. Any comments on sort of Marshall? Because he kind of pops in and out.

47:28.52
Jonathan Horn
Yeah, i mean, I think George Marshall really was in the exactly right position. And you mentioned Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt really was skilled at getting men into the right jobs.

47:40.46
Jonathan Horn
And in a sense, that brings me back to the Wainwright-McArthur debate, because I didn't write this book in any way to attack Douglas MacArthur. And that was, you know, i think

47:50.38
Andy Tippet 
Mm-hmm.

47:52.44
Jonathan Horn
There are some times that biographers write books and they have an agenda. I don't ever want to have an agenda like that. I can't imagine spending that much time delving into someone's life, reading their papers and walking away with an agenda to try to damage the reputation. Because if you don't have some empathy as a biographer, then you're not doing your job. Your whole understanding is trying to understand why someone else made a decision. And if you're writing it where you're with a sense of a personal agenda, then you're not doing your job.

48:25.49
Jonathan Horn
For me, I really came to the conclusion that America had put these two men and in the right spots in this sense. and It was Harry Truman after the war who said Roosevelt made um a mistake. He had ordered the wrong general out of the Philippines.

48:43.45
Jonathan Horn
Truman already hated Douglas MacArthur.

48:44.73
Andy Tippet 
Truman.

48:46.01
Jonathan Horn
He was only too eager to present Wainwright the Medal of Honor and and fix that. And he went further in his private correspondence. He said Roosevelt had made a mistake. He had ordered the wrong general out of the Philippines. He said if we had ordered Wainwright out instead of MacArthur, we would have had a real general instead of a stuffed shirt and a prima donna.

49:06.95
Jonathan Horn
um But I think as you read my book, um as more people read my book, they will come to the conclusion that Roosevelt had his reasons. In those desperate days in March 1942, we had needed two very different generals. We had needed a general for the headlines and a general for the front lines.

49:23.43
Jonathan Horn
And ah no general as certain of his place in history and self-centered as Douglas MacArthur could have made the sacrifice Wainwright did, not to die a glorious death, but to live as a prisoner for the sake of his men.

49:39.84
Jonathan Horn
But alternatively, no general as committed to the chain of command and uncomfortable with celebrity as Wainwright could have done what MacArthur did. And that was hold a country of 130 million Americans to their obligation to a distant island chain, ah the Philippines, and make them return. and on ah Really only the strength of his word alone to uphold that vow, I shall return.

50:07.60
Jonathan Horn
and You know, there would be those during the course of the war that would think returning to the Philippines was a distraction from the main goal of defeating the Japanese. But MacArthur never saw it that way. He always believed the United States had a moral obligation to return to the Philippines.

50:25.65
Jonathan Horn
We had been forced out at the point of a bayonet and we needed to return the same way. This was American soil. And I think he was right, even if in one of the most terrible ironies of the war,

50:37.97
Jonathan Horn
His return to the Philippines culminated in February 1945 with the Japanese carrying out one of the worst war crimes of the war and leveling the city of Manila, the city that Douglas MacArthur considered his home and the city that he loved and was always in his mind when he was imagining his return to the Philippines.

50:58.83
Andy Tippet 
Yeah, and I would, a couple of comments. If I'm giving the impression that it was sort of an entirely negative thing on MacArthur, that's not it at all. I'm saying, I think you you put a very nuanced view of somebody who, at least from my original impression, had sort of a bit of hagiography around him.

51:18.49
Andy Tippet 
Yeah.

51:18.96
Jonathan Horn
Absolutely.

51:20.00
Andy Tippet 
you You note in the book his conduct in managing the actual ground forces in New Guinea, the isolation of Rabaul, which saved lives, the landing on Leyte. It all sounded pretty, you know, these are very sound military decisions. And Leyte, which is ah really aware from the scope of your book, in the Korean War, his landing at Incheon was nothing less than brilliant.

51:44.89
Andy Tippet 
as opposed to fighting up the Pusan, you know, from there out. So mcarthy by no means was MacArthur a bad general, but I think you're exactly right in that they needed a hero in 1942.

51:58.02
Andy Tippet 
And guess what? Somebody was comfortable in that role. And as you note, I don't think Wainwright would have been. So I agree with you. I think Truman probably got that one wrong.

52:08.28
Jonathan Horn
I mean, what's interesting so many of the things you see come out in Korea.

52:08.66
Andy Tippet 
So

52:12.70
Jonathan Horn
I mean, Truman already hated MacArthur before Korea, but so many of the things that go wrong in the relationship during Korea, MacArthur is already doing during World War two He's always been operating outside the chain of command.

52:15.01
Andy Tippet 
yeah

52:26.08
Jonathan Horn
He's always been willing to take his fight to the press when necessary. And so A lot of the things that go wrong in Korea are and are would be familiar to someone who had studied his World War II campaigns and his effort to return to the Philippines. Because when he makes that vow, I shall return, in a sense, people always say, why did he why didn't he say we shall return? Wouldn't it have been less egotistical? well it would have made no sense because, first of all, the United States had not left the Philippines. We were still there fighting.

52:57.71
Jonathan Horn
And second of all, this really was a personal commitment. ah this was He had no authority to make this pledge on behalf of the United States, and he would spend a good portion of the war trying to force the United States to live up to the commitment that he had made but in Australia when he said those famous words.

53:18.71
Andy Tippet 
And one of the things you had mentioned, too, was Roosevelt was was especially good at selecting generals. And for every Eisenhower and Marshall and Bradley and a Wainwright, they're great. But you also need some Patton's, Montgomery's, and MacArthur's to people who can make the headlines and have people say, there's my, you know, there goes my hero, as the song would say. So,

53:41.98
Andy Tippet 
I'm going to pivot to ah to a couple of the last points here. Number one, you had mentioned that the paper, so a little historiography, you admit, actually, i just want to make one point.

53:52.94
Andy Tippet 
I love your approach to history. There are a lot of historians, um which I contend with, that would, I would argue, start off with a preset narrative or thesis, and then cherry pick all of the sources to build upon that thesis.

54:10.14
Andy Tippet 
The best histories I've ever seen is where you kind of start off with one kind of impression. And the more you build and build and build, you kind of come out of it with a little bit of a different impression or or your your thesis might be altered or changed from what you originally were intending to do.

54:28.50
Andy Tippet 
And part of me is is the fun of historiography is the journey, not the end. it's the It's the discovering things that you didn't know before. And that was, again, part of the fun of this book.

54:40.86
Andy Tippet 
but So, um so historiography, you had talked about papers becoming available um but after the only sort of ah biography of Wainwright.

54:51.80
Andy Tippet 
What other, what other papers, journeys? I'm always just sort of curious at the actual back of the scenes work of the historian. What were some of the interesting experiences you had in building the book?

55:05.04
Jonathan Horn
Well, you know that's a great question. So for me, the first discovery was these papers which were located at Carlisle and West Point, the Wainwright papers. um But that wasn't enough. I also had to go, you have to go to the um MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia. There's important papers there.

55:26.05
Jonathan Horn
um I worked with a lot of different archives, which were kind enough to work with me. i live in Washington, DC. So a number of them are very, very close to me. and i'm lucky that way. um But looking at old papers isn't enough ah to write a paper a book like this. It's the most indispensable work you do, but you also do have to get out and see the places where history actually happened. for me, that meant going to the Philippines, going to Luzon, seeing Manila,

55:54.10
Jonathan Horn
seeing Bataan, seeing Corregidor, seeing where the Japanese made their main landing at Lingayen, and where MacArthur made his return to Luzon, and be able to see the different places ah where this history happened. That was just indispensable. And one of the things I came away with is that people in the Philippines know a lot more about this history than people in the United States do. In the United States, it's really been forgotten that the Philippines were even a colony of the United States is, I think people know Douglas MacArthur's vow when he said, I shall return, but very few people know why he said it, know where what he's even talking about. They don't know why we were in the Philippines.

56:37.94
Jonathan Horn
um So all his history, in a sense, has been forgotten. But for me, and this goes back to your point, which I really do appreciate about about about the right way to write a book, for me, my only en agenda in wanting to write this book was, I thought,

56:52.67
Jonathan Horn
Here was a chance to be able to better understand Douglas MacArthur and to understand better understand General Wainwright, who really had been forgotten in recent years, because you couldn't understand MacArthur's vow to return unless you understood Wainwright's vow to stay. And these stories belonged side by side in the same book. And i believe there's an opportunity to be able to restore Wainwright to his proper place in history. And that's what I really wanted to do with this book.

57:20.09
Andy Tippet 
Awesome. Final question. Any, any, ah can you give us any sneak peek as to, cause so if you release this book in April of this year, I'm this is in 2025.

57:26.28
Jonathan Horn
Okay.

57:32.16
Andy Tippet 
um That means is that you've now had months and months to consider your next journey. Have you, have you started on that journey or you're just taking a breather right now? Because again, like you would, you would referenced little bit earlier and I, I kind of assumed, I think he went, you had kind have to go to the Philippines.

57:49.76
Andy Tippet 
Yeah. So you actually went there, ah which is which is great. um But any sneak peek as far as the next journey?

57:58.35
Jonathan Horn
You know, for me, i pour so much of myself into every book I'm writing that it's very hard. I admire writers who are able to know what their next project is going to be while they're currently working on a project. But I never get that sense of clarity because I'm always so involved. And I also don't necessarily know exactly what I'm going to do next, even when I started coming up with an idea. Because for this book, for example, it was Finding the Wainwright Papers, which that allowed me to launch this entire project. it would have been i don't know i don't know if i would I don't think I would have pursued this idea unless I had found those boxes of Wainwright papers that hadn't been used.

58:34.96
Jonathan Horn
So all of this is a long way way of saying that I'm not prepared to say what my next project is.

58:40.75
Andy Tippet 
Got it. Totally understood. So Jonathan Horn, thank you very much for for jumping on the Chronicle of American History. Really appreciate you coming on.

58:52.20
Jonathan Horn
Well, thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation.

58:55.67
Andy Tippet 
Excellent. And consider all of the other podcasts of the Chronicle of American History. We are up to at least 20 episodes right now, and it's all American history all the time.

59:09.81
Andy Tippet 
So please check them all out. And thank you for listening.