The reclusive only child of five-star Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur made a rare public statement Saturday to honor the Americans and Filipinos who fought to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation during World War II and fulfill his father’s famous vow: “I shall return.”
“I wish I could be there once again in the land of my birth and your distinguished company,” 87-year-old Arthur MacArthur IV said in a statement read at a solemn ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the brutal Battle of Manila at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Eighty years ago, while the battle of Manila still raged, “my father restored civilian government to the Philippines under President Sergio Osmena,” MacArthur said in the statement. “It was only made possible by the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Filipinos dedicated to freedom and those Americans buried among you today at the Manila American Cemetery.”
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The fight to retake the Philippines was a “pivotal moment in the Pacific theater of World War II,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in his remarks at the ceremony in which he singled out the contributions of the only two U.S. veterans of the campaign in the audience — 101-year-old former Army Cpl. John Hodges and 99-year-old former Navy Yeoman 2nd Class Arthur Grabiner.
In phone interviews from Manila prior to the ceremony, both Hodges and Grabiner spoke of their pride in being part of the liberation of the Philippines and of the hard combat to defeat the Japanese.
Hodges, then a 19-year-old farmhand from Staunton, Virginia, recalled fighting in a place called “Zig-Zag Pass” in the retaking of the Bataan peninsula, scene of the infamous Bataan Death March after the surrender to the Japanese in 1942.
He served with the 950th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion out of Georgia and said the flat trajectory of the 90mm weapons used by the unit was effective in driving the Japanese out of caves. “I had a rifle but never had to use it,” Hodges said.
Later in the campaign, he was sent to guard one of the prison camps where the Japanese held a mix of Americans and Filipinos in horrid conditions.
“The Japanese, they had mistreated the people there awfully. I was almost sick when I saw them. The last couple of days” before the Americans arrived, “they had no food,” Hodges said. “I think it was 17 died the day we got there. The Japanese didn’t leave anything behind for them when they left.”
He recalled meeting a woman who weighed only 64 pounds and a man who weighed 70. “It was just heartbreaking,” Hodges said. “I still can remember it so vividly. I have a great admiration for those people,” he said of the Filipinos who withstood the occupation.
‘We Stood Behind Them’
Grabiner, of New York City, was just out of James Monroe High School in the Bronx when he served aboard the attack transport USS Laurens ferrying troops and supplies to battlefields in Guadalcanal, New Guinea, the Philippines and Okinawa.
Grabiner, who had a long career as an accountant after the war, said he was in charge of the paperwork aboard ship and also had the midnight to 4 a.m. shift when the officer of the day would relay the ship’s speed and he would forward that to the engine room.
In January 1945, the Laurens was in the Lingayen Gulf of the Philippines to put 1,500 Army troops ashore on the island of Luzon to begin the drive to Manila while dodging kamikaze suicide attacks from Japanese aircraft.
“There was no warning” when the kamikazes went into their dives, Grabiner said. “They came out of the cloud and — boom — they hit the ship” just ahead of the Laurens off the bow, he said.
“We went and we liberated the Philippines, and that was a big deal and then we went on to Okinawa,” Grabiner said. “We stood behind them,” he said of the Filipinos, “and did everything we could to get them out of Japanese control.”
Grabiner and Hodges were seated at the ceremony Saturday with Filipino veterans of the battle of Manila through the efforts of two United Airlines pilots — Pierre Oury and Scott Seeberger — who formed Operation Pacific Tribute and organized a GoFundMe campaign to cover the travel expenses for the two veterans.
“All that we can do is thank them and allow them to travel back there” to enable “current and future generations to understand what these men did to bring freedom to the world,” Seeberger told WHSV-TV3, an ABC affiliate.
Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. also hailed the service and sacrifice of the U.S. and Filipino veterans who fought to retake the islands, culminating in the Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, battle for Manila, the largest urban warfare campaign ever engaged in by U.S. forces.
More than 1,000 American troops and more than 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed in the fight that left the city, once known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” in smoldering ruins.
They Called Him ‘Cannibal’ at West Point
The 152-acre Manila American Cemetery in the heart of the city with the new Manila skyline as a dramatic backdrop is the largest of the 17 overseas American military cemeteries worldwide administered and meticulously maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, said Ryan Blum, the cemetery superintendent.
More than 17,000 U.S. service members from World War II and more than 570 Filipinos are interred in the cemetery; another 36,000 are listed on the Walls of the Missing, including more than 4,000 Filipinos, Blum said in a phone interview from Manila.
Those interred or listed on the Walls of the Missing include 29 Medal of Honor recipients, 20 women, 20 sets of brothers buried side-by-side, and one father and son, said Blum, who served as a platoon sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the Filipinos listed on the Walls of the Missing is the legendary Brig. Gen. Vicente Lim, the first Filipino to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Class of 1914).
As a Filipino, Lim was subjected to the racial taunts of the era and the ostracism of classmates who called him “cannibal,” said Vicente Lim IV, his great-grandson, who now administers the Visitors Center at the Manila American Cemetery.
“It was something that he took as a badge of honor,” Lim said of the taunts aimed at his great-grandfather, who eventually earned the respect of his classmates with his performance in class and athletics. He was also fluent in Spanish and tutored classmates to help them with their language requirement.
In the fight against Japanese occupation, Brig. Gen. Lim sent a note to Manuel Quezon, one of the Filipino civilian leaders, stating that “you may rest assured that we will continue to fight as long as there is one man left in this command.”
Lim eventually was captured by the Japanese and is believed to have been executed by beheading, “which is why his name is up on the walls of the missing,” Vicente Lim IV said.
Brig. Gen. Lim knew Gen. MacArthur and may have had some disagreements with him, “but in the end there’s a deep level of respect between them as fellow soldiers,” Vicente Lim IV said.
Much has been made since the war of MacArthur’s monumental ego and his disdain for civilian leadership, and “many people with hindsight criticize him now” but “it’s hard to fault him for what I think was a genuine love for the Philippines and life here,” Lim said.
The love for the Philippines and its people was also evident in the statement of Arthur MacArthur IV, who was four years old in 1942 when he was in the tunnels under the fortress of Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay with his father and mother, Jean.
On orders of President Franklin Roosevelt, Gen. MacArthur and his family were evacuated by PT boat from Corregidor. The fast PT boat took them up the coast of Luzon to a waiting B-17 bomber and a flight to Australia, where MacArthur made his defiant prediction: “I shall return.”
Arthur MacArthur IV noted in his statement that his father returned to the site of the Manila American Cemetery on July 4, 1961, where he said of those buried there that “I do not know the dignity of their birth but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the prayer that we would go on to victory.”
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