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I was just speculating when I wrote about the possibility that the young Douglas MacArthur might have served in Leyte around the time of the Balangiga Massacre in 1901 (PDI, 8/11/94). But this has been confirmed by a retired general who writes a column in another newspaper, who said Tacloban was the first assignment of MacArthur after graduating from West Point at the top of his class in 1901. The retired general also noted that the date of the Leyte Landing, Oct. 20, coincided with the date of MacArthur's arrival in Tacloban more than 40 years earlier. Within a few days after Lieutenant MacArthur's arrival, Gen. Jacob Smith implemented his "kill-and-burn" policy on Samar, in retaliation for the massacre that almost wiped out a company of US Marines (sic) in Balangiga three weeks earlier. The Samar experience is well documented and widely written about in history books. Largely unknown was the fact that General Smith also applied his "kill-and-burn" policy, although unofficially, in Leyte. Unfortunately, official accounts of the abuses and atrocities in this province were effectively suppressed or grossly under-reported because "… Washington knew that Leyte was peaceful and functional as a show-case of American benevolent administration to the American public." Lieutenant MacArthur must have been involved in some "kill-and-burn" forays, either in Leyte or in Samar. Thus it could be that General MacArthur's return to the Philippines in 1944 was an expensive personal ego trip intended: 1) to cover up his possibly murderous record as a young lieutenant in Leyte and Samar, and 2) to cover with his own footsteps the tracks of previous conquerors in the country's more than 400 years of recorded history. MacArthur entered the Philippines through Leyte Gulf because this was the historic entry point of the globetrotting Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. He landed in Palo near the place where Gen. William Kobbe routed the Leyte-based revolutionaries during the Philippine-American War in February 1900. And Allied Forces swooped west of Leyte from Dulag and Palo because, aside from being colonizer-friendly, these towns were successful launching areas for winning attacks against native fighters during the Pulahan Wars from 1902 to 1907. From Leyte, MacArthur jumped to Mindoro. Why? Because it was from this island that Miguel Lopez de Legazpi launched his successful conquest of Manila in 1571. Then General MacArthur, a la Leyte, landed in Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan, presumably to cover up the victorious tracks of the Japanese occupation forces under Gen. Masaharu Homma in December 1941. Finally, MacArthur entered Manila, perhaps to eclipse the victory of Commodore George Dewey in May 1898. That MacArthur's return was associated with our "liberation" suggests our people's sick sense of humor. More Filipinos died after his return that at any other period during World War II. Those who were killed were certainly "liberated" -- from existence. Because many of those who survived suffered -- in the hands of favored Japanese collaborators and from the discriminatory policies that MacArthur and the US government imposed on our people right after the war. It turned out that MacArthur liberated Japan, not the Philippines. Yet the Japanese do not celebrate him. We do.
(NOTE: The speculative first sentence was disputed by another letter writer in an article published in the Inquirer on Oct. 20, 1994. He claimed that MacArthur was a yearling (sophomore) in 1901, that he entered West Point in 1899 and graduated in June 1903 at the age of 23. He also claimed that William Manchester's The American Caesar has all the details on MacArthur.)
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