The Fine Print
WW2 Fine Print

MacArthur never planned to wade ashore

The photograph of General MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines on 20 October 1944 is one of the best-known pictures of the war, and people have argued about it ever since. Some say he staged it.

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In this story

  1. 0:00The photo
  2. 0:52The islands fall
  3. 2:07The escape
  4. 2:50Terowie
  5. 3:39I will return
  6. 4:27The "I"
  7. 5:06What it cost
  8. 5:37Stamped on everything
  9. 6:17Skipping the Philippines
  10. 8:04The morning
  11. 9:12Fifty yards out
  12. 10:34On the beach
  13. 12:13The retakes that weren't
  14. 13:29Lingayen
  15. 14:25Manila
  16. 15:14Today

Sources

Sources

  • The Advertiser (Adelaide), 21 March 1942; Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (1964); Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History; George C. Kenney, General Kenney Reports (1949); Carlos P. Romulo, I See the Philippines Rise (1946); John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur (1951); D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. II (1975); Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines (US Army, 1953); M. Hamlin Cannon, Leyte: The Return to the Philippines (US Army, 1954); Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines (US Army, 1963); Carl Mydans, Life (14 July 1961); Joseph Connor, "Shore Party", World War II magazine (2017); the MacArthur Memorial, "MacArthur and the Leyte Landing Photograph".

Film

  • US Army Signal Corps (National Archives); United News newsreels (Office of War Information) and Universal Newsreel; US Army Combat Bulletin 23; The Big Picture (US Army); Appointment in Tokyo (US Army, 1945). MacArthur's voice: Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University. Photographs: US Army Signal Corps (Gaetano Faillace, NARA 531424), US Coast Guard, US Navy, US Army and the Office of War Information, via the National Archives and the Naval History and Heritage Command; Australian War Memorial; State Library of South Australia; US Army photo by Sgt. Lyca Williams. Maps: Army Newsmaps (UNT Libraries Government Documents Department), Louis Morton (US Army) and TIME (Robert Chapin, 1944). Newspapers: The Advertiser (Adelaide) and The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), via Trove; The Ypsilanti Daily Press, The Wilmington Morning Star and the Detroit Evening Times, via the Library of Congress; Army Times. Under Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons: Terowie station and monument by Peterdownunder, CC BY-SA 3.0; Courtney Whitney, Carl Albert Center Archives, CC BY-SA 4.0; MacArthur Memorial rotunda by Toohool, CC BY-SA 4.0. Music: instrumental bed generated with Google's Lyria.

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