The American Legacy 3. What were the major errors of Gen. Douglas MacArthur that caused much suffering to the Filipino people? MacArthur committed major errors that bordered on criminal negligence and incompetence that caused great harm to the general interest of Filipinos. These were: a) Negligence resulting in the destruction of the USAFFE’s capability to crush Japan’s ability to take Southeast Asia in the first 24 hours of the war in the Philippines MacArthur had been forewarned by higher headquarters that war was imminent after the US imposed an oil embargo on Japan. He did not devise an automatic retaliatory response based on possible scenarios that could emerge as was standard command military procedure. In military procedures, these automatic acts based on corresponding scenarios are called OPLANS (Operational Plans). Macarthur failed to put Oplans in place. In addition, USAFFE’s infantry and air force and the Asiatic Fleet combined were militarily superior in air, naval and army in terms of manpower, weapons, and logistics than the Japanese expeditionary forces when the war started. The Japanese bombers in Formosa were unable to take off and bomb US airfields in the Philippines, providing 8 valuable hours for MacArthur between the attack on Hawaii and the attack on the Philippines. He failed to seize the strategic initiative to effectively stop the Japanese forces. On that fateful day of December 9, 1941, MacArthur was technically AWOL. He was nowhere to be found, not even in his luxurious penthouse in Manila Hotel, to command the USAFFE. His Chief of Staff, General Sutherland, did not assume command of the situation in the wake of MacArthur’s unexplained absence. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the commander of the US air force in Clark Air Base pressed for the immediate bombing of the Japanese air field in Formosa as a counter attack. Formosa was the only Japanese airbase that could enable Japanese bombers to reach and bomb the Philippines. The US air force commander frantically asked Sutherland three times to bombard Formosa but Sutherland denied his request, saying that it was first necessary to make an aerial photo reconnaissance before he could consider making such an order. Within that day, most of the US bombers and fighter planes in the Philippines had become useless debris. They were caught neatly parked in runways in a Japanese turkey shoot. 79