No Surrender

In the summer of 1944, Franklin Roosevelt faced an unprecedented challenge: seeking a fourth term as president while commanding a global war that had visibly aged him. Polio had confined him to a wheelchair since his youth, and the stress of the conflict had ground him down. To demonstrate he remained firmly in command, Roosevelt sailed to Hawaii for a wartime conference at Pearl Harbor—the very site where the war began for America. The primary purpose was to determine strategy against Japan, and Roosevelt stuck to the policy he had declared in 1943: unconditional surrender.

The Philippines and MacArthur's Promise

The Pearl Harbor Conference pitted two competing visions against each other. The Navy wanted to take Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) as a prelude to invading Japan. General Douglas MacArthur insisted on returning to the Philippines first—for reasons both strategic and personal. MacArthur had lived in the Philippines before the war and commanded the garrison when the Japanese attacked in 1941. When American and Filipino troops surrendered after months of bitter fighting, they were marched off the Bataan Peninsula in what became known as the Bataan Death March. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were killed during the Japanese occupation. As MacArthur evacuated to Australia on Roosevelt's orders, he made a famous pronouncement: "I shall return"—not "we