Past Time with Coins: Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Peso
The Philippines’ 1947 MacArthur coins honor the American general whose wartime promise to return made him a national hero.
at Leyte, Philippines, on Oct. 4, 1944. (Image public domain, Wikimedia Commons.)
In the Philippines, U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was considered a hero, as evidenced by the 1947 peso and 50 centavos with his image in military uniform on the coins’ obverse.
“When the Republic of the Philippines issued its first coins, it was no surprise that the man pictured on the silver was an American,” wrote Samuel Wayne in the December 1966 issue of Coins magazine. “At the time, shortly after the end of World War II, and in the first months of the Philippine Republic, the Filipinos were honoring General Douglas MacArthur not only as an outstanding military figure, but [also] as a true national hero, long before their coins got around to paying tribute to the earlier hero, Rizal. Dr. Rizal was martyred by the Spaniards before the Americans came, but MacArthur commanded the forces that rose from defeat to a triumphant victory over the Japanese invaders.
A 1947 peso from the Philippines features Gen. Douglas MacArthur on its obverse. Images courtesy Heritage Auctions.
“The 1947 peso and fifty centavos were strictly a commemorative issue. As coins go, they weren’t the most outstanding ever struck, from an artistic standpoint. They were, however, distinctive in that they were among the few issued in honor of a living American. (This is a unique characteristic of Philippine coins, since F.D. Roosevelt, President Quezon, and Governor General Murphy were on the 1936 Commonwealth set.) The General appears on the obverse in his officer’s cap, facing right, surrounded by the inscription DEFENDER AND LIBERATOR OF THE PHILIPPINES. The name, GEN DOUGLAS MAC ARTHUR, is split by the portrait. The reverse, reflecting earlier custom, bears the Philippine arms modified for the Republic, with PHILIPPINES above and value and date below the shield. Two flowers flank the shield; these represented the sampaguita, the green and white national flower.
“The portrait is the General’s, but the coins also reflect one of the most heroic chapters in American military history. Leading up to that was one of the most colorful and controversial Army careers in the present century. MacArthur was no stranger to the Philippines. His father, Arthur MacArthur, commanded the Army forces that landed in the Spanish-American War and then had to fight the Philippine rebels in the siege of Manila shortly thereafter. After Douglas, in turn, went into West Point, he rose rapidly to become one of the best-known division commanders of World War I. Long before anybody on Main Street knew about Bataan or Corregidor, MacArthur had become famous as commander of the Rainbow Division in France. Wounded more than once, he got the Distinguished Service Cross for coolness in leading his men forward under fire….
“MacArthur’s Philippine fame started in the 1930s when he retired as Chief of Staff and went to the Islands to take charge of the armed forces of the Commonwealth. He had the title and position of Field Marshal of the Philippines. As the Axis threat became greater, MacArthur, a four-star general, was given command of all U.S. Army troops there.
“At the time, on the eve of World War II, American forces in the Islands reflected the situation at home. The major command was the Philippine Division, which consisted basically of one U.S. infantry regiment and two of Philippine Scouts. There was a small collection of Air Corps units, and work was started on several divisions of Philippine Army troops. Unfortunately for the Philippines, the greatest priorities went to preparation at home; there was simply nothing to send there until late in 1941, when some draftees, a few tanks, and some heavy bombers arrived. A large part of the available forces were tied up on the island forts in the entrance to Manila Bay, where some years the Army had had seacoast and anti-aircraft artillery.
“The Japanese attack in December 1941 wiped out most of the Air Corps’ strength in one attack on Clark Field on Luzon. Since it was impossible to defend all of the island against the Japanese ground forces, MacArthur withdrew his command into the Bataan Peninsula that separates Manila Bay from the sea. There, he could keep some Japanese forces engaged, and those helped slow down the drive southward to the Dutch East Indies and Australia. At the same time, his forces bottled up Manila Bay, so although the city fell at New Year’s, it was useless as a port to the Japanese since they couldn’t get into the bay to use it.
“It was on Bataan that the MacArthur legend started. The General had a small force, equipped with World War I equipment for the most part, and in the case of the new Filipino troops, very sketchily trained. More serious was the food problem. Although Bataan had been envisioned as a battlefield before, there had been no chance to get enough supplies into it to feed the number of American and Filipino troops that poured in. Early in the year, the troops went on half rations. As time went on, the daily food allowance was further cut until at the end, in April, it was down to a cup of rice and a few odds and ends of whatever else—horse, carabao, or monkey meat—could be scrounged up. To add to this, the supply of quinine, then the only malaria preventative, ran out early, so the defenders were forced to try, while sick and starving, to hold back an entire Japanese army corps.
“At first, there was some hope that relief would come. The U.S. fleet would sail up with transports, and that would take care of the Japanese. What the defenders didn’t know was that there wasn’t much of a fleet left in the Pacific in those days, and what there was had its hands full elsewhere. Troops were diverted elsewhere to stem the tide of Japanese advance, and for all practical purposes the Philippines were written off.
“Despite the lack of food or medication, the defenders managed to hold out for four months on Bataan. This time, which saw the first ground engagement of U.S. forces against the enemy in World War II, also saw some of the last of certain types of action. The last horse cavalry combat took place as the Americans and Filipinos were trying to get to Bataan before the Japanese. The cavalry was used as a screen to hold off the Japanese while the rest of the Army retreated there. Shortly thereafter, the shortage of forage for the horses and the desperate food situation for the men had the natural result. The cavalrymen ate their horses and fought on foot.
“Coast Artillery also fought its last fight, as far as the U.S. Coast Artillery Corps was concerned, in the Philippines. During the early years of the century, Washington hadn’t authorized much money for defense, but it had appropriated funds to fortify Manila Bay. The large island of Corregidor, along with forts on three others, was intended to deny that body of water to any naval force. Besides seacoast gun batteries on three islands, a large concrete structure with rotating gun turrets, Fort Drum, was built on El Fraile Rock. (This was called the ‘Concrete Battleship,’ since it looked like a contemporary warship.) Although designed for use against warships, the island forts gave some account of themselves against the Japanese artillery on land. In time, the Japanese brought up enough heavy guns to completely blanket the islands with fire, and by the time the siege ended in May, most of the American batteries had been wiped out.
“In March, Washington ordered MacArthur out of the Philippines and to Australia, where he was to organize the Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific in an offensive northward. A few of the small force of motor torpedo boats in the Philippines were used to evacuate him, his wife and four-year-old son, and some of his staff; that was the extent to which U.S. forces had been reduced, when the only things available to carry out the commanding general were motorboats. Nothing else could get in.
“MacArthur’s departure occasioned the famous ‘I Shall Return’ speech, in which he pledged liberation of the Islands from the Japanese. The use of ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ has been criticized, but the fact is that this promise first served to buoy the Filipinos and Americans in their last-ditch defense, and later to help the Filipinos during more than two years of Japanese occupation. Throughout the last half of 1942, and until the actual return in October 1944, this slogan was broadcast, passed along on propaganda leaflets through the U.S. and Filipino guerrillas who fought on after the surrender, and even appeared on items such as cigarettes, gum, and other supplies smuggled in by submarine.
“The tragedy was that the return was so delayed. MacArthur himself had opposed the earlier strategy which assumed the Philippines would be lost at the start of the war, to little avail. The result was that after his departure from Mindanao by plane in mid-March, resistance on Bataan lasted only a few weeks. The peninsula fell on April 9th. Corregidor lasted four more weeks, until May 6th. By then, the garrison was near starvation and had been pounded day and night by the heaviest siege artillery in the Japanese army. As it was, the Japanese had a hard time getting on the island, and only the arrival of tanks ensured that they stayed there. One condition of the surrender was that all other American forces in the Philippines give up. Some did, but many didn’t, choosing instead to form an underground resistance through the long months of occupation.
“It seems rather strange to look back on it as such, but the MacArthur evacuation was hailed in the States with considerable enthusiasm, being regarded as a victory of sorts. The PT-boat dash from Corregidor, and the knowledge that MacArthur was being saved for bigger things, gave morale a shot in the arm at a time when nothing was going right for the Allies. For his work in the Philippines, MacArthur got the Medal of Honor.
“Rather curiously, MacArthur’s arrival in Australia produced an interesting button that was widely sold in the States; it bore his picture, and resembled a conventional political campaign button. There was agitation for him as a political candidate much later, but this first button seems to have been someone’s profiting by the General’s newsworthiness at the time. Some people seem to have read more significance into the button than there probably was.
“The Japanese naval advance was finally stopped at the Coral Sea and Midway battles. Late that summer, MacArthur directed the start of ground operations in New Guinea to recover the northern coast from the Japanese. An untrained American force went in and finally dislodged the enemy, and the slow crawl up the islands began.
“In October 1944 the U.S. Sixth Army landed at Leyte, in the middle of the Philippine archipelago, and MacArthur waded ashore to say, ‘I have returned!’ By the following summer, most of the Islands were cleared of any effective Japanese resistance; MacArthur returned to Luzon in January 1945, and proceeded to liberate Manila despite desperate Japanese resistance from their stronghold in the old walled city. The Filipinos hailed him as their deliverer; the returning Americans were greeted with more enthusiasm than even those in liberated France. The General had kept his promise.
“At the time the coins were issued, MacArthur was in command of the American occupation forces in Japan, transforming the country from a feudal militarism to a modern democracy. His diplomacy in working with the Emperor, and the justice of his administration, had much to do with getting the nation toward that goal. The coins reflect one phase of his life.
“The size of the issue was limited, there being only 100,000 of the pesos and 200,000 fifty centavos. In size, they followed standard Philippine dimensions. The peso was slightly smaller than the U.S. silver dollar, being 36 millimeters in diameter compared to the dollar’s 38. It was thinner and lighter, weighing only 20 grams to the dollar’s 30. The fifty centavos was the same size as the regular issue coin struck previously in that denomination, 27 millimeters in diameter and 10 grams in weight. This wasn’t too much more than the U.S. quarter, which is 24 mm. and weighs 6 1/4 grams. It looks, however, nearer in size to the half dollar. The fineness of these two denominations varied. The peso was .800 and the fifty centavos, .750. Again, this corresponded to earlier standards set back when the coinage was under U.S. direction. The MacArthur peso, incidentally, was the first of that kind struck by the U.S. Mint since 1912. (Manila struck some in 1936.) All MacArthur coins were made at San Francisco.
“The series was fairly well publicized in the U.S. As I recall, it sold for about twice face value. It’s a good question how many actually saw circulation. Although this was a set of true coins, there was a naturally high demand for pieces for collections or mementos. A great many seem to have stayed in the States, judging from the large numbers offered for sale in recent years. This large-scale saving, if such was the case, seems to have helped to keep the price of the issue down, or better, within reach of the less wealthy collector.
“One bad quality of the MacArthur coins was that the design lacked detail, and many appear to have been poorly struck, no doubt a matter of the coin’s relief. My own view is that the coins have more historical significance than beauty. The 1947 Philippine stamp issue honoring the General seems to have been much better executed, with a good portrait of the ‘Defender-Liberator’, and good printing. This, incidentally, made MacArthur one of the few Americans to be pictured on both stamps and coins while living. While the MacArthur coins seem to lack the quality of the contemporary Commonwealth issues, his stamps were better designed than many of the other Philippine designs then being issued….
“MacArthur died in 1964. Shortly before his death, he made a farewell visit—at age 80—to the Philippines, and re-visited the battlefields where a handful of starving, under-equipped troops had held off the Imperial Japanese Army long enough to give time to get other U.S. forces into action. Corregidor today is a Philippine national shrine, kept as it was when the war ended. Once again, he was greeted by cheering crowds as their liberator.
“The true monument to MacArthur is not in the Philippine coins, or the three-cent stamp the U.S. post office issued in 1944 showing the Manila Bay harbor forts where the defenders made their last stand. The true memorial is in history—his military achievements and the final task of changing ravaged Japan into a self-supporting, peaceful state. (Here, the MacArthur regime was marked with justice and forbearance, not blind retaliation for such atrocities as the infamous Bataan Death March.)
“Nevertheless, the two silver pieces remain as distinct reminders of the suffering and triumph of the last war, as well as a mark of appreciation to one man. And as a token of international friendship, the Philippines’ first coins are distinctively in a class by themselves.”
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