“Orders emanating from General Wainwright have no validity…. Separate your forces into small elements and initiate guerrilla operations,” read the message MacArthur sent to Sharp on May 9 with the perfunctory-sounding preface of “if possible.” In truth, MacArthur knew how little was possible. He did not say it now but had admitted it days before Corregidor’s surrender, when he had informed the War Department that the guerrillas would not amount to more than “a few scattered bands of desperate men… whose effectiveness will be practically negligible.”
