Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

MacArthur was bidding for supreme command in the Pacific, and his backers in the United States were quick to pick up his cues. At his hilltop castle at San Simeon, on the central California coast, William Randolph Hearst picked up the telephone and dictated an editorial about Iwo Jima to the managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner. On February 27, it ran on the Examiner’s front page: “The attacking American forces are paying heavily for the island, perhaps too heavily. . . . Plainly, what we need in all our Pacific operations is a military strategist.” Hearst nominated MacArthur, because “he saves the lives of his own men.”90 That afternoon, a group of about one hundred off-duty marines filed into the Examiner’s newsroom in the Hearst Building at Third and Market Streets. A flustered employee called the police, but then called back a few minutes later to say that the police were not needed. The marines were calm and law-abiding. They did not threaten the staff or premises, but only wanted to look the editor in the eye as they explained that he did not have the facts. In the end, however, the Marine Corps won its case in the court of public opinion.