A photo in the New York Times on June 10, 1942 depicted a naval officer, John Duncan Bulkeley, and his wife in the back of a car as they were being treated to a New York ticker tape parade. Hundreds of thousands of people were cheering him in a hero's welcome. The thirty-year-old Bulkeley was back from the Philippines, where he had pulled off one of the most spectacular rescues in United States naval history by taking General Douglas MacArthur out of the besieged islands aboard a PT boat.
MacArthur's escape from the Philippine death trap was front-page news. America's most illustrious soldier had been a hair's breadth away from being killed or captured by the Japanese. Both MacArthur and Bulkeley were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. But no mention was ever made of the nearly eighty officers and men of Bulkeley's squadron who were left behind, a tragic sacrifice that no one would admit was unnecessary.
Saving MacArthur is the story of the fateful friendship of two otherwise very different men who shared an unquenchable thirst for fame and a willingness to turn history into myth, a story that is as much about the nature of human beings as it is about a glorious moment in our past. But above all it is the story of the men history has forgotten. Saving MacArthur captures their hardships, close escapes, and ultimate triumph.
