The next day, Wednesday, March 18, the New York Times banner headline had read: MACARTHUR IN AUSTRALIA AS ALLIED COMMANDER/MOVE HAILED AS FORESHADOWING TURN OF THE TIDE.
Now it was Friday, and he was in the Adelaide station. Knowing that reporters would be there, asking for a statement, he had scrawled a few words on the back of an envelope: “The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines…for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return….”
Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Carlos P. Romulo (R), during the General’s visit to the Philippines.
The originator of the phrase, in fact, was Carlos Romulo. Back on the Rock, Sutherland had told the Filipino journalist that the Allied slogan in the islands should be, as OWI later suggested, “We shall return.” Romulo objected: “America has let us down and won’t be trusted,” he said. “but the people still have confidence in MacArthur. If he says he is coming back, he will be believed.” Sutherland passed the suggestion along to the General, who adopted it. MacArthur…later wrote: “‘I shall return’ seemed a promise of magic to the Filipinos. It lit a flame that became a symbol which focused the nation’s indomitable will and at whose shrine it finally attained victory and, once again, found freedom. It was scraped in the sands of the beaches, it was daubed on the walls of the barrios, it was stamped on the mail, it was whispered in the cloisters of the church. It became the battle cry of a great underground swell that no Japanese bayonet could still.”
William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978), pp. 270-271.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 278
