Part II of “...and Nobody Gives a Damn” will address the prewar planning failures and the command collapse once hostilities began.
Even though your assessment of MacArthur is quite damning, evidence suggests that he deserves an even harsher verdict. While MacArthur is responsible for over committing our forces in the Philippines, he appears to have suffered some sort of nervous breakdown immediately after the Pearl Harbor attacks. When the Japanese commenced their attack, he was uncommunicative and failed to coordinate the complex active defense that he was largely responsible for devising.
Harsher indeed - I didn't want to clog up my first post. I have read of the "breakdown" theory but believe John Costello (Days of Infamy) had a better take. MacArthur so identified with the Philippines and was thick with Quezon that when Pearl harbor was attacked, they both foolishly thought that the Philippines could stay neutral - hence the indecision. Gen. Brereton, in command of the air force there wanted to execute long-standing plans to bomb Formosa with his B-17s but Mac held off and only finally agreed to a "reconnaissance mission" (we had already done that)- and nothing was ever done. (Brereton deserves heat for not dispersing the bombers to other islands, although some of the backup airfields couldn't handle the B-17s. That and failure to send up covering fighters sealed the Philippine's doom.)
Hours later the Japs surprised our air force on the ground, parked wingtip-to-wingtip a la Pearl Harbor and eliminated our air cover, with predictable results. The Japanese pilots all thought they were going on a suicide mission as they figured the Americans would be waiting for them because of the advance warning given by the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were astounded when they met little or no opposition.
On top of all the strategic errors, a sleazy element surfaced when MacArthur accepted a $500,000 "gift" from Quezon just before they left for Australia. MacArthur then had the gall to bill the Philippine govt. for $35,000 "expenses". He took that money and, in the midst of the retreat, instructed his broker to invest it in some stock - ending up a millionaire after the war.
A good article on that whole mess is HERE.