From the desk of the Tiger Lily.
Last year I stumbled across a copy of William Manchester's biography on Douglas MacArthur, entitled "American Caesar: Douglas Macarthur 1880-1964", on sale for a quarter in the thrift store. It proved to be a difficult read, partially because this edition was the annoying kind that is a short, squat book, so half my time reading was spent physically turning pages, but mostly because much of it was anti-MacArthur propaganda and subtle smears cleverly sown into the actual history of his life.
Much to my surprise, a quote from Bill O'Reilly's latest book, "Killing the Rising Sun", appeared on Facebook last week that looked eerily similar to something I had read in Manchester's biography months earlier. So I did an internet search and came up with the following:
Quoting from O´Relly´s book ´Killing the Rising Sun´ page 19:
Rather than conduct a savage aerial bombardment, the forces of Dai Nippon-or Great Japan-aimed to seize control of the entire country. (The Philippines)
´ The invasion was planned for almost a decade beginning with an influx of Japanese soldiers disguised as immigrants, a systematic mapping of the Philippines /snip/ and spying on Philippine coastal defenses.
Only later, Filipino President Manuel Quezon will remember, did I discover that my gardener was a Japanese major and my masseuse a Japanese colonel ´
A commenter on another thread uses "masseur" instead of "masseuse" in the quote:
"Last night, as I was reading “Killing the Rising Sun,” I came across this paragraph: “The invasion [of the Philippines] was planned for almost a decade, beginning with an influx of Japanese soldiers disguised as immigrants…”Only later,” Filipino president Manuel Quezon will remember, “did I discover that my gardener was a Japanese major and my masseur a Japanese colonel.”"
Yet another person quotes William Manchester's book in this thread:
‘In 1934 Major General Frank Parker, then the commander in the Philippines, reported to Washington that Japanese immigration continued to grow at an alarming rate, that they were mapping coasts, and that most of them were men of military age – some, indeed, known to hold reserve commissions in the Nipponese army. The War Department shrugged, and so, once more, did [President Manuel] Quezon. The newcomers were industrious; they were useful bicycle salesmen, sidewalk photographers, and servants; they seemed to contribute to the quality of Filipino life. “Only later,” Carlos Romulo recalls, “did I discover that my gardener was a Japanese major and my masseur a Japanese colonel.”’ – William Manchester, "American Caesar" pp. 170-171.
I can confirm that the above passage quoting from William Manchester's biography also appears in the annoying squat edition on page 187, which is sitting right beside me. According to the notes at the back of the book, this is a DIRECT QUOTE from Carlos Romulo himself during an interview with William Manchester on October 18, 1977. This means the direct quote is most likely not in Romulo's book, "I Saw the Fall of the Philippines", and most definitely cannot be attributed to an interview with Manuel Quezon who died in 1944 (unless somehow he also magically wrote the exact same thing in his own autobiography, "The Good Fight").
This looks an awful lot like plagiarism. And not just your run-of-the-mill plagiarism seen in the echo chamber halls of hallowed learning, but a really lazy copy-paste attempt along with a complete lack of sourcing.
(As a disclaimer, I have not read Bill O'Reilly's book as I have neither time nor the money to waste, so I cannot confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that he does not give proper notation to William Manchester in the passage. From what both people quoted on separate websites attributing the observation to Quezon instead of Romulo as shown above, I highly doubt it.)
Seems as if Bill O'Reilly owes Manchester's descendants a cut of his financial earnings for plagiarizing their father's work.
You people really should stop funding these Bill O'Reilly, Dinesh D'Souza, Michelle Fields, and Mark Levin type frauds in their copy-paste plagiarism and go to the original sources to read the actual history. It's the same amount of wading through the Mockingbird muck, but at least you won't be voluntarily padding a faux-conservative fraud's pocket in the process.
agtG
