I've always been curious why Admiral Kimmel, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, got demoted and blamed for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor but MacArthur, who commanded the Army in the Philippines, is considered a hero even though 1.) MacArthur had a warning an attack was coming after Pearl Harbor and 2.) he fumbled any response to the attack and 3.) had to flee the islands and allowed the largest capture of US troops in American history?
Surely MacArthur's fuckup, leaving 76,000 American and Filipino troops behind, is arguably worse since he had (or should have) known the Japanese were coming.
So why the double standard? Why didn't he get demoted?
Not to mention the award of his Medal of Honor to MacArthur.
I'll focus more on the General MacArthur side here, and why he was so celebrated.
It's rather simple;
Admiral Kimmel didn't offer what MacArthur did, which was hope. The reason that everyone in the United States fell in love with the firebrand General MacArthur is because of his larger-than-life character. He managed to withdraw almost his entire force to Bataan and Corregidor, and led a futile, but nevertheless fierce, resistance against the Japanese invasion force. He had warning of an attack after Pearl Harbour, sure, but there was not much he could do. His aviation assets were poorly positioned on the day of the attack on the Philippines, and he overestimated the resilience of the Filipino infantrymen, spreading his forces too thin when the Japanese landed.
That being said, I should clarify that General MacArthur did not "fumble" the response to the attack, and also that he did not want to flee the Philippines or let his troops get captured.
In fact, when General Homma's marines began to land, MacArthur acted on his feet to move his forces to Bataan, which is exactly what the top secret War Plan Orange called for. It was by far the best possible action that a Western Army untrained in guerrilla warfare could hope for, what with the island of Corregidor, overlooking the Bataan Peninsula, having the strongest fortifications of any in the Philippine islands.
Now on to your third point; Douglas MacArthur had no intention of leaving the Philippines. He was perfectly content with dying on Corregidor, fighting to the last man, defending his command. In fact, when President Manuel Quezon boarded a submarine bound for Allied waters, General MacArthur and his wife, Jean, had a locker filled with all of their most prized possessions put aboard, bound for a bank in the United States, which was to issue the contents to his next of kin. He believed wholeheartedly he would die there, and he was okay with that. President Roosevelt, however, was not. He ordered MacArthur to Australia, where he would command the entire Southwest Pacific Theater. With that, the most experienced General in the entire U.S. Army was forced to leave.
By the time he got to Australia, General Wainwright was on the verge of surrender in the Philippines, and hope was lost. No relief could be made available for MacArthur to send to the Philippines at that point.