On 8 December 1941, General Douglas MacArthur, who recently had been called back to active service and placed in command of all U.S. and Philippine forces, had known of the attack on Pearl Harbor since about five in the morning, but insisted on delaying any hostile act by the forces under his command until the Japanese committed an overt attack on the Philippines, this was in accordance to instructions received from General George Marshall in Washington. It is also likely that MacArthur was influenced by his close friend Philippine President Manuel Quezon, who wanted the Philippines to remain neutral and thus be spared Japanese attack. Major General Lewis H. Brereton, Far East Air Force Commander, met with Major General Richard Sutherland, MacArthur's Chief of Staff, and argued in vain that his bombers at Clark should be allowed to strike military targets on Taiwan, the location from which everyone felt the Japanese attack would come. Meanwhile, the B-17s at Clark were loaded first with anti-ship ordnance. Later, that order was rescinded and different bombs were uploaded for use against Japanese airfields on Taiwan. Eventually, Brereton got permission to send one B-17 on a reconnaissance mission to the north. When the attack on Clark Field came, maintenance crews were in the process of preparing the one reconnaissance plane, changing the bomb loads in the other B-17s, and refueling the fighters, which had just come in from patrol. The aircrews were eating lunch. They were sitting ducks.