MacArthur, Douglas

MacArthur, Douglas (1880–1964), American general in World War II and the Korean War.Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised on army posts by his father, Gen. Arthur MacArthur, and mother, Mary, Douglas Mac Arthur graduated from West Point in 1903. An engineering officer, he served in the Philippines and Panama. In 1913–17, he was assigned to the army's General Staff. During World War I, he was chief of staff of the 42nd (Rainbow) Division in France and subsequently commanded the 84th Infantry Brigade as a brigadier general. In 1919–22, he was superintendent of West Point, then served two tours of duty in the Philippines. As army chief of staff (1930–35), MacArthur evoked much criticism by using military force in 1932 to disperse encampments in Washington, D.C., of unemployed veterans, “Bonus Marchers,” seeking their pensions. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed MacArthur military adviser to the U.S. colony of the Philippines, and the general spent the next six years training the Filipino Army.

In July 1941, MacArthur was appointed to command all U.S. forces in East Asia, but when Japanese planes attacked American bases near Manila several hours after their attack on Pearl Harbor, they destroyed most of the American warplanes on the ground. For three months, Mac Arthur led the defense of the Philippines; but in March 1942, Roosevelt ordered him to Australia to command the Southwest Pacific Area theater. MacArthur vowed: “I shall return.”

While the U.S. Navy pushed through the Central Pacific, MacArthur, with American reinforcements, launched an offensive from Australia against Japanese forces on the coastline of New Guinea, using highly successful “leapfrogging” flanking envelopments with combined air, land, and sea forces. The high point of MacArthur's campaign came in October 1944, when despite the reluctance of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), he convinced Roosevelt to allow him to liberate the Philippines rather than bypass the archipelago. The image of MacArthur with his crushed officer's hat, aviator sunglasses, and corncob pipe was familiar to Americans. Most famously, photographers showed him wading ashore at Leyte in the Philippines as he launched the liberation that continued through July 1945. In December 1944, he was promoted to the new rank of general of the army (five stars). He accepted the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945.

Appointed by President Harry S. Truman as Supreme Allied Powers Commander, MacArthur directed the occupation of Japan (1945–50), implementing generally liberal economic, social, and political reforms, but delaying rebuilding of Japan's industrial economy until ordered by Truman in 1948. As a conservative Republican, MacArthur was seriously considered for the GOP presidential nomination in 1948, but he was defeated in the early primaries.

With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Truman also named MacArthur commander of the U.S. and United Nations forces there. The general persuaded the JCS to authorize an amphibious flanking envelopment at Inchon in September, and by October, South Korea had been liberated. Truman, with MacArthur's concurrence, then expanded the war aims to unify the peninsula. When UN forces crossed the 38th parallel and advanced toward the Yalu River, the border with China, despite warnings from Beijing, MacArthur met with Truman on Wake Island, dismissing the danger of Chinese intervention and predicting quick victory.

China intervened massively in late November, pushing the UN forces back to the 38th parallel and beyond. MacArthur then clashed with the JCS and the White House, blaming them for forcing him to fight a limited war. Arguing that there was “no substitute for victory,” MacArthur sought permission to expand the war to China by bombing bases in Manchuria, perhaps with nuclear weapons, and by assisting Chinese Nationalist troops from Taiwan to invade the mainland. However, as the JCS discovered early in 1951, MacArthur exaggerated the Communist Chinese threat to overrun South Korea. Battle lines stabilized in March 1951 when a new field commander, Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, rallied the U.S. and UN forces.

Truman proposed a cease‐fire that month, but MacArthur sabotaged the plan. When the press printed a letter from the general to Republican congressman Joseph Martin condemning Truman's policy in Korea as appeasement, an outraged president, supported by the JCS, removed MacArthur from all his commands on 11 April 1951. Two weeks later, after returning to a hero's welcome, MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress and appealed for public support for his strategy. But although Americans were frustrated with the stalemated war, Senate hearings into MacArthur's accusations revealed that most military and diplomatic experts opposed his plan at a time when the Soviet Union in Europe was seen as the main threat to U.S. interests. Few Americans wanted an expanded war with China.

After fifty‐two years of active service, the general with his flare for the dramatic gesture and his penchant for political controversy retired from the army and became an officer of a large business corporation. Another effort to nominate him for president failed in 1952 when the GOP chose a far more genial and less controversial general, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
[See also Inchon Landing; Korean War; Korean War: U.S. Naval Operations in; Philippines, U.S. Involvement in the; World War II, U.S. Naval Operations in: The Pacific.]

Bibliography

D. Clayton James , The Years of MacArthur, 3 vols., 1970–85.
Carol Petillo , Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years, 1981.
Michael Schaller , Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General, 1989.

Michael Schaller