Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur (b 26 January 1880 in 26 January 1880 in Little Rock, Arkansas; d. 5 April 1964 in Washington, D.C.) was an American officer played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II, becoming the Supreme Allied Commander, South West Pacific Area and Field Marshal of the Philippine Army. He fought in three major wars (World War I, World War II, Korean War) and was one of only five men ever to rise to the rank of General of the Army.

Life

MacArthur was the third son of Arthur MacArthur, later the army’s senior ranking officer, and Mary Hardy MacArthur, an ambitious woman who strongly influenced Douglas. He was graduated from West Point in 1903 with the highest honours in his class and served the next 10 years as an aide and a junior engineering officer, following this with four years on the general staff. He spent several months with the U.S. troops that occupied Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914. On the 42nd Division’s staff in 1917–19, MacArthur was variously chief of staff, brigade commander, and divisional commander during combat operations in France during World War I and in the Rhine occupation that followed. During the 1920s he initiated far-reaching reforms while superintendent at West Point, served on William (“Billy”) Mitchell’s court-martial, held two commands in the Philippines, commanded two U.S. corps areas, and headed the 1928 American Olympic Committee. Having advanced in rank to brigadier general in 1918 and to major general seven years later, MacArthur was promoted to general when he was selected as army chief of staff in 1930. His efforts as military head for the next five years were largely directed toward preserving the army’s meagre strength during the Great Depression. MacArthur was widely criticized in mid-1932 when he sent regular troops to oust the Bonus Army of veterans from Washington. In 1935–41 he served as Philippines military adviser (and field marshal), endeavouring, despite inadequate funds, to build a Filipino defense force. He retired from the U.S. Army in December 1937. [...] Recalled to active duty in July 1941, MacArthur conducted a valiant delaying action against the Japanese in the Philippines after war erupted in December. He was ordered to Australia in March 1942 to command Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Theater. He soon launched an offensive in New Guinea that drove the Japanese out of Papua by January 1943. In a series of operations in 1943–44, MacArthur’s troops seized strategic points in New Guinea from Lae to Sansapor, while capturing the Admiralties and western New Britain. The simultaneous northward movement of South Pacific forces in the Solomons, over whom MacArthur maintained strategic control, neutralized Rabaul and bypassed many Japanese units.

MacArthur was a highly decorated US soldier of the war, receiving the Medal of Honor for his early service in the Philippines and on the Bataan Peninsula. He was designated to command the proposed invasion of Japan in November 1945. When that was no longer necessary, he officially accepted the nation's surrender on 2 September 1945.

He was the effective ruler of Japan during the American occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951. Although criticized by liberals and bolsheviks for protecting Emperor Showa and not including him in the kangaroo court "war crimes" trials, MacArthur is credited with implementing far-reaching "democratic" reforms in that country as an integral part of multiple structural changes divided into three phases:

• 1) Initial effort to punish and reform Japan
• 2) Rekindle the Japanese economy
• 3) Peaceful creation of a peace treaty and an alliance

He led the United Nations Command forces defending South Korea against the North Korean invasion from 1950 to 1951. MacArthur led the United Nations Command in the Korean War, controversially removed from command by President Harry S. Truman on 11 April 1951 for publicly disagreeing with Truman's Korean War Policy.

He stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely unnecessary from a military point of view:

“My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender.”

In 1952 General MacArthur was nominated for President of the United States by tree different nationalist political parties. The Constitution Party, America First Party, and the Christian Nationalist Party had him as their presidential candidate without MacArthur’s consent.

Family

MacArthur married Louise Cromwell Brooks in 1922, but the childless union ended in divorce seven years later. In 1937 he married Jean Faircloth; Arthur, their only child, was born in Manila the next year.

See also

• Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• International Military Tribunal for the Far East
• Occupation of Japan
• The World Wars and mass starvation

External links

• Why the United States Rejects the International Criminal Court - Including on stated American atrocities in the Pacific during WWII.
• Orders, decorations and medals