Posted on 01/26/2019 8:21:52 AM PST by Ozguy1945
My father served under Douglas MacArthur in World War Two when Indonesia was liberated from Japan and became an independent republic after centuries of colonisation.
MacArthur was a complex and powerful figure with monumental self confidence. He was a brilliant innovative strategist and a master of the English language.
What do other people think of him?
He is also highly regarded in Morotai where my dad camped for a few weeks.
He organised a successful defence of Australia based on fighting in New Guinea whereas some Australians allegedly were prepared to surrender the country north of Brisbane.
Can the Chinese become what the Japanese were?
Is the South Chine Sea now analogous to Japan entering Manchuria?
Understood but a comparison of casualty rates would show that ground forces under MacArthur's command from Melbourne to Tokyo were less than combined losses at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
...a downtown Tokyo hotel...”
I left off the word “hotel.”
It is entirely possible.
People will have a difference of opinion on this.
There were people who fought under MacArthur who despised him, and some who didn’t. There were others who fought under Patton and hated him, and others who loved him.
It is the same with any commander. If you were to sit in a roman encampment, you might hear much the same thing.
I don’t hate MacArthur. There is a lot about him both personally and militarily, from reliable sources that I dislike. But I do recognize his ability and also recognize there is a reason he got to where he was, and it wasn’t all politics.
And I do think we could not have chosen a better man to rule Japan after WWII. He was perfect in so many ways for that job.
And a momma’s boy to boot. When he entered West Point, his mother moved into the Thayer Hotel on the academy’s grounds and was there for his entire four years. He would dutifully present his report cards to her every time they were issued and she was the one who would chase away any young ladies who were foolish enough to think their charms might have turned the head of momma’s little boy. Her connections with the war department (having been the daughter-in-law of a MOH recipient and the wife of a career officer) made her lifelong lobbying of promotions for her son much more productive than anyone else with her same mission.
He must have done a fairly competent job in World War One and as Commandant of West Point but those gains were wiped out by the rousting of the Bonus Marchers in Washington D.C. - I suppose no one had any concept of what public relations were in those days. In the pictures of that day, he is seen on site with his aide-de-camp Dwight Eisenhower. MacArthur later described Eisenhower as “the best clerk I ever had.” How’s that for class?
The Philippines were his darkest hour. As another poster pointed out, there was a plan to turn the Bataan peninsula into a well supplied and properly prepared fortress capable of withstanding months of siege. But MacArthur never implemented those plans and so was caught completely unprepared when the Japanese landings took place. Considering the War Department had issued a “war warning” to all commanders only twenty-four hours before with hostilities expected to commence, as well as MacArthur having eight hours warning after Pearl Harbor (and the entire War Department convinced that Japan would strike the Phillipines) it seems incredible that there was apparently no contingency plan to prevent the destruction of his bombers. In David Bergamini’s “Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy” he describes the Japanese Air Commanders on Formosa in an absolute panic, expecting American bombers from the Phillipines to be overhead at any moment. Instead it was the other way around - how do the MacArthur supporters explain that?
MacArthur holed up on Corregidor in the Malinda Tunnel and left the day-to-day defense of Bataan to Jonathan Wainwright. According to William Manchester’s biography of MacArthur “American Caesar”, MacArthur only visited the front three times then quickly returned to Corregidor. The American troops, without adequate food, water and medical supplies (which should have been available had they been stock-piled on the Bataan peninsula as planned) held out as long as they could but were eventually overwhelmed.
To my mind, MacArthur’s greatest disgrace was in abandoning his troops after he was ordered to escape to Australia. His rank and experience must have allowed him to know that no such “relief expedition” to save the American soldiers fighting on Bataan would be possible much less probable. If he was as great a leader as his supporters claim, he would have ignored that order, filled the PT Boat sent to rescue him with his wife, son and as many young American and Fillipino nurses as possible and then returned to the battle to face the end that he was largely responsible for. Instead, he left Wainwright holding the bag while he went on to his “I shall return...” posturing.
While the fewer casualty rates of his command for the rest of the war and his administration of a post-war Japan are commendable, his non-action during the Korean War was a complete farce. Most readers are unaware that MacArthur wasn’t even in Korea but rather “commanded” from his headquarters in Tokyo. His coterie of synchophat staff officers protected him from any bad news coming from the fighting and made sure that sympathetic supporters in the press got whatever they thought the public needed to know. Truman’s opinion of MacArthur as a “pompous, posturing ass” sums up his persona exactly. If his sympathy-seeking speech in front of a joint session of congress with the “old soldiers never die, they just fade away” vomit-inducing line is any indicator, Truman was correct in his assessment of this Primma Donna who honestly thought that anything which ever went wrong was someone else’s fault but definitely not his.
There were very high casualty rates in the Bataan death march.
I heard that, and also read a rebuttal that there was no such plan.
MacArthur has plenty of critics. It is clear that he was a genius at self promotion. He spent a huge amount of time and effort self-promoting.
Others did not.
Eisenhower was not a big self-promoter, from what I have read.
Roger that but FDR had already ordered MacArthur out of the Philippines and Wainwright was in charge when The Death March occurred.
Can you offer up a realistic strategy that would have produced a happier outcome?
I was not there, so I cannot.
I tend to be skeptical of generals who spend huge amounts of time and energy promoting themselves.
I realize that propaganda is important, very important in war.
But MacArthur was legendary in self-promotion. He was, for an American, an incredibly political general.
How could such an incredibly political general never be elected to Dog Catcher when Ike's and Grant's and Old Hickory's were made president?
By the fall of 1944, our submarines were pretty close to cutting off the Japs' ability to transport that sort of thing.
I think that the B.S. detector of the American voter worked somewhat better in the past than in the last 2-3 decades.
MacArthur I think should get the most credit for how he handled the post-war occupation of Japan.
Agreed. The biggest risk was a Communist insurgency potentially dividing Japan, like Korea and Germany. MacArthur nipped (forgive the expression) it in the bud.
Taking the Philippines enabled U.S. aircraft to range over the South China Sea, Chinese mainland, Formosa and oil production facilities in Borneo and Indonesia effectively cutting off the seaborne flow of raw materials to Japan.
When saying taking the Philippines wasn't necessary, one should offer up a viable alternate strategy.
That is why FDR appointed him.
He did not really believe in natural rights or natural law.
He could have instituted a Japanese right to arms, for example, but he did not.
Hard to argue with his success in the occupation of Japan.
We can never know if another person would have done better.
I give most of the reason for the success to the Japanese.
MacArthur described Ike as the best damned clerk he ever encountered in the Army...
I the comments below regarding the Occupation of Japan, more needs to be told about those years. My dad was there just as the general was headed for Korea.
He should have stayed in Tokyo.
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