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Douglas MacArthur, the son of the high-ranking military figure, Arthur MacArthur, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 26th January, 1880. Although previously a poor scholar, in 1903 MacArthur graduated first in his 93-man class, at West Point Military Academy.
General Douglas MacArthur, was commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, commander of the Allied Forces during the occupation of Japan, and commander of United Nations (U.N.) forces during the first nine months of the Korean War. MacArthur was born in 1880, the son of Arthur MacArthur, who had been awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War for his exploits at Missionary Ridge. Arthur MacArthur also served in the Indian Wars, fought in the Philippines during and after the Spanish—American War and was appointed military governor of the Philippines. When Arthur MacArthur retired in 1906 he was the senior ranking officer in the U.S. Army.
Commander in Chief Far East General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.
Photo: Department of the Army.
Source: Truman Library.
Douglas MacArthur entered West Point in 1899, graduating four years later at the head of his class and setting the highest scholastic record at the academy in 25 years. His first assignment was in the Philippines, where his father had served as military governor just two years before. In 1904, he was promoted to first lieutenant and became his father’s aide-de-camp in Japan.
In 1906, MacArthur was appointed aide-de-camp to President Theodore Roosevelt and, in 1913, he was appointed to the general staff under President Woodrow Wilson. The next year, MacArthur took part in the Veracruz, Mexico, expedition. By the time America entered the European war in 1917, the talented and flamboyant MacArthur had reached the rank of major.
Appointed superintendent of West Point after the war, he instituted reforms in curriculum, teaching methods, and standards of performance that began to restore West Point to an academic respectability badly eroded by wartime policies.
MacArthur helped organize the famed 42nd Infantry Division, better known as the “Rainbow Division.” As a colonel, he served as the division’s chief of staff. In August 1918, MacArthur was promoted to brigadier general and became commander of the Rainbow Division’s 84th Infantry Brigade which he led in the St. Mihiel, Muese-Argonne and the Sedan offensives. His exploits during the war won him a number of citations and brought him to national prominence for the first time.
Following the war, MacArthur became the superintendent at West Point, the youngest officer to ever hold that post; he remained there until 1922. Following a second tour in the Philippines, he returned to the United States in January 1925, was named commander of the 3rd Corps, and then returned to the Philippines where he served as department commander.
In 1930, MacArthur returned to the United States and was named by President Herbert Hoover as chief of staff of the Army. At age 50, he was promoted to the rank of full general at a time when America was staunchly isolationist and military figures like MacArthur played a small part in the nation’s activities. In 1932, MacArthur led a force of tanks, cavalry and infantry against a group of 15,000 unarmed World War I veterans who had camped in Washington to petition Congress for early payment of their service bonuses. In a violent clash precipitated by orders from MacArthur, the “Bonus Army” was dispersed. For many at that time, and for historians since, the harsh treatment of the “Bonus Army” has seemed to offer insight into the mind and character of Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur later justified his actions by improbably claiming that he had thwarted a “Communist revolution.”
West Point Cadet Douglas MacArthur and his mother, Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur. His father, Maj. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, soon to become the army’s highest-ranking officer, remained in the Philippines when his son entered West Point in 1899. His mother, however, took up a two-year residence in the West Point Hotel, rejoining her husband upon his return from the Philippines in 1901.
In 1936, MacArthur was appointed military advisor to the Philippines, where he trained commonwealth military forces and prepared the Philippine government for its coming independence. In 1937, he retired from the Army, but remained in the Philippines as an advisor to its government with the rank of generalissimo and a lavish salary and perquisites.
MacArthur built up and trained Philippine forces between 1935 and 1937, but he trained them for a conventional war—an unrealistic goal. When war came, MacArthur’s Philippine Army was poorly prepared to meet the crack invading Japanese Army in the field, and lacked the training to conduct the only real option open to it: guerrilla warfare. About the only positive conclusions that could be validly made about the Philippine Army of 1941-1942, was that it remained loyal, fought bravely on occasion, and in distinct contrast to other Asian “colonial” armies, it could boast native officers up to the highest ranks.
Against Presidential order, General Douglas MacArthur assumed "martial law" and took over the eviction of the "Bonus Army" marchers.
In the summer of 1941, the entire Philippine Army was inducted into the Army of the United States, and MacArthur was recalled to active duty to head the new command: U.S. Forces in the Far East. The long-expected Japanese attack came at Clark Field, north of Manila, about eight hours after the initial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Most of MacArthur’s air force was destroyed on the ground by Japanese aircraft in “Pearl Harbor II.”
MacArthur committed at least one serious military blunder in the early days of the Philippine Campaign in his disastrous attempt to meet Japanese thrusts everywhere, a strategy based on his exaggerated estimate of the prowess of the Philippine Army. In addition, his failure to transfer the vast food stocks that had been earlier assembled for removal to the Bataan Peninsula resulted in the largely unnecessary hunger that so debilitated its doomed defenders.
But MacArthur retrieved his reputation by his aggressive defense at Bataan, a defense that seemed all the more the work of a military genius when contrasted to the astonishingly quick capitulation of the other colonial powers in the area, the Dutch and British at Malaya and Singapore. Although he was criticized by some of his troops for leaving the Philippines before the inevitable surrender, his orders came directly from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and this was one presidential order that MacArthur chose to obey.
Philippine President Manuel Quezon and General Douglas MacArthur, ca. 1940, from Joseph Ralston Hayden papers
MacArthur was evacuated by patrol torpedo (PT) boat to Australia in March where he was named supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific and began his plans to launch an attack on Japanese power in the Pacific.
After five months of preparation, MacArthur began a daring counteroffensive against the Imperial Japanese at New Guinea. Bypassing Japanese strongholds (such as Rabaul) and cutting off supplies to the enemy from the Japanese home islands to the north, MacArthur’s armies leapfrogged through the Solomon, Bismarck, and Admiralty islands back toward their destination of the Philippine Islands. With the support of Adm. William Halsey’s forces in the South Pacific and Adm. Chester Nimitz’s forces advancing across the Central Pacific, the Japanese were pushed back throughout 1943 and 1944. On October 20, 1944, MacArthur’s forces invaded Leyte Island in the Philippines. In December, he was promoted to the rank of five-star General of the Army. On December 15, MacArthur seized Mindoro and, on January 9, 1945, landed in force on Luzon. Through February and March, Allied forces gained control of a devastated Manila, and soon thereafter completed their conquest of the islands.
General Douglas MacArthur and Maj.Gen. Jonathan Wainwright
MacArthur was to lead American forces in the invasion of the Japanese home islands, and he was in the process of preparing for that impending and horrific operation when the atomic bomb brought an abrupt and decisive end to the war. On August 15, MacArthur was named supreme commander for the Allied powers, and in that capacity he accepted the surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri September 2,1945.
>From his role of military leader in time of war, MacArthur moved on to a new chapter in his life as the commander of the Allied occupation of postwar Japan. He held that position until 1951, ruling Japan through a series of orders from his headquarters in Tokyo. MacArthur is credited with restoring Japan’s devastated economy, placing the defeated nation’s political future on a sound footing, liberalizing the government, and setting Japan on the road to democracy and postwar recovery. His rule of Japan in this period (in the name of the Allied powers) is usually considered both fair and progressive, and MacArthur claimed, a greater source of satisfaction to him than his military successes.
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