Unforgettable Douglas MacArthur By Dennis McEvoy To millions of his fellow citizens, five-star General of the US Army Douglas MacArthur was the all-time AU-American I patriot. Other millions thought him vain, bombastic and potentially a dangerous demagogue. To me, and I knew him well, he was a friend whose virtues and faults, as befits a hero-which he unquestionably was-were on a heroic scale. During the First World War he led the famous Rainbow Division in fighting in France. In 1930, he became US Army Chief of Staff, at the age of 50, one of the youngest in US history. In the Second World War he took more territory than Darius the Great. (Admittedly, most of it was water; but in strategy and execution his was still one of the great military accomplishments of all time.) At the peak of his career, as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in post-war Japan, he led the transformation of a feudal, militaristic nation headed by a God-Emperor into a democracy. He laid the groundwork for a treaty of genuine US-Japanese friendship. Then came the Korean War. When he publicly collided head-on with his commander-in-chief, President Harry Truman, over the conduct of the war, he was summarily relieved of command. Thus ended, in a swirl of controversy, a military career without parallel. I first met Douglas Mac Arthur in 1938 in Manila when I was a foreign correspondent. He was a field marshal of a virtually non-existent Philippine Army, having been loaned by the US government to help the newly created Philippine Commonwealth raise its own armed forces. I was ushered into MacArthurs presence by his chief of staff, a cheery, sharp-eyed US Army lieutenant-colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower. Hell go far, MacArthur said of the future President in a subsequent interview-probably the only time he was guilty of an understatement. The impact of MacArthurs personality was tremendous. As one who knew him remarked: He could walk into a room full of drunks and, in five minutes, they would all be sober. Tall, dark, handsome as a film hero, MacArthur radiated enormous nervous energy as he paced up and down the room during our interview, smoking. Born in 1880 in Little Rock, Arkansas, he had been raised on the high-sounding oratory of the era. His public prose was classic and flawless, though much of it coloured beyond the wildest hues of the rainbow. As for his private conversation: the late John Gunther, interviewer of many world leaders, regarded MacArthur as the best speaker he ever heard. MacArthur and I saw each other on various occasions during the next few years. On July 26, 1941, he was recalled to active service to command all US Army forces in the Far East. It seemed that zero hour with Japan was near, for the very same day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had slapped on a total oil embargo against that nation. Privately, MacArthur called it the ultimate provocation: there is no going back. Stupendous Knowledge. In November 1941, MacArthur summoned me to his office. I had just arrived from Moscow, where the German besieging armies were so close that reinforcements from the Moscow garrison were being sent to the front in tram-cars. It seemed certain the Soviet capital would fall. MacArthur cross-examined me about the Red Army and the Russian-German war. It developed, perhaps not surprisingly for a man of his intellect (he graduated first in his class at West Point), that he knew more about the gigantic war than I did. He knew the countryside around Moscow intimately: where the Germans were attacking, where they had been stopped or slowed down. How could he have such incredibly detailed knowledge of an area he had never seen, and of events not reported? Reread Tolstoys War and Peace, he snapped. The Germans are fighting the same war Napoleon did. Hitlers fate will be the same as Napoleons. He underestimated the courage and endurance of the Russia people-and he started too late to defeat Russias greatest general, that ageless warrior, General Winter. My editors thought me mad when I cabled that qualified observers believed Moscow would hold. But it did. And then some. Was MacArthur arrogant? Indeed, yes. But as onetime aide Brigadier-General Elliott Thorpe (Retd.) puts it: He had the egoism of the man who says I can hit that target ten times out of ten-and then does it. Or, in the words of the late Walker Stone, an American newspaper editor: Never underestimate a man because he overestimates himself. Personally, MacArthur was totally fearless, even contemptuous of death. He held all the decorations, some awarded to him numerous times, which could be given for personal bravery under fire-including the highest, the Congressional Medal of Honour. His father, Lieutenant-General Arthur MacArthur, a Civil War hero, also won this medal, making the only father-and-son team in history to do so. Two weeks after our interview, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, the Philippines and British possessions in Asia. Jeannie MacArthur and young son Arthur were with the general during the Japanese siege of Manila. We three drink of the same cup, she said when refusing the opportunity to be evacuated to safety. The family left the doomed fortress of Corregidor in March 1942, only on orders from President Roosevelt. MacArthur was sent to Australia to direct Allied defence and begin the drive for the relief of the Philippines. Incredible Memory. Less than three years later, he was ready to fulfil his famous promise and return. Colonel Weldon (Dusty) Rhoades, MacArthurs personal pilot, tells the story of the Leyte landing when the reconquest of the Philippines began: The beach had not yet been secured and sniper fire was buzzing all around us. I headed for the nearest safe-looking tree. Are you afraid, Dusty? the general called out. There he was, walking along the beach as if on a Sunday stroll, while bullets and mortar fragments were kicking up the sand at his feet. I sure am, I replied. Arent you, General? He stopped, looked at me with a serious expression and said, No. God gave me a mission to perform. He is not going to take me away until it is done. I replied that God had given me no such mission and, with the generals permission, I would just stay where I was for while. He laughed, and walked on. At the end of the Second World War, the victorious Allies placed into MacArthurs hands both the baton of a generalissimo of armed forces and the sceptre of a ruler with dominion over some 80 million Japanese. No other American in history has ever been granted such powers. He stayed in Tokyo for five and a half years. Every day (he worked 365 days a year), he followed the same route, at the same time, four times a day (he always went home for lunch), between his quarters at the American Embassy and his office in Tokyos Dai-Ichi building, facing the Imperial Palace. Anyone who cared to see him-or to assassinate him-could have done so, from a distance of a few metres. During the violent anti-American demonstrations in May 1950, in Tokyo, when about 15,000 Japanese were demonstrating in the area between his home and his office, his nervous staff submitted to him elaborate plans for his security, including use of armed US combat soldiers. He waved them all aside and drove to his office on the same route, at exactly the same time as he did every day. The Japanese fell back and let his- car, proudly flying his five-star flag, through their ranks. Many lowered their signs and bowed. Throughout the Occupation, I talked with MacArthur frequently. Elected by the American business community in Tokyo as President of their postwar Chamber of Commerce (I had spent my formative years in Japan), I had to lay various problems on his desk. Always he gave me quick, fair decisions. Then our conversations would roam far afield. He was interested in almost everything, and his memory for facts was phenomenal, bordering on total recall. A Military Aristocrat. MacArthurs public and private image were as different as night and day. I found him warm, compassionate, humorous: basically a shy, sensitive man. He was not a politician in the US tradition. I cannot see that seemingly aloof man going about kissing babies-he certainly lacked the common touch. And it was virtually impossible to get him to stand still for a picture. I last saw MacArthur in his Tokyo office in late December 1950. My office had posted me to Europe and I had called to say good-bye. He was in a furious mood. Three months earlier he had brought off the audacious strategic stroke of the Inchon landings in Korea, a military miracle. But by now, it was a new war. Chinese Communist armies were pouring across the Yalu River into North Korea-and his hands were tied. Washington wanted an honourable peace while MacArthur wanted to win the war. He believed profoundly in his own slogan, There is no substitute for victory. Less than four months later, in April 1951, Truman relieved MacArthur of all commands because of the generals open disagreement with the Administrations war policy. He returned to the United States and remained in the Army without assignment until his death in 1964. MacArthur had argued with Presidents before. He had disagreed with Herbert Hoover on disarmament. A battle with Roosevelt was over inadequate supplies to the pre-war Philippines, and with Truman it was Korea. Along with overoptimism, as in his conviction that the Chinese would not enter into the Korean War, and an extraordinary sensitivity to criticism, this unshakable belief in the infallibility of his own judgment was, in my opinion, one of his major faults. Yet he was usually correct. There are those professional soldiers and military historians who believe that MacArthur deserves that highest of all military accolades, the title of a Great Captain. Other commanders in this elite group include Alexander the Great, Darius, Napoleon, Wellington and Ulysses S. Grant. Douglas MacArthur was a military aristocrat-one of the few America has produced.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 01:07:30 +0000
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