General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
October 9th, 2008
Douglas MacArthur lived his entire life, from cradle to grave in the United States Army. He was born on January 26, 1880, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He spent his early years in remote sections of New Mexico, where his father, Arthur MacArthur, Jr., commanded an infantry company charged with protecting settlers and railroad workers from the Indian “menace.” As a teenager, Arthur had served with distinction in the Union Army, eventually earning the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading a courageous assault up Missionary Ridge in Tennessee. However, he soon discovered that life in the post Civil War U.S. Army held little of the glamour he knew during the war.
These years were even harder for Douglas’ mother, Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur, whose upbringing as a proper Southern lady had done little to prepare her for raising a family on dusty western outposts. But seen through a boy’s eyes, life at a place like Ft. Selden, New Mexico, was heady stuff. “My first memory was the sound of bugles,” Douglas MacArthur recalled in his “Reminiscences.” It was here I learned to ride and shoot even before I could read or write – indeed, almost before I could walk or talk.” Even more importantly, by watching his father and listening to his mother, he learned that a MacArthur is always in charge.
When Douglas was six, Captain MacArthur was assigned to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, where his mother could finally introduce him and his older brother Arthur to life back in “civilization.” Three years later the family took another step in that direction when they moved to Washington, D.C., where Arthur took a post in the War Department. During these formative years, Douglas was able to spend time with his grandfather, Judge Arthur MacArthur, a man of considerable accomplishment and charm. As his grandfather entertained Washington’s elite, Douglas learned another valuable lesson: a MacArthur is a scholar and a gentleman. Douglas, who had always been an unremarkable student, first started to reveal his own intellectual gifts when his father was posted to San Antonio, Texas, in 1893. There he attended the West Texas Military Academy, thriving in an atmosphere which combined academics, religion, military discipline and Victorian social graces. By virtue of his excellent record there, his family’s political connections and top scores on the qualifying exam, Douglas received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1898. Over the next four years, he would achieve one of the finest records in Academy history.
What became a lasting connection with the Philippines began with Douglas’ first assignment out of West Point, when the young lieutenant sailed to the islands to work with a corps of engineers. While on a surveying and material gathering mission in the jungle, he was ambushed by two guerrilla fighters. A bullet tore through the crown of his campaign hat and lodged in a sapling behind him. MacArthur drew his .38 revolver and shot both guerrillas. Soon after his first brush with physical danger, MacArthur was assigned to accompany his father on an extended tour through Asia, where the General would review the military forces of eleven countries. The MacArthurs were treated like royalty and Douglas came away from the trip firmly convinced that America’s future – and his own – lay in Asia.
MacArthur contracted malaria in 1904 and was transferred to Manila and while there, passed his examination for First Lieutenant. Following assignments as an aide in Theodore Roosevelt’s White House and an engineering post in Milwaukee, MacArthur was assigned to the staff college at Leavenworth. When his father died in 1912, he was transferred to the War Department in Washington, so that he could care for his mother. While there he was taken under the wing of Chief of Staff Leonard Wood, a protégé of his father, and his career blossomed. In 1915 MacArthur was promoted to major and the following year became the Army’s first public relations officer, performing so well that he is largely credited with selling the American people on the Selective Service Act of 1917, as the country moved ever closer to joining the war in Europe. He was promoted to Colonel while on the general staff.
The First World War gave Douglas MacArthur his first real measure of fame. Quickly promoted to brigadier general, he helped lead the Rainbow Division – which he had helped create out of National Guard units before the war – through the thick of the fighting in France. Wounded twice on the battlefield, MacArthur became the most decorated American soldier of the war.
While his peers were demoted to their pre-war ranks, MacArthur kept his through a plum new assignment as Superintendent of West Point. MacArthur antagonized many of the old guard while dragging the stagnant Academy into the 20th Century, enabling it to produce officers fit to lead the country in the type of modern war he had just experienced first hand. He found time to get married to Louise Cromwell Brooks, a vivacious divorcee and heiress very different from her spit-and-polish second husband. A scandalous report detailing an affair by his wife with a minor during the war caused Chief of Staff John Pershing to ship MacArthur from West Point to a makeshift assignment in the Phillipines. While MacArthur was glad to be back in the islands, his wife, used to the glamorous society of cities like New York and Paris, was not at all pleased. Following their return to the states in 1925, the marriage continued to deteriorate and Louise MacArthur filed for divorce in 1928. MacArthur found solace back in the Philipines, where he took command of the Army’s Philippine Department.
MacArthur served as Army Chief of Staff from 1930 to 1935. He became Military Advisor to the Government of the Philippines charged with preparing the islands for full independence in 1946. He met and married Jean Marie Faircloth from Murfreesboro, Tennessee on his way back to Manila. MacArthur voluntarily retired from active duty with the Army at the end of 1937, with the permanent rank of Major General. For the next three years he was appointed by the Philippine government as Commander of the Commonwealth Army. On July 26, 1941 President Roosevelt returned him to active duty in the Philippines as Commander of the Far East Command. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 MacArthur was made Commander in Chief of all U.S. armed forces in the Far East, with the rank of full General. The Japanese invaded the Philippines with superior forces and drove MacArthur from Manila to the Bataan Peninsula, where his troops held off the enemy for two months. Shortly before the fall of Bataan, MacArthur, under orders from the President, departed for Australia and assumed the post of Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific, making that famous phrase, ‘I shall return’. Following numerous brilliant offensives by the Allied Forces, (mostly U.S.), such as the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, New Guinea and many others, MacArthur became a 5-star General. In October of 1944, the world watched the newsreels showing MacArthur dramatically wading ashore at Leyte, Philippines. (An aside, RW James Ross recounted to me that MacArthur, ever the PR showman, refused to allow the U.S. Navy put him ashore on dry land, but made them take him back out and then drop the ramp in about 18” of water, so the reels of film would show him wading ashore.)
Following multiple battles on islands, at sea and in the air, with continuous long range bombing by the U.S. Army Air Force, then President Truman authorized the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A refusal to surrender by the Japanese was answered by the second bomb on Nagasaki. One week later, Japan capitulated to an unconditional surrender. On September 2, 1945, MacArthur presided over the Japanese surrender on board the U.S.S. Missouri, bringing an end to World War II.
MacArthur may have made his greatest contribution to history during the next five and a half years, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, and de facto ruler in Japan. He introduced and instituted a democratic government, charted the course for the rebuilding of Japan and is probably the major reason for Japan’s becoming a major industrial power today. The U.S. response as victor in the war with Japan and Germany was unique. The treatment of the citizenry of both countries in a humane manner, without plundering the land was a landmark event. MacArthur to this day is revered in Japan.
In June, 1950, the sudden outbreak of the Korean War, caused President Truman to place MacArthur back on active duty as head of the United Nations Forces there. The North Koreans pushed the South Korean army and the American led United Nations forces to the extreme southern end of the peninsula, when MacArthur reversed the dire military situation with a brilliant amphibious assault behind the enemy lines at the Port of Inchon. The success of this campaign, followed by the pushing of the North Koreans up to the Chinese border, led to the ultimate downfall of this hero. The Chinese joined the North Koreans and pushed the Allied Forces back near to the prewar boundary of the 38th parallel. Months of both public and private bickering with the Truman administration over the handling of the Korean conflict and the refusal to allow attacks on the Chinese mainland, caused Truman to relieve General MacArthur of his duty and returned him to the U.S. The last great General of World War II came home to a hero’s welcome, but his public future was soon at an end.
MacArthur was Chairman of the Board of Remington Rand and it’s successor Sperry Rand Corporation until his demise on April 5, 1964.
Douglas MacArthur became a Freemason in an unconventional way, much as most of his lifetime activities occurred. He was made a ‘Mason at sight’ by Most Worshipful Samuel Hawthorne, Grand Master of Masons in the Philippines, on January 17, 1936, in the presence of over six hundred Master Masons, who watched in silence in a crowded hall. The Entered Apprentice degree was conferred by PGM Frederick H. Stevens presiding, immediately followed by the Fellowcraft degree conferred by PGM Francisco A. Delagado. M.W. Samuel Hawthorne then raised MacArthur to the sublime degree of Master Mason. MacArthur affiliated with Manila Lodge No. 1, and on March 13th, 1936, joined the Scottish Rite. On October 19, 1937, he was elected Knight Commander Court of Honor, and on December 8, 1947, was coroneted Honorary 33rd Degree at the American Embassy in Tokyo.
At age 62, Douglas MacArthur was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous leadership in the Philippines, making he and his father the only father/son recipients of the U.S. highest award.
Glenn Murray, PM
