The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur

by Perry, Mark

  The next evening, August 31, MacArthur was having dinner at the hotel when he was told that Jonathan Wainwright was in the lobby. Weeks before, in Washington, Marshall had sent out inquiries to American intelligence teams that had parachuted into prisoner of war camps in China to locate the general. They had found him, finally, at a camp in Sian, in Manchuria. At the direction of Secretary of War Stimson, Wainwright was brought to Mukden, where he was put aboard a C-47 bound for Chungking. When he arrived, a message awaited him from Marshall reaffirming the last message he had received on Corregidor: “Never has so much been done with so little. The nation will be forever grateful.” On August 30, Wainwright was flown from Chungking to Manila, where he was met by Sid Huff, MacArthur’s staff aide. “Why, General,” Huff said, “when you get back to the States, you’re going to be promoted to four-star general.” Wainwright was skeptical, believing he was disgraced and might be put on trial for surrendering his army.

  The next evening, Wainwright arrived in Tokyo and was driven to the New Grand Hotel where, pushing tentatively through the door to the dining room, he saw MacArthur headed toward him. Writing about this incident later, MacArthur said that the first thing he noticed was that Wainwright “was haggard and aged. His uniform hung in folds on his fleshless form. He walked with difficulty and with the help of a cane. His eyes were sunken and there were pits in his cheek. His hair was snow white and his skin looked like old shoe leather.” MacArthur suppressed his shock at Wainwright’s appearance, smiled broadly, and embraced him. Caught up with emotion, both men attempted to speak, but couldn’t. “Jim, Jim,” MacArthur finally said. He then escorted Wainwright across the dining room, and when they were seated for dinner, Wainwright gently questioned MacArthur on how he, Wainwright, was viewed by his old comrades. MacArthur was surprised by the question but then reassured him that he was thought of as a hero. What command would he like? MacArthur asked. “I want command of a corps,” Wainwright answered, “any one of your corps.” MacArthur smiled. “Why, Jim, you can have command of a corps with me any time you want it,” he said.

  On the morning of Sunday, September 2, MacArthur drove from the New Grand Hotel to the Yokohama Naval Base, where he was put aboard a launch for the USS Missouri, which lay anchored in Tokyo Bay. It was a bright and sunny morning, with only a few low gray clouds in the sky, and he noted the hundreds of American warships in the harbor. He had spent the previous days mapping out the surrender ceremonies, including a diagram designating where each of his fellow commanders would stand. MacArthur was brought aboard the Missouri, accompanied by Chester Nimitz, their sometimes fractious relationship of the last four years now forgotten. A short time after his arrival, and even as the rows of American and Allied generals and admirals were arranging themselves on the Missouri’s deck, a delegation of eleven Japanese officials, led by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, was brought aboard. The civilians in the Japanese delegation were dressed in formal attire, with top hats. MacArthur stood in front of the assembled American and Allied delegates as the Japanese lined up on the other side of a table set between them. There was no cheering; the sailors of the Missouri, dangling from every part of the ship, watched in silent awe. As MacArthur stepped to the microphone, he directed that Nimitz, Halsey, Wainwright, and British General Arthur Percival, who had surrendered his army at Singapore, stand in the first row behind him. Then he began: “We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate.”

  The Japanese watched MacArthur closely, with one of them later noting that his hands trembled, if only slightly. Around them, sailors, reporters, and photographers jostled for a better position to watch the ceremony as cameras on a scaffold clicked and whirred, recording the event. “They were all thronged, packed to suffocation, representatives, journalists, spectators, an assembly of brass, braid and brand,” a Japanese delegate later remembered. “There were a million eyes beating us in the million shafts of a rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire. I felt their keenness sink into my body with a sharp physical pain. Never have I realized that the glance of glaring eyes could hurt so much.” On a wall nearby were painted “several miniature Rising Suns” denoting the numbers of planes and ships shot down or sunk by the Missouri.

  MacArthur, his voice steady, went on: “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world founded upon faith and understanding—a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish—for freedom, tolerance and justice.” MacArthur had written the words himself, without help from his staff, and without reviewing them with anyone. He wanted to set a calm tone with simple sentences shorn of triumph. Now was not the time, he thought, to celebrate. It was, without question, his finest speech—and his finest moment.

  When he finished, Shigemitsu was directed to sign the terms of surrender, followed by General Yoshijiro Umezu, the chief of the general staff of the Imperial Japanese Army. At eight minutes past nine in the morning, MacArthur stepped forward, was seated, and signed the documents. As he affixed his signature, he stopped partway through and handed the pen to Wainwright. Continuing to finish his signature, he turned and gave a second pen to Percival. When he was finished, Chester Nimitz was seated and signed the document, followed by representatives of the Allied powers. The Japanese delegation looked on in silence. When this was completed, at 9:25 on a clear blue summer morning, MacArthur returned to the microphone. “Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always,” he said. “These proceedings are now closed.” And with those words, World War Two ended.

  Epilogue

  New York

  He crossed great rivers and mountain ranges.

  —Douglas MacArthur

  Great lives, fully lived, cast long shadows. If Douglas MacArthur had received the Japanese surrender and retired instead of continuing his career, he would be considered the greatest commander of World War Two. Instead, he served as America’s “shogun” in Japan and then led U.S. forces in the Korean War. He fought bitterly with Harry Truman and was relieved of his command. He returned to the United States to great acclaim, but his fight with Truman overshadowed what he had done in the war. He dabbled in politics (though without success) and, after failing to win the 1952 Republican nomination for president, moved with Jean and Arthur to New York City, where he lived in a set of suites at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Jean and her husband would be seen, from time to time, at the opera or taking in a baseball game.

  History has not treated MacArthur well. A recent, if informal, Internet poll listed him as America’s worst commander; Benedict Arnold was second. A popular television series on the war has Marines on Peleliu cursing MacArthur for expending their lives in seizing the island needlessly. He had nothing to do with the battle. Many are convinced that he rehearsed his landing at Leyte, reboarding his landing craft until the cameras got it right. That would be Patton—on Sicily. A Pentagon hallway is dedicated to MacArthur, but a recently retired senior army officer, who spent thirty years in uniform, admitted that he found him embarrassing. “What about Cartwheel?” he was asked. He had never heard of it. MacArthur’s detractors relay the story that his son Arthur renounced him and changed his name out of embarrassment. There’s not a shred of evidence to prove it. Douglas MacArthur is remembered, still, for his actions during the Bonus March, for his evacuation from Corregidor, and for his confrontation with Truman. A man of enormous physical courage, the term “Dugout Doug” has followed him through six decades.

  MacArthur’s lasting memorial is Operation Cartwheel, what is called “The Reduction of Rabaul” in the army’s official history of the Pacific War. Four decades before the U.S. Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act to
dampen interservice rivalry and institutionalize “jointness”—whereby all service branches work together—MacArthur coordinated the most successful air, land, and sea campaign in the history of warfare. And while he and Ernie King fought for control of the Pacific campaign, he came to believe that the army-navy competition in the Pacific was a major obstacle to an American victory. He articulated his most famous dictum—to never get involved in a land war in Asia—because he believed that Japan’s war in China made his Philippines victory possible. He never put his men ashore without seeking the views of amphibious commandeer Daniel Barbey, did so only when they were protected by Admiral Thomas Kinkaid’s ships, never fought a battle without the protection of General George Kenney’s bombers, praised Robert Eichelberger as one of the war’s great commanders, and told Walter Krueger that speed saved lives.

  MacArthur’s inability to identify and promote open-minded and selfless staff officers (with some noted exceptions) remains his most disturbing military quality. His chief of staff was autocratic, and his two most important intelligence officers were narrow-minded reactionaries appointed to defend his reputation. His command retained its reputation as a hotbed of paranoid anti-Roosevelt military operatives, a view that he fed. But his identification of combat commanders was faultless. Robert Eichelberger, George Kenney, Thomas Kinkaid, and Walter Krueger were never defeated. Many of their subordinates, while relatively unknown, were among the best soldiers, sailors, and airmen in U.S. history: Robert Beightler, Oscar Griswold, Ennis Whitehead, and Joseph Swing, among many others. Daniel Barbey was the best amphibious officer of the war. Jonathan Wainwright’s defense of Luzon in 1942 remains a monument to what an outnumbered but well-led army can do. Hugh Casey was the best engineer in any army, and Richard Marshall, MacArthur’s head of logistics, was brilliant and hardworking. The Southwest Pacific campaign could not have been won without them.

  MacArthur’s friend and nemesis, Franklin Roosevelt, is remembered as one of the great American presidents. Although he removed himself from the everyday planning of the war, his most important contribution to the U.S. victory was choosing George Marshall, Ernie King, Chester Nimitz, Hap Arnold, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur to lead the nation’s military. Franklin Roosevelt’s relationship with Douglas MacArthur defined the war in the Pacific. Roosevelt mistrusted MacArthur’s motives; MacArthur mistrusted Roosevelt’s politics. The standard explanation, propounded by a surprising number of historians, would have us believe that Roosevelt removed MacArthur to the Philippines to keep him out of the country, rescued him from Corregidor under political pressure, kept him undersupplied because he considered him a poor military leader, and only agreed to his return to Luzon for political reasons. None of this is true. Douglas MacArthur was not a good politician and never threatened Roosevelt’s hold on office. MacArthur was appointed commander in the Philippines by George Marshall, whereas MacArthur’s removal from Corregidor was first suggested by John Curtin.

  The decision to appoint MacArthur commander in the Southwest Pacific was made for sound military reasons. His command remained undersupplied because America had other priorities. The structure of the Pacific command, with divided service responsibilities, was maintained primarily because it reflected sound military strategy. A divided and feuding leadership impeded the war effort, but also impelled it. Roosevelt benefited from MacArthur’s victories, but the president endorsed the commander’s return to Luzon because MacArthur convinced him that the United States owed the Philippine people their freedom. In this MacArthur was right. MacArthur’s anti-imperial views remain among his finest qualities. Roosevelt shared them.

  In 1932, Roosevelt called MacArthur the most dangerous man in America and set out to tame him. In this he was successful. Then, in 1941, the president decided to make MacArthur useful. Roosevelt brought him back into uniform and agreed with Marshall that MacArthur should lead the U.S. offensive against Japan from Australia. And although Robert Eichelberger, Walter Krueger, Thomas Kinkaid, George Kenney, and Daniel Barbey helped to make him victorious, it was MacArthur himself who authored their victories. In the end, what MacArthur wrote of Genghis Khan could be written of him: “He crossed great rivers and mountain ranges, he reduced walled cities in his path and swept onward to destroy nations and pulverize whole civilizations. On the battlefield his troops maneuvered so swiftly and skillfully and struck with such devastating speed that times without number they defeated armies overwhelmingly superior to themselves.”

  Daniel Barbey replaced Thomas Kinkaid as Seventh Fleet commander after Japan’s surrender. He retired as a vice admiral in 1951, published a memoir of his Pacific service, and died in Bremerton, Washington, in 1969.

  Sir Thomas Blamey was on the USS Missouri during the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo Bay. He was promoted to field marshal in 1950, but died of a stroke in 1951. He was Australia’s greatest soldier. Three hundred thousand of his countrymen lined the streets of Melbourne to honor him during his funeral.

  Lewis Brereton served in a number of combat positions in World War Two. He remains a controversial figure. Brereton wrote The Brereton Diaries after the fact, to exonerate his actions on December 8. He died of a heart attack in July 1967.

  Robert Eichelberger spent three years in Japan overseeing the occupation, retiring in 1948. He was angered that he was never given enough credit for his wartime service. His book, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo, and a volume of letters he wrote to his wife provide invaluable insights into his service. He was promoted to general in 1954 and died in North Carolina in 1961.

  Oscar Griswold, a brilliant soldier, remains unknown to the public. He held a number of senior commands following the war, after which he retired to Colorado, where he died in 1959.

  William Halsey retired in 1947, served on corporate boards, and died in New York City in 1959.

  Masaharu Homma surrendered to American authorities in Japan and was extradited to Manila, where he was tried for atrocities committed by his men during the Bataan Death March. He was convicted and executed by firing squad outside Manila in 1946.

  Harold Ickes served as secretary of the interior for all of Roosevelt’s time as president, resigning after questioning Harry Truman’s appointment of Edwin Pauley as secretary of the navy. Ickes accused Pauley of dishonesty, citing a conversation he, Ickes, had had with him; Truman suggested that Ickes’s memory must be faulty. When Ickes resigned, Truman gave him three days to vacate his office. Ickes worked as a syndicated columnist and died in 1952.

  George Kenney served as the first commander of the Strategic Air Command and fought for the creation of an independent air force. George Kenney Reports is perhaps the finest memoir published by any MacArthur lieutenant. Kenney was an outspoken and fiery advocate of air power. He died in Florida in 1977.

  Ernest King served as an advisor to the secretary of the navy but suffered a debilitating stroke in 1947. He died, of a heart attack, in Maine in 1956.

  Thomas Kinkaid retired in April 1950 but remained close to MacArthur. He was active in bringing MacArthur’s former commanders together for a series of reunions, held each year on MacArthur’s birthday. He died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland in November 1972.

  Walter Krueger took up residence in Tokyo and—after the Sixth Army was deactivated in early 1946—returned to the United States. He retired, saw his wife through a long illness, and wrote a book about his campaigns—the invaluable From Down Under to Nippon. He had a difficult time: His son was dismissed from the army, and his daughter suffered from mental instability. He died in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in August 1967.

  Arthur MacArthur became an accomplished musician and took up residence in New York City, but after his father’s dismissal by Harry Truman, he received death threats and changed his name. Repeated attempts to contact and interview Arthur MacArthur by numerous reporters over the years have been rebuffed.

  Jean Faircloth MacArthur accompanied her husband to New York during his retirement, raised funds for the Metropolitan
Opera, and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. She died in New York City, much mourned, at the age of 101 in 2000.

  Richard Marshall lived a life of great usefulness. He retired in 1946 and became superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, where he expanded the endowment, enlarged the corps of cadets, and added to its curriculum. He died in 1973.

  Chester Nimitz succeeded Ernie King as chief of naval operations and served as a regent of the University of California. He suffered a stroke in 1965 and died in California in 1966.

  Richard Sutherland returned to the United States, and to his wife, immediately after Japan surrendered and retired. Soon thereafter, his wife discovered a stack of letters he had written to Elaine Clarke in Melbourne. She was enraged, but she and her husband were reconciled. He met MacArthur only once after the war, and the two had a civil but frigid talk. They were no longer friends. Sutherland died at Walter Reed Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., in June 1966.

  Jonathan Wainwright received his fourth star, was awarded the Medal of Honor, and battled alcoholism. When it was rumored that MacArthur would run for president in 1948, Wainwright volunteered to make the nominating speech. He died of a stroke in San Antonio, Texas, in 1953.

  Ennis Whitehead headed up the Continental Air Command. He retired in 1951, disappointed that he had not received a fourth star. He died in Kansas in 1964.

  Courtney Whitney served with MacArthur in Japan, wrote the first draft of the Japanese constitution, accompanied MacArthur during his command in Korea, was promoted to major general, and retired from the army. An unreconstructed reactionary, he died in March 1969.

  Charles Willoughby served with MacArthur in Japan and Korea, where his intelligence estimates came under harsh criticism. He headed up an army intelligence unit affiliated with the CIA, was promoted to major general, retired from the service, and became an advisor to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. He helped conservative businessman H. L. Hunt establish the International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture. He died in October 1972.