I have no recollection of viewing the 1977 produced film on the life of General Douglas MacArthur before although I would be surprised if I have not. I was aware of many of the main points of his life and remember the Film “I shall Return” or something similar which chronicled his second World War campaign to regain the Philippines.
The film commences in 1942 before the battle of Battle of Bataan to 1952 when the President removed him from office.
Douglas was born in 1880 so was 60 by the time of the Bataan campaign. His father was then an army captain who went onto become a Lieutenant General having already won the Congressional Medal of Honour for his actions during the Civil War. Douglas was therefore raised within military settings in the old west saying he could ride and shoot before reading and writing! He attended military schools and then the West Texas Military Academy where he played football as a quarterback and baseball.
After two failures he was admitted to the US Military Academy at West Point. Along with several other mothers, his own moved into a hotel adjacent to the academy in order to try and help her son through the initiation practice in which new recruits were subjected to harassment, tyrannical abuse, shameful, insulting and humiliation behaviour and although MacArthur played down his own experience when questioned others testified his treatment had been particular severe. The matter was raised in Congress after one recruit subsequently died and there was an attempted reform.
He survived and graduated first in his 93 person class alongside Ulysses S Grant and commissioned as was the custom at the time in the Army Corp of Engineers in June 1903. He first posting was to the Philippines and became a first Lieutenant after taking the examination in Manila in 1904. After contracting malaria he was reassigned as chief engineer of the Pacific. In 1905 he had the good fortune(?) to become an aide to his father inspecting Japanese military bases in Japan (including Nagasaki) and those at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Java, Singapore, Calcutta. Madras and Karachi before going to China and Canton and Peking on a tour which lasted the greater part of the year. This will have given him a unique experience and made a lasting impression. He was then given an assignment in Washington where he was asked to participate in White House functions by President Theodore Roosevelt.
His first command of men came at Fort Leavenworth and this brought him experience of working Panama. Following the death of his father and his mother also requiring care he returned to Washington as a member of the Office of the Chief of Staff. It was after being sent as headquarters’ staff on a Presidential authorised occupation of Veracruz that MacArthur experienced direct combat after going in search of train engines and being attacked by groups on three occasions which outnumbered his expedition party. He narrowly escaped being wounded or killed also directly killed some of his attackers. Thus the legend that this was no armchair soldier was established. As permission for the expedition had not been requested there was an inquiry and despite its success and his heroics no award was made. MacArthur was not a rule book soldier but only when circumstances dictated.
On return he was in effect appointed the Army’s first Press officer at the office of the Secretary of War. MacArthur supported Secretary Baker’s view that the National Guard should be deployed and to avoid appearing to favour one State against another, MacArthur suggested bringing together units from all the states and thus the 42nd Division became nicknamed the Rainbow Division. He became Chief of Staff, and a Colonel in the Infantry. He entered France with the Division in 1917 and established himself as wearing unconventional clothing and in effect breaking military regulations about uniform. MacArthur participated with the French in a raid which captured German soldiers as a consequence of which he was awarded the Croix de guerre, the first award to a USA serviceman and a Silver Star. Although strict about his men wearing gas masks he did not follow this requirement and was gassed but recovered in time to Show Secretary Baker the situation a week later. MacArthur led various engagements and expeditions gaining five more Silver Stars, a second Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur. He was gassed for the second time. It was after these exploits that he was wounded but not severely during a foray to establish that there was a gap in the German defences. He was a warded a second Distinguished service Cross and a seventh Silver Star before returning tot he USA in 1919.
His reward was to be appointed Superintendent of West Point and retained the rank of Brigadier General. He was the youngest man appointed for 100 years. His task was to modernise the training fit for purpose post World War I, an imaginative and brave decision by his superiors given his combination of passionate commitment and original thinking and behaviour. His approach was reintroduce four year training to provide a rounded human being with a strict code of honour supervised by student representatives. Many of his reforms were opposed by the generals and discarded when he moved on although subsequently reintroduced over time.
It was not until 1922 that MacArthur married, a socialite said to have also had the attention of General Pershing and which explained the decision to then outpost MacArthur as a District Military Commander in the Philippines. His work was successful and in 1925 he became the youngest Major General, returning to the United States. This proved an unhappy period with difficult assignments which he did not like and his marriage ending in divorce. He returned to Manila for another period. He returned to the USA to become a full General at the time of the economic depression and MacArthur fought to restrict the loss of officers to 10000 from 12000 following his appointment as Chief of Staff. Controversy continued following the decision to break up a camp of Veteran Protestors in Washington at the request of the civil authorities. During this time he is known to have taken a mistress.
By this time MacArthur had become the best known USA serviceman and any statement was given national and international publicity including his criticism of USA isolationism and of pacifism, His tour as Chief of Staff continued as Chief of Staff until 1935 when the Philippines was granted semi independent status and the new President who had known MacArthur over the previous 35 years since his father had been Governor General asked the President to let MacArthur supervise the creation of a Philippine army for him. This was agreed. Among his staff was General Dwight D Eisenhower. His mother and sister in law also accompanied. His mother’s health deteriorated and she died in Manila two years latter. The army was established from scratch via conscription, was inadequately funded and supplied with out of date weaponry, mainly by the USA.
On the journey to Manila he established a new relationship with an unmarried socialite. They married two years later and had a son. The official assignment completed he retired from army and made his home in Manila continuing to advise the new President. Without knowing this background there is much in the film which is not explained.
In 1941 MacArthur was recalled to active service and made army commander of USA forces in the Far East. His time had come. Plans were put in place to strengthen the army in Manila and to reequip and then there was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The contingency was to retreat from Manila but MacArthur resisted until the odds against his forces became too great and he decamped to an off shore island and to Bataan. MacArthur was ordered to take his command to Australia and is reported to have considered resigning and taking command of the forces in the Philippines. This was not just from loyalty and admiration to the people. He and his colleagues had received substantial secret payments from the Philippine Government for their previous services, but known to the USA administration. He made the promise I shall return which Washington requested to be amended to We shall return. He ignored the request although in the film used the order to ensure that the commitment was honoured.
MacArthur was able to convince the Joint Chief of Staff that in the pacific they should not approach victory by attempting to capture island by island with great loss of life and prolonging the war. He opted for well planned and organised major offensives on key targets even though this meant having Japanese forces left in surrounding areas. The first operation was in New Guinea.
In July 1944 the President met MacArthur and his Joint Chiefs in Hawaii to determine the next phase of the defeat of Japan. Unbeknown to MacArthur or the Vice President, the President was planning the use of the Atomic Bomb on mainland Japan and he and the Joint Chiefs were in favour of a military campaign which limited casualties and avoiding the retaking of the Philippines. MacArthur consider this a betrayal of his and the USA President’s promise and proposed two actions, condensed to one in the film. MacArthur watched the first operation offshore and then landed in the afternoon when the advance had not progressed far with snipers still active. He had to wade ashore and made a moving recorded speech relayed to the forces and then back home. The campaign was not as successful as MacArthur and the media reported after he had declared that only a mopping up operation remained to clear the area of the Japanese some 27000 were killed with others wounded and captured.
Over a quarter of million Japanese troops guarded the central island and the capital. The battle was bloody with many civilians dying and wounded in the cross fire MacArthur who had made the capital his permanent home lost his library of 8000 military books.
His next assignment was the invasion of Japan but this was cut short following the dropping of the two atomic weapons and the Japanese surrender. He accompanied by representatives of all the allied forces, including Russia who had only recently joined the war against Japan accepted the surrender on the USS Missouri which the film covered in detail. This brought to an end World War 2 and it is not clear if Douglas made the speech as stated in the film.
MacArthur then became supreme allied commander of forces with absolute power resisting attempts to create a Russian Zone and insisting on a radical programme of democratic modernization. This in my view is his greatest and lasting achievement and should not be forgotten. He made land reform a key issue, the enfranchisement of women and the development of Trade Unions. Understandably the wealthy and powerful in Japan resisted as did elements in the USA who saw this as creeping communism although much of what he insisted on were components of the Presidential led New Deal against the Depression. MacArthur remained in Japan until 1951 having transferred power in 1949 to the civilian government.
He was responsible for the War Crimes Tribunals in the Far East and for confirming sentences including executions. He protected those involved in bacterial research because they handed over their research based on human experimentation. He also protected the Emperor and his family, in the film on the basis that to have removed the official head of state would have prevented the progress which was made.
In the film MacArthur is also reported to have sided with the Japanese over their decision not to re-establish military forces and to have argued strongly that the Atomic Bomb and the slaughter of the World War ought to prevent further conflicts being settle this way. After the War the Korean peninsular had been divided between the Soviets and the USA to maintained forces until 1948 an 1949 when these were withdrawn leaving only military advises. 60 years ago North Korea invaded the South and the UN authorised the US to assist the South. At first the USA established a greater force that the Koreans with the object of containment and reestablishment of the agreed boundary. In the film MacArthur is portrayed as seeking to push further and retake the peninsular and then China intervened saying this was unacceptable. China at this point was thought to only have a small force trained and available and to be under equipped. In fact they had secretly being building up forces but well away from the action with fooled MacArthur and the High Command. The reputation of Douglas has soared again following the successful battle of Incheon. Because of this success the President agreed to the request to go over the 39 parallel and China commenced to flood in their forces with the threat of involving Russia and a third World War. The allied leaders decided to call for a peace settlement rather than continue the MacArthur plan.
He campaigned against any compromise and eventually a letter was read into the record by a Congressman and therefore relayed to the media showing what MacArthur had in mind. He wanted total military war against Communism. The joint Chiefs supporting MacArthur drew up plans to attack airbases in China. The President felt he had no alternative but to remove MacArthur, who returned to live in the Unites States although the war continued until July1953. The conflict between the North and South is as strong as ever as recent events have shown with the regime in the North the last anti capitalist totality in the world.
This was the first time their 13 year old son visited his home country. The film ends with extracts from his address to Congress and begins with a lecture at West Point in which he looks back. He had been given the biggest ticker tape welcome ever in New York and seriously considered running for President, but it was, as he said one of his former clerks, albeit a good one, General Eisenhower who proved successful in becoming President. It is said Eisenhower agreed to the suggestion of Douglas to threaten to use nuclear weapons to end the war.
He was given a well paid job with the Remington Rand Corporation and he and his wife occupied a penthouse suit at the Waldorf Astoria for ten years Becoming ill he commenced a journey of goodbye, travelling to the White House and the Philippines and for an award at West Point. He died in 1964 and is buried in a special memorial in Norfolk Virginia. 34 years later his wife was also buried there. She remained at the Waldorf for that time.
He was decorated 100 times and it says something of the man that all were accepted by him proudly. There is no doubt that he was a courageous soldier who enjoyed being the centre of attention but throughout he was consistent in his undivided loyalty to the USA and to the Military service, that he genuinely wanted and achieved improvements service conditions and public recognition for service men and women. He was totally opposed to totalitarianism although he enjoyed being a dictator when opportunity arose and that he had a healthy and an unhealthy distrust of transient politicians preferring to put his faith in the USA constitution and the rule of law. In this respect I partly share in his distrust of politicians and belief that the Rule of Law is more important that much of what goes under the name of democracy. However where I part company is his belief that the alternative is the supremacy of the generals, especially Generals like him who always need an understanding sympathetic but firm control by someone they can respect.
As for the film it is excellent in conveying the key events during the period covered and Gregory Peck is also excellent as the General. It will remain of interest to military students and historians and those in the peace movement.
The film commences in 1942 before the battle of Battle of Bataan to 1952 when the President removed him from office.
Douglas was born in 1880 so was 60 by the time of the Bataan campaign. His father was then an army captain who went onto become a Lieutenant General having already won the Congressional Medal of Honour for his actions during the Civil War. Douglas was therefore raised within military settings in the old west saying he could ride and shoot before reading and writing! He attended military schools and then the West Texas Military Academy where he played football as a quarterback and baseball.
After two failures he was admitted to the US Military Academy at West Point. Along with several other mothers, his own moved into a hotel adjacent to the academy in order to try and help her son through the initiation practice in which new recruits were subjected to harassment, tyrannical abuse, shameful, insulting and humiliation behaviour and although MacArthur played down his own experience when questioned others testified his treatment had been particular severe. The matter was raised in Congress after one recruit subsequently died and there was an attempted reform.
He survived and graduated first in his 93 person class alongside Ulysses S Grant and commissioned as was the custom at the time in the Army Corp of Engineers in June 1903. He first posting was to the Philippines and became a first Lieutenant after taking the examination in Manila in 1904. After contracting malaria he was reassigned as chief engineer of the Pacific. In 1905 he had the good fortune(?) to become an aide to his father inspecting Japanese military bases in Japan (including Nagasaki) and those at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Java, Singapore, Calcutta. Madras and Karachi before going to China and Canton and Peking on a tour which lasted the greater part of the year. This will have given him a unique experience and made a lasting impression. He was then given an assignment in Washington where he was asked to participate in White House functions by President Theodore Roosevelt.
His first command of men came at Fort Leavenworth and this brought him experience of working Panama. Following the death of his father and his mother also requiring care he returned to Washington as a member of the Office of the Chief of Staff. It was after being sent as headquarters’ staff on a Presidential authorised occupation of Veracruz that MacArthur experienced direct combat after going in search of train engines and being attacked by groups on three occasions which outnumbered his expedition party. He narrowly escaped being wounded or killed also directly killed some of his attackers. Thus the legend that this was no armchair soldier was established. As permission for the expedition had not been requested there was an inquiry and despite its success and his heroics no award was made. MacArthur was not a rule book soldier but only when circumstances dictated.
On return he was in effect appointed the Army’s first Press officer at the office of the Secretary of War. MacArthur supported Secretary Baker’s view that the National Guard should be deployed and to avoid appearing to favour one State against another, MacArthur suggested bringing together units from all the states and thus the 42nd Division became nicknamed the Rainbow Division. He became Chief of Staff, and a Colonel in the Infantry. He entered France with the Division in 1917 and established himself as wearing unconventional clothing and in effect breaking military regulations about uniform. MacArthur participated with the French in a raid which captured German soldiers as a consequence of which he was awarded the Croix de guerre, the first award to a USA serviceman and a Silver Star. Although strict about his men wearing gas masks he did not follow this requirement and was gassed but recovered in time to Show Secretary Baker the situation a week later. MacArthur led various engagements and expeditions gaining five more Silver Stars, a second Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur. He was gassed for the second time. It was after these exploits that he was wounded but not severely during a foray to establish that there was a gap in the German defences. He was a warded a second Distinguished service Cross and a seventh Silver Star before returning tot he USA in 1919.
His reward was to be appointed Superintendent of West Point and retained the rank of Brigadier General. He was the youngest man appointed for 100 years. His task was to modernise the training fit for purpose post World War I, an imaginative and brave decision by his superiors given his combination of passionate commitment and original thinking and behaviour. His approach was reintroduce four year training to provide a rounded human being with a strict code of honour supervised by student representatives. Many of his reforms were opposed by the generals and discarded when he moved on although subsequently reintroduced over time.
It was not until 1922 that MacArthur married, a socialite said to have also had the attention of General Pershing and which explained the decision to then outpost MacArthur as a District Military Commander in the Philippines. His work was successful and in 1925 he became the youngest Major General, returning to the United States. This proved an unhappy period with difficult assignments which he did not like and his marriage ending in divorce. He returned to Manila for another period. He returned to the USA to become a full General at the time of the economic depression and MacArthur fought to restrict the loss of officers to 10000 from 12000 following his appointment as Chief of Staff. Controversy continued following the decision to break up a camp of Veteran Protestors in Washington at the request of the civil authorities. During this time he is known to have taken a mistress.
By this time MacArthur had become the best known USA serviceman and any statement was given national and international publicity including his criticism of USA isolationism and of pacifism, His tour as Chief of Staff continued as Chief of Staff until 1935 when the Philippines was granted semi independent status and the new President who had known MacArthur over the previous 35 years since his father had been Governor General asked the President to let MacArthur supervise the creation of a Philippine army for him. This was agreed. Among his staff was General Dwight D Eisenhower. His mother and sister in law also accompanied. His mother’s health deteriorated and she died in Manila two years latter. The army was established from scratch via conscription, was inadequately funded and supplied with out of date weaponry, mainly by the USA.
On the journey to Manila he established a new relationship with an unmarried socialite. They married two years later and had a son. The official assignment completed he retired from army and made his home in Manila continuing to advise the new President. Without knowing this background there is much in the film which is not explained.
In 1941 MacArthur was recalled to active service and made army commander of USA forces in the Far East. His time had come. Plans were put in place to strengthen the army in Manila and to reequip and then there was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The contingency was to retreat from Manila but MacArthur resisted until the odds against his forces became too great and he decamped to an off shore island and to Bataan. MacArthur was ordered to take his command to Australia and is reported to have considered resigning and taking command of the forces in the Philippines. This was not just from loyalty and admiration to the people. He and his colleagues had received substantial secret payments from the Philippine Government for their previous services, but known to the USA administration. He made the promise I shall return which Washington requested to be amended to We shall return. He ignored the request although in the film used the order to ensure that the commitment was honoured.
MacArthur was able to convince the Joint Chief of Staff that in the pacific they should not approach victory by attempting to capture island by island with great loss of life and prolonging the war. He opted for well planned and organised major offensives on key targets even though this meant having Japanese forces left in surrounding areas. The first operation was in New Guinea.
In July 1944 the President met MacArthur and his Joint Chiefs in Hawaii to determine the next phase of the defeat of Japan. Unbeknown to MacArthur or the Vice President, the President was planning the use of the Atomic Bomb on mainland Japan and he and the Joint Chiefs were in favour of a military campaign which limited casualties and avoiding the retaking of the Philippines. MacArthur consider this a betrayal of his and the USA President’s promise and proposed two actions, condensed to one in the film. MacArthur watched the first operation offshore and then landed in the afternoon when the advance had not progressed far with snipers still active. He had to wade ashore and made a moving recorded speech relayed to the forces and then back home. The campaign was not as successful as MacArthur and the media reported after he had declared that only a mopping up operation remained to clear the area of the Japanese some 27000 were killed with others wounded and captured.
Over a quarter of million Japanese troops guarded the central island and the capital. The battle was bloody with many civilians dying and wounded in the cross fire MacArthur who had made the capital his permanent home lost his library of 8000 military books.
His next assignment was the invasion of Japan but this was cut short following the dropping of the two atomic weapons and the Japanese surrender. He accompanied by representatives of all the allied forces, including Russia who had only recently joined the war against Japan accepted the surrender on the USS Missouri which the film covered in detail. This brought to an end World War 2 and it is not clear if Douglas made the speech as stated in the film.
MacArthur then became supreme allied commander of forces with absolute power resisting attempts to create a Russian Zone and insisting on a radical programme of democratic modernization. This in my view is his greatest and lasting achievement and should not be forgotten. He made land reform a key issue, the enfranchisement of women and the development of Trade Unions. Understandably the wealthy and powerful in Japan resisted as did elements in the USA who saw this as creeping communism although much of what he insisted on were components of the Presidential led New Deal against the Depression. MacArthur remained in Japan until 1951 having transferred power in 1949 to the civilian government.
He was responsible for the War Crimes Tribunals in the Far East and for confirming sentences including executions. He protected those involved in bacterial research because they handed over their research based on human experimentation. He also protected the Emperor and his family, in the film on the basis that to have removed the official head of state would have prevented the progress which was made.
In the film MacArthur is also reported to have sided with the Japanese over their decision not to re-establish military forces and to have argued strongly that the Atomic Bomb and the slaughter of the World War ought to prevent further conflicts being settle this way. After the War the Korean peninsular had been divided between the Soviets and the USA to maintained forces until 1948 an 1949 when these were withdrawn leaving only military advises. 60 years ago North Korea invaded the South and the UN authorised the US to assist the South. At first the USA established a greater force that the Koreans with the object of containment and reestablishment of the agreed boundary. In the film MacArthur is portrayed as seeking to push further and retake the peninsular and then China intervened saying this was unacceptable. China at this point was thought to only have a small force trained and available and to be under equipped. In fact they had secretly being building up forces but well away from the action with fooled MacArthur and the High Command. The reputation of Douglas has soared again following the successful battle of Incheon. Because of this success the President agreed to the request to go over the 39 parallel and China commenced to flood in their forces with the threat of involving Russia and a third World War. The allied leaders decided to call for a peace settlement rather than continue the MacArthur plan.
He campaigned against any compromise and eventually a letter was read into the record by a Congressman and therefore relayed to the media showing what MacArthur had in mind. He wanted total military war against Communism. The joint Chiefs supporting MacArthur drew up plans to attack airbases in China. The President felt he had no alternative but to remove MacArthur, who returned to live in the Unites States although the war continued until July1953. The conflict between the North and South is as strong as ever as recent events have shown with the regime in the North the last anti capitalist totality in the world.
This was the first time their 13 year old son visited his home country. The film ends with extracts from his address to Congress and begins with a lecture at West Point in which he looks back. He had been given the biggest ticker tape welcome ever in New York and seriously considered running for President, but it was, as he said one of his former clerks, albeit a good one, General Eisenhower who proved successful in becoming President. It is said Eisenhower agreed to the suggestion of Douglas to threaten to use nuclear weapons to end the war.
He was given a well paid job with the Remington Rand Corporation and he and his wife occupied a penthouse suit at the Waldorf Astoria for ten years Becoming ill he commenced a journey of goodbye, travelling to the White House and the Philippines and for an award at West Point. He died in 1964 and is buried in a special memorial in Norfolk Virginia. 34 years later his wife was also buried there. She remained at the Waldorf for that time.
He was decorated 100 times and it says something of the man that all were accepted by him proudly. There is no doubt that he was a courageous soldier who enjoyed being the centre of attention but throughout he was consistent in his undivided loyalty to the USA and to the Military service, that he genuinely wanted and achieved improvements service conditions and public recognition for service men and women. He was totally opposed to totalitarianism although he enjoyed being a dictator when opportunity arose and that he had a healthy and an unhealthy distrust of transient politicians preferring to put his faith in the USA constitution and the rule of law. In this respect I partly share in his distrust of politicians and belief that the Rule of Law is more important that much of what goes under the name of democracy. However where I part company is his belief that the alternative is the supremacy of the generals, especially Generals like him who always need an understanding sympathetic but firm control by someone they can respect.
As for the film it is excellent in conveying the key events during the period covered and Gregory Peck is also excellent as the General. It will remain of interest to military students and historians and those in the peace movement.
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