Douglas MacArthur Film Notes

Further information: Korean War

MacArthur observes the naval shelling of Incheon from USS Mount McKinley, September 15, 1950 with Brigadier General Courtney Whitney (left) and Major General Edward M. Almond (right).

On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War.^[227] The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 82, which authorized a United Nations (UN) force to help South Korea. The Soviet Union failed to exercise its veto, as its delegates were boycotting sessions at the time.^[228] The UN empowered the American government to select a commander of the UN forces, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously recommended MacArthur.^[229] He therefore became Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command, while remaining SCAP in Japan and Commander of the USAFFE. MacArthur's headquarters was located in the Dai Ichi Life Insurance Building in Tokyo, from which he and his successors directed operations in Korea.^[230] Rhee placed all South Korean forces under MacArthur's command. As they retreated before the North Korean onslaught, MacArthur received permission to commit U.S. ground forces on July 1. All the first units to arrive could do was trade men and ground for time, falling back to the Pusan Perimeter. Lieutenant General Walton Walker established his Eighth Army headquarters at Taegu and assumed control of the perimeter.^[231]

By the end of August, the crisis was subsiding. North Korean attacks on the perimeter had tapered off. While the North Korean force numbered 88,000 troops, Walker's forces now numbered 180,000, and he had more tanks and artillery pieces.^[232] In 1949, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, had predicted that "large scale combined amphibious operations... will never occur again," but by July 1950, MacArthur was planning just such an operation.^[233] Meeting in Tokyo with Generals J. Lawton Collins and Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. and Admirals Forrest Sherman and Arthur W. Radford, MacArthur compared his plan with that of General James Wolfe at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and brushed aside the problems of tides, hydrography and terrain.^[234] In September, despite lingering concerns from superiors, MacArthur's soldiers and marines made a successful landing at Incheon, deep behind North Korean lines. Launched with naval and close air support, the landing outflanked the North Koreans, recaptured Seoul and forced them to retreat northward in disarray.^[235] Visiting the battlefield on September 17, MacArthur surveyed six T-34 tanks that had been knocked out by Marines, ignoring sniper fire around him, except to note that the North Korean marksmen were poorly trained.^[236]

On September 11, President Harry Truman issued orders for an advance beyond the 38th parallel into North Korea. In the wake of the victory at Incheon, the first South Korean troops advanced across the 38th parallel on October 1. MacArthur now planned another amphibious assault, on Wonsan on the east coast, but it fell to South Korean troops before the 1st Marine Division could reach it by ship. On September 25, the Chinese foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, issued warnings via India's ambassador to the People's Republic of China, Kavalam Madhava Panikkar, that an advance to the Yalu would force China into the war. In early October, troops of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) had begun crossing into North Korea.^[237] In October, MacArthur met with Truman on Wake Island, where the president awarded MacArthur his fifth Distinguished Service Medal.^[238] Briefly questioned about the Chinese threat by President Truman, MacArthur dismissed it, saying that he hoped to be able to withdraw the Eighth Army to Japan by Christmas, and to release the 2nd Infantry Division for service in Europe in January. He regarded the possibility of Russian intervention as a more serious threat.^[239]

A month later, things had changed. MacArthur flew to Walker's headquarters on November 24. He later wrote:

For five hours I toured the front lines. In talking to a group of officers I told them of General Bradley's desire and hope to have two divisions home by Christmas... What I had seen at the front line worried me greatly. The R.O.K. troops were not yet in good shape, and the entire line was deplorably weak in numbers. If the Chinese were actually in heavy force, I decided I would withdraw our troops and abandon any attempt to move north. I decided to reconoiter and try to see with my own eyes, and interpret with my own long experience what was going on...^[240]

MacArthur flew over the front line himself in his C-54 but saw no signs of a Chinese build up. He therefore decided to wait on ordering an advance or withdrawal. He was, however, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and honorary combat pilot's wings.^[240]

Walker's Eighth Army was attacked by the Chinese on November 25, 1950. Soon the UN forces were in retreat. MacArthur provided Collins with a series of nine successive withdrawal lines.^[241] On December 23, Walker was killed when his jeep collided with a truck. He was replaced by Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, an officer Collins and MacArthur had selected in case of such an eventuality.^[242] Ridgway noted that MacArthur's "prestige, which had gained an extraordinary luster after Incheon, was badly tarnished. His credibility suffered in the unforeseen outcome of the November offensive..."^[243]

Dismissal

Main article: Dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur

The Eighth Army pressed north again in February, inflicting heavy casualties and recapturing Seoul in March 1951. Allied leaders had to once more consider whether they wanted MacArthur to invade North Korea or seek a peace. On March 24, MacArthur called on China to admit that it had been defeated, simultaneously challenging both the Chinese and his own superiors. Then on April 5, Representative Joseph William Martin, Jr., the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, revealed a letter from MacArthur critical of President Truman's limited-war strategy, providing copies of it to the press and reading it aloud on the floor of the House.^[244] The letter concluded with:

It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe’s war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words; that if we lose the war to communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable, win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you pointed out, we must win. There is no substitute for victory.^[245]

That day too, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drafted orders for MacArthur authorizing him to attack airbases in Manchuria and Shantung with nuclear weapons if Chinese air strikes originated from there.^[246] The next day, April 6, Truman summoned Secretary of Defense George Marshall, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Omar Bradley, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Averill Harriman to discuss what to do about MacArthur. The two generals were opposed to the idea of MacArthur's relief but Acheson was strongly in favor. The Joint Chiefs met on April 8 and agreed that MacArthur was not guilty of insubordination and had stretched but not violated any orders.^[247] The Joint Chiefs concurred with but did not recommend MacArthur's relief, although they felt that it was correct "from a purely military point of view."^[248] The next day Truman ordered MacArthur's relief by Ridgway. The order went out on April 10 with Bradley's signature. The relief led to a storm of controversy.^[249] The fighting would go on until ended by the Armistice Agreement in July 1953.^[250]

Later life

MacArthur flew to Washington, D.C., with his family via Hawaii. It was his and Jean's first visit to the continental United States since 1937, the visit during which they had been married; Arthur IV, now aged 13, had never been to the United States.^[251] MacArthur made his last official appearance in a farewell address to the U.S. Congress. This address, "one of the most impressive and divisive oratorical performances of recent American times", was interrupted by fifty ovations.^[252] MacArthur ended the address saying:

I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.

Douglas MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia. The statue is a duplicate of the one at West Point. The base houses a time capsule which contains various MacArthur, Norfolk and MacArthur Foundation memorabilia.^[254]

MacArthur encountered massive public adulation, which aroused expectations that he would run for the presidency as a Republican in the 1952 election. However, a U.S. Senate Committee investigation of his removal, chaired by Democrat Richard Russell, largely vindicated the actions taken by President Truman, and contributed to a marked cooling of the public mood.^[255] Henry Luce, the publisher of Time Magazine and a staunch supporter of MacArthur, wanted to make MacArthur Time’s Man of the Year for 1951, but was talked out of it by his editors.^[256]

MacArthur repeatedly stated he had no political aspirations. In the 1952 Republican presidential nomination contest, he was not a candidate and endorsed Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Rumors were rife that Taft offered the vice presidential nomination to MacArthur. Taft did persuade MacArthur to be the keynote speaker at the 1952 Republican National Convention. The speech was not well received. Taft lost the nomination to Eisenhower, and MacArthur was silent during the campaign, which Eisenhower won by a landslide.^[257] Once elected, Eisenhower consulted with MacArthur and adopted his suggestion of threatening the use of nuclear weapons to end the war in Korea.^[258]

MacArthur and Jean spent the last years of their life together in the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.^[259] MacArthur was elected Chairman of the Board of Remington Rand, a corporation which had annual sales of over $1.1 billion in 1961. In that year he earned a salary of $68,000, in addition to $20,000 pay and allowances as a General of the Army.^[260] The Waldorf became the setting for an annual birthday party on January 26, thrown by the general's former deputy chief engineer, Major General Leif J. Sverdrup. At the 1960 celebration for MacArthur's 80th, many of his friends were startled by the general's obviously deteriorating health. The next day he collapsed and was rushed into surgery at St. Luke's Hospital to control a severely swollen prostate.^[261]

After his recovery, MacArthur methodically began to carry out the closing acts of his life. He visited the White House for a final reunion with Eisenhower. In 1961 he made a "sentimental journey" to the Philippines, where he was decorated by President Carlos P. Garcia with the Philippine Legion of Honor, rank of Chief Commander. MacArthur also accepted a $900,000 advance from Henry Luce for the rights to his memoirs, and began writing the volume that would eventually be published as Reminiscences.^[261] Sections began to appear in serialized form in Life magazine in the months just prior to his death.^[262]

President John F. Kennedy solicited MacArthur's counsel in 1961. The first of two meetings was held shortly after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. MacArthur was extremely critical of the Pentagon and its military advice to Kennedy. He also cautioned the young President to avoid a U.S. military build-up in Vietnam, pointing out that domestic problems should be given a much greater priority.^[263] Shortly before his death, he gave similar advice to the new President, Lyndon Johnson.^[264]

In 1962 West Point honored the increasingly frail MacArthur with the Sylvanus Thayer Award for outstanding service to the nation, which had gone to Eisenhower the year before. MacArthur's speech to the cadets in accepting the award had as its theme Duty, Honor, Country:

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell."^[265]

MacArthur died at Walter Reed Army Hospital on April 5, 1964, of biliary cirrhosis.^[266] President Kennedy had authorized a state funeral, and President Johnson confirmed the directive when he ordered that General MacArthur be buried "with all the honor a grateful nation can bestow on a departed hero."^[267] On April 7 General MacArthur's body was moved to the 7th Regiment Armory, where it lay in the Clark Room throughout the day. A relief of the guard of honor was posted. Later in the morning Jean and the family group arrived at the armory for a private interfaith memorial service.^[268] The body was taken on a funeral train carrying the President to Union Station and then was transported by a funeral procession to the Capitol,^[269] where it lay in state. An estimated 150,000 people filed by the bier.^[270] On April 11 the body was taken to Washington National Airport and flown to Naval Station Norfolk. It was finally laid to rest in the rotunda of The MacArthur Memorial.^[271]

In 1960 the mayor of Norfolk, Virginia had proposed using funds raised by public contribution to remodel the old Norfolk courthouse as a memorial to General MacArthur and as a repository for his papers, decorations, and mementos he had accepted. Although he had no other ties with the state, his mother was a Virginian, born in Norfolk. Restored and remodeled, the building contains nine museum galleries whose contents reflect the general's fifty years of military service. At the heart of the memorial is a rotunda. In its center lies a sunken circular crypt with two marble sarcophagi, one for General MacArthur, the other for Jean, who continued to live in the Waldorf Towers until her own death in 2000.^[272][273]

Honors and awards

Main article: Service summary of Douglas MacArthur

For a more comprehensive list, see Places named for Douglas MacArthur

During his lifetime MacArthur earned over 100 military decorations from the United States and other countries including the Medal of Honor, the French Légion d'honneur and Croix de guerre, the Order of the Crown of Italy, the Order of Orange-Nassau from the Netherlands, Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath from Australia^[274] and the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, Grand Cordon from Japan.^[275]