Nine years later, in the critical moments immediately after Pearl Harbor, for reasons that have never been adequately explained, MacArthur kept his fleet of planes in the Philippines clustered wingtip to wingtip on the tarmac for hours , providing an astonishingly convenient target for the Japanese aerial attack that any other commander would have seen coming. A few months later, he escaped to Australia, leaving his beleaguered forces on Bataan and Corregidor to suffer and die.
True, President Roosevelt ordered him to leave, but the better part of honor would have told him to countermand that order and stick with his command, no matter what. The last American holdouts on Bataan, starving for food and ammunition, had no choice but to surrender, in what became the largest capitulation in American history unless one counts Appomattox. Later, during the American island-hopping campaign across the Pacific, the U. But in a late reversal, MacArthur decided to bypass Mindanao in favor of Leyte, thus obviating the need for the Peleliu runway.
By that point, however, the Marines were committed to fight at Peleliu, and while MacArthur moved on, the Navy commanders stubbornly and stupidly stuck with the plan. Peleliu proved one of the costliest engagements of the Pacific war, yet the battle should never have happened.
The island could have been avoided altogether. In September , during the Korean War, MacArthur is rightly credited for the Inchon invasion—the monumental amphibious landing he led there was an enormously risky but spectacularly successful undertaking.
However, when approaching Seoul a few days later, MacArthur ordered his forces to unleash a hellish bombardment of the capital. It was thus imperative, he insisted, that the capital be reclaimed exactly three months after the start of the war. Meeting this seemingly arbitrary deadline, he said, would strike a devastating blow in the hearts and psyches of the enemy.
That many thousands of South Korean civilians would be maimed and killed by the wholesale shelling of the capital did not seem to bother him. And indeed many thousands were killed. After capturing Seoul and advancing to the 38th Parallel, MacArthur sniffed a far bigger prize. Why not keep on going? Why not seize Pyongyang? What a triumph this would be, what a blow against Communism, against Stalin, against totalitarian regimes everywhere.
If MacArthur could pull it off, it would be the crowning moment of his career. So, inevitably, the mission crept. Here was a classic case of hubris and overreach: Having achieved a tremendous victory with the Inchon landing, MacArthur felt invincible. He ordered his men to race headlong for the Yalu. The war would be over by Christmas, he said, and everyone could go home.
How did MacArthur blunder so badly? MacArthur returned to the States and retired from the Army. Subsequently, he gave an unprecedented speech to a joint session of Congress in which he made his famous statement that "old soldiers never die, they just fade away.
Skip to main content. You are here Home » Biographies. Douglas MacArthur. Birth Location:. Birth Date:. Death Location:. Death Date:. During this time he was promoted to brigadier general of the Army and also married his first wife, Louise Cromwell Brooks. For the rest of the s, MacArthur again held various military posts and also headed the American Olympic Committee. He divorced Louise in In , MacArthur was promoted to general and selected as the Army chief of staff.
Over the next few years his efforts were primarily devoted to maintaining a military that, like the rest of the country, was crippled by the Great Depression.
He also spoke frequently of what he considered to be the increasingly serious threat of Communism, both in the United States and abroad. In , President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose MacArthur as his military adviser to the Philippines and sent him there to establish a defensive military force. MacArthur married his second wife, Jean Faircloth, in , and the following year she gave birth to a son, Arthur. In July , MacArthur was recalled to active duty and became commander of U. In , at the end of the war, President Harry S.
Truman appointed MacArthur supreme Allied commander. MacArthur was placed in charge of the formal surrender of Tokyo, and for the next six years, he remained in Japan to command the occupation forces there and to oversee the rebuilding of the country. When the North Korean army invaded South Korea in , MacArthur was placed in command of the newly created United Nations forces and quickly drove back the attack.
However, he failed to anticipate impending attacks by Chinese forces and was soon forced to retreat. In the aftermath of this defeat, MacArthur was vocal about his belief that the war should be expanded to include China, despite warnings from President Truman that he should keep his opinions to himself. The American public welcomed him back as a hero, but Truman continued to be openly critical of his actions.
He was also considered as a potential Republican presidential candidate, though none of these exploratory campaigns ever developed further. In , MacArthur met with Dwight Eisenhower, who had just been elected president, and advised him on how to end the Korean War.
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