Douglas MacArthur

January 26, 1880 – April 5, 1964

American general who was chief of staff of the U.S. Army (1930-1935), Allied commander in the Southwest Pacific in the Second World War and head of the occupation of Japan (1945-1951). He commanded United Nations forces in Korea until President Truman relieved him in 1951.

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Biography

Douglas MacArthur was born in 1880, the son of Medal of Honor recipient Arthur MacArthur Jr., and graduated first in his class from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1903. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor for a reconnaissance mission during the 1914 occupation of Veracruz, and on the Western Front in the First World War he rose to brigadier general and won many decorations. From 1919 to 1922 he was superintendent of West Point.

Posted to the Philippines, he helped put down the Philippine Scout Mutiny in 1924, and in 1930 he became chief of staff of the U.S. Army. In 1932 he took part in the controversial expulsion of the Bonus Army protesters from Washington, and he helped organise the Civilian Conservation Corps. From 1935 he was military adviser to the Commonwealth of the Philippines, staying on as a field marshal of the Philippine Army after retiring from the U.S. Army in 1937.

Recalled in 1941, he commanded U.S. forces in the Far East when Japan invaded the Philippines; in March 1942 he escaped to Australia and became Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, directing the New Guinea campaign and the return to the Philippines from October 1944. He accepted Japan's surrender and, as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, governed occupied Japan, overseeing war crimes trials, demilitarisation and democratisation. Leading the United Nations Command in Korea from 1950, he won early successes but suffered heavy defeats after China entered the war, and President Truman removed him in April 1951. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1964.