Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  It would enable him to complete the work his father had set out to do, namely, to bring about the freedom of the Philippine Islands; it would reunite him with Quezon and people that, unlike those he worked with in Washington, he could count on as real friends. Above all, taking on the job would allow him to remain in the army; he would be going out in the newly created post of military advisor. Instead of his departure as chief of staff marking his retirement, it would just be the springboard to something even more interesting.

  Besides, he was fifty-five and a bachelor with no family ties except his mother. If anyone was entitled to start his life over in a new job in a familiar setting thousands of miles away from Washington, it was Douglas MacArthur.

  After the meeting he sat down and wrote a letter to Quezon.

  “The great work involved as your Military Advisor seems to me to transcend in ultimate importance anything else that is conceivable. I am prepared to devote the rest of my life if necessary to securing a proper defense for the Philippine Nation.”42

  The next stage was breaking the news to Roosevelt and Secretary of War Dern. Perhaps to his surprise, they were enthusiastic—maybe because they would finally have him far, far away from Washington. He wrote to Quezon, “As a consequence I am making definite plans to close my tour as Chief of Staff about June 10 and leave for the islands immediately thereafter.”

  But nothing was easy with Roosevelt. Instead of smoothing the way for MacArthur’s transition, Roosevelt announced he was keeping the general on as chief of staff until October. Then when the pair were having lunch at Hyde Park in September, Roosevelt unveiled his new offer. He wanted to appoint MacArthur as the United States’ first high commissioner to the Philippines, once the commonwealth was established and the old post of governor-general was abolished.

  For MacArthur, the offer was breathtakingly tempting. It was an opportunity like no other to oversee the Philippines’ transition to full self-government; to leave his personal stamp on the democratic experiment unfolding there; and to be the first U.S. senior official defining a new relationship between the United States and the Philippines. But when he returned to Fort Myer, the army’s top lawyers warned him that if he took the job he would have to retire from the army. MacArthur wrote a sad note to Roosevelt, saying he was “somewhat dismayed and nonplused” at this development; unless the law was changed to allow him to remain on the active list, he would have to turn the high commissioner post down.43

  The post of military advisor, on the other hand, kept him very much in the army, with the added bonus that he could continue to draw his army pay ($7,500 a year) in addition to what he negotiated with Quezon, which in the end came to $18,000 annual salary and $15,000 for expenses—more than double his present salary.

  In addition, as historian Geoffrey Perret has revealed, MacArthur had an additional deal to receive a percentage of Philippine defense spending up to 1942 as a performance bonus, once the defense plan was approved by the commonwealth government—which, with his friend Quezon at the helm, was virtually guaranteed. By then the 46/100 of one percent could add up to a quarter of a million dollars—a tidy retirement nest egg.44

  All of it was not only shrewd business and entirely legal, but it met the approval of the army’s adjutant general—as did any changes in compensation and emolument that MacArthur cared to make in his position later. MacArthur would be going to the Philippines with extraordinary carte blanche, not just to make whatever defense plans he deemed necessary but to make him independently wealthy in the process.

  —

  On September 18 his appointment as military advisor to the Philippines was announced. That same day MacArthur learned that Quezon had been elected president, as expected. He sent his friend a telegram of warm congratulations, and then turned his attention to deciding what, and who, would be going with him on his latest adventure.

  One who was going was his mother. She was now eighty-three, and most doctors would have said her heart wouldn’t be able to stand the strain of living in the Philippines. But Pinky was more than game. The sea voyage and the warmth of Manila would do her good, she insisted; Douglas shouldn’t miss out on this wonderful opportunity out of concern for her.45 Besides, nothing would have killed her quicker than saying goodbye to her son, with no hope of ever seeing him again.

  MacArthur, however, was not going to let her travel alone. He asked her doctor, Major Howard Hutter of the Medical Corps, if he would accompany them to the Philippines not just as his mother’s doctor but as MacArthur’s medical advisor on dealing with sanitation and health issues for the new Philippine Army. Hutter enthusiastically said yes.

  Then there was Major Dwight Eisenhower, whom MacArthur asked to join him as his chief of staff. Their relationship was something of a puzzle. Born to dirt-poor Mennonite pacifist parents in Kansas, Eisenhower had gone to West Point largely as a way to pay for a college education. Once there, however, “Ike” had proved to be an able soldier and graduated at the top of his class at the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth. He was a gifted administrator—one reason MacArthur liked him—and was also a gifted writer. He had written General Pershing’s memoirs, and most of the official American Battlefields and Monuments guides published accounts of the AEF’s combat operations, which had given him an intimate knowledge of the war he hadn’t gone to fight, the Rainbow Division’s war included.46

  Ike was a rising star in the army bureaucracy, who understood the power of pushing paper effectively—and attaching oneself to a powerful patron like MacArthur. “Ike got so he could write more like MacArthur talked than the General himself,” one General Staff officer remembered.47

  MacArthur, in fact, had been so impressed by Eisenhower’s work on the 1931 Annual Report to the War Department that he put a special commendation into the major’s personnel file, and sent a copy to Ike, which his wife, Mamie, had framed.48

  Privately, Eisenhower’s opinion of MacArthur was more mixed. His affair with “Dimples” Cooper and his personal vanity (MacArthur could spend hours examining himself in the mirror) disturbed him. He also believed MacArthur’s complacency and arrogance had led him to make crucial mistakes during the Bonus Army fiasco. But when MacArthur called, he was happy to go, and for the next four years they would be in the closest contact MacArthur ever had with any officer.

  He allowed Ike to bring an aide. This was Ike’s West Point classmate Major James “Jimmy” Ord, who would prove to be a popular officer not just with Americans but with the Filipinos as well. MacArthur’s own personal aide, Captain Tom Davis, and Arthur MacArthur’s widow, Mary, who came along as female company for Pinky on the long voyage, rounded out their little band.

  Then came the final ceremonies for his departure as chief of staff: an Oak Leaf Cluster was added to his Distinguished Service Medal, and the Reserve Officers Association issued him a special citation. The veterans of the Rainbow Division asked him to give the keynote address at their annual convention, which MacArthur delivered to rousing cheers and a standing ovation. The Bonus Army shame, it seemed, was finally behind him.

  As one reporter for the Washington Herald put it, “Brilliant and magnetic General Douglas MacArthur is going out as Chief of Staff in a blaze of splendid glory.”49

  —

  Media hype aside, how good a chief of staff had MacArthur been?

  Certainly he had overseen some major changes in the administration of the U.S. Army, ones that experts and historians agree were crucial for the future. They included creating a four-army system for mobilization, divided into nine corps areas around the country, that streamlined the mobilization process. He had built up the Army Reserves and the ROTC, as well as opening the General Staff College at Leavenworth to lieutenants. He also turned the Army War College into a lively place for serious thinking about tactics and strategy.

  In addition, he had overseen the launching of three weapons that would become iconic arms of the U.S. armed forces in World War Two.

  The first wa
s the M-1 Garand rifle. MacArthur was its crucial champion in the search for a weapon to replace the .03 Springfield bolt-action rifle. He personally selected the M-1’s .30 caliber and had told the president that outfitting the army with a new rifle would put thousands of workers back on the job with a ripple effect throughout the economy, as well as give American soldiers their first semiautomatic weapon. Once in service, the M-1 Garand would become the indispensable rifle for his troops in the New Guinea and Philippines campaigns, as well as in Europe and the central Pacific. If there was one weapon that gave American soldiers and marines the extra edge in World War Two, it was the M-1—and they owed it to MacArthur’s foresight and determination.

  The second was the B-17 bomber, which was under contract with the Army Air Corps beginning in 1935 and which came into service in 1937. The third was the 105 mm howitzer, which would support army formations in every campaign from North Africa to the Philippines. MacArthur also put into production the army’s first light and medium tanks—ancestors of the Grant and Sherman that would be the key combat vehicles of British as well as American armored formations throughout the Second World War. In addition, he had given the army’s medals and ribbons an overhaul and set up the standard system we see on soldiers’ chests today, and revived the Purple Heart as the ultimate tribute for wounds received in combat.50

  But perhaps his most generous action was saving General Pershing’s pension. As part of its mania for economizing, Congress had proposed that no retired officer’s pay exceed $2,400 a year, which would mean that Pershing’s special pension of $21,000, granted when he retired as general of the armies, would be slashed to the bone. MacArthur headed for Capitol Hill—“he could turn his attention on a House committee like a searchlight,” Robert Eichelberger remembered—to testify against the bill. He did this by comparing Pershing’s retirement with what his British counterpart, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, received upon his retirement. That had included a life trust of $9,000 a year plus a $1 million trust fund yielding $30,000 a year that was perpetual for his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

  Congress got the message; it dropped the bill. Pershing, who was now seventy-two years old and ill, sent MacArthur a message. “Please allow me to send you my warmest congratulations upon the way you have succeeded in overcoming opposition in Congress to the Army. I think you have much to be thankful for, as we all have. And may I also express my appreciation for the way you have defended the Retired List and especially your reference to me.”51 In a single afternoon MacArthur had laid an old grudge, and old ghosts, to rest.

  In the end, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that MacArthur had saved the United States Army from dwindling to impotence, in a time when the majority of Americans didn’t think about their military, or care. He had also saved Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential legacy, by giving him an army that could respond to the sudden challenge of war in December 1941. In that sense, MacArthur was correct when he said, looking back on his service as chief of staff, “we formed the central character of the U.S. Army in World War Two.”52

  Yet the character of the president he had served eluded him. “You are the best general,” Roosevelt once told him, “but the worst politician”—evidently thinking of the Bonus Army mess. And although they were ideological opposites, MacArthur had spent many hours in the White House discussing domestic policy as well as foreign policy. He tells us in his memoirs that he finally asked Roosevelt why he kept asking his advice on domestic issues when he seemed to pay no attention to MacArthur’s views on what he knew best, the military.

  “Douglas,” the president said, “I don’t bring these questions up for your advice but for your reaction. To me, you are the symbol of the conscience of the American people.” If Roosevelt had meant to say “conservatism” instead of “conscience,” he was probably right.53

  When they met for the last time before MacArthur left, MacArthur told friends, Roosevelt’s mood was grave. He thanked him for his work both for the country and for Roosevelt himself. Then as MacArthur rose to leave, the president looked up with considerable emotion.

  “Douglas, if war should suddenly come, don’t wait for orders to return home. Grab the first transportation you can find. I want you to command my armies.”54

  It may have been a typical Roosevelt throwaway line, signifying nothing. Or he may have meant it. With the exception of Pershing, MacArthur was America’s greatest living soldier and also the most admired—and Pershing would not be coming back to command anything. If there was a supreme commander that any president, Democratic or Republican, would turn to in time of war, it was Douglas MacArthur.

  When they next met that war would be in full swing—and MacArthur would be locked with Roosevelt in a battle of wills that would determine the difference between victory and defeat.

  * * *

  *1 One was Lieutenant Colonel George Marshall, who was put in charge of nineteen CCC camps in the IV Corps Area and tens of thousands of young men from Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. “I’ll be out to see you soon,” he told one of his officers. “If I find you doing something, I will help you, but if I find you doing nothing, only God will help you.”

  *2 MacArthur’s defense of Foulois turned the general into an unqualified fan. “MacArthur was the kind of man you either deeply respected or hated with a passion,” he wrote many years later. “I not only respected him. I believed him to be possessed of almost godlike qualities.”

  CHAPTER 12

  MISSION TO MANILA

  The power that rules the Pacific rules the world.

  —SENATOR ALBERT BEVERIDGE, 1900

  One bright day in the summer of 1935, thirty-seven-year-old Jean Faircloth was having breakfast in her aunt’s house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She was unmarried, and living with her aunt Myrie, who worked at the local telephone company. It was a relaxed, easygoing existence but also rather dull—especially after the places Jean had seen.

  She was gazing out the window, wondering what she could do with herself for another unexciting day in Murfreesboro, when her aunt looked up from the breakfast table and said: “Why don’t you go back to the Far East, Jean? You loved it so much.”1

  Those were magic words, ones that would set her niece on a journey unlike any either of them imagined.

  Jean Faircloth was a stars-and-bars kind of Southern girl, born in Nashville and raised in nearby Murfreesboro after her father, a prominent banker, and her mother divorced. Barely five feet two and weighing less than one hundred pounds, she was lithe and lively, with bright eyes and a wide, infectious smile—and a taste for adventure.

  For some time after the divorce she and her mother had lived in Murfreesboro with her grandparents—the grandfather was a Confederate veteran—from whom she learned strict rules about behavior and deportment, and imbibed a deep patriotism and a love for the military. “If you want to win Jean Marie,” local boys were told, “you better get a uniform.”2

  Then after graduating from Soule College in Murfreesboro, Jean got an unexpected break. Her father, with whom she had grown close, died and left her a substantial fortune. She used it to travel around the world with one of her half brothers; then on a South American cruise with her half sister; and finally in 1926 on a voyage to the Orient and the Philippines, where she wandered the streets of Manila before heading back to Honolulu and San Francisco.

  She returned to small-town life in Murfreesboro and endured it for nine years before her aunt made her inspired suggestion. Jean immediately arranged to buy tickets on the SS Hoover for Manila and back. She intended to be away for six weeks. Instead, the trip would change her life.

  While waiting to board their ship in San Francisco, Jean and her friend spotted a large entourage on the dock with a veritable mountain of trunks and suitcases in tow. They were led by a tall, distinguished-looking man with dark hair and a tiny, frail woman dressed all in black and using a cane. Another young woman, with dark hair, followed close behind.

  Jean a
sked someone who they were.

  “He’s General Douglas MacArthur,” she was informed. “He’s traveling with his mother out to the Philippines.”3

  Jean had heard his name in Manila on her last trip—he was already well known to Filipinos and Americans out there—and then learned he was bound for Manila to assume a new post, as military advisor to the new president. She subsequently discovered that the younger woman was not the general’s wife but his brother Arthur’s widow, Mary MacArthur (Arthur, Douglas’s beloved older brother, had died suddenly of appendicitis in December 1923).

  On leaving San Francisco Jean saw the distinguished-looking general rarely, and his mother never. She had retired to her cabin for virtually the entire duration of the voyage. Night after night Jean and her friend sat at the captain’s table, enjoying the food and conversation, but Douglas sat at his own table with his sister-in-law and a group of serious men who looked military in spite of their civilian attire.

  One of the other guests on board was former Boston mayor James Curley, who was bound for Honolulu. The night before they docked, the captain suggested that the ladies attend a party for Curley in the captain’s quarters. As she and her friend entered the sitting room, they spotted two men in white tuxedos whom they had never seen before. As they stopped to chat, she realized to her shock that she was talking to MacArthur, and that the other man in a white tux was his aide, Major Ord.

  They did not talk long before MacArthur excused himself and left early. “Typical general,” Jean thought.4

  But the next day after going ashore in Honolulu, she returned to her stateroom to find a large basket of flowers. Inside was a note: “with the compliments of Douglas MacArthur.”

  From that point on, for the next two weeks they met frequently, usually for breakfast. MacArthur’s formal reserve was what she had grown up with and expected; she had no trouble detecting the considerable charm, even humor, underneath. She was even delighted to learn that his father had been the great Union Army hero at Missionary Ridge; her grandfather, she told MacArthur, had been one of the Confederate officers holding down the ridge. There was a moment of surprised laughter, and then the conversation deepened.