# Gen. Douglas MacArthur As Recipient of the Medal of Honor: Worthy or Not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 5, 2006, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108 "2006-02-05T16:52:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/41 "2013-01-22T15:53:24Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But MacArthur insisted on an invasion. He wanted to wade ashore on the beach and announce “I have returned.” > > 14000 Allied troops died so MacArthur could make that speech. This is my assessment of Mac. Whatever his strengths or weaknesses, bringing greater glory to MacArthur was his one true goal and he would do whatever it took to get there. When he said, “I shall return” it was a statement that he would bend all his considerable power to to making that happen, no matter the proper strategy was for ending the war. He had to recover his kingdom and his glory from his own mistakes. I don’t think Mac could have held the Philippines with the forces he had at the time but it isn’t like a Japanese attack was totally unexpected. The point of having such a large force there, and he did have a considerable army, was to resist aggression and Japan was clearly the likely attacker. We knew it was probably coming eventually. Mac just plan failed at his job, which was to be prepared for that attack. Giving him a medal of any kind after that was a mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/42 "2013-01-22T16:29:20Z")
I do think his historical status as a military genius may may be overblown, but his stewardship of occupied Japan is perhaps the greatest feat of American statecraft in the 20th Century. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/43 "2013-01-22T17:06:50Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I do think his historical status as a military genius may may be overblown, but his stewardship of occupied Japan is perhaps the greatest feat of American statecraft in the 20th Century. Yes, MacArthur does deserve credit for his good ideas. He did oversee the transformation of post-war Japan. He was one of the few major figures in the fifties who saw that Communism was not a monolith and argued that America should work on exploiting the rifts between the Soviet Union and other communist regimes like China, Yugoslavia, and North Korea. He also argued against American involvement in Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/44 "2013-01-22T17:23:39Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > This is a 7 year old zombie thread. Indeed. Notably, **David Simmons** , a knowledgeable and thoughtful poster, has since passed on. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > MacArthur also insisted on an invasion of the Philippines. If you look on a map you can see that the Philippines are not on the route between American bases and Japan. There was no strategic need to capture them. Well, hrm. They’re not in a line between the US and Japan, but the plans for Operation Downfall list the Philippines as a “staging area.” [See [lower left on this map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operation_Downfall_-_Map.jpg)]. But even before that, I’d call the Philippines strategically important in the general sense because they DO lie across the sea lanes between Japan and the oil-producing areas she had conquered and depended upon (especially Borneo and Cebu, IIRC). If one is anticipating a long war (as opposed to a very early invasion of Japan) there could be said to be strategic value in using the Philippines to inderdict the sea lanes. > [@the\_diego](#): > > But give me one general in the European theater who had his own navy and commanded a nuclear attack. I genuinely don’t know this…did MacArthur have anything to do with the atomic bombings? The [Wikipedia article on the atomic bombings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki) mentions Marshall directing the planning: > [@](#): > > General of the Army George Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the Army, asked Groves to nominate specific targets for bombing, subject to approval by himself and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. Groves formed a Target Committee in April 1945… The [509th Composite Group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/509th_Composite_Group) dropped the bombs; were they actually under Lemay or only nominally, while reporting back to [Leslie Groves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Groves)? I’m not sure who [Curtis LeMay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Lemay) reported to at the time. I guess it could have been MacArthur, but I’d be surprised. It was proposed to elevate MacArthur to five-star rank, and also to make him supreme commander of the invasion of Japan, but those things never quite materialized: [QUOTE=Wikipedia on Operation Downfall] **Planning** Responsibility for planning Operation Downfall fell to the U.S. commanders: Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Fleet Admirals Ernest King and William D. Leahy, and Generals of the Army George Marshall and Hap Arnold (the latter was commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces).[2] Douglas MacArthur at the time was also being considered for promotion to a special “super rank” of General of the Armies, so as to be granted operational authority over other five star officers.[3] However, the proposal to promote MacArthur was only at the level of informal discussion when World War II ended. At the time, the development of the atomic bomb was a very closely guarded secret (not even then Vice President Harry Truman knew of its existence until he later became President), known only to a few top officials outside the Manhattan Project and the initial planning for the invasion of Japan did not take its existence into consideration. Once the atomic bomb became available, General Marshall envisioned using it, if sufficient numbers could be produced in time, to support the invasion.[4] Throughout the Pacific War, the Allies were unable to agree on a single Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C). Allied command was divided into regions: by 1945, for example, Chester Nimitz was Allied C-in-C Pacific Ocean Areas, while Douglas MacArthur was Supreme Allied Commander, South West Pacific Area, and Admiral Louis Mountbatten was Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command. A unified command was deemed necessary for an invasion of Japan. Inter-service squabbling over who it should be (the US Navy wanted Nimitz, but the US Army wanted MacArthur) was so serious that it threatened to derail planning. Ultimately, the Navy partially conceded, and MacArthur was to have total command of all forces, if circumstances made it necessary.[5] [/QUOTE] The passage above makes it sound like MacArthur might not even have known about the bombs before they were used. Can anyone show supporting evidence MacArthur deserves some form of credit for “commanding a nuclear attack?” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2013, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/45 "2013-01-22T17:37:45Z")
No. By WWII the MOH was awarded for extraordinary physical bravery and combat achievements. By WWII Dugout Doug was long past this point. He in fact retreated from the Philippines (the right thing to do) alone leaving his army behind. Odd to award the MOH for that. I imagine that he put himself in for the award and his toadies in Congress got it through without much opposition as he was not wildly unpopular in Congress at the time. MacArthur’s ego, like Patton’s, was enormous. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/46 "2013-01-25T06:31:29Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > during the Civil War the hierarchy of medals was such that the Medal of Honor was often just given out for any acts of distinction. In retrospect a huge number of ACW Medals of Honor would not have been given out under the standards in place today. Said USCW hierarchy of medals being as follows: 1. Medal of Honor ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/47 "2013-01-25T10:05:56Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > I genuinely don’t know this…did MacArthur have anything to do with the atomic bombings? He did not. He even claimed that he was not even consulted. [Here](http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm) > [@](#): > > Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed.” He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor. > [@](#): > > The [509th Composite Group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/509th_Composite_Group) dropped the bombs; were they actually under Lemay or only nominally, while reporting back to [Leslie Groves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Groves)? > > I’m not sure who [Curtis LeMay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Lemay) reported to at the time. I guess it could have been MacArthur, but I’d be surprised. It was not. LeMay reported to Hap Arnold. This was done in 1944 to keep the the valuable B-29s from being hijacked by [del]terrorists[/del] theater commanders who would want to utilize them for their own purposes. As [outlined in Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_Bomber_Command): > [@](#): > > To avoid the risk that B-29s might be wasted on the battlefields when they would be much more useful against the Japanese home islands, the Joint Chiefs agreed in April 1944 to establish the Twentieth Air Force as a non-theater command controlled directly by the JCS, and approved Operation Matterhorn, a plan for bombing Japanese strategic targets with B–29s based in China. The B-29s would double as transports to carry their own fuel and cargo requirements over The Hump from India.[2] Acting as executive agent for the Joint Chiefs and with the approval of Roosevelt, Arnold named himself commander of the Twentieth Air Force. His Air Planner, Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell served as its chief of staff and the remainder of the Air Staff at Headquarters AAF performed duplicate duties as the staff of the Twentieth. Centralized control of the Superfortresses from Washington marked the recognition of the B-29 as a strategic weapon that transcended theaters and services.[1] > [@](#): > > Can anyone show supporting evidence MacArthur deserves some form of credit for “commanding a nuclear attack?” He was not, and should not have been credited. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/48 "2013-01-25T12:51:37Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > It was not. LeMay reported to Hap Arnold. This was done in 1944 to keep the the valuable B-29s from being hijacked by [del]terrorists[/del] theater commanders who would want to utilize them for their own purposes. As [outlined in Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_Bomber_Command) Blah. Poorly written. The independence of the XX Bomber Command was created in 1944. LeMay was assigned later. Jan or Feb 1045, IIRC. Correction: When LeMay was first assigned command, he reported directly to Arnold. Later, General Spaatz was command of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific based in Guam. The [order for the bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Handy_to_spaatz_1945.gif)was transmitted to Spaatz from Thomas T. Hardy, Acting Chief of Staff, in Marshall’s absence. Note that MacArthur and Nimitz were to be given a copy of the directive. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/49 "2013-01-25T15:25:43Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Well, hrm. They’re not in a line between the US and Japan, but the plans for Operation Downfall list the Philippines as a “staging area.” [See [lower left on this map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operation_Downfall_-_Map.jpg)]. > > But even before that, I’d call the Philippines strategically important in the general sense because they DO lie across the sea lanes between Japan and the oil-producing areas she had conquered and depended upon (especially Borneo and Cebu, IIRC). If one is anticipating a long war (as opposed to a very early invasion of Japan) there could be said to be strategic value in using the Philippines to inderdict the sea lanes. I’m not saying they were useless. I’m just saying the Philippines weren’t necessary and the resources used to liberate them would have been better used elsewhere. For example, you can see from the map you linked to that while Luzon was identified as a staging area for Downfall, there are other staging areas that are closer to Japan and therefore better than Luzon. And there are other areas which interdict the same sea lanes. So the goals that were accomplished by liberating the Philippines would have been just as accomplished if the Philippines hadn’t been liberated. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2013, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108/50 "2013-01-26T12:20:30Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m not saying they were useless. I’m just saying the Philippines weren’t necessary and the resources used to liberate them would have been better used elsewhere. > > For example, you can see from the map you linked to that while Luzon was identified as a staging area for Downfall, there are other staging areas that are closer to Japan and therefore better than Luzon. And there are other areas which interdict the same sea lanes. So the goals that were accomplished by liberating the Philippines would have been just as accomplished if the Philippines hadn’t been liberated. The accepted military doctrine accepted by the JCS and the theater commanders was that invading Japan needed to be done in stages from the outer defensive line to the inner. Obviously they did not need to conquer all of the outer and inner lines but they needed to create breaks somewhere. The question they asked was Formosa or the Philippines. Nimitz and King were pushing for Formosa, which would have been even much more bloody and it was felt that the US didn’t have the necessary manpower. Many historians agree with what **Dissonance** and I have said. That the Philippines was the better choice, but it was a waste to take the whole archipelago. Here’s [an article](http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=75)which agrees. > [@](#): > > In retrospect, although the Philippine Islands made more strategic sense than Taiwan, MacArthur’s campaign to clear every corner of the islands of its Japanese occupiers was rather wasteful in time and resources. Are you arguing that the entire military US leadership was wrong and there was yet another option? You’ve got a map. It’s a simple matter of geography. Where should they have gone instead? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gen-douglas-macarthur-as-recipient-of-the-medal-of-honor-worthy-or-not/343108.md?page=2)