I don’t slight him for not being in the front lines during WWII. He was a general, in an Army everyone has their purpose and their job to do, if you try to do someone else’s job to the detriment of your own, that’s not good for the war effort.
If medics all decided, “Screw this bandaging crap, we’re all gonna be infantrymen” no one would be around to tend to the wounded and many more would die than otherwise. And likewise if there were no quartermasters the army would starve, if there were no ground crew the planes would never fly and etc.
Likewise, if the overall commanders of a theatre decided to charge a pillbox and get shot up, you instantly have a leadership vacuum. It’s not the job of the generals to be in the front lines anymore than it’s the job of a private to plan overall strategy.
However the Medal of Honor was originally supposed to be for acts of bravery in the face of the enemy. At one time it was only awarded to enlisted men but it was later expanded to include officers as well. Which definitely makes sense because a junior officer is going to be in the thick of things just as much (and sometimes more) than the men he commands.
However adept or even “courageous” a general’s orders may be, he didn’t do something “above and beyond the call of duty” while in a combat situation. And that’s what I think the MoH should be reserved for, and I’m in opposition to any MoH given in other circumstances and especially to MoH’s given to senior officers miles away from the battle.
He couldn’t have prevented the loss, true. But he certainly could have made the Japs fight way harder to take them. See Sailboats post.
His worst blunder was STILL being caught by suprise even after he was told about Pearly Harbor.
That post appears to criticize MacAurthur solely on the basis on one book by one person. As to mistakes made in the Philippines on the day of the attacks, as I understand it MacAurthur wasn’t in command of US forces there at that time. He was a military advisor to the Philippine government. As to mistakes made after he was placed in command, it seems that he might have been afflicted with the same mindset as the whole US Army command at that time and should be criticized for that if the facts are as reported. However, the entire US military command structure from Gens. Marshall and Arnold, Adm. King et al on down had to undergo a rigorous retraining and re thinking at the beginning of our entry into WWII.
MacAurthur was clearly egotistical and tended to grab glory, but so was Patton and he is lionized by many of those who criticize MacAurthur.
My readings of the campaign in the Pacific is that MacAurthurs’ island hopping strategy which cut off many Japanese forces leaving them stranded was quite an economical way to conduct a war with limited forces. In a theater that covered thousands of square miles, it’s hard to see how the theater commander can be criticized for being at some distance from the action. Eisenhower’s headquarters were closer to the action than that mainly because Europe is small and the combat area was quite restricted.
I would agree that unless MacAurthur’s CMH was for distinguished action against the enemy it was probably unjustified. However, I don’t see how it can be justifyably argued that MacAurthur wasn’t an extremely able and at times brilliant miltary strategist.
The award of the Medal of Honor is ALWAYS about politics… there are many other medals that could be awarded for the same acts…
There are many more Navy Crosses than Medals of Honor given out for ‘jumping on grenades’… any more Dist. Air Crosses given out than Medals of Honor for saving your air crew…
The Medal of Honor is meant as the ultimate PR… you give it to MAKE a statement… not to honor a man (yes it is a HUGE honor… and YES 99% of all Medal of Honor winners are heros… but then so are many Navy Cross recipents, as well as other medals…)
The loss of the Philippines and so many troops was just another horrible piece of news for the U.S., coming so soon on the heels of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. So FDR ordered MacArthur to leave via PT boat, despite Mac’s “protests” that he ought to be allowed to remain to carry on the fight. I will concede that Mac won his WWI medals fair and square, but he was not the same man in 1941 that he was in 1918. Giving him the Medal of Honor specifically for his WWII service was almost all about politics.
And later, notwithstanding the brilliance of the Inchon landing, his challenge to President Truman’s authority as CINC was unconscionable.
David, let me reiterate that I may be approaching the subject from bias, as I stated above. And clearly opinion is only opinion. That said, I think the General’s reputation simplay has to be inflated beyond his actual performance.
Don’t dismiss Eagle Against the Sun too readily. Spector’s book is hardly the only book to touch on the subject, just one of the most highly regarded. Have you read it?
Please don’t assume I lionize Patton either.
I would agree that at times MacArthur was a daring (is that different from “brilliant”?) strategist – particularly at Inchon, which I admire. My argument is that not many of those times occurred during World War II, where his generalship ran from farcical (issuing “fight harder” orders from 700 miles behind the front) to blindly aggressive to outright negligent.
I have to take with a grain of salt any purportedly serious argument containing the phrase “Europe is small”.
Regarding the island hopping strategy, I agree it was smart. Where I might differ is in the assumption that it was primarily MacArthur’s contribution. As far as I can recall, practically everybody recognized that leaving isolated garrisons behind to “wither on the vine” was the right thing to do; the question was which ones did we have to attack.
Nimitz directed one prong of the American offensive across the cetral Pacific while Mac did the southwestern prong (Australia to Philippines. Citing the aforementioned Eagle Against the Sun and John Keegan’s The Second World War, some historians believe this two-pronged strategy was a weakness, exposing divided American forces to the risk of defeat in detail. In the accounts I read, it seemed that most of the real reason for the two-pronged plan’s existence was MacArthur’s ego (sometimes described in coded terms, such as “MacArthur’s reputation precluded his serving under Nimitz,” “his stature merited important independent command,” or some such).
What I have read on the subject leads me to believe that although it might have been expecting too much to assume MacArthur could have “won” the Philippine invasion and turned back the Japanese – their tide was running strong – it is not too much to expect that he could have listened rto subordinates who implored him to release the aircraft after news of Pearl. Furthermore, the Japanese did not always, everywhere outnumber the American/Filpino forces, nor were they always better equipped. The American B-17 bomber force on the islands was formidable, and the submarine arm was the largest concentration of submarines
in any one place in the world – and the newer American boats (everything built after the “S” boats, in short) were superior types. Analyses I’ve read of the invasion credit dynamic Japanese leadership as instrumental in seizing the “fingers” areas and outflanking the Americans.
And the “lack of equipment” problems the Americans suffered were partly caused by MacArthur’s pre-positioning decisions.
Clearly this is both hindsight and to a degree armchair generalship, and opinions may differ.
I’d never know much about the details of the Japanese attack on the Philippines, coming on 8 Dec 1941 (the 8th because the Philippines are east of the international date line). Then I read a book by historian John Costello called “Days of Infamy” and I was was positively shocked by the lassitude MacArthur exhibited, and and the lax atmosphere of his headquarters exhibited, even after getting confirmation of the Pearl Harbor attack. Japan was able to basically destroy on the ground almost the entire Far East Air Force (FEAF), some 10 hours AFTER the Pearl Harbor raid. In the event of war with Japan, MacArthur was supposed to dispatch his bombers to Formosa to try and catch the Japanese air units stationed there. Not only did he NOT give approval for any raid (despite repeated requests by FEAF commander Gen Louis Brereton or Heavy Bomber commander Col Eugene Eubank), but he didn’t even authorize increased reconnaissance of the sea approaches to Luzon, where a Japanese army of invasion steamed. Japan’s air units stationed on Formosa even had to delay for several hours their takeoffs, due to heavy fog, yet they STILL managed to catch MacArthur’s FEAF napping, literally shooting most of it up on the ground at Clark Field, just as the Japanese had done at Hickam Field, 10 hours earlier. This forum is not the place to go into all the detail of Mr. Costello’s work, but I would urge everyone to read it. There was simply no excuse for MacArthur’s strange and dilatory behavior. If the U.S. hadn’t been in such a dark time, facing multiple disasters, that we needed “heroes”, then I’ll bet MacArthur would have faced a Board of Inquiry for his negligence, not been awarded a Medal of Honor.
Not only one book – please read John Costello’s book “Days of Infamy” (1994, Simon & Schuster) to see in incredible, well documented detail, just how dilatory MacArthur was after being informed of the Pearl Harbor attack. What Costello proves beyond a doubt is that, after getting confirmation of Pearl Harbor, MacArthur not only failed to carry out his war plan to attack the air bases on Formosa, but failed to increase reconnaissance of the sea approaches to the Philippines. In fact, he allowed most of his Far East Air Force to be caught on the ground and shot to pieces – 10 hours AFTER Pearl Harbor! Deserved a Medal of Honor? Deserved a Board of Inquiry and maybe a court-martial!
FWIW MacArthur wasn’t the first comander in history to be caught unprepared. His strength (IMO) was brought forward in his response to the unexpected nature of the attacks by Japan. I think our modern-day view of battlefield intel and lack of “fog of war” afforded by modern resources, such as satellites, skews some of our expectations.
He fought a rear-guard action, managed to evacuate a large number of his (outnumbered and unprepared) troops, and then worked to return/liberate the territory he and his men were forced out of. That’s just WW II. I think that his actions in Korea were exemplary, and Truman’s showboating flight to his headquarters was (probably) uncalled for. MacArthur was a battle tested, experienced General who was trying to use his forces to best effect, who was over-ruled by his Commander in Chief (fully within his power to do so, of course), but I think it set a bad example of allowing Washington politicians to overrule battlefield commanders that came back to bite the US in the ass in Vietnam and ever afterward.
FWIW, my grandfather fought under MacArthur, and to his dying day claimed that Mac was the only American general or admiral who gave two shits about keeping his men alive.
American planners expected that if Japan attacked, its first target would be the Philippines - that was a given. It’s one of the main reasons why the Japanese were able to surprise Hawaii - nobody thought Japan would bypass the Philippines and strike Hawaii first. So MacArthur had no reason to be caught unexpectedly.
The big interwar debate was what could be done about it. Most people felt the Philippines could not be held against a determined Japanese attack. We would have to accept their loss while we build up our forces and then we would recapture them later in the war. MacArthur argued otherwise. He insisted he could hold the Philippines if he was given the forces he wanted. He was a loud advocate and he got his way. At a time when American military resources were scarce, the Philippines got priority.
M60TankDriver’s post describes what happened. MacArthur was given the gift of ten hour’s advance notice but he squandered it. He apparently had a moral collapse and just went into his office and did nothing.
That was bad enough. But you can perhaps forgive a man for reaching his breaking point. But you can’t forgive MacArthur for what he had done in the months before the war began. He had gutted the officer corps in the Philippines of anyone with any initiative. He wanted to be surrounded by yes-men who were dependent on him. So when MacArthur collapsed, the entire command structure collapsed with him. The plans for defending the islands all existed but nobody was willing to give the orders without MacArthur’s permission or challenge MacArthur into doing his duty. For hours, the entire command structure sat timidly waiting for MacArthur to do something while the Japanese came closer.
Quite frankly if MacArthur had been a Japanese agent he couldn’t have done a better job for Japan than what he did. He gathered up as much military resources as he could before the war and then handed it to the Japanese.
During the rest of the war, MacArthur performed adequately. The military was expanded and new officers were assigned to MacArthur’s command. They did their job and MacArthur took the credit.
MacArthur’s actions in Korea were not as good. Inchon was actually a really bad plan. It was a terrible site for a landing and most of his officers advised against it and asked him to pick a different landing site. But MacArthur wanted to land as close as possible to Seoul so he could dramatically recapture the city.
And he (and the landing troops) got lucky. On the day of the invasion, the weather at Inchon was unexpectedly perfect. With the winds and currents so unusually calm, the troops were all able to land. And there were no defenders on the beach because the North Koreans knew how crazy it would be to try to land troops there. So MacArthur had rolled the dice and come up sixes.
MacArthur used this opportunity and pushed the North Koreans right up north. Right to the point were he was caught over-extended by the Chinese. Which wouldn’t have been a surprise if MacArthur had been doing adequate recon (the Chinese had moved 200,000 troops into Korea six days before the attack without MacArthur noticing). But MacArthur was sure the Chinese wouldn’t dare attack him so he kept moving fast after the North Koreans he thought were trying to escape from him.
Nor was Truman showboating by flying to Wake Island. The President of the United States wanted to discuss the war with one of his generals and summoned MacArthur to a meeting. MacArthur refused to go. Truman forgave this insubordination and traveled to Wake Island to meet with MacArthur instead. Truman warned MacArthur about the possibility of the Chinese attacking. MacArthur assured him it wouldn’t happened. Then MacArthur flew back to Korea where, as described above, he was attacked by the Chinese.
This did at least have the effect of shaking off Truman’s overconfidence in MacArthur’s battle-tested experience. Truman stopped simply accepting everything MacArthur said and began giving him explicit orders. MacArthur couldn’t handle this and disobeyed orders. So Truman fired him and replaced him with Matthew Ridgway, who was a much better general than MacArthur. Ridgway cleared up MacArthur’s mess and saved South Korea.
At least at the time, the Medal of Honor could be received in two different ways: One was recognition by the military chain of command, and the other was through an act of Congress.
MacArthur’s MoH was awarded for political and morale purposes. At the start of the war, things were a mess for the Americans pretty much everywhere, but MacArthur was becoming a hero to America for defending Bataan and Corregidor. A bill was introduced in Congress to award him a Medal of Honor, which forced the military’s hand - the military felt that if MacArthur was to receive the Medal of Honor, it would look better for everyone involved if it came from the military instead of through an act of Congress. So the tepid citation was written, the award was given and publicized, and that was that.
I personally think it was absurd that a Congressman could nominate anyone for a Medal of Honor. Politicians shouldn’t have the right to do that. If they want to award medals, they can give someone the Congressional Gold Medal, or the President can award the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Leave the MoH to the military.
Never been a really big fan of MacArthur. The loss of the Philippines was huge in the war, and others have covered that quite well.
Another reason to hate him is that he was fighting tooth and nail to not change the planned invasion of Kyushu, despite intelligence warnings that the number of enemy soldiers had greatly increased. Admiral Ernest King, the Chief of Naval Operations, and Admiral Nimitz were opposed to the operation and it would have been a large show down.
More than one author has suggested the reason MacArthur rejected the intelligence from the Magic radio intersection was vanity. He wanted the operation and was going to do it. Fortunately, the Japanese surrendered prior to that fiasco.
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. It would have made more sense to have bypassed them as we did with other Japanese outposts like Indochina and Taiwan and used the resources we saved to keep going towards Japan itself. When Japan fell, all of these outposts would fall with it.
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.
Wait, what? Only if by a large number of his troops you mean himself and his family. I’ll forgive him that as he was ordered to leave, but none of his troops were evacuated. Also, they were certainly unprepared but they were certainly not outnumbered.
No disrespect intended to the memory of your grandfather who was certainly entitled to his opinion, but not placing concern for his men over his ego is something he’s been heavily criticized for, from being dubbed dugout Doug by his own men in 1941 to his obsession with liberating every square inch of the Philippines in 1944-45. I might not go as far as Little Nemo in that all of the Philippines should have been bypassed, but once Leyte was secured the rest of the islands were isolated and the Japanese garrisons on them could have been left to rot on the vine. I might even forgive some of Luzon, but the only thing being served by fighting into the hinterlands of Luzon and landing on all of the many other islands of the Philippines was MacArthur’s ego. They were as asinine as the Australian attacks in New Guinea, the Solomons and New Britain in late 1944-45 and served as little purpose.
Finally just to add, MacArthur had a long history of disobedience of orders including the President of the United States, not just in Korea. In 1932 he decided to ignore orders from his commander in chief in assaulting the Bonus Army:
Some say (and I agree) that Doug had no understanding of mechanized warfare in the European sense, otherwise, he could have done a lot with two heavy divisions prior to the Japanese landings in the Philippines.
But give me one general in the European theater who had his own navy and commanded a nuclear attack.
Then again, the invasion drew out the Imperial fleet which suffered near annihilation at Leyte Gulf. An unintended, but hugely fortuitous, consequence of MacArthur’s push for an invasion of the Philippines.
I’ve got back and forth on the wisdom of the Philippines campaign. I may switch again, but here’s my latest thoughts.
While I agree with Dissonance that the whole archipelago wasn’t required, for the ultimate surrender of Japan, it was necessary for the civilians in the government, certain elements of the IJN and eventually the Emperor to decide that the IJA was losing and losing big. The army itself always wanted to fight past the end, but the others eventually won the debate.
The loss of the Philippines helped in the strangulation of the Japanese homeland from it’s occupied territories further south. Little Nimo and I regularly disagree about the importance of the Philippines to Japan. He tends to believe it’s not important and I cite Japanese strategies which placed it within a critical status.
The alternative to the Philippines would be invading and occupying Formosa, and the subsequent utilization of Nationalist held bases on the east coast of China, but planning for Operation Causeway proved that to be beyond the capacity of the US forces.
While I disagree with the reason for the selection, I believe that it proved the smarter move.
