Douglass Macarthur

My report is on Douglass MacArthur. I chose to do my report on Mr. MacArthur

because he was a very important person in many wars. I chose to do my report on MacArthur because I wanted to learn more about his contributions to our nation.

Douglas MacArthur was one of three sons of Arthur MacArthur and Mary Pinkney. Arthur was a Lieutenant General and he was also awarded a Medal of Honor during the American Civil War. Douglas was born on January 26, 1880 in Little Rock Arkansas. He spent his younger years in New Mexico, then the family moved to Kansas and then to Washington DC where his father took a job in the Defense Department.

Douglas received his education from an Episcopalian school and the West Texas Military Academy. “In June 1899 he entered West Point Military Academy and graduated as valedictorian in 1903.” [Curtin1]

In 1904 MacArthur became a lieutenant and was his fathers aide-de-camp in Japan. In 1906, he was aide-de-camp to President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1913, “he was appointed to the general staff under President Woodrow Wilson.” [Curtin 2] In 1917 MacArthur had earned the rank of major.

MacArthur helped organize the “Rainbow Division.” He was the division’s chief of staff. “In 1918 he was promoted to brigadier general and he became commander of the Rainbow Division’s 84th Infantry Brigade.”[Curtin 3] His many exploits during the war won him many awards and honors. He was named the youngest two star general in the U S Army.

In 1922 MacArthur married Louise Crowell Brooks MacArthur a divorcee, he was married to her for six years. This marriage ended in divorce in 1929. MacArthur’s mother lived with him for many years after the divorce.

After the European war he became a superintendent at West Point and he was the youngest person to ever hold this position. He continued doing this until 1922. He did a second tour of duty in the Philippines before returning to the United States in January of 1925 and being named commander of the 3rd Corps. Then he returned to the Philippines as a department commander.

When MacArthur returned to the United States in 1930, he was named Chief of Staff of the army by President Herbert Hoover. When he was 50, he was made a full general.

In 1932 MacArthur led the army against a group of 15,000 unarmed World War 1 veterans who were “camped in Washington to petition Congress for early payment of their service bonuses.” In a violent clash, MacArthur managed to remove the “Bonus Army.” He tried to justify his actions by saying that he stopped a “Communist Revolution.”

He was appointed military advisor to the Philippines in 1936. He trained the military forces and the government for its independence. He retired from the Army in 1937, but he stayed in the Philippines as an advisor to the government. He received a huge salary for this.

MacArthur’s mother died in 1938. MacArthur married Jean Faircloth who was 39 years old. She had MacArthur’s only son Arthur MacArthur IV in 1938.

“MacArthur was to lead American forces in the invasion of the Japanese home islands, and he was in the process of preparing for that impending and horrific operation when the atomic bomb brought an abrupt end to the war.”[Korea 1] On September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri the now named supreme commander for the Allied powers, MacArthur