On October 20th, 1944, filming began on The Heroic General; a short film written, directed, produced, and inspired by Douglas MacArthur.
Heroically wading ashore and bravely exposing his trousers to saltwater stains, Gen. MacArthur managed to seize the already secured beach in less than twenty dramatic takes.
The same heroic general that ordered the killing of unarmed US veteran citizens that were conducting peaceful marches on DC?
ReplyDeleteMy junior year of highschool, I was in Manila, 1949/1950. I had relatives who survived Santo Tomas, and school mates who also had endured. I met a fair number of Filipinos, including guerillas, who had resisted as best they could.
ReplyDeleteMacArthur made many bad decisions, but on the morale side of things as dealt with by FDR, MacArthur was a symbol of hope. His symbolic "seize the beach" photo was indeed a morale booster, ego or no ego.
Those were damned dark days, folks. Many wondered if we'd pull it out. I was 11 years old when it ended, and I recall wondering on my July birthday if it would go on long enough that I had to go fight.
We haven't had that sort of darkness, now, for sixty years. We as a society have no clue about what morale means.
So cut a little slack for ol' Dugout Doug's memory. He gave us hope...
Art
My all-time favorite MacArthur take came from Dwight Eisenhower: "I studied drama under him."
ReplyDeleteI have a chat buddy in the P.I., a well educated lady in government service...and they still admire MacArthur. He made a lot of mistakes, but did give a lot of people hope in a very dark time.
ReplyDeleteNo mercy for Dugout Doug from this historian of the Pacific War.
ReplyDeleteFrom dispersing the Bonus Army to being insubordinate to the Commander in Chief, there just isn't all that much I can say about him that's good. His biggest problem was that he believed his own PR.
Heh. Word verification for this comment: "ltevil"
I agree that we as a society have little clue about what morale really means, and the reason for that is the intentional and ongoing efforts by the Left to destroy morale and the meaning of morale outside a collective meaning. Instead we have Obama and his Ministry of Truth codifying "Hope" for us as a political platform point...
ReplyDeleteRegardless of whatever hope he may have inspired, and regardless of any feats of arms, the measure of Douglas MacArthur for me will always be his shameful and disgraceful treatment of Generals Wainwright and Homma after the war.
ReplyDeleteHe had Homma, perhaps the most humane of Japanese commanders, hung for the crime of kicking his ass, and would have hung Wainwright, too, if Wainwright hadn't been in the same army and thus out of petty Doug's reach.
When I was a young'un in the Marine Corp, we still had some senior NCO's who'd served in the Pacific. Upon earning the exaulted rank of Corporal, I was allowed to drink in their presence.
ReplyDeleteI was actually allowed to open my mouth and express a modest opinion on occasion, especially after they found out I was a Navy Brat who's old man had flown SBD's and provided aircover for them.
The opinion of the China hands was not exactly high. Dugout Dug used them up covering his retreats, and never even mentioned them in his communiques.
There was a copy of the landing pic on the wall, underneath which was "With the help of God and a few Marines, MacArthur returns to the Phillipines". Underneath that, someone had written "Walking on water". The man was the American equivalent of Britain's Monty, another charlatan.
And he darn near got pushed right off that beach 5 days later but was saved by the tin can sailors and pilots of Taffy 3.
ReplyDeleteGive him his due.
ReplyDeleteThe finest Emperor Japan ever had.