Emperor Hirohito in Japanese society and retained him
as a figurehead leader.
In June 1950, forces from North Korea invaded
South Korea, and MacArthur was named as commander
of United Nations forces sent in to repel the invasion.
As North Korean forces moved south, he devised a plan
to land behind them and attack them from the rear. His
landings at the port of Inchon, in what is now northern
South Korea, changed the course of the conflict. Devas-
tated, the North Korean forces were forced back behind
the 38th parallel border dividing north and south. How-
ever, MacArthur decided to pursue the North Koreans
toward their border with China, at the Yalu River. Hav-
ing foreseen that Communist China would become a
huge threat to American interests in the Pacific region,
he felt that attacking the Chinese troops now reinforc-
ing the Koreans was the only way to counter this grow-
ing threat. When President Truman personally warned
him not to take action against China, MacArthur, an-
gered, wrote a letter to several congressmen criticizing
civilian leaders who refused to let military commanders
do their job properly. Truman immediately relieved him
of his command on 11 April 1951, replacing him with
General Matthew ridgWay. MacArthur returned to the
United States, where he delivered an address to a joint
session of the U.S. Congress eight days later. At the end,
he spoke these immortal words:
I am closing my 52 years of military service. When
I joined the Army, even before the turn of the
century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boy-
ish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over
many times since I took the oath at West Point,
and the hopes and dreams have all since vanished,
but I still remember the refrain of one of the most
popular barracks ballads of that day which pro-
claimed most proudly that old soldiers never die;
they just fade away. And like the old soldier of that
ballad, I now close my military career and just
fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty
as God gave him the light to see that duty.MacArthur toured the nation, where he was met
by enormous crowds cheering his every move. Although
he had delivered the keynote address to the Republican
Convention in Philadelphia in 1948 and was asked to
do so again in Chicago in 1952, he was not popular
enough to receive the party’s presidential nod. He spent
his final years as chairman of the board of the Reming-
ton Rand Corporation, later the Sperry-Rand Corpora-
tion. Shortly before his death, he published his memoirs.
As he lay dying, he was visited by President Lyndon
Baines Johnson, whom he had personally warned against
getting American forces bogged down in a land war in
Vietnam.
Douglas MacArthur died in Washington, D.C., on
5 April 1964 at the age of 84. Historian Michael Schaller
writes, “MacArthur left an ambiguous legacy. Admira-
tion for his World War II victories, supervision of oc-
cupied Japan, and eloquent rhetoric on the themes of
duty, honor, and country must be tempered by his per-
formance during the Korean War. His public challenge
of civilian authority and accusations against the Truman
administration contributed to the appeal of Senator Jo-
seph McCarthy’s charges that Communist subversion
undermined American security.” Despite this, MacAr-
thur remains one of the most important commanders
of the 20th century. He ranks with Dwight D. eisen-
hoWer, Ulysses S. grant, and George Washington
in his leadership and excellent grasp of strategy.References: Manchester, William Raymond, American
Caesar (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978); Nicolay, Helen,
MacArthur of Bataan (New York: D. Appleton-Century
Company, 1942); Windrow, Martin, and Francis K.
Mason, “MacArthur, Douglas,” in The Wordsworth Dic-
tionary of Military Biography (Hertfordshire, U.K.: Word-
sworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 174–176; Parkinson, Roger,
“MacArthur, Douglas,” in The Encyclopedia of Modern
War (New York: Stein & Day, 1977), 103; Schaller, Mi-
chael, “MacArthur, Douglas,” in American National Bi-
ography, 24 vols., edited by John A. Garraty and Mark
C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),
14:195–199.Macbeth (d. 1057) Scottish king
Macbeth’s exact date of birth is lost to history; he may
have been a grandson of the Scottish king Kenneth II,
who ruled from 971 to 995, although some sources note
that his mother was a daughter of King Malcolm II of
Scotland. His life before 1031 is unknown, but in that
year he succeeded his father Findlaech as the mormær,
or chief, of the province of Moray in northern Scotland.
In order to take the throne of the Scots, Macbeth took
his people into war against his cousin, King Duncan I.mAcbeth 0