Detailed US planning for the administration of the defeated Axis powers was not hastily improvised after the war ended, but was well thought out and initiated early on while hostilities were still raging. The Roosevelt team’s enlightened postwar policies proved both more humane and practical than the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, or the harsh peace imposed by the Allies on Germany after World War I.

He, himself, does not have any record of a regard for people of any ilk.

Early on, he released the Communist Party from prison, where the wartime Japanese government had locked them up.

He introduced agrarian reform, breaking up the great holdings of the landlord class, selling the land to their tenant farmers at reasonable prices.

He broke the back of the great industrial conglomerates, or zaibatsu.

He democratized the Japanese constitution, introducing concepts from the US Bill of Rights, the New Deal, and European social democracies.

He conducted parliamentary elections, in which women were included in the franchise.

He gave Japan its first industrial trade unions and Labor Standards Act.

Abolished the state religion of Shinto.

Japan was a country under military occupation, and that occupation was managed to meet American political, military and economic objectives, particularly as the Cold War heated up. But Japan could have done much worse.

He was certainly an egotistical man, one very concerned with “publicity”. But whether the criticisms or praises heaped on him were justified I really cannot tell. Maybe they were both justified. He did win the war in the Pacific, that cannot be denied, and victory is the only judgement that matters. Still, it was primarily a Naval conflict.

The rest of what I know about MacArthur is spotty. I know he was in command when the WWI veterans agitating for their pensions were routed at bayonet point, one of the most shameful episodes in American history. But can he be blamed for that? He had his orders. His attack at Inchon was a brilliant maneuver, but also incredibly risky. He might have led our forces into a humiliating disaster, another Dunkirk, at best. At worst, a total rout. But instead it led to a collapse of the enemy, and in war, it is the result that matters, not the possibilities.

But shortly after that triumph, he uttered the remarks that eventually led the Chinese to enter Korea, so that great Inchon victory was nullified. Truman was perfectly right, and highly courageous himself, in firing his ass.

First, that return was over the dead bodies of thousands upon thousands of American soldiers. He tries to make it sound as if HE was the man, when his participation was minimal compared to those who have all. At the least he could have said “We shall return”. Prick.

Second, there was nothing sacred about him. Other generals with the opportunities he had would have done the same things. There is no reason he shouldn’t have been captured at Corregidor along with the other generals. The story that Roosevelt ordered him out are simply a cover – he could have stayed.

Third, the guy is the only general of whom I’m aware in WWII who had his family with him. At government expense, by the way. Why should that be.

I have no respect for the guy, which is about the amount of respect he had for anyone else, especially the American fighting man over whose bodies he built his reputation.