Douglas MacArthur (* January 26th, 1880 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is a General of the US Army. An army brat, he claims that he learned to shoot before being able to read, walk or talk. He was extremely close with his mother and often considered a "mama's boy." Until around the age of 8, she dressed him in skirts.
In October 1905, he received orders to proceed to Tokyo for appointment as aide-de-camp to his father. A man who knew the MacArthurs at this time wrote that: "Arthur MacArthur was the most flamboyantly egotistical man I had ever seen, until I met his son."
In the First World War, he participated in the battle of Saint-Mihiel. After the End of the war, he was stationed in the Rhineland, as commander in Sinzig.
In 1922, he married socialite and multi-millionaire heiress Louise Cromwell Brooks, from whom he got divorced in 1929. On 30 April 1937, he married Jean Faircloth in a civil ceremony. Their marriage produced a son, Arthur MacArthur IV, who was born in Manila on 21 February 1938.
One contemporary described MacArthur as the greatest actor to ever serve as a U.S. Army general while another wrote that MacArthur had a court rather than a staff. In 1930, he started a relationship with then-sixteen years old Filipino actress/vaudeville dancer/singer Isabel Rosario Cooper. In 1933, when the secret affair threatened to become public, he brought it to an end, giving her $15,000 and a ticket back to the Philippines.
In July 1932, President Herbert Hoover had given MacArthur the order to "clear" the Bonus Army of the World War I veterans, who were demonstrating in Washington D.C.. He used tanks, cavalry and Infantry with Bayonets, which lead to a hundred wounded people and the death of a Kid. George S. Patton was dissatisfied with MacArthur's conduct as he recognized the legitimacy of the veterans' complaints and had himself earlier refused to issue the order to employ armed force to disperse the veterans.
When the Philippines gained independence, Manuel Quezon asked MacArthur to supervise the creation of a Philippine Army. They had been personal friends since the latter's father had been Governor-General of the Philippines, 35 years earlier. With President Roosevelt's approval, MacArthur accepted. It was agreed that he'd receive the rank of field marshal, with its salary and allowances, in addition to his major general's salary. This made him the best-paid soldier in the world.
Dwight D. Eisenhower found it “pompous and rather ridiculous to be the field marshal of a virtually nonexisting army.”
MacArthur's a member of the Freemasons.
