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The memory of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor drove MacArthur through a brilliant Pacific campaign. He was one of the first Army generals to be sold on the potential of strategic air power. With Lieutenant General George C. Kenney as his No. 1 air strategist, he mounted furious assaults upon the Japanese land and naval forces that had smothered the Pacific islands. "It doesn't matter how much you have, so long as you fight with what you have," he said. "It doesn't matter where you fight, so long as you fight. Because where you fight, the enemy has to fight too, and even though it splits .your force, it must split his force also. So fight, on whatever the scale, whenever and wherever you can. There is only one way to win victories. Attack, attack, attack!"
Supported by naval and air power, MacArthur attacked constantly, leapfrogging through a series of coastal assaults on key islands that isolated the Japanese chunk by chunk. In October 1944, he landed on Leyte; three months later he was back on Luzon; and 25 days after that, he claimed Manila. Cried MacArthur: "On to Tokyo!" On Sept. 2, 1945, as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, he accepted the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
Wrong War? MacArthur capped that great achievement with still another. For nearly six years he was U.S. commander of the Occupation—in effect, the Yankee Emperor of Japan. He gave the Japanese a constitution and a will to create a new life, and for that he was idolized as much as if he had been a god. MacArthur himself enjoyed his new job immensely. Efficient, indefatigable, imperious in everything he did, he struck outsiders as a benign but egocentric despot. MacArthur hardly bothered to listen to what others had to say, for he liked to talk himself. But when he spoke, he exhibited an uncommon grasp of a wide variety of non-military subjects, from economics to politics. Even the most skeptical of his visitors went away murmuring incredulously about "that amazing man!"
Then, in June 1950, destiny beckoned again. Communist-trained North Koreans invaded the Republic of South Korea. The United Nations, urged by the U.S., gathered its armies to throw them back, and MacArthur once more turned to battle, this time as Supreme U.N. Commander in Chief for Korea. In a bold, perilous and perfectly executed amphibious flanking stroke, he landed his forces behind enemy lines at Inchon, drove a wedge through the Red armies, and turned the tide of the war. His announced "win the war" offensive was evidently a success; the troops, he said, would "be home for Christmas." And then the roof fell in. Out of the north swept swarms of "volunteer" Chinese Communist soldiers. Pouring across the Yalu River, they enveloped U.S. Marine contingents at Chosin Reservoir. Swiftly the Chinese pushed the U.N. forces back; MacArthur dug in for a bloody, stalemated, seesaw battle for little pieces of real estate. It was a new war. Christmas came and went.