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MacArthur was convinced that he could win the war only by throwing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces into the fight on the Chinese mainland and by carrying the war across the Yalu River into Manchuria. President Harry Truman and his Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that such tactics would inevitably bring Communist China into the Korean war. It would be, explained General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong enemy."
Through various messages sent to the States, MacArthur set forth his strong opposing views. Then, in March 1951, just four days after he was notified that the U.N. planned to proclaim its willingness to discuss a Korean settlement, MacArthur himself declared that he was ready to meet the enemy in the field to talk about peace; implied was a threat that otherwise MacArthur would extend the war beyond the Korean border. On April 11, Truman, after consulting the Joint Chiefs, fired MacArthur because he felt that the General was "unable to give his wholehearted support" to the policies of the Administration and the United Nations.
MacArthur returned to the U.S. and one of the wildest hero's welcomes ever accorded an American. With him came his wife Jean (a first marriage, to Louise Cromwell Brooks in 1922, had ended in divorce seven years later), and his son Arthur, who was born in the Philippines in 1938. MacArthur made his eloquent farewell address to the Congress, testified before a congressional joint investigation committee. Both he and Truman continued to have their say —in tendentious statements, in books and in articles. Neither budged a whit from his position—and neither, probably, could ever be proved wrong.
Nostalgia & Splendor. Thus Korea brought MacArthur's military career to a dramatic but unhappy end. Named board chairman of Remington Rand Inc. (now the Sperry Rand Corp.), he lived in lonely splendor high in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers. He made a nostalgic trip back to the Philippines three years ago, attended Arthur's 1961 graduation from Columbia University, otherwise rarely appeared in public.
Last year his longtime aide, Major General Courtney Whitney, found MacArthur writing in precise, Victorian handscript across page after page of ruled paper. MacArthur explained that he was writing his "reminiscences." The memoirs, completed in six months' time, ran to more than 200,000 words; three installments have appeared in LIFE Magazine so far.
With the memoirs out of the way, MacArthur resumed his quiet, circumscribed routine. At 84, he was still a fine, bayonet-straight specimen of a soldier. Then, early in March, doctors at Washington's Walter Reed Hospital operated on him and removed his gall bladder. He appeared to progress fairly well after that, but soon he began to fail. For four weeks he fought tenaciously to live. Doctors performed two more major operations. It seemed that no ordinary man could withstand such punishment, but incredibly, MacArthur clung to life. Then at last he let go, drifted into a coma. His great will was no longer a match for his old body.
When he lay dying, he sent word to the men who grieved: "I am going to do the very best I can." He always did. He was MacArthur.