His own staff could give him advice but nobody could tell him what to do. He was austere and aloof, which fitted the Japanese conception of a great leader. MacArthur was supremely fit for the job of Monarch. An acquaintance of mine had just left a Japanese whorehouse and was half a block away when one the girls came chasing after him, shouting that he'd forgotten his wallet. And of course it's hard to beat the Japanese when it comes to politesse, honesty, and humility. The general himself was magnanimous in victory and touched by the conditions of his former adversaries. Democracy, okay, but food first, and they got it. The Japanese, devastated and starving, put their allegiance to the Emperor on the back burner and looked to MacArthur for salvation. Any American soldier striking a Japanese was subject to five years in the slams. It took about a year for the Allied troops to change their perception of the Japanese as the hated enemy into a polite, clean people with a rich historical tradition.

MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of the occupation forces in Japan - and it worked. His actions as ruler of Japan, between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War are emblematic of his character. The difficult work is in reconciling the two points of view. If you want to argue that he was vainglorious, egotistical, and contemptuous of rivals, you can find evidence for that too. If you want to consider MacArthur a brilliant strategist and humanitarian, you can find plenty of evidence to support that position. As for his character, historian William Manchester, on whose biography this series is based, put it well.

At more than four hours, this program is much too long to deal with in detail and anyway the general trajectory of his career is widely known.

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