Douglas MacArthur II

Douglas MacArthur II (July 5, 1909 – November 15, 1997) was an American diplomat. During his diplomatic career, he served as United States ambassador to Japan, Belgium, Austria, and Iran, as well as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. He was a nephew of the U.S. general Douglas MacArthur.

Early life and education MacArthur's parents were Captain Arthur H. MacArthur, III and Mary McCalla MacArthur. Through his mother, he was a grandson of Bowman H. McCalla, great-grandson of Colonel Horace Binney Sargent, and great-great-grandson of Lucius Manlius Sargent. Named for his uncle, General Douglas MacArthur, he was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1909.

MacArthur graduated from Milton Academy in Milton, Mass., and from Yale College, Class of 1932.

Military Service In the mid 1930s, MacArthur served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, Field Artillery Branch. He also worked as an assistant to the sub-district supervisor in the Washington D.C. Army headquarters of sub-district 17.

Diplomatic career After serving as an Army officer, MacArthur began his Foreign Service career in 1935 with a post in Vancouver. He was assigned to Vichy France during the early years of World War II, served as secretary of the U.S. Embassy there from 1940 to 1942, and was interned in Baden Baden, Germany with other U.S. diplomatic staff and civilians for two years after the U.S. broke relations with the Vichy government. Following an internee exchange in March 1944, he served as part of General Dwight Eisenhower's political staff and then led the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Paris until 1948. He went on to become chief of the State Department's Division of Western European Affairs in 1949, where he assisted in the formation of NATO, and served as Counselor of the State Department from 1953 to 1956, where he led the U.S. negotiations for the SEATO treaty. Douglas MacArthur II (left), then US Ambassador to Belgium, presents Basil F. Macgowan with a retirement gift

Ambassador to Japan MacArthur was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Japan in December 1956 and presented his credentials in February 1957.

However, the new treaty was met with the massive Anpo Protests in Japan, and was only ratified with great difficulty. As the protests grew in size in June 1960, MacArthur summoned the heads of major newspapers and television station NHK to his office and demanded more favorable coverage of the treaty.

Then on June 10, MacArthur deliberately provoked the so-called "Hagerty Incident" (ハガチー事件, Hagachii jiken). That afternoon, MacArthur was leaving Tokyo's Haneda Airport in a black car carrying himself and President Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty, who had just arrived in Japan to prepare for a planned visit by Eisenhower, when MacArthur ordered that the car be deliberately driven into a large crowd of anti-treaty protesters. The mob surrounded the car and proceeded to smash the car's windows and tail lights, slash its tires, and dance on the roof until MacArthur and Hagerty finally had to be rescued by a U.S. Marine helicopter. MacArthur had hoped that by provoking the incident, he would force the Japanese government to carry out a more forceful police response to suppress the protests ahead of Eisenhower's planned arrival. However, MacArthur's gambit backfired, as widespread shock at the Hagerty Incident helped force prime minister Nobusuke Kishi to cancel Eisenhower's visit, for fears that his safety could not be guaranteed.

It was revealed in 1974 that MacArthur had negotiated a secret agreement with the Japanese foreign minister Aiichiro Fujiyama to allow the transit of American nuclear weapons through Japanese territory.

Other posts Following his time in Japan, MacArthur served as Ambassador to Belgium (1961–1965), Assistant Secretary of State (1965–1967), Ambassador to Austria (1967–1969) and Ambassador to Iran (1969–1972). While in the latter post, he escaped an attempted kidnapping in 1970 by a network of opposition guerillas in Iran. Months later, Iranian military officials sentenced four guerrillas to life imprisonment for their involvement in the attempted kidnapping.

SAVAK also later claimed that sixty members of the Iranian Liberation Organization faced charges related to planned kidnapping. Personal life

He married Laura Louise Barkley on August 21, 1934; she was the daughter of future U.S. Vice President Alben Barkley. Douglas's daughter married Henry Goditiabois-Deacon, a Belgian man with whom she had a daughter. President Johnson signed a special bill conferring U.S. citizenship to Laura's daughter in 1965.

Later life and death MacArthur died in Washington, D.C., in 1997.