Book review: MacArthur in Asia by Hiroshi Masuda
Hiroshi Masuda's MacArthur in Asia was well-received in Japanese in 2009, but its dour translation makes little new ground in English.
MacArthur in Asia
by Hiroshi Masuda
Cornell University Press
Hiroshi Masuda's MacArthur in Asia was well-received in Japanese in 2009, but its dour translation makes little new ground in English.
An academic at Yokohama's Toyo Eiwa University, Masuda toured Bataan and Corregidor, and provides interesting battlefield and potentially contentious Death March recollections of Japanese troops who had been shipped there from China. If the author highlights General Douglas MacArthur's skill in recruiting the 15 specialist "Bataan Boys" to his staff, he fails to fully explain their office politics, however.
Masuda cites the rivalry for MacArthur's attention between the signals chief, Major General Spencer Akin, and his intelligence counterpart, Major General Charles Willoughby, and describes how the "ambitious" lawyer Major General Courtney Whitney ruffled fellow staffers' feathers when he demanded a Tokyo office on the same floor of their boss, his old friend from Manila.
Having set the scene for some high-level jockeying for favour and promotion, MacArthur in Asia soon stales, however, because the author has failed to read between the lines of long-dead staffers' oral histories to reinterpret how they and MacArthur ticked.