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publicity machine, that he remains the most famous figure of the Pacific war. More than forty years after the general accepted the Japanese surrender, Ronald Spector wrote of him: “Despite his undoubted qualities968 of leadership, he was unsuited by temperament, character, and judgment for the positions of high command which he occupied throughout the war.” MacArthur’s megalomania, disloyalty to his own national leadership, pettiness, contempt for intelligence, poor selection of staff and subordinates, refusal to acknowledge error and determination to shape national strategy to conform with his personal ambitions suggest that this verdict errs on the side of generosity. Nonetheless, it is essential also to recognise the charisma, intellect and self-conscious aspiration to nobility which enabled MacArthur at times to scale heights no ordinary commander could achieve, as he did at the Japanese surrender. As post-war ruler of Japan, he displayed a wisdom and magnanimity conspicuously absent from his tenure as supreme commander in the south-west Pacific. It should also be acknowledged that between December 1941 and August 1945, deservedly or no, he became for the American people the embodiment of their national purpose in the east. Nations at war need symbols, and no less so do fighting soldiers: “We thought he was above God,” one veteran said to me of MacArthur. Another asserted: “He was the greatest military commander America has ever produced.” Even though this is quite untrue, it is noteworthy that some of his old soldiers believe it.

It was MacArthur’s good fortune that, after presiding over the initial disaster in the Philippines, he served in a theatre where American material dominance became so overwhelming that his misjudgements and follies were redeemable. The U.S. Navy achieved the decisive victories, but MacArthur was able to reap much of the glory. That dramatic profile in its oversized cap and glinting sunglasses dominated every image of war against Japan. Nimitz, a supremely professional naval officer, neither sought nor received a due share of fame for his stellar performance in the Pacific. The U.S. Navy’s achievement was as brilliant, as decisive, as that of the Royal Navy in frustrating Napoleon’s tyranny almost a century and a half earlier.

BRITISH AND American prisioners in Aomi barracks, Japan, had to wait three weeks after the surrender for the first sight of their deliverers. Then one day nine U.S. fighters flew overhead in perfect formation, spotted the huge “PW” letters laid out by the inmates, and dipped low enough for the pilots to wave. It was the prisoners’ first glimpse of a friendly outside world for 1,302 days. Stephen Abbott went inside and wept. Before the prisoners departed, he visited the local factory, in the quarry of which he and his comrades had laboured and often died. In the boardroom of the Denki Kagaku Kogyo company, its president said to Abbott: “Our country is in ruins969, but you understand Japanese people. We will never lose our pride. Return here in five years and we will be tidy; allow us ten and I know you will find a prospering nation.” Soon afterwards, the British and American prisoners quit “those few square yards of Japanese soil we loathed with all our hearts—but on which a volume of human tragedy and learning had been recorded.” Even as the prisoners departed, the first elements of MacArthur’s army landed in Japan, a force mighty enough to ensure against any belated displays of recalcitrance by the defeated enemy. Officers and men alike gazed in awe at the ruined land before them: “I marvel continually970, from what I see, how Japan did so much with so little,” wrote Lt.-Gen. Oscar Griswold. U.S. military occupation continued until 1952.

In 1945–46, some Japanese were prosecuted for war crimes. To impose retribution on all those guilty of barbarous acts would have required tens of thousands of executions, for which the Allies lacked stomach. Very few Japanese were called to account for their deeds in China and South-East Asia. The U.S., dominant partner in the alliance,