American Minute with Bill Federer
General Douglas MacArthur "Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within ... infiltrated into positions of public trust ... into journalism, the press, the radio & the school"
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"Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions," stated General Douglas MacArthur in Lansing, Michigan, May 15, 1952.
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Douglas MacArthur was born January 26, 1880.
The lineage of both parents were military and Episcopalian Christian.
Home-schooled as child, he attended high school at West Texas Military Academy, whose mission statement, “to provide an excellent educational community, with values based on the teachings of Jesus Christ," was influenced by D.L. Moody's "Moody Bible Institute."
Every day, he and his 48 classmates walked several blocks, no matter the weather, to attend morning chapel at St. Paul’s Memorial Church.
He explained:
“Biblical lessons began to open the spiritual portals of a growing faith.”
He graduated valedictorian of West Texas Military Academy, and in 1898, became a cadet at West Point Military Academy, where he graduated top of his class in 1903.
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MacArthur conducted a reconnaissance mission during the 1914 U.S. occupation of Veracruz, for which he was nominated for the Medal of Honor.
He served as an officer in France during World War I.
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He was superintendent of West Point, 1919-1922.
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In 1930, at age 50, MacArthur became the youngest Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.
On July 14, 1935, he addressed the 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division:
"The springs of human conflict cannot be eradicated through institutions, but only through the reform of the individual human being … We all dream of the day when human conduct will be governed by the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount."
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A four-star general, he retired in 1939, but returned in 1941 to defend the Philippines.
When Japan invaded the Philippines, President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to withdraw to Australia.
MacArthur left the Philippines, but not before he promising "I shall return."
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When General MacArthur heard that 10,000 Filipino and American prisoners died on the Bataan Death March, he stated, April 9, 1942:
"To the weeping mothers of its dead, I can only say that the sacrifice and halo of Jesus of Nazareth has descended upon their sons, and that God will take them unto Himself."
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On October 20, 1944, General MacArthur returned with an American army to free the Philippines, stating:
"People of the Philippines: I have returned . By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil -- soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples.
We have come, dedicated and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control ... The hour of your redemption is here ... Let the indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead on."
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In a radio speech broadcast from the invasion beach on returning to the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur stated, October 20, 1944:
"Strike at every favorable opportunity. For your homes and hearths, strike! For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! In the name of your sacred dead, strike!
Let no heart be faint. Let every arm be steeled. The guidance of Divine God points the way. Follow in His name to the Holy Grail of righteous victory!"
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General Douglas MacArthur stated:
"In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory."
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Promoted to Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific, he received Japan's surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor.
He stated:
“Men since the beginning of time have sought peace…military alliances, balances of powers, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war.
The utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative. We have had our last chance.
If we will not devise some greater and equitable system, our Armageddon will be at our door.
The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence, an improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years.
It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”
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After the surrender, Japan was under direct control of the U.S. Occupation Army led by Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Pacific (SCAP).
This was different than post-war Europe, in which Germany was divided into four zones controlled the allied powers.
President Truman sent a message to MacArthur, September 6, 1945:
“The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State is subordinate to you as Supreme Commander for the Allied powers. You will exercise your authority as you deem proper to carry out your mission.”
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Japanese investigative journalist Eiichiro Tokumoto wrote in Under the Shadow of the Occupation: The Ashlar and The Cross (1945):
“There was a complete collapse of faith in Japan in 1945 — in our invincible military, in the emperor, in the religion that had become known as ‘state Shinto.'"
Shinto beliefs were taught in the public schools and permeated Japanese society, exciting the militaristic fervor of an ancient samurai warrior code known as Bushido, fighting to the death, similar to Islamic jihad martyrs.
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MacArthur warned:
"Japan is a spiritual vacuum ... If you do not fill it with Christianity, it will be filled with communism.”
He pleaded that Youth for Christ and other ministries send 10,000 missionaries to Japan:
“Send missionaries and Bibles.”
While in Tokyo, MacArthur daily read the American Standard Version of the Bible and helped distribute 43 million Bibles, resulting in it becoming a best-seller in Japan.
He served as Honorary Chairman of Japan’s first post-war Christian University, and advocated for the spread of Christianity:
"(In order to) provide the surest foundation for the firm establishment of democracy";
“Democracy and Christianity have much in common, as practice of the former is impossible without giving faithful (service) to the fundamental concepts underlying the latter.”
MacArthur wrote in 1948:
“I am absolutely convinced that true democracy can exist only on a spiritual foundation. It will endure when it rests firmly on the Christian conception of the individual and society.”
These views were held by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who stated November 1, 1940:
"Those forces hate democracy and Christianity ... They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy."
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MacArthur's call for missionaries and Bibles was documented in:
- The Riddle of MacArthur, by John Gunther, (1951);
- Japan’s American Interlude, by Kazuo Kawai (1960);
- The MacArthur Controversy and American Foreign Policy, by Arthur Schlesinger (1965).
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Journalist Eiichiro Tokumoto gave the account of a 1946 conversation between MacArthur and two U.S. Catholic Bishops John F. O’Hara and Michael J. Ready:
"General MacArthur asked us to urge the sending of thousands of Catholic missionaries — at once ... that they had a year to help fill the ‘spiritual vacuum’ created by the defeat."
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Emperor Hirohito offered to have the government convert all of Japan to Christianity.
Amherst College professor of Japanese history, Ray Moore, recorded the General told evangelist Billy Graham: “the Emperor had offered to make Christianity the official religion of Japan."
MacArthur made the fateful decision to decline the offer, believing that it could potentially create conflict between Protestants and Catholics, and that conversion should be only by a free choice:
“This most sacred of human rights – to worship freely in accordance with individual conscience – is fundamental to all reforms.”
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In the article "Bringing the Bible to Japan," MacArthur told U.S. News and World Report, February 4, 1955:
“No phase of the occupation has left me with a greater sense of personal satisfaction than my spiritual stewardship.”
As recorded in Revitalizing a Nation: A Statement of Beliefs, Opinions, and Policies Embodied in the Public Pronouncements of General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur (Chicago: Heritage Foundation, 1952), he explained how his policies in Japan:
“Discarded is the traditional intolerance of human rights, the restrictions upon human liberties, the callousness to human life, and in their place have been accepted and fused into the Japanese heart many of the Christian virtues.”
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Among the first Church of Christ missionaries returning to Japan were Emily Cunningham, and Owen and Shirley Still. A beliefnet.com article stated:
"Owen Still had been a missionary in pre-war Japan.
He got his family out of Tokyo on one of the last ships before Pearl Harbor, then spent much of World War II in Japanese internment camps in California and Arizona, serving as a volunteer chaplain to Japanese-Americans forced to spend the war behind barbed wire.
After the Japanese surrender, he was one of the first civilians allowed back into Tokyo since he spoke fluent Japanese.
The firebombing of the city had been so devastating that it was difficult to identify neighborhoods much less streets or buildings — which had been constructed mostly of wood with interior walls made of paper.
He had trouble even finding the Yotsuya Mission where he had preached for a decade — so complete was the destruction.
In the city of Osaka, Hiromu Sugano, a devout Christian and retired Army captain, had built a shack on the church property there so that the land was occupied until the missionaries returned.
If he had not done so, the property could have been lost.
In Tokyo, Owen Still was gratified to find that many of the native pastors, including Stephen Ijima, had survived the war — and their congregations were going strong ..."
The beliefnet.com article continued:
"MacArthur saw that Rev. Still received a temporary military commission, allowing him to move freely ... He got the mission’s churches and Bible college back up and running — knowing that the permanence of the Gospel in Japan depended on native-born pastors."
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Another person who decided to return to Japan as a missionary was Jake DeShazer, which changed the life of a Japanese pilot, Mitsuo Fuchida.
Fuchida wrote in his biography From Pearl Harbor to Calvary (1953):
"With the end of the war, my military career was over, since all Japanese forces were disbanded ... Though I was never accused, Gen. Douglas MacArthur summoned me to testify ...
As I got off the train one day in Tokyo's Shibuya Station, I saw an American distributing literature ... He handed me a pamphlet entitled "I Was a Prisoner of Japan" (published by Bible Literature International) ...
What I read was the fascinating episode which eventually changed my life ...
Jake DeShazer ... volunteered for a secret mission with the Jimmy Doolittle Squadron - a surprise raid on Tokyo from the carrier Hornet ... After the bombing raid ... DeShazer found himself a prisoner of Japan ..."
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Mitsuo Fuchida explained that after the war:
"DeShazer ... returned to Japan as a missionary. And his story, printed in pamphlet form, was something I could not explain ...
I decided to purchase (a Bible) myself, despite my traditionally Buddhist heritage ... In the ensuing weeks, I read this book eagerly.
I came to the climactic drama - the Crucifixion. I read in Luke 23:34 the prayer of Jesus Christ at His death: 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do' ...
I was certainly one of those for whom He had prayed. The many men I had killed had been slaughtered in the name of patriotism, for I did not understand the love which Christ wishes to implant within every heart.
Right at that moment, I seemed to meet Jesus for the first time. I understood the meaning of His death as a substitute for my wickedness, and so in prayer, I requested Him to forgive my sins and change me from a bitter, disillusioned ex-pilot into a well-balanced Christian with purpose in living ..."
Fuchida added:
"I became a new person. My complete view on life was changed by the intervention of the Christ I had always hated and ignored before .I have traveled across Japan and the Orient introducing others to the One Who changed my life.
I believe with all my heart that those who will direct Japan - and all other nations - in the decades to come must not ignore the message of Jesus Christ."
Kiyoko Takeda Cho, a prominent intellectual in Tokyo described the missionaries:
“They were young and idealistic, and identified with Japan ... They represented not the ruling country, but came for reconciliation. That attitude was very much appreciated, not only by Christians but also non-Christians.”
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To MacArthur's credit, no other military occupation in history matched the peace and reconciliation he achieved in the aftermath of WWII.
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As recorded in "The Faith of MacArthur: Binding Up the Wounds of a Broken Nation," by Joseff J. B. Smith, (College at Brockport, SUNY, 05/10/2013), MacArthur stated:
“If the historian of the future should deem my service worthy of some slight reference, it would be my hope that he mention me not as a commander engaged in campaigns and battles, even though victorious to American arms, but rather as that one whose sacred duty it became, once the guns were silenced, to carry to the land of our vanquished foe the solace and hope and faith of Christian morals …
An occupation not conceived in a spirit of vengeance or mastery of victor over vanquished, but committed to the Christian purpose of helping a defeated, bewildered and despairing people recreate in the East a nation designed in the image of the West.”
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When U.S. occupation of Japan ended in 1952, it was apparent that relatively few Christian missionaries responded to MacArthur's call to come to Japan, and an enormous opportunity was missed.
This is significantly different to the outcome after the Korean War, with the vibrant growth of Christianity in South Korea, which is now sending missionaries throughout the world.
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Douglas MacArthur received the Medal of Honor, as did his father, Arthur MacArthur, who served during the Civil War.
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The only other father and son to receive the Medal of Honor were Theodore Roosevelt, for leading the charge up Cuba's San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War, and his son, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., for leading the first wave of troops ashore at Normandy during World War II.
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Promoted to five-star general, MacArthur was Supreme U.N. Commander during the beginning of the Korean War, making a daring landing of troops deep behind enemy lines at Inchon and recapturing Seoul.
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MacArthur became at odds with President Truman who did not want to confront the Communist Chinese, but instead introduced a "containment" strategy.
Truman made the stunning and immensely unpopular decision to remove MacArthur.
MacArthur stated:
"It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it";
and
"In war there is no substitute for victory."
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On April 19, 1951, following his tour of Korea, General Douglas MacArthur spoke to a Joint Session of Congress to announce his retirement:
"I am closing my fifty-two years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all my boyish hopes and dreams.
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... The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the Plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have all since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day, which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
And, like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who has tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-by."
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MacArthur told West Point cadets, May 1962:
"The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -- sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those Divine attributes which his Maker gave when He created man in His own image ...
No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind."
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Warning of the deep-state, he addressed the Michigan legislature in Lansing, Michigan, May 15, 1952, (Edward T. Imparato, General MacArthur Speeches and Reports 1908-1964, published in 2000, p. 206):
"Talk of imminent threat to our national security through ... external force is pure nonsense.
Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions -- those institutions we proudly called the American way of life."
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On January 18, 1955, a monument was dedicated to General Douglas MacArthur at the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, which had inscribed his statement:
"Battles are not won by arms alone. There must exist above all else a spiritual impulse -- a will to victory. In war there can be no substitute for victory."
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In 1942, General MacArthur was named Father of the Year. He stated:
"By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder -- infinitely prouder -- to be a father.
A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life.
And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still.
It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, 'Our Father Who Art in Heaven.'"
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He composed "A Father's Prayer" in the early days of World War II while in the Pacific:
"Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee -- and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.
Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail ..."
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MacArthur continued:
"Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.
And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously.
Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength.
Then, I, his father, will dare to whisper, 'I have not lived in vain.'"
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MacArthur warned in a speech to the Salvation Army, December 12, 1951, stating:
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline.
There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."
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General Douglas MacArthur addressed Massachusetts State Legislature in Boston, July 25, 1951:
"It was the adventurous spirit of Americans which despite risks and hazards carved a great nation from an almost impenetrable wilderness ... which built our own almost unbelievable material progress ... which raised the standard of living of the American people beyond that ever before known ...
This adventurous spirit is now threatened as it was in the days of the Boston Tea Party by an unconscionable burden of taxation.
This is sapping the initiative and energies of the people and leaves little incentive for the assumption of those risks which are inherent and unescapable in the forging of progress under the system of free enterprise.
Worst of all, it is throwing its tentacles around the low income bracket sector of our society, from whom is now exacted the major share of the cost of government. This renders its paper income largely illusory ..."
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He continued:
"The so-called forgotten man of the early thirties now is indeed no longer forgotten as the Government levies upon his income as the main remaining source to defray reckless spendthrift policies.
More and more we work not for ourselves but for the State. In time, if permitted to continue, this trend cannot fail to be destructive.
For no nation may survive in freedom once its people become servants of the State, a condition to which we are now pointed with dreadful certainty ..."
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MacArthur added:
"Nothing is heard from those in the supreme executive authority concerning the possibility of a reduction or even a limitation upon these mounting costs.
No suggestion deals with the restoration of some semblance of a healthy balance.
No plan is advanced for easing the crushing burdens already resting upon the people.
To the contrary, all that we hear are the plans by which such costs progressively may be increased.
New means are constantly being devised for greater call upon the taxable potential as though the resources available were inexhaustable.
We compound irresponsibility by seeking to share what liquid wealth we have with others ..."
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He stated further:
"Much that I have seen since my return to my native land after an absence of many years has filled my with immeasurable satisfaction and pride. Our material progress has been little short of phenomenal.
It has established an eminence in material strength so far in advance of any other nation or combination of nations that talk of an imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense.
It is not of any external threat that I concern myself but rather of insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions -- these institutions which formerly we hailed as something beyond question of challenge -- those institutions we proudly called the American way of life.
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... Foremost of these forces is that directly, or even more frequently indirectly, allied with the scourge of imperialistic Communism.
It has infiltrated into positions of public trust and responsibility -- into journalism, the press, the radio and the school.
It seeks through covert manipulation of the civil power and the media of public information and education to pervert the truth, impair respect for moral values, suppress human freedom and representative government, and in the end destroy our faith in our religious teachings.
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... This evil force, with neither spiritual base nor moral standard, rallies the abnormal and subnormal elements among our citizenry
and applies internal pressure against all things we hold descent and all things that we hold right -- the type of pressure which has caused many Christian nations abroad to fall and and their own cherished freedoms to languish in the shackles of complete suppression.
As it has happened there it can happen here.
Our need for patriotic fervor and religious devotion was never more impelling.
There can be no compromise with atheistic Communism, no half way in the preservation of freedom and religion. It must be all or nothing ..."
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MacArthur, who considered himself “a soldier of God as well as of the republic,” concluded:
"We must unite in the high purpose that the liberties etched upon the design of our life by our forefathers be unimpaired and that we maintain the moral courage and spiritual leadership to preserve inviolate that mighty bulwark of all freedom, our Christian faith."
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924 wjfederer@gmail.com
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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