National Affairs: Another MacArthur

To be U.S. Ambassador to Japan, the President last week chose a career diplomat with a historic name: Douglas Mac-Arthur II. The name (for his uncle) may impress the Japanese, but it had nothing to do with his appointment. Suave, capable Douglas MacArthur, 47, was picked for his first ambassadorship strictly on performance.

Born into a military family (his father, Arthur, was a Navy captain), MacArthur chose the Foreign Service at the age of twelve after a Far East trip on which he was impressed by U.S. consular officials. At Yale (’32) he studied history and economics, played guard on the 1931 football team captained by Eli’s “Little Blue Boy,” Albie Booth. MacArthur entered the Foreign Service in 1935, served in Vancouver, Naples, Paris, Lisbon and Vichy, where he was interned by the Germans in 1942. Exchanged 16 months later, he encountered a Vichy official, gave a pointed reason for being underweight: “You would probably have lost weight yourself, sir, if we had handed you over to the Japanese.”

In the past decade, MacArthur has worked almost continuously with Dwight Eisenhower as a knowing and capable adviser. In 1944 he was assigned to General Eisenhower’s wartime headquarters as a political adviser on France, later shared in the formation of NATO, performed so well that in 1951 Ike borrowed him as a

SHAPE adviser on international affairs. Soon after Eisenhower became President, MacArthur was recalled to Washington, named State Department counselor. On his office wall hang two cherished Christmas presents: Eisenhower oils of Washington and Lincoln.

As counselor, MacArthur has been a top adviser and confidant to John Foster Dulles, participated in almost every major conference of the last four years, including the summit meeting at Geneva. His role, as a colleague defined it: “A kind of general manager who’s always on the firing line.”

On Washington’s social circuit, Mac-Arthur and his witty wife, Laura, daughter of the late Alben Barkley, are much in demand. Laura MacArthur leans naturally toward the Democratic Party; her husband diplomatically describes himself as an independent. MacArthur keeps a motorboat on the Potomac, hopes that when he, Laura, and daughter, Mimi, 19, are settled in Tokyo he will be able to follow a favorite pastime: skindiving.

Last week friends hailed MacArthur’s appointment to succeed Ambassador John Allison as “a natural.” But the feeling was not universal; commented Tokyo’s second biggest newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun, “The name MacArthur will not make the man’s job any easier.” The job: to follow up Allison’s “civilianizing” of post-occupation Japanese-American relations. Chief problems: the future status of U.S. military bases in Japan, growing demands for return of such prewar Japanese possessions as Okinawa and the Bonin Islands, Japan’s desire for more trade with Communist China.