Following graduation from West Point in 1903, Douglas MacArthur had a number of engineering assignments before being assigned to participate in the occupation of Veracruz, Mexico. During World War I, he was chief of staff, brigade leader, and then commander of the 42nd Division in France.

Following a period with the occupation army at Koblenz, Germany, he was superintendent at West Point. MacArthur was promoted to full general on being named army chief of staff in 1930, and retired from the army in 1937. He was recalled to active duty in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

When the Japanese invaded the Philippines later that year, he conducted a skillful and valiant defense on Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island. In late 1942 he launched a daring major counteroffensive against the enemy in Papua, New Guinea, using combined land, sea, and air forces to outguess and outfight the enemy. In April 1945 he had been made commander of all U.S. Army forces in the Pacific. His troops invaded Leyte and then other islands of the archipelago, decisively defeating the Japanese forces on Luzon in August. He accepted the surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.