re: Who knew MacArthur was recalled from retirement to serve in WWII?

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At first I thought the Southerners in the US, then I realized I would rather fight real men.

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So edgy. You're a legend in your own mind.

The media loved him and he loved publicity. Truman fired him for insubordination, which sounds like it would hurt a guy's reputation. But in 1950/51, MacArthurr was probably more popular than Truman. There was a giant ticker tape parade when he returned to NY.

MacArthur was still on active duty and politicing to run against Roosevelt in '44. He did the same shite in '48. By '52, he was out of the Army, but the Republications nominated a different general ... Eisenhower.

Roosevelt and MacArthur hated each other

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Roosevelt and MacArthur hated each other

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It's easy to see why and it is also easy for one to hate both of them.

Both vastly overrated.

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MacArthur was the basis of the general in Dr Strangelove

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No shite? I didn't know that. I had always thought Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C Scott) was based on Curtis LeMay. Mostly because that's what my father told me and, because when people asked him what he did in the Air Force, he always answered, "I worked for Curtis LeMay."
(It was a joke. He was part of SAC and LeMay commanded SAC and later became AF Chief of Staff. So, technically, he worked for Curtis LeMay, just like everyone else in SAC.)

LeMay was an uber-right wing anti communist and some people thought he really WAS crazy. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan (early August), reporters asked LeMay how he felt about killing 100,000 civilians in one day. LeMay's answer was something like "I've been killing 100,000 a night since March (when the B-29 incendiary raids started). I feel fine"

I think LeMay was the guy who originally said "I'll bomb them back into the Stone Age."

My father had no judo moves that I'm aware of!

Funny story, or at least I think it's funny. I had an uncle who had been in the Marines. After one of my younger siblings baptism, my parents had a big party at the house with all of tbe cousins there. We had more cousins than house, so a bunch of the kids were out in the yard. We were fricking around horseplaying and wrestling in the grass. The Marine, my Uncle Bubba (I swear to God that's what we called him) comes out and offers to give us some instruction. Next thing I know, 10 year old me has my face in the grass with my arm behind my back, wondering if my arm is going to break before my shoulder explodes. It wasn't just me. He kicked a couple of other asses, including two of his own sons. I don't know what the frick he was thinking, but in retrospect, he went way too far.

I don't remember any actual wrestling or martial arts instruction. I just remember Uncle Bubba telling me, "This is what we used to do to those chinks in Korea" as he was smashing my face in tbe lawn and dislocating my shoulder. Thankfully, one of his kids started crying during his "lesson" and that ended that.

I went inside to get a drink of water and my father saw me. I was kind of disheveled looking and he asked what we had been doing. I told him we had been playing and then Uncle Bubba came out and show us what he used to do to those chinks Korea. My father practically shouted "KOREA?!?" He then said, "The closest Bubba got to Korea was 29 Palms." and walked away to find Uncle Bubba. Of course, I had never heard of 29 Palms, but I knew my father had been in Korea and had never made it sound like much fun. Not sure what happened next, but I never got another wrestling lesson from Uncle Bubba.

An armistice, which is basically a truce, between N Korea and S Korea was signed to stop the fighting in July of '53 and created the DMZ. No formal peace treaty was ever signed, so technically, some people consider the Koreas to still be at war.

So I'm not sure if we won. We're still there in large numbers, but at least it's not a hot war.