The Most Dangerous Man in America was written from the firsthand accounts of the historical participants: the diaries, digests, interviews, notes, letters, monographs, memoranda, papers, and reminiscences of Douglas MacArthur, Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Jean MacArthur, Henry Arnold, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, William Halsey, Jonathan M. Wainwright, Harold Ickes, Henry Stimson, Robert Eichelberger, Walter Krueger, George Kenney, Ennis Whitehead, Richard Sutherland, Richard Marshall, Sidney Huff, John D. Bulkeley, Thomas Blamey, Daniel Barbey, Thomas Kinkaid, Thomas Hart, and Lewis Brereton.
The MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, contains the correspondence of both MacArthur and his wife, his reminiscences on his service in World War One, an extensive cache of interviews he conducted during his career and after, and, most importantly, thousands of radio cables that MacArthur sent and received during World War Two. The memorial’s archivist, James Zobel, provided valued and patient assistance in the research for this book.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, contains the president’s invaluable correspondence with MacArthur during World War Two. The library also holds notes and papers that provide his views on his relationship with MacArthur, Marshall, Eisenhower, and their subordinates—as well as his most important wartime papers.
Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall’s papers are collected in The Papers of George Catlett Marshall (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), which includes his wartime memoranda to Franklin Roosevelt and his wartime cable messages to MacArthur. I have also relied on the invaluable postcareer interview of Marshall conducted by his biographer, Forrest Pogue.
Dwight Eisenhower’s views of MacArthur, including those during his tenure as a staff officer for MacArthur during the Bonus March, during the budget fights when MacArthur was army chief of staff, and then during MacArthur’s prewar tenure in Manila can be found in Eisenhower, The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905–1941 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Eisenhower’s wartime dispatches to MacArthur are contained in the multivolume The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years (John Hopkins University Press, 1970).
The memories and reminiscences of the events of World War Two of each these major participants have been checked against the official accounts of the battles and campaigns as contained in each military service’s official history (these also contain interviews with the major commanders after the fact). Samuel Eliot Morison’s fourteen-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Little, Brown & Company, 1947); the six-volume Army Air Forces in World War II (University of Chicago Press, 1948); and the multivolume U.S. Army in World War II (Center of Military History, 1996). I have relied most particularly on those multiple volumes of the U.S. Army’s official history dealing with MacArthur’s campaigns and his relationship with the army chief of staff and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (all sources from the U.S. Army Center of Military History): The Supreme Command (1954); Strategy and Command: The First Two Years (1962); The Fall of the Philippines (1952); Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (1949); The Approach to the Philippines (1953); Victory in Papua (1955); Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls (1955); Cartwheel and the Reduction of Rabaul (1959); Leyte: The Return to the Philippines (1954); and Triumph in the Philippines (1963).
Nearly all of MacArthur’s commanders have provided personal reminiscences of him and an account of their service in the Southwest Pacific Area. These are invaluable first-person accounts: Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey’s MacArthur’s Amphibious Navy: Seventh Amphibious Force Operations (United States Naval Institute, 1969); Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger’s Our Jungle Road to Tokyo (Viking Press, 1950) and Dear Miss Em, General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945, edited by Jay Luvaas (Greenwood Press, 1972); General George Kenney’s George Kenney Reports (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949); General Walter Krueger’s From Down Under to Nippon (Combat Forces Press, 1953); and General Jonathan Wainwright’s General Wainwright’s Story, with Robert Considine (Doubleday, 1946). Of less value, but of interest, is MacArthur’s own account of his life: Reminiscences (McGraw Hill, 1964). I recommend the often-ignored but valuable two-volume autobiography of Paul P. Rogers, an eyewitness to the MacArthur-Sutherland relationship: MacArthur and Sutherland: The Bitter Years and MacArthur and Sutherland: The Good Years (Praeger, 1990).
No account of the life and campaigns of Douglas MacArthur can be written without acknowledging the work of the biographers who have contributed to the MacArthur story. The works include D. Clayton James’s two-volume The Years of MacArthur (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970); William Manchester’s American Caesar (Little, Brown and Company, 1978); and Geoffrey Perret’s Old Soldiers Never Die (Random House, 1996).
A complete list of the literature on the life of Douglas MacArthur and his career during the Great Depression and the Pacific War would run to hundreds of pages. But a select listing of those most valuable biographies and studies that contributed to this narrative must include the following:
Allen, Thomas B., and Norman Polmar. Codename Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan (Headline, 1995).
Borneman, Walter R. The Admirals (Little, Brown and Company, 2012).
Brands, H. W. Traitor to His Class (Doubleday, 2008).
Buell, Thomas B. Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Little, Brown and Company, 1980).
Campbell, James. The Ghost Mountain Boys (Crown, 2007).
Connaughton, Richard, John Pimlott, and Duncan Anderson. The Battle for Manila (Presidio, 1995).
———. MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines (Overlook Press, 2001).
Davidson, Peter D. Bulldozing the Way: New Guinea to Japan (privately published, 2009).
Gamble, Bruce. Fortress Rabaul (Zenith Press, 2010).
Griffith, Thomas E. Jr. MacArthur’s Airman: General George C. Kenney and the War in the Southwest Pacific (University Press of Kansas, 1998).
Harries, Meirion, and Susie Harries. Soldiers of the Sun (Random House, 1991).
Hastings, Max. Retribution (Knopf, 2008).
Holzimmer, Kevin C. General Walter Krueger (University Press of Kansas, 2007).
Hoyt, Edwin P. MacArthur’s Navy (Orion Books, 1989).
Leary, William M., ed. We Shall Return! MacArthur’s Commanders and the Defeat of Japan (University Press of Kentucky, 1988).
———. MacArthur and the American Century (University of Nebraska Press, 1995).
McAulay, Lex. MacArthur’s Eagles: The U.S. Air War over New Guinea 1943–1944 (Naval Institute Press, 2005).
Norman, Michael, and Elizabeth M. Norman. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009).
Persico, Joseph E. Roosevelt’s Centurions (Random House, 2013).
Petillo, Carol Morris. Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Indiana University Press, 1981).
Potter, E. B. Nimitz (Naval Institute Press, 1976).
Prados, John. Islands of Destiny (NAL Caliber, 2012).
Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan. Allies Against the Rising Sun (University Press of Kansas, 2009).
Schultz, Duane. Hero of Bataan: The Story of General Jonathan M. Wainwright (St. Martin’s Press, 1981).
Sloan, Bill. Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
Smith, George W. MacArthur’s Escape (Zenith Press, 2005).
Smythe, Donald. Pershing: General of the Armies (Indiana University Press, 1986).
Taaffe, Stephen R. MacArthur’s Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign (University Press of Kansas, 1998).
———. Marshall and His Generals (University Press of Kansas, 2011).
Thomas, Evan. Sea of Thunder (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
———. The War Lovers (Little, Brown & Company, 2010).
Toll, Ian W. Pacific Crucible (Norton, 2012).
Weintraub, Stanley. Fifteen Stars (Free Press, 2007).
Young, Kenneth Ray. The General’s General: The Life and Times of Arthur MacArthur (Westview, 1994).