Today’s post was written by David Langbart, Archivist at the National Archives at College Park.
Douglas MacArthur was born on January 26, 1880. As his 70th birthday approached, he was serving as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in occupied Japan. In that position he had significant interaction with the Department of State. In honor of the General’s birthday, Secretary of State Dean Acheson signed the telegram shown below. The relationship between SCAP and the Department of State was, to put it mildly, not the best, so perhaps sending the telegram to celebrate this milestone birthday was an effort to improve connections at the policymaker level.
Source: Secretary of State to Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Telegram, January 25, 1950, file 711.551/1-2550 and Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to the Secretary of State, Telegram Z-35888, January 27, 1950, file 711.551/1-2750 both in the Central Decimal Files, 1950-1954 (NAID 302021), RG 59: General Records of the Department of State.
For more information on the MacArthur-Acheson relationship, see:
- Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1969)
- Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)