Flamboyant, egotistical, gifted and, above all, driven, Douglas MacArthur was one of the more controversial prominent Americans of the 20th century. Born on January 26, 1880, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Arthur MacArthur and Mary Hardy MacArthur, he graduated first in his class at West Point. During World War I, he served with great distinction as a brigade and division commander. During the 1920s he served as superintendent at West Point as well as in the Philippines before becoming the youngest chief of staff in the history of the U.S. Army in 1930. In July 1932 he led an Army rout of the Bonus Expeditionary Force -- 25,000 penniless war veterans who were camping out in Washington to ask Congress for a cash bonus. In 1935, he became military commander of the Philippines, but two years later he retired from the U.S. Army.

In July 1941 President Roosevelt recalled him to active duty as commander of the U.S. Army in the Far East. MacArthur let himself be caught off guard by the Japanese attack on the Philippines on December 8, and he had to start his counteroffensive from scratch the following year. This campaign became one of his bigger accomplishments. MacArthur was appointed commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific in early 1945, and in this capacity he oversaw the Japanese surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945. From 1945 to 1951 he was in charge of the rebuilding of Japan and the reform of its political, economic and social institutions.

Perhaps his finest hour came in September 1950 during the Korean War, when as commander of a hastily assembled U.N. force he staged a brilliant and daring amphibious landing at the Inchon peninsula. MacArthur's successfully executed scheme turned the war around. However, in subsequent months, he turned his triumph into a great personal defeat. When the war turned into a stalemate after the Chinese entry and a new U.N. counteroffensive, MacArthur began ever more openly to criticize his civilian superiors in Washington over the war's objectives, particularly whether the war should be expanded into China. On April 11, President Truman sacked him for insubordination. Despite of a hero's welcome back in the United States and a third half-hearted, abortive run for the presidency in 1952, this effectively ended his career as a public figure. MacArthur died at age 84 on April 5, 1964, in Bethesda, Maryland.