Under cover of the diplomatic world, full of: assassins, espionage (with all saboteurs, spies, terrorism and terrorists), Intelligence, Nazis, nuclear weaponry, Nuclear Weapons, full of all unlawful spying MacArthur wound his way through it all guided by the unseen hands.
Douglas MacArthur 2d, 88, Former Ambassador to Japan
Douglas MacArthur 2d, a diplomat who was Ambassador to Japan from 1957 to 1961, a period when relations between Tokyo and Washington were put on a new footing of equality after 15 years of Japanese subordination, died on Saturday at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. He was 88 and lived in Washington.
Mr. MacArthur was a nephew of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who became the commander of the Allied occupation of Japan immediately after World War II.
After his time in Tokyo, Mr. MacArthur went on to become Ambassador to Belgium, Assistant Secretary of State for congressional relations, Ambassador to Austria and then Ambassador to Iran. There, he escaped an attempted kidnapping. He retired in 1972.
While he was Ambassador to Japan, he played a crucial role in prolonged negotiations during which Japanese grievances were addressed. Eventually, a new United States-Japanese mutual security treaty was signed and ratified by both Governments and went into effect in 1960. In that year, Time magazine called him ''the principal architect of present-day U.S. policy toward Japan.''
Despite the improvement in Japanese-American relations, there were leftist-led demonstrations against the treaty in May and June 1960, and they led to the cancellation of a scheduled visit to Japan by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But afterward, the political party that accepted the pact was returned to power in the Japanese Parliament.
While the uproar dwindled, Premier Hayato Ikeda, on becoming head of the Japanese Government, declared that no unsolved problems remained between the Washington and Tokyo. At the time, his statement was called a signal that the postwar transitional era in relations between the two countries had come to an end, and it was said that most of the remaining problems that had emerged since the war's end had either been done away with or cut down to manageable dimensions.
Late in the transitional era, there had been strong dissatisfaction, within the emerging postwar Japan about what were seen as limitations on its sovereignty.
Years later, in 1974, it was reported from Tokyo that authoritative Japanese sources had revealed that a secret agreement allowing the United States to move nuclear weaponry through Japan had been reached in 1960 by Mr. MacArthur and Aiichiro Fujiyama, the Japanese Foreign Minister at the time. But Mr. MacArthur, who was a businessman in Belgium in 1974, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry denied the report.
Afterward Mr. MacArthur was Ambassador to Belgium from 1961 to 1965, Assistant Secretary of State from 1965 to 1967, Ambassador to Austria from 1967 to 1969, and Ambassador to Iran from 1969 to 1972.
He was born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., to Arthur MacArthur and the former Mary Hendry McCalla and went on to graduate from Milton Academy in Milton, Mass., and in 1932 from Yale. He served as an Army officer and then began his Foreign Service career in 1935 and was given a post in Vancouver, Canada.
After a succession of postings in Europe, he was assigned, during the Nazi occupation of France, to Marshall Henri Philippe Petain's puppet capital at Vichy in central France. When the Vichy Government broke off relations with the United States in 1942, he was turned over to the Nazis and was interned for 16 months.
The former Vichy Ambassador to the United States met Mr. MacArthur in Lisbon after he was freed, and remarked that he had lost weight in confinement. Mr. MacArthur answered, ''You would probably have lost weight yourself, sir, if we had handed you over to the Japanese.''
Rising in the diplomatic world, Mr. MacArthur became chief of the State Department's Divison of Western European Affairs in 1949 and was Counselor of the State Department before becoming Ambassador to Japan.
His wife of 53 years, the former Laura Louise Barkley -- daughter of Alben W. Barkley, Vice President in the Truman Administration -- died in 1987.
Mr. MacArthur's survivors include a daughter, Laura MacArthur, who lives in Belgium; two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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