Talk:Douglas MacArthur

Not Really Similar to Operation Paperclip

"MacArthur gave immunity to Shiro Ishii and other members of Unit 731 in exchange for germ warfare data based on human experimentation. This was similar to Operation Paperclip,"

This is not the same, because it can reasonably be argued that production of armaments is a normal part of war, whereas inhuman experimentation on civilians and others is a war-crime, and the shameful failure to prosecute war criminals could even be considered a crime. This needs to be rewritten to make clear the nature of the choice that MacArthur made which is against all morality. The lengths that they went to to cover it up demonstrates their guilt. Muchado (talk) 15:45, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the references to Operation Paperclip because they are not supported by the cited source, and re-worded what is left to match what the source does say. Failure to prosecute may be shameful but it is not considered a crime. It is quite common for district attorneys to decline to prosecute simply because they are short of time, personnel or money. MacArthur's role is not so clear-cut; he submitted reports and recommendations, but decisions were taken in Washington. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Understood. Thank you. Muchado (talk) 14:20, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

As an added note to this topic, many of those Operation Paperclip scientists were Nazi Party members or SS officers like SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun. Paperclip scientists and members also employed slave labor and assisted with the Holocaust, which is absolutely not merely "producing armaments as a normal part of war". Unit 731 in a similar situation used their "experiments" to create bioweapons that they used as weapons of war on Chinese soldiers and civilians. Why is there an attempt to defend what happened in Paperclip and claim that it was "not as bad" as Unit 731? Also, President Truman and Fort Detrick (the bioweapons research facility for the U.S. military) were the ones who truly made the decision to grant immunity to Unit 731, not MacArthur, yet MacArthur gets solely blamed for some reason.--Nimuda (talk) 04:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 May 2023

Add General of the Army hyperlink above Douglas MacArthur's name on the right profile side, similarly to George C. Marshall and Omar Bradley's pages. Historygeek64 (talk) 07:13, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

 Already done — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 15:36, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Length

At over 18k words of readable prose, this article is too long to read comfortably. It would be beneficial to condense and/or migrate content to subarticles to make this one more readable. See WP:TOOBIG. @Dr. Grampinator: At the time of the last discussion that I could identify, the length was "only" 12k words of readable prose, which is still quite long but at a lower tier according to TOOBIG. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I already created two subarticles, Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines and Relief of Douglas MacArthur, and the service summary and awards were moved into their own articles. The question therefore is: what is not covered adequately by the article that could benefit from its own more detailed subarticle? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:08, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that the article at present is too detailed, rather than that detail is missing. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a written compendium of knowledge. Those details are what constitutes the encyclopedia. Details can only be removed if they are unsourced, undue, inaccurate, irrelevant, inappropriate or duplicates information contained in another article. My feeling is that some material could be moved or trimmed but WP:TOOBIG is never a valid reason to do so. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is indeed an encyclopedia, but one which serves a general readership rather than a specialist audience. Details can be moved or removed for a variety of reasons, when appropriate to serve the needs of the encyclopedia's readers. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:39, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia serves both a general and a specialist audience. It is not considered likely that a general audience with find much of use in K2-18b, Steinitz's theorem or Monothelitism. In the case of Douglas MacArthur, we may have a general reader seeking broad information about the subject (for whom the lead is provided), a reader seeking a broad knowledge of the subject (who will likely read the whole article) or a specialist reader seeking particular knowledge (who will read through the relevant section). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:29, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Exactly - except, as explained at WP:DETAIL, the specialist reader is served by subarticles, and the broad-knowledge reader by an appropriately summary-style main article. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• I don't see an issue with the length because the article is well-organized. It is too long to read in a sitting, but it is easy to navigate. I think the tag can come down. Srnec (talk) 05:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  It would make more sense to move some of that excess length to subarticles. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:05, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Sure, but in the meanwhile the tag at the top is more annoying than the length. Most readers do not want to read the whole thing "comfortably". They want to find what they are interseted in and read just that. This article makes it easy. Most sections are of a reasonable length. Srnec (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Most sections are longer by themselves than the average non-stub article. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:46, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Do you have figures on that? I know that the average article is 638 words (nearly twice what it was ten years ago), but that includes stubs, which account for more than half. The average word count of the 6,303 featured articles is 4,384 words. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:21, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  Subtract 3,802,265 stubs, and 4.4 billion words gets an average of 1526 for the official article count of almost 6.7 million. Even if you go with the average FA number, World War II still exceeds that. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:36, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  The WWII section has two levels of subdivision. Srnec (talk) 03:08, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 June 2023

Requesting someone add {{anchor|Dugout Doug}} at The troops on Bataan knew that they had been written off, and point Dugout Doug and Dugout doug to it. I don't think there's an NPOV problem as it's a nickname troops under his command applied. Redirecting to the anchor gives the context. 47.155.41.201 (talk) 22:14, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: It's not clear why this anchor needs to be added, pointing to a nickname which is only mentioned twice in the whole article. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 05:50, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

MacArthur in WWI was nicknamed "Bravest of the Brave" by his 42nd (Rainbow) Division soldiers and nicknamed the "Fighting General" by many American and French generals including General Pershing, and his men even gave him a special cigarette case with "Bravest of the Brave" engraved on it. I don't understand why the people who want to talk so much about 62-year-old semi-retired "Dugout Doug" (this nickname was originally coined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his political machine and not by any soldier in the field) don't want to also mention "Bravest of the Brave"/"Fighting General" and his 7 Silver Stars, 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, 2 Croix de Guerre and French Légion d'honneur for his WWI service. He earned all of these medals as a colonel and brigadier general. He already proved in WWI when he was 38 years old that he could fight in the field.--Nimuda (talk) 05:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Why is there no mention of Douglas MacArthur in popular culture?

Not that I'm too knowledgeable on it but I noticed his appearance in the videogame Hearts of Iron IV is not mentioned. For those who dont know he is a general for the United States who can also come to power for any political party except the Communist States of America. ImSpook'd (talk) 00:46, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 August 2023

change “joint session” to “joint meeting” 73.200.216.62 (talk) 15:59, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: Joint session is the correct wording for meeting of both sides of congress. RudolfRed (talk) 16:31, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

no. they are different. 73.200.216.62 (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2023 (UTC)