Arthur MacArthur IV

Until 2004, MacArthur apparently lived in the Mayflower Hotel on New York's Upper West Side. Forbes magazine tracked him down in 2005 but MacArthur "declined to be interviewed". In 2014, MacArthur was featured in a New York Post article that discussed his long and secret residency in the hotel. Michael Gross's 2014 book, House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address, also devoted a page to the mystery of MacArthur's life and assumed name. When the hotel was demolished, he moved to Greenwich Village.

After graduation, MacArthur avoided the public spotlight. The United Press agency reported following his father's funeral in 1964 that, since graduating, "the tall handsome young man ... has made few public appearances." The Associated Press reported the same year that "MacArthur's Son Shuns Military Life" but pointed out that "his childhood had been filled with war." Arthur MacArthur reportedly lives under an assumed name.

MacArthur graduated from Columbia University in 1961, having majored in English. The only non-prizewinning student mentioned by name in The New York Times was Arthur MacArthur. The New York Times pointed out that MacArthur's parents sat in the box of the president of the university, Grayson L. Kirk, with the General in full dress uniform.

Gibbons ("'Gibby', Tutor of Young Mac" according to a front-page headline in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle) was summoned from Tokyo to tutor Arthur for some time. Thereafter, Arthur attended New York's Browning School until he entered Columbia University as a freshman in 1956. The New York Times reported Arthur MacArthur's admission along with that of the son of MacKinlay Kantor, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Upon Douglas MacArthur's dismissal by President Truman, MacArthur flew home with his family on April 18, 1951. Arthur, then aged 13, had never been to the United States.

The popular interest continued. In May 1951 the United Press syndicate ran a story reporting that young MacArthur was to receive a "100-year old peace pipe as a gift" from the people of Havre, Montana.

Even trivial childhood matters could find their way into the newspapers. When Arthur broke his arm ice skating in Tokyo in May 1947, the Australian Associated Press reported that "[d]octors said he behaved 'like a soldier'".

While the fighting was going on in the Philippines, Arthur and his mother left Brisbane on the refrigerator ship Columbia Express. They arrived in Manila on March 6, 1945, and were met by his father, who ferried out on a Higgins (or LCVP) boat, as there was no place for the ship to dock. Upon arriving in Manila, they discovered that their old penthouse at the Manila Hotel was burned down by the Japanese, and thus they took up residence at "Casa Blanca," the house of Russian Jewish-born American businessman Emil Bachrach in Santa Mesa, which also happened to be the house used by General Tomoyuki Yamashita before he evacuated to Baguio with his Northern Force.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the family moved to Tokyo, from where the United Press agency reported in 1946 that eight-year-old Arthur MacArthur was considered a "musical prodigy". Arthur's first meeting with Emperor Hirohito of Japan's sons, the future Emperor Akihito and Prince Masahito in September 1949, at a swimming meet, was covered by Sir Keith Murdoch's Adelaide News under the headline "MacArthur's son and Jap. princes".

Arthur MacArthur IV's early life was chronicled extensively in the press. His early childhood was spent around the penthouse built for his father atop the Manila Hotel. Arthur's father would play with him every morning before work. After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, Arthur, his mother and his nanny were forced to relocate from the Manila Hotel as bombs fell nearby. They first joined Arthur's father on Corregidor Island and then were evacuated by PT boat and a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber to Brisbane, Australia. The United Press agency reported in March 1942 on the boy's escape with his family and that he was a "real MacArthur, a soldier like his father and grandfather". Life made Arthur their cover story in August 1942 and reported on such matters as the boy's life in Australia, his "curiously mixed-up accent", his kindergarten routine, and his new tricycle.

The family's return to the United States brought intense media scrutiny of the General's son as well as the father. Douglas' selection as "Father of the Year" in June 1942 by the National Father's Day Committee, together with his reputation for being a particularly devoted father, drew attention to his only son. While newspapers' political correspondents focused on Douglas MacArthur's testimony before the Senate in Washington in May 1951, the general press sought out human interest stories connected to Arthur, his mother and his Chinese nanny, Ah Cheu. The New York Times ran a front-page story covering young MacArthur's first visit to a Major League Baseball game, as "guest of Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants." Only two days later the Times ran another story (this time only on page 5) covering Arthur's first visit to a circus, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. The article was subheadlined "Two Notables Meet At The Garden" above the photo caption "The 13-year-old son of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Felix Adler, King of the clowns." The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where the family had taken up residence, was besieged by press and photographers. Scripps's Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate reported that "Arthur is the object of staring eyes and photographers' flash-bulbs and reporters' questions."

Arthur MacArthur IV (born February 21, 1938) is the only child of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Jean MacArthur. He is also the grandson of Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr.