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Later life

A day after his arrival in San Francisco from Korea on 18 April 1951, MacArthur flew with his family to Washington, D.C., where he was scheduled to address a joint session of Congress. It was his and Jean's first visit to the continental United States since 1937, when they had been married; Arthur IV, now aged 13, had never been to the U.S. On 19 April, MacArthur made his last official appearance in a farewell address to the U.S. Congress presenting and defending his side of his disagreement with Truman over the conduct of the Korean War. During his speech, he was interrupted by fifty ovations. MacArthur ended the address saying:

I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that " old soldiers never die; they just fade away".

And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.

Good Bye.

MacArthur received public adulation, which aroused expectations that he would run for president, but he was not a candidate. He carried out a speaking tour in 1951–52 attacking the Truman administration for "appeasement in Asia" and for mismanaging the economy. Initially attracting large crowds, by early 1952 MacArthur's speeches were attracting smaller and smaller numbers of people as many complained that MacArthur seemed more interested in settling scores with Truman and praising himself than in offering up a constructive vision for the nation. MacArthur felt uncomfortable campaigning for the Republican nomination and hoped that at the 1952 Republican National Convention, a deadlock would ensue between Senator Robert A. Taft and General Dwight Eisenhower for the presidential nomination. MacArthur's plan was to then step in and offer himself as a compromise candidate; potentially picking Taft as a running mate. His unwillingness to campaign for the nomination seriously hurt his viability as a candidate. In the end, MacArthur endorsed Taft and was keynote speaker at the convention. Taft ultimately lost the nomination to Eisenhower, who went on to win the general election in a landslide. Once elected, Eisenhower consulted with MacArthur, his former commanding officer, about ending the war in Korea.

Douglas and Jean MacArthur spent their last years together in the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He was elected chairman of the board of Remington Rand in 1952. In that year, he earned a salary of $68,000, as well as $20,000 pay and allowances as a General of the Army (equivalent to $ 627,000 and $ 184,000 in 2023, respectively). The Waldorf became the setting for an annual birthday party on 26 January thrown by the general's former deputy chief engineer, Major General Leif J. Sverdrup. At the 1960 celebration for MacArthur's 80th birthday, many of his friends were startled by the general's obviously deteriorating health. The next day, he collapsed and was rushed into surgery at St. Luke's Hospital to control a severely swollen prostate. In June 1960, he was decorated by the Japanese government with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, the highest Japanese order which may be conferred on an individual who is not a head of state. In his statement upon receiving the honor, MacArthur said:

No honor I have ever received moves me more deeply than this one. Perhaps this is because I can recall no parallel in the history of the world where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander. What makes it even more poignant is my own firm disbelief in the usefulness of military occupations with their corresponding displacement of civil control."

After his recovery, MacArthur methodically began to prepare for his death. He visited the White House for a final reunion with Eisenhower. In 1961, to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of Filipino independence, an eighty-one year old MacArthur made a "sentimental journey" to the Philippines, where he was decorated by President Carlos P. Garcia with the Philippine Legion of Honor and met with cheering crowds. MacArthur also accepted an advance of $900,000 (equivalent to $ 7.03 million in 2023) from Henry Luce for the rights to his memoirs, and wrote the volume that would eventually be published as Reminiscences. Sections began to appear in serialized form in Life magazine in the months before his death.

President John F. Kennedy solicited MacArthur's counsel in 1961 and 1962. The first of three meetings was held shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion. MacArthur was extremely critical of the military advice given to Kennedy and cautioned the young president to avoid a U.S. military build-up in Vietnam, pointing out that domestic problems should be given a much greater priority. MacArthur later gave similar advice to President Lyndon B. Johnson. In August 1962 Kennedy summoned MacArthur for counsel at the White House while MacArthur met members of Congress in Washington after Kennedy received intelligence that the Soviets were preparing to transport nuclear weapons to Cuba. "The greatest weapon of war is the blockade," MacArthur advised Kennedy after a long conversation about how to deal with the Soviets and Chinese. "If war comes, that is the weapon we should use." Kennedy used the naval blockade option during the Cuban Missile Crisis two months later thanks to MacArthur's advice. Kennedy heavily trusted MacArthur because whenever he was urged to increase U.S. involvement in Laos and Vietnam by generals, politicians, and advisors he would tell them, "Well now, you gentlemen, you go back and convince General MacArthur, then I'll be convinced."

In 1962, West Point honored the increasingly frail MacArthur with the Sylvanus Thayer Award for outstanding service to the nation, which had gone to Eisenhower the year before. MacArthur's speech to the cadets in accepting the award had as its theme "Duty, Honor, Country":

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell.

In August 1962, MacArthur returned to Washington, D.C., to receive a special honor from a joint session of Congress called the Thanks of Congress. Congress unanimously passed a special resolution to give him this award. This was his first trip to Congress since April 1951 after he was relieved. He received an engrossed copy of the resolution that honored him for his military leadership during and following World War II and also "for his many years of effort to strengthen the ties between the Philippines and the United States.". This honor is unique in that it dates back to the American Revolutionary War and has rarely been given to anybody after the Civil War. Two months later MacArthur was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal that honored his "gallant service to his country".

In 1963, President Kennedy asked MacArthur to help mediate a dispute between the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Amateur Athletic Union over control of track sports in the country. The dispute threatened to derail the participation of the United States in the 1964 Summer Olympics. His presence helped to broker a deal, and participation in the games went on as planned.