MacArthur was also showered with gifts—and, more often than not, accepted them. Although it was traditional practice to give gifts to superiors and benefactors, the number of offerings to the alien overlord exceeded anything the former military leaders had elicited. Some gestures were modest and charming. A fisherman wrote MacArthur in the midsummer heat of 1948 to say that he had been thinking deeply about how to express his heartfelt gratitude that the general, “with your outstanding ideas and capabilities,” was making it possible for the Japanese to achieve “what we could not have attained
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