“Late in the war, General Marshall, while returning from an Allied conference between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at Tehran, stopped over a day in the Southwest Pacific Area. We had a long and frank discussion. I called attention to the paucity of men and materiel that I was receiving as compared with all other theaters of war. He said he realized the imbalance and regretted it, but could do little to alter the low priority accorded the area. He said:
Admiral King claimed the Pacific as the rightful domain of the Navy; he seemed to regard the operations there as almost his own private war; he apparently felt that the only way to remove the blot on the Navy disaster at Pearl Harbor was to have the Navy command a great victory over Japan; he was adamant in his refusal to allow any major fleet to be under other command than that of naval officers although maintaining that naval officers were competent to command ground or air forces; he resented the prominent part I had in the Pacific War; he was vehement in his personal criticism of me and encouraged Navy propaganda to that end; he had the complete support of President Roosevelt and his Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy, and in many cases of General Arnold, the head of the Air Force.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 183

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U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of… 1880–1964

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