"I'll be back," admonished Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Terminator." US General Douglas MacArthur also uttered a historical phrase, when the US troops were forced to leave the Philippines during World War II. "I shall return," he said on March 20th, 1942, when he arrived in Terowie, Australia, following the orders of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to manage the allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Area.

MacArthur was born in 1980. Like his father, he made a military career. In World War II, he became the most decorated army official.

He retired in 1937, but Roosevelt asked him to return and named him commander of the US troops based in the Philippines on July 1941. He settled in the island of Corregidor, near Manila, but not for so long. Ending that year, his country joined the war.

On December 7th, 1941, there was a Japanese air raid on the island of Oahu, in Hawaii, where the US military base of Pearl Harbor was located. The move made the United States take an active part in the war and set a new course in the world history.

With a wounded US Pacific Fleet, Japan managed to spread over the region. It took the Gilbert Islands and Hong Kong, and set strategies to conquer New Guinea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Burma.

Therefore, when on March 1942, Philippine President Manuel Quezón left the country because of the Japanese shelling, MacArthur went to Australia to defend the Pacific in charge of Australian and US troops.

On May 1942, the Japanese had seized Solomon Islands and the Philippines. But when they tried to reach Port Moresby, the capital city of New Guinea, allied fleets stopped them in the Coral Sea. In June, US aircrafts thwarted Japan's attempt at taking the Midway military base and sank four Japanese aircraft carriers. It was the first defeat of the Japanese forces, which gradually lost ground in the Pacific Area.

With a Japanese base in the Rabaul Island in view, MacArthur planned his Operation Cartwheel, set not to directly attack the target, but to lay a siege to Japan. It was a success.

After more than two years of fight, the work carried out by MacArthur and by Commander in Chief, US Fleet, Chester Nimitz, helped the allied forces to land on Leyte Island, in the Philippines. In this way, the general who was awarded multiple decorations and the target both of admiration and despise, accomplished his promise and returned.
Later, once in Manila, MacArthur started planning an invasion on Japan. However, two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the war.