Background
Courtney Whitney was born on May 20, 1897 in Takoma Park, Md. , the son of Milton Whitney, the first director of the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Soils, and Annie Cushing Langdon.
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Courtney Whitney was born on May 20, 1897 in Takoma Park, Md. , the son of Milton Whitney, the first director of the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Soils, and Annie Cushing Langdon.
Whitney attended public schools in Washington, D. C. In August 1917, after serving briefly in the National Guard, he joined the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps, soon earning a second lieutenant's commission. While stationed at Bolling Field, Whitney studied law in the evenings at the National University in Washington, where he earned an LL. B. in 1923.
In the next nine years, he was stationed at airfields in Louisiana, Mississippi, the District of Columbia, and the Philippines. He became a section chief in the Office of the Chief of the Army Air Corps in 1926. Resigning from the Air Corps in 1927, he established a lucrative law practice in Manila. His friends included many influential Filipinos as well as General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the United States Army's Philippine Department from 1928 to 1930 and military adviser to the Commonwealth government from 1935 to 1941. In the autumn of 1940, Whitney returned to active duty in Washington as a major. He became assistant chief of the Legal Division of the Army Air Corps and, in February 1943, assistant judge advocate of the Army Air Force. In May, Whitney was transferred to MacArthur's Southwest Pacific-theater headquarters in Australia. By then a colonel, he was selected to head the Philippine Regional Section, which provided logistical assistance to the resistance movements, dispatched American personnel to train guerrillas, collected intelligence, and disseminated propaganda among the Filipinos. MacArthur was pleased with Whitney's work and with the strong support the guerrillas gave United States forces later. Whitney soon became MacArthur's confidant and eventually almost his alter ego. Elevated to brigadier general in January 1945, Whitney assisted Filipino officials in restoring government and order in the wake of the advancing American forces. In late August 1945, Whitney moved to Japan with MacArthur, who had become supreme commander for the Allied powers there. In December, Whitney became chief of the Government Section, the most powerful of the occupation agencies. Whitney assembled an able group of officers and civilian experts to oversee the demilitarization and democratization of Japan. Whitney's staff was largely responsible for drafting Japan's constitution of 1946, which incorporated liberal, democratic features from various Western constitutions. Whitney and his colleagues also advised the Japanese on the legislative measures necessary to revise statutes and codes for the new constitution. They were also responsible for purging ultranationalists and militarists; decentralizing administrative, fiscal, and police authority; promoting woman's suffrage; supervising election procedures and political-party activities; maintaining liaison between MacArthur's headquarters and the Japanese government; and modernizing the civil service. When the Korean War erupted in June 1950, Whitney was named military secretary of the United Nations Command, which MacArthur headed. He accompanied MacArthur to the conference with President Truman on Wake Island that October. When Truman relieved MacArthur of his commands in April 1951, Whitney returned to America with the general. That spring Whitney retired as a major general, to serve as MacArthur's personal secretary in New York City, where the five-star general maintained an office. When MacArthur became board chairman of Remington Rand in 1952, Whitney was employed as an executive by the firm. In 1956, Whitney published an adulatory book on the 1941-1951 period of MacArthur's career. After MacArthur's death in 1964, Whitney moved back to Washington, where he died.
Although he was hardworking and intelligent, Whitney was also considered abrasive by some, especially colleagues who envied his unique bond with MacArthur and correspondents who were critical of the five-star officer. Particularly after World War II, Whitney probably became more essential to MacArthur than Colonel House had been to Woodrow Wilson or Harry Hopkins to Franklin Roosevelt.
Although he was hardworking and intelligent, Whitney was also considered abrasive by some, especially colleagues who envied his unique bond with MacArthur and correspondents who were critical of the five-star officer.
He married Evelyn Ewart Jones on October 20, 1920; they had two children.
