Between 1905-1906, a twenty-five year old Lieutenant Douglas MacArthur traveled through Asia with his father Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur and his mother Mary Hardy MacArthur. Over a period of nine months, he traveled 19,949 miles from Japan to Calcutta, across the plains of India, to the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan, and south to what is now Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Vietnam. He then traveled through China before returning to Japan. Writing of the trip decades later, MacArthur wrote: “[I visited] countless lands so rich in color, so fabled in legend, so vital to history that the experience was without a doubt the most important fact of preparation in my entire life.” For the rest of his life, and the remaining 45 years of his military career, this journey would inform his thoughts about the political, military, and economic potential of Asia. This fundamental knowledge would pay massive dividends – guiding and inspiring many of the major decisions he would later make as a senior leader in the region.

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