Few soldiers understood the power of an image like Douglas MacArthur. Driven out of the Philippines in the disastrous early months of the Pacific war, ordered to escape to Australia while his men fought on to surrender at Bataan and Corregidor, he arrived in 1942 and made a promise that became a rallying cry: "I shall return." For two and a half years he fought his way back across the southwest Pacific, and on 20 October 1944 he waded ashore through the surf at Leyte before the cameras — a scene he thought important enough to restage until it was right — and broadcast, "People of the Philippines, I have returned!" Brilliant, vain and theatrical, he made himself the face of the Pacific war.

K&C's figure gives MacArthur his instantly recognizable look — the gold-encrusted cap (a relic of his prewar post as a field marshal of the Philippine Army), the corncob pipe, tropical khakis and a battered A-2 leather flight jacket, hand on hip in a pose he could have held for a photographer all day. As one of America's two Pacific theater commanders, he pairs naturally with his naval counterpart, Admiral Chester Nimitz; with his opposite number in Europe, General Eisenhower; and, across the lines, the Japanese infantry he fought island by island. He is a command-vignette centerpiece and, in a Pacific diorama, an unmistakable one.

Model: FOB157 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set