Baldwin of the Times by Robert Davies

Author:Robert Davies [Davies, Robert B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612514581
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

CHAPTER

Korea, 1950–53

The sudden beginning of the Korean War in 1950 caught Baldwin by surprise, as it did many others. The conventional wisdom in the postwar years was that the Soviet armies would attack in Western Europe. It was also believed in Washington that Joseph Stalin controlled a worldwide Communist conspiracy that would eventually try to make the world safe for Communism, Soviet style. The Korean War was viewed by some as a test of the determination and ability of Washington to fight. The concern within the Truman administration was that Stalin would use the Korean War to engage American forces, thus permitting Russia to move elsewhere in Europe.

Beginning on June 25, 1950, the North Korean forces moved swiftly south across the 38th parallel, decimating the poorly equipped and trained South Korean army (ROK). American occupation troops in Japan were sent over to bolster the ROK, but to little effect. By the end of July 1950, Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker, who commanded the UN forces in South Korea, had established the Pusan perimeter, a 130-mile barrier of contact with the enemy. The harbor at Pusan, on the southeast coast of the Korean peninsula, was the only link to all supplies arriving from Japan and from the United States. For the next six weeks, until September 15, the defenses of the perimeter were tested repeatedly. General Walker did not have enough troops to defend the entire line, and was forced to move his troops about to repel the North Korean attacks at various points.1

In mid-July Baldwin became concerned about the loose talk in Congress that favored the use of the atomic bomb, America’s ultimate weapon. Since 1945 he had been writing that the bomb was a weapon of limited military value. In the context of the current war situation, he observed that as the going gets tough, “expediency replaces ethics.” Proponents for the bomb’s use were the “voice of doom,” he wrote. Our strategy ought to be to “avoid an atomic strategy . . . in any war,” citing military reasons against the bomb’s use: our limited stockpiles, no large targets in North Korea, and the inability of the bomb to stop the war.

There were larger issues. “If we want to lose what friends and what influence we have left in Asia, a good way to do it is to drop the atomic bomb on North Korea.”2 World public opinion would label us as being warmongers. A Communist-sponsored petition, currently being circulated throughout the world, called for the outlawing of atomic warfare. We would fall into that Communist propaganda trap if we went ahead and used the bomb on Korea. Baldwin thought that the existing arsenal of World War II’s non-atomic weapons would be adequate for the current war.

To break the stalemate around the Pusan perimeter, General Douglas MacArthur proposed an invasion of the port of Inchon, on the west coast of the Korean peninsula and close to the South Korean capital of Seoul. In his mind, this invasion would relieve the UN forces near Pusan and force the North Korean forces to move north, where the U.

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