Korea - The Lost War by Bevin Alexander

Author:Bevin Alexander [Alexander, Bevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780099565208
Amazon: 009956520X
Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd
Published: 1989-02-15T13:00:00+00:00

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The UN offensive against North Korea had just got under way when President Truman, worried about the Chinese Communist threat to intervene and hoping he would have better success than others in conveying to MacArthur his administration's foreign policy, decided he and MacArthur needed a face-to-face meeting. It was to be one of the strangest encounters in history between the chief executive of a nation and a subordinate military field commander, not least because Truman sought out MacArthur and in the process seemed to elevate the General into the President's political equal.

The date of the meeting, October 15, fell shortly before the November elections. Therefore, it is probable Truman also hoped a public showing of solidarity between himself and the Far East commander might bolster his administration's stature and help the Democratic cause in the elections.

Many persons in the State Department were opposed to the meeting, and Dean Acheson, who declined to go, summed up his objections as follows: “While General MacArthur had many of the attributes of a foreign sovereign . . . it did not seem wise to recognize him as one.”

Truman made it plain he would go to MacArthur. He at first considered meeting MacArthur in Korea, but security considerations made this impossible. Then he chose Hawaii, but at the suggestion of Secretary of Defense Marshall, the meeting place was shifted to Wake Island, a tiny U.S.-owned atoll 2,300 miles west of Honolulu and 2,000 miles southeast of Tokyo. The idea was to keep MacArthur from having to travel far while offensive operations against North Korea were at a high pitch.

At first, Truman wanted all the Joint Chiefs to accompany him, but they objected on the grounds it would be inadvisable for them all to be absent at once (Bradley said they also didn't want to go). Bradley volunteered to represent all the Chiefs. Others in the group included Dean Rusk, assistant secretary of state; W. Averell Harriman, special assistant to the President; Frank Pace, secretary of the army; Philip C. Jessup, ambassador-at-large; John J. Muccio, U.S. ambassador to South Korea (flown in by MacArthur), and Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Pacific Fleet commander.

MacArthur arrived before Truman's aircraft, the Independence, set down, and the General was at the foot of the ramp when the President came down it. It was their first meeting (and it was to be their last), and it was cordial. Truman and MacArthur climbed into a battered old car and drove off to an hour's private conference at a Quonset hut beside the beach. According to the President's account, they discussed the situation in Korea and Japan, and MacArthur gave assurances the Korean conflict was won and Chinese intervention unlikely.

The President and the General then moved to another building for a larger conference with military and diplomatic advisors. There was no official transcript of this meeting, but Bradley reported at least seven persons took notes, including Bradley himself. However, a controversy developed later about shorthand recordings taken by Vernice Anderson, Jessup's secretary, who listened to the meeting from an adjacent room.

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