Harry Truman (59 page)

On Thursday, the news from Korea was almost all bad. At 7:00 a.m., our time, another teleconference was held between MacArthur’s headquarters and the Pentagon. South Korean forces had suffered 50 percent casualties and had very little hope of forming a line at the Han River south of Seoul, their capital. Then came a telegram from our ambassador in Moscow, Alan G. Kirk. On June 27, my father had ordered the ambassador to ask the government of the USSR to “use its influence with the North Korean authorities to withdraw their invading forces immediately.”

Foreign Secretary Andrei Gromyko now read the Russian reply to this request. The atmosphere was “calm and without constraint,” Ambassador Kirk said, but the words were chilling:

John Foster Dulles, back from Tokyo, gave my father a very alarming report on the conduct of General MacArthur. When the North Korean attack began, Dulles rushed to MacArthur’s headquarters. MacArthur was not there, and no one was aware of what was happening or had the slightest conception of what to do. Incredulously, Dulles asked if they weren’t going to notify their commander. But not one of the General’s aides had the nerve to call him when he was in seclusion. Dulles finally telephoned him personally and got him into action.

Dulles urged Dad to recall MacArthur immediately, and send a younger, more vigorous man to Japan to replace him. But my father pointed out this was almost certain to cause a tremendous blowup among MacArthur’s supporters in Congress - something he did not want to risk at this delicate moment, when he had Congress so totally on his side they had just passed a one-year extension of the draft unanimously. Dulles was forced to agree.

At 4:00 p.m. that day, my father held a press conference. Naturally, the reporters were full of questions about Korea.

“Mr. President, everybody is asking in this country, are we or are we not at war.”

“We are not at war,” my father said.

“Mr. President, another question that is being asked is, are we going to use ground troops in Korea?”

“No comment on that.”

“Mr. President, in that connection it has been asked whether there might be any possibility of having to use the atomic bomb?”

“No comment.”

Another reporter asked him to elaborate on his view of the war.

“The members of the United Nations are going to the relief of the Korean Republic to suppress a bandit raid on the Republic of Korea.”

“Mr. President, would it be correct against your explanation, to call this a police action under the United Nations?”

“Yes, that is exactly what it amounts to.”

Note that this term, police action, was not my father’s creation. He accepted it, as a very rough estimate of what was being done in Korea, with no idea of how it would be misused by his critics in the months to come.

At 5:00 p.m., Dad summoned another meeting of his Blair House team. He decided, after more intense discussion, to authorize the bombing of airfields and other military targets in North Korea and to order American ground troops to seize and protect the port of Pusan, at the southernmost end of Korea - at that moment far from the combat zone.

At the very end of the day came one bit of news that seemed to brighten the gloom a bit, as far as Dad was concerned. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had offered to send 33,000 troops to Korea if we would arm them with modern weapons and supply them. It raised Dad’s hope of avoiding a massive commitment of American ground troops. Secretary of State Acheson feared it might give the Chinese Communists a chance to intervene. Dad decided to discuss it more fully with all his advisers the following day.

This same day, Thursday, June 29, General MacArthur landed in Korea to make a personal inspection of the situation. What he saw was not encouraging. The South Korean army had blown up the bridges across the Han River in a moment of panic, trapping three of their best divisions in Seoul. The roads were clogged with fleeing refugees and shattered remnants of South Korean army units. The North Korean army was massing on the other side of the Han, and there seemed to be nothing between them and the tip of the Korean peninsula to stop them. General MacArthur climbed back into his plane and returned to Tokyo. At 3:00 a.m., Washington time, the General’s recommendations were received in the Pentagon: “The only assurance for holding the present line and the ability to regain later the lost ground is through the introduction of United States combat forces into the Korean battle area.”

General MacArthur told his fellow generals it would be a waste of time, money, and equipment to try to stop the North Korean invasion with the American air force and navy. He asked for permission to commit a regimental combat team immediately and urged a rapid buildup of our troops in Japan “for an early counteroffensive.” Even an all-out effort by the “army-navy-air team,” the General warned, “might be doomed to failure.”

General Collins discussed the situation in detail with General MacArthur. The North Korean army had burst across the Han River by now and was rolling south. General Collins told MacArthur it was his impression that “the President would wish carefully to consider with his top advisers before authorizing introduction of American combat forces into battle area.”

MacArthur replied: “Time is of the essence and a clear-cut decision without delay is imperative.”

At 4:30 a.m. Friday, June 30, General Collins called Frank Pace, the Secretary of the Army, and reported his conversation with General MacArthur. At 4:57 a.m., Pace called my father. He listened to the grim news and made the most difficult decision of the week without a moment’s hesitation. He had known it was coming and had been bracing himself for it.

Aware of its enormous importance, Dad sat down later that morning and made the following notes:

At 8:30 Friday morning, my father convened another meeting of his Blair House team. When he brought up the subject of Chiang’s troops, he found very little enthusiasm. Secretary of State Acheson renewed his fears of Chinese Communist intervention. The Joint Chiefs of Staff pointed to the time that would be lost transporting Chiang’s men into Korea and reequipping them. They might even have to be retrained to use modern weapons. Instead, they recommended the commitment of the two U.S. divisions which General MacArthur had under his command in Japan. Reluctantly, my father decided to refuse Chiang’s offer and approved the commitment of our two American divisions.

Step by step, in six fateful days, searching for alternatives before he made each move, my father found himself fighting his third war. At 11:00 a.m. on Friday, he convened a meeting of the Cabinet, to which he invited eighteen leading members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. He told them he was sending troops to Korea, but he did not make it clear they were going into action immediately. Republican Kenneth Wherry arose and addressed Dad as though he were on the Senate floor. He wanted to know if the Congress would be advised before “our boys” began actual combat.

My father replied that ground troops had already been ordered into combat. Tensely, Senator Wherry said he thought Congress ought to be consulted before the President made moves like this. My father told him that it had been an emergency. It was no time for lots of talk. “I just had to act as commander in chief, and I did. I told MacArthur to go to the relief of the Koreans and to carry out the instructions of the United Nations Security Council.”

Senator Wherry ignored him. Echoing Senator Taft’s party line, he leaped to his feet again and reiterated that the President should consult Congress before taking drastic steps.

“If there is any necessity for congressional action,” Dad said, “I will come to you. But I hope we can get those bandits in Korea suppressed without that.”

Dewey Short, the Republican congressman from Missouri, cut Wherry down by asking for the floor and stepping up to the Cabinet table to say he thought he was expressing the opinion of practically everyone in the Congress in saying they owed the President thanks for the quality of his leadership. Short said he personally was very grateful to the President for his frankness in telling them what had been going on and having General Bradley give them a résumé of the military situation. Nothing more was heard from Senator Wherry for the rest of the meeting.

Several other senators declaimed at length upon the importance of getting soldiers from other countries into the fighting. Patiently, General Omar Bradley explained this was not as easy as it sounded. They were equipped with different weapons, used different food from American troops. They had different military procedures. It would take six or eight months to train them to the point where they could be used in combat.

Vice President Barkley complained about the statement Dad was releasing, saying that “General MacArthur had been authorized to use certain supporting ground units.” Barkley felt the President was in control of the troops and was issuing orders to them. Dad had to explain that from a legal point of view, MacArthur was working for the United Nations. “This is all very delicate. I don’t want it stated any place that I am telling MacArthur what to do. He is not an American general now, he is acting for the United Nations. It would spoil everything if we said he was just doing what we tell him to do.”

My father was feeling his way in a totally new situation - the first war against aggression fought under the auspices of a world organization of nations. It had to be fought successfully on both the military and the diplomatic fronts, and time was very short.

At the end of this terrible week, Dad did something that was utterly typical of him. He thought of what other men around him had accomplished and somehow found the time to give them credit. He sent Dean Acheson the following handwritten note:

ONE LETTER OF support which my father received around this time especially pleased him. It was from Henry Wallace. He enclosed a statement he had issued defending the decision to resist aggression in South Korea. “When my country is at war and the U.N. sanctions that war, I am on the side of my country and the U.N.,” he wrote. “. . . I cannot agree with those who want to start a propaganda drive to pull United Nations troops out of Korea.”

Dad replied:

Among the most serious aspects of the situation was the President’s relationship to Congress. In the course of the June 30 meeting, not only Senator Wherry, but Senator H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey, a moderate Republican, brought up the question of obtaining approval from Congress before Dad committed American ground troops on a large scale. My father, who had already achieved so much by working closely with Congress to create a genuinely bipartisan foreign policy, assured them he would seek congressional support for any decisions he made. But he never said he would seek congressional
approval
because he believed the powers of the presidency were at stake in this issue, and these powers were in turn related to the very survival of the United States of America. A President without the power to make the swift decision he had made in Korea could not protect the United States in a world of jet aircraft and surprise attacks.

On July 3, at the President’s request, the State Department prepared a memorandum, which listed eighty-seven instances in the previous century when the President as commander in chief had taken similar action. At this time, moreover, there was little need for my father to seek congressional support. He already had it, in overwhelming amounts. Letters and statements poured into the White House from all but a small group of die-hard right-wing Republicans. Around the country and the world, the same air of euphoria prevailed.

But our hopes of swiftly repelling the North Korean “bandit raid” were not realized. The American troops flung into battle from Japan were not much better equipped than the South Koreans. Few of them had combat experience, and they were cruelly mauled by the tank-led North Koreans. Americans gasped with shock as reports poured in from the battlefronts about the superiority of North Korea’s weapons and the combat readiness of their well-trained troops. American soldiers finally established a perimeter around the port of Pusan at the heel of the Korean peninsula, and for the rest of the summer maintained a tenuous grip on this beachhead, beating off ferocious North Korean attacks.

The desperate fighting, the heartbreaking casualties were only part of my father’s woes during this summer of 1950. He had to get congressional permission to shift the economy from a peace to a war basis. Six hundred thousand men had to be added to the armed forces in the shortest possible time. Four National Guard divisions were activated, the draft was expanded, and a massive recruiting program launched. By raising taxes and restricting consumer credit, my father tried to avoid the painful imposition of price controls, which had been the most unpopular government measure of World War II.

The lengthening struggle in Korea inevitably complicated my father’s relationship with Congress. The reactionaries began ranting sarcastically about Truman’s “police action.” Rumors about Communists in the government ballooned, upsetting moderate congressmen in both parties. The emotional situation led to one of the most distressing political defeats my father ever suffered in his warfare with the reactionaries. If there was one of these negative thinkers whom he disliked both personally and politically, it was Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, which controlled 40 percent of the Senate’s business. My father first tangled with him over the displaced persons bill, which he had hoped to see passed early in his second term. Dad wanted to admit 339,000 refugees, who were still languishing in camps in Europe, five years after the war had ended. Senator McCarran refused to have anything to do with the administration’s bill. Instead, he introduced his own which was worse than the one that had been passed by the Eightieth Congress. Only after a tremendous thirteen-hour debate did the Senate finally reject McCarran’s ideas and vote for the Truman bill, sponsored by Harley Kilgore of West Virginia.

This victory, on April 5, 1950, left Senator McCarran thirsting for revenge, and he got it when the Korean War aroused the nation to anti-Communist frenzy. My father was trying to prevent the government’s loyalty program from turning into a witch-hunt. For over a year, Senator McCarran had introduced into appropriations bills numerous riders giving government department heads the power to fire any employee on security grounds without the right of appeal. My father asked for legislation to give every accused person a fair hearing. In response, Senator McCarran introduced an internal security bill which set up a government within the government, the Subversive Activities Control Board, with sweeping powers to hunt down suspected Communists everywhere. My father promptly vetoed the bill, because, he said, it gave the government “thought control” powers the framers of the Constitution never intended it to have. “There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have,” Dad wrote.

Within twenty-four hours, in spite of heroic efforts by a forlorn little band of senators led by Hubert Humphrey, Congress overrode the veto by crushing majorities. Even Scott Lucas, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, voted to override, because he was worried about his reelection in November.

Congress was by no means the only legislative body with which Dad had to cope during this agonizing summer of 1950. The United Nations was also restive and frightened by the large-scale fighting. The British and the Indian governments suggested peace plans which involved large concessions, such as the immediate seating of Communist China and the trading of Formosa for a withdrawal from Korea. They were politely informed this was unacceptable to the United States. My father also had to fend off critics such as Bernard Baruch, who demanded immediate and all-out national mobilization, which would include price, wage, and rent controls, as well as rationing. Lengthy reports were made to Congress and the American people in mid-July, explaining why such drastic measures were unnecessary. Although the term was not yet in use, my father was already formulating the concept of a limited war. Any lunge toward the posture of an all-out war might inspire a Russian attack and launch World War III.

Simultaneously, Dad had to keep the more headstrong members of the armed forces under control. Early in July, he learned the air force was planning high-level photo reconnaissance missions over Dairen, Port Arthur, Vladivostok, and other Russian Far Eastern bases, to see if Stalin was planning to move into Korea. My father immediately ordered the cancelation of these missions. It was the first appearance of a problem that was to vex him throughout the war in Korea - the clash between the global view of our security and interests which Dad maintained in the White House and the needs and desires of local commanders in the war zone.

To my father’s dismay, the focus of this clash soon became the man in supreme command of the UN army, General Douglas MacArthur. Dad was not an admirer of the MacArthur style of generalship. MacArthur’s fondness for personal publicity, his rhetoric to describe his own accomplishments, his petulant conduct during World War II, when he constantly badgered Washington for more support for his theater of war - all these things were against the code of Harry S. Truman, who put humility, giving credit to others, and teamwork at the head of his list of personal values. But my father recognized these differences between him and General MacArthur for precisely what they were - essentially differences in style. Such personal opinions had no place and no influence in the relationship between
President
Harry S. Truman and
General
Douglas MacArthur. In fact, as a student of military history, Dad was an admirer of General MacArthur’s strategy in the South Pacific during World War II.

At the same time, my father was very aware General MacArthur had political ambitions. He had allowed himself to be put forward as a candidate in the Wisconsin presidential primary in the 1948 election. He took a drubbing, and that was the end of his candidacy.

Even before the Korean War began, some rather strange things had happened in Tokyo which made my father suspect General MacArthur was still working rather closely with the right-wing Republicans who had backed him in Wisconsin. When Chiang retreated to Formosa, it looked at first as if the Communists would follow him and swiftly capture the island. We had no plans - or desire - to defend Chiang, and with White House approval, the State Department sent instructions to MacArthur’s headquarters, advising him how to deal with the press on the subject, so that he would say nothing that contradicted his superior in Washington. The memorandum was leaked and was soon raising a hue and cry in the anti-Truman press and among the “animals,” as Dad called the right-wingers in Congress.

On the other hand, my father was encouraged by General MacArthur’s praise of his decision to resist aggression in Korea. When Dad appointed him United Nations Commander, the General sent the following radio message: “I have received your announcement of your appointment of me as United Nations Commander - I can only repeat the pledge of my complete personal loyalty to you as well as an absolute devotion to your monumental struggle for peace and goodwill throughout the world. I hope I will not fail you.”

But before the month of July was over, my father and General MacArthur had clashed again over Formosa. On July 19, Dad had carefully spelled out his policy toward Chiang Kai-shek: “The present military neutralization of Formosa is without prejudice to political questions affecting that island. Our desire is that Formosa not become embroiled in hostilities disturbing to the peace of the Pacific and that all questions affecting Formosa are to be settled by peaceful means as envisaged in the Charter of the United Nations. With peace re-established, even the most complex political questions are susceptible of solution. In the presence of brutal and unprovoked aggression, however, some of these questions may have to be held in abeyance in the interest of the essential security of all.”

On July 27, at a National Security Council meeting, my father decided to send a survey team to Formosa to estimate Chiang’s military needs. This decision was not caused by any change of heart or mind on Dad’s part toward Chiang. Intelligence reports indicated the Communist Chinese were concentrating a large army along the coast opposite Formosa, and my father was determined to resist another apparently imminent act of aggression. The plan was to send Chiang the military aid he needed, quietly, with a minimum of mention in the press. Dad was irate when he picked up the newspaper on August 1 and discovered that the previous day, General MacArthur had made an unauthorized trip to Formosa to do his own survey of Chiang’s needs and explain why we could not use his troops in Korea. The glare of publicity which followed MacArthur everywhere made it look as if we were negotiating a mutual defense treaty with Chiang. The Generalissimo, no slouch himself in undercutting American policy, had urged in a public statement a few weeks before the General’s visit that “no difficulties . . . will arise if United States relationships are placed in the hands of Douglas MacArthur.”

Soon after MacArthur returned to Tokyo, Chiang announced “the foundation for Sino-American military cooperation has been laid.” There was no doubt, he declared, of “final victory in our struggle against Communism.”

My father was appalled, and immediately dispatched Averell Harriman to Tokyo to explain in detail our policy toward Chiang and Formosa, as well as the entire Korean involvement. Dad also wanted to get from one of his most reliable associates a wide-ranging report on MacArthur’s view of the war. When Harriman explained our Formosa policy, General MacArthur demonstrated an alarming ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He agreed that Chiang personally was a liability and at one point in the conversation, suggested letting him land with his army on the Chinese coast, where he would be swiftly annihilated. Much troubled, Ambassador Harriman reported, “He did not seem to consider the liability that our support of Chiang on such a move would be to us in the East.” Ambassador Harriman came away with the worried feeling that he and General MacArthur had not come “to a full agreement on the way we believed things should be handled on Formosa with the Generalissimo.” At the same time, MacArthur had assured Harriman that he would “as a soldier obey any orders that he received from the President.”

On August 26, Charlie Ross laid on Dad’s desk a copy of the statement which General MacArthur had sent to the commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who were holding their annual convention. It was to be read to the convention on August 28, but a news magazine was already on the stands with the full text. The message was a lofty criticism of the American government’s policy, with special emphasis on Formosa. He compared the island to “an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender” which threatened our bases in Okinawa and the Philippines. “Nothing could be more fallacious than the threadbare argument by those who advocate appeasement and defeatism in the Pacific that if we defend Formosa we alienate continental Asia,” the General declared. “Those who speak thus do not understand the Orient.”