Harry Truman (62 page)

Later, General Ridgway buttonholed General Hoyt Vandenberg, commander of the air force. “Why don’t the Joint Chiefs send orders to MacArthur and
tell
him what to do?”

Vandenberg shook his head. “What good would that do? He wouldn’t obey the orders. What can we do?”

“You can relieve any commander who won’t obey orders, can’t you?” General Ridgway exclaimed.

General Vandenberg gave General Ridgway a look that was, Ridgway says, “both puzzled and amazed.” Then he walked away without saying a word.

Early on November 28, General Bradley called to give my father bad news from Korea. The Chinese had struck the UN army with masses of troops, and so began one of the grimmest days Dad spent as President. Fortunately for history, one of America’s best reporters, John Hersey, was in the White House doing a series of articles on the President and he preserved an accurate record of my father’s reaction to this crisis.

He remained calm. The staff met for their usual morning meeting, and Dad discussed a number of routine problems with them. Then in a quiet voice, he told them what was happening. “We’ve got a terrific situation on our hands. General Bradley told me a terrible message had come from General MacArthur. MacArthur said there were 260,000 Chinese troops against him out there. He says he’s stymied. He says he has to go over to the defensive. It’s no longer a question of a few so-called volunteers. The Chinese have come in with both feet.”

Everyone sat there, stunned into silence.

“I’m going to meet with the Cabinet this afternoon,” Dad said. “General Bradley will be there to discuss the situation. General Marshall is going to meet with the State and Treasury people. Acheson is informing the congressional committees. It may be necessary to deliver a special message in a few days declaring a national emergency. I want to have that meeting with the congressional leaders you were talking about, Murphy. Let’s not wait until Monday; let’s arrange it for Friday.”

It was clear to everyone what a great disappointment this news was to my father. Then in the same quiet voice he went on: “This is the worst situation we have had yet. We’ll just have to meet it as we’ve met all the rest. I’ve talked already this morning with Bradley, Marshall, Acheson, Harriman and Snyder, and they all agree with me that we’re capable of meeting this thing. I know you fellows will work with us on it, and that we’ll meet it.”

Crisply, Dad asked his staff to begin preparing the declaration of emergency, an appropriations message, and a speech to the people. Then he began signing documents while he continued to talk. “The liars have accomplished their purpose. The whole campaign of lies we have been seeing in this country has brought about its result. I’m talking about the crowd of vilifiers who have been trying to tear us apart in this country.
Pravda
had an article just the other day crowing about how the American government is divided, and how our people are divided, in hatred. Don’t worry,
they
keep a close eye on our dissensions. . . .”

He finished signing the documents and handed them back to Bill Hopkins, his executive clerk. “We have got to meet this thing just as we’ve met everything else,” he said, “and we will. We will! Let’s go ahead now and do our jobs as best we can.”

During these awful days, my father remained loyal to his Far Eastern commander. On November 30, he wrote on his calendar: “This has been a hectic month. General Mac, as usual has been shooting off his mouth. He made a pre-election statement that cost us votes and he made a postelection statement that has him in hot water in Europe and at home. I must defend him and save his face even if he has tried on various and numerous occasions to cut mine off. But I must stand by my subordinates. . . .”

By now, the terrible truth about massive Chinese intervention in Korea was visible to everyone, including General MacArthur. Only the prudent generalship of his subordinate commanders, especially Walton Walker, leader of the Eighth Army, prevented the Chinese ambush from becoming a gigantic trap that could easily have destroyed the whole United Nations army. Both he and the commanders of the Xth Corps, operating on the western side of Korea, suspected a Chinese ambush and advanced with far more caution and with careful attention to lines of retreat than the supreme commander in Tokyo considered necessary. General Walker was, in fact, showered with rather abusive messages from Tokyo, asking him why he wasn’t advancing faster.

When the Chinese struck in force, General MacArthur again plunged from optimism to panic. “We face an entirely new war,” he reported on November 28, adding, “this command . . . is now faced with conditions beyond its control and strength.” On December 3, he declared, “This small command is facing the entire Chinese nation in undeclared war. Unless some positive and immediate action is taken, hope for success cannot be justified, and steady attrition leading to final destruction can reasonably be contemplated.” He called for “political decisions and strategic plans and implementation thereof adequate fully to meet the realities involved.” Again, he was demanding the right to attack Chinese bases and supply lines in Manchuria.

We now know this panic was unnecessary. Thanks to the skill of his field commanders, the Eighth Army and the Xth Corps executed fighting retreats that enabled them to escape the Chinese trap relatively undamaged. When the Xth Corps evacuated the North Korean port of Hungnam, they took out 105,000 troops, 91,000 Korean refugees, more than 17,000 vehicles, and several hundred thousand tons of cargo. The Eighth Army fell back toward the 38th parallel with the 2nd Division fighting a ferocious rear guard action. We suffered a defeat that cost us about 13,000 killed and wounded - less than 5 percent of the UN army.

My father did not lose faith in General MacArthur because of this defeat. He was the last man in the world to give up on a subordinate because he was in trouble. What dismayed him was the General’s frantic attempts to protect his public image by dumping the blame for the defeat on others - notably the President of the United States. Between November 28 and December 3, MacArthur gave at least seven interviews to various journalists explaining away - or trying to explain away - what was happening in Korea. All these statements only rephrased the story he gave to
U.S. News and World Report.
His inability to bomb Manchuria was “an enormous handicap without precedent in military history.”

“I should have fired MacArthur then and there,” my father has said. But he had too much respect for the General’s long service to his country and his outstanding military record. He did not want to fire him in the aftermath of a defeat. Instead, Dad ordered the Joint Chiefs to send General MacArthur a new directive, which was applicable to all military officers overseas. It instructed him that “no speech, press release or public statement” about the policy of the United States should be issued without first clearing it with Washington.

In his November 30 press conference, my father defended the General vigorously. Edward T. Folliard of the Washington
Post
asked Dad what he thought of the criticism of General MacArthur in the European press.

“They are always for a man when he is winning, but when he is in a little trouble, they all jump on him with what ought to be done, which they didn’t tell him before. He has done a good job, and is continuing to do a good job.”

“The particular criticism,” Folliard added, “is that he exceeded his authority and went beyond the point he was supposed to go.”

“He did nothing of the kind,” my father said.

At this same press conference, Tony Leviero asked Dad if attacks in Manchuria would depend on action in the United Nations.

“Yes, entirely,” Dad said.

“In other words,” Leviero continued, “if the United Nations resolution should authorize General MacArthur to go further than he has, he will . . .”

“We will take whatever steps are necessary to meet the military situation, just as we always have.”

“Will that include the atomic bomb?” Jack Dougherty of the New York
Daily News
asked.

“That includes every weapon that we have,” my father said.

Paul R. Leach of the Chicago
Daily News
asked: “Mr. President, you said every weapon that we have. Does that mean that there is active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?”

“There has always been active consideration of its use. I don’t want to see it used,” my father said. “It is a terrible weapon and it should not be used on innocent men, women and children who have nothing whatever to do with this military aggression.”

The press conference wandered off to other matters, and then Merriman Smith of the United Press asked: “Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the bomb is under active consideration?”

“Always has been,” Dad said. “It is one of our weapons.”

The truth, of course, as Dad had indicated in his previous comment, was that the atomic bomb would be used only as a last desperate resource. But he hoped the threat of using it would force the Chinese to move more cautiously.

Now the reporters, sniffing a story, really went to work on him. “Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives or civilian?” Robert G. Nixon of International News Service asked. The question penned my father into a corner. He tried to extricate himself by saying that was “a matter that the military people have to decide. I’m not a military authority that passes on those things.”

My father was thinking of the way targets were selected for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. He had ordered his military advisers to select authentic military targets, and they had done so. He was trying to avoid the implication that he or anyone else would willingly drop a bomb on a purely civilian target. He was trying to do this in a nice way, without cutting down Bob Nixon.

“Mr. President,” said Frank Bourgholtzer, “you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn’t use the atomic bomb except under United Nations authorization?”

This question tried to pin Dad into another corner. Numerous congressmen, mostly Republicans, were extremely touchy about the agreements which President Roosevelt had made with the British, giving them a say in the use of the atom bomb. When those agreements expired in 1946, Congress had absolutely refused to renew them. In fact, their intransigence had forced Dad to break off all direct relations with British research in atomic energy. Struggling to avoid giving his home-front critics political ammunition, Dad replied: “No, it doesn’t mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of weapons, as he always has.”

Here my father was trying to say that even a UN army had permission to use all the weapons in its arsenal, if its survival was at stake.

None of the reporters tried to pursue these questions beyond the single answer my father gave them. There was no indication the subject was considered the main theme of the press conference. They again went on to other things, and the conference ended with a plea from Dad for the reporters and the nation to understand that “we have exerted every effort possible to prevent a third World War. Every maneuver that has been made since June 25 has had in mind not to create a situation which would cause another terrible war. We are still trying to prevent that war from happening.”

The reporters departed and within minutes, the UP began carrying the following bulletin: “PRESIDENT TRUMAN SAID TODAY THE UNITED STATES HAS UNDER CONSIDERATION USE OF THE ATOMIC BOMB IN CONNECTION WITH WAR IN KOREA.”

The AP was just as bad: “PRESIDENT TRUMAN SAID TODAY ACTIVE CONSIDERATION IS BEING GIVEN TO USE OF THE ATOMIC BOMB AGAINST THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS IF THAT STEP IS NECESSARY.”

Only much later in the message did the AP explain the context of Dad’s remarks on the atomic bomb and make it clear they were
not
in the prepared statement which he had made on Chinese intervention, at the beginning of the conference. Charlie Ross hastily summoned reporters to his office and sternly told them the story’s implication - that new consideration of the atomic bomb was in the works, because of the Chinese intervention - was simply not true.

Meanwhile, the AP ticker kept piling distortion on distortion: “HE SAID . . . THE DECISION WHETHER TO DROP ATOMIC BOMB WAS ONE FOR THE COMMANDER IN THE FIELD.”

From New York, the AP sent orders to its Washington Bureau to jump this to the top of the story. It now read as follows:

An appalled Charlie Ross hastily put together a clarifying statement - but the damage had been done. The afternoon papers carried huge headlines making it sound as if my father were shipping A-bombs to MacArthur with a carte blanche to use them - the last thing in the world he would have done at such a moment. In Europe, the story created an even bigger sensation. Italian papers declared bombers loaded with atom weapons were ready to take off from Japanese airfields. The
Times of India
ran an editorial under the heading, “NO, NO, NO.” London went into the biggest flap. The House of Commons had been debating foreign policy for two days, and Churchill and other Conservative leaders had been urging Prime Minister Attlee to go to America and confer with my father on Britain’s numerous problems. When the news of the atom bomb story reached the House, the left wing of the Labour party immediately circulated a petition, which collected a hundred signatures, declaring if Attlee supported Dad’s supposed atomic intentions, they would bolt the party and bring down the government. A panicked Attlee announced he would fly to Washington immediately.

It was all ridiculous, and very disheartening. Douglas Cater in his book,
The Fourth Branch of the Government,
about the relationship between the free press and the government, called the handling of this story a journalistic lapse that bordered on “complete irresponsibility.”