Sunday night he sent another jubilant dispatch to the Joint Chiefs: Kimpo field had fallen. Casualty reports were still coming in, but the battle was already won, and won spectacularly. The final reckoning would show that at Inchon MacArthur had defeated between 30,000 and 40,000 In Min Gun defenders at a cost of 536 dead, 2,550 wounded, and 65 missing. Halsey called it “the most masterly and audacious strategic course in all history.” Heinl wrote: “At Inchon, MacArthur was bold, judicious, assured, and unwavering. Those who doubted his judgment—the lesser men who wanted to play things safe—exemplified the reverse.” The General himself described it as “a classic” which would be remembered as long as military strategy was studied, though he uncharacteristically qualified his prophecy. It would not be “one of the short list of decisive battles of the world,” he said, if the Chinese Communists entered the war.
Lost in all the acclaim and congratulation was one ominous note. Accompanying the troops was an army officer, James M. Gavin, the airborne hero of the ETO. Gavin represented the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, and at Kimpo he had made an odd discovery. “I was,” he recalls, “amazed to find an elaborate arrangement of hard stands and revetments all around the airfield. They were as good or better than any I had seen in the airfields of Europe in World War II. Obviously, some sophisticated thinking had gone into the planning, and much labor and effort had been expended in anticipation of using the airfield by a modern air force. Either the North Koreans were wasting their time, which seemed unlikely, or a first class air power was about to intervene in the war.”82
Back in Tokyo the following week, Gavin laid his analysis before Willoughby, pointing out that “intelligence of that sort was taken very seriously in the European war,” and suggesting that “an intervention by the Chinese seems most likely.” MacArthur’s G-2 rejected the idea. “If the Chinese were going to intervene,” he said confidently, “they would have done so when we made the Inchon landing.” Gavin replied that they had probably been stunned by the swiftness of MacArthur’s maneuver and hadn’t had time to come to the rescue of the North Koreans. “But if they do plan an intervention,” he argued, “the preparation of Kimpo is a sure indication that this is what they are going to do, and when they are ready, they will come in.” Willoughby was still unimpressed. The Chinese would never cross the Yalu and march into the peninsula, he assured Gavin. He had his own sources. He knew.83
Peking was indeed too shocked at first to grasp the implications of the UN commander’s turning movement, but Moscow reacted swiftly. On Saturday, September 23, Pravda charged that “General MacArthur landed the most arrant criminals at Inchon, gathered from the ends of the earth. . . . American bandits are shooting every Seoul inhabitant taken prisoner.” Pravda’s correspondent in Rhee’s capital compared the city to Stalingrad, writing that the streets were being barricaded with wagons, rice bags filled with dirt, and furniture, and that “pillboxes and tank points dot the scene. Every home [is] defended as a fortress. There is firing behind every stone. When a soldier is killed, his gun continues to fire. It is picked up by a worker, tradesman, or office-worker.” 84
These desperate men were ineffective against X Corps, and on Tuesday Seoul fell. Meanwhile Walker’s Eighth Army, having broken out of the Pusan bridgehead, was racing up the Taegu-Kumchon-Taejon-Suwon axis. In ninety-six hours half of the In Min Gun, fifty thousand soldiers, was trapped between MacArthur’s two gigantic pincers. The demoralized survivors, abandoning their equipment, fled toward the 38th Parallel. After nearly three months of defeat and besiegement, MacArthur had freed all South Korea of Communist domination in fifteen days. His forces were on the 38th Parallel, where, for the time being, he held them in check. He had no doubt that he could crush the rest of Kim II Sung’s army if given free rein, however. Sebald reminded him of a Japanese proverb—“In the moment of victory, tighten your helmet-strap”—but the General, gesturing toward the hills north of Seoul, said confidently, “They’ll all evaporate very shortly.”85
The reconquest of the ROK capital was an event of symbolic, political, and psychological significance, and MacArthur meant to exploit it ceremoniously. Over five years earlier he had formally restored Philippine civil rule in Malacañan Palace. Now, he informed the Pentagon, he meant to repeat the performance in Seoul’s vaulted National Assembly chamber. Objections instantly arose in the State Department, which liked Rhee even less than Chiang and had been planning a trusteeship of Korea. Washington warned the General that reinstating the prewar ROK administration “must have the approval of higher authority.” MacArthur sharply replied, “Your message is not understood.” He reminded them that “the existing government of the Republic has never ceased to function,” and reaffirmed his intention to return that government “to its constitutional seat.” This was important to him, for reasons which lay at the core of his beliefs. In Seoul, as in Manila and Taipei, he was partial to the upper classes of the Orient, but his conviction that Asians must be governed by Asians was deeply held. He had wept in Malacañan, and when Struble invited him aboard the Missouri at Inchon, to revisit the quarterdeck where he had begun his task of transforming Japan into a genuine democracy, Howard Handelman of INS saw his eyes fill. Holding out his arms to the admiral, MacArthur said thickly: “You have given me the happiest moment of my life.”86
Flying home to pick up Jean, he landed at Kimpo that last Friday in September aboard the SCAP, Rhee, on the Bataan, following him in. The General, his wife, and the seventy-five-year-old ROK president climbed into a Chevrolet bearing a five-star plate while four other Chevrolets and forty jeeps lined up behind them. At the outset MacArthur was in a jovial mood. Crossing the Han on a new pontoon bridge, he grinned at Rhee and said, “This is where I came in.” He waved cheerily at the Korean children waving paper ROK flags beside the dusty road. But when the motorcade entered the battered city, he sobered. On either side lay charred masonry, looted stores, fire-gutted homes and schools, and flames still crackling in the blackened, windowless, burned-out shells of government buildings. As they rode down Ma Po and Sei Chong Lo avenues, zigzagging to avoid piles of ash and rubble, the General became grim. At the stroke of noon, he and Rhee entered the chamber arm in arm. An aide, noticing that every officer of SCAP’s party was carrying side arms, jested, “There haven’t been so many gats in this place since the last time the legislature sat.” MacArthur silenced him with a walleyed glance. To him this was a holy time, a time of consecration, and at the lectern he announced that, like Stonewall Jackson after his victories—and like himself in Manila—they would express their gratitude for divine intervention by reciting the Lord’s Prayer.87
Larry Bunker joined in, but he couldn’t keep his mind on devotions. He recalled being here on that sunny Sunday two years earlier when MacArthur had flown in for Rhee’s inaugural. Now Bunker scarcely recognized the room. The mulberry-colored velvet drapes were still there, but the rest was a shambles. One wing of the building was burning; acrid smoke drifted in through the doors. Outside, heavy artillery rumbled, and this, coupled with a high wind, was shaking loose great panes of the heavy glass panels over the chamber. As they crashed down and shattered, most officers hurriedly exchanged their mudcaked fatigue caps for steel helmets, but the General finished the prayer bareheaded. With tears coursing down his cheeks but his voice strong, he told Rhee that “by the grace of a merciful Providence our forces fighting under the standard of that greatest hope and inspiration of mankind, the United Nations, have liberated this ancient capital city of Korea . . . .” Now, he said, he would “leave you to the discharge of civil responsibilities.” Rhee turned from his own prepared remarks to say to MacArthur: “We admire you. We love you as the savior of our race. How can I ever explain to you my own undying gratitude and that of the Korean people?” After this exchange, Doyle said that “if there had been any chaplains around, they would have had to have gone back to school again.” According to Reginald Thompson of the London Daily Telegraph, one British correspondent
was so moved that he cabled home the General’s entire text, including the Lord’s Prayer, at fifteen cents a word.88
Airborne on the SCAP once more, the Supreme Commander lit up a handsome, long-stemmed, delicately shaped pipe and walked the aisle with long, deliberate steps. His next move, he knew, would be crucial, though the decision wasn’t his to make. Leaving Rhee he had said, “Mr. President, my officers and I will now resume our military duties.” Defining those duties was not CINCFE’s job, however. Later, millions of Americans would believe that he had provoked Red China into military intervention by ignoring White House orders to halt at the 38th Parallel. That is not at all what happened. In late June the UN objective had been to push the In Min Gun back across the Parallel—in Truman’s words, “to restore peace there and to restore the border”—but a subsequent UN Security Council resolution had called for “the complete independence and unity of Korea.” Unification seemed to mean merging North and South Korea under one government. Acheson, who was convinced that it did, argued that troops could not be expected “to march up to a surveyor’s line and stop”; the Parallel, he said, had “no political validity. “ The General was more cautious. In 1904, he knew, the Russian government had made a Japanese crossing of the Parallel a casus belli. He wanted precise orders before pressing northward.
Until the fall of Seoul, precision had been lacking in his directives on this momentous question. The wisdom of annexing North Korea was being debated in all UN capitals, including Washington. George Kennan had advised Acheson that it was “not essential to us or within our capabilities to establish an anti-Soviet regime in all of Korea.” The secretary of state disagreed. Others swung back and forth. On September 11, when Jean was packing the General’s bag for Inchon, Truman had approved a National Security Council paper which was a masterpiece of evasion. MacArthur was instructed “to conduct the necessary military operations either to force the North Koreans behind the 38th Parallel or to destroy their forces.” If there was “no indication or threat” of intervention by Peking or Moscow, he was then to “extend his operations north of the Parallel and to make plans for the occupation of North Korea.” This assigned MacArthur the task of fathoming what was going on in the minds of the men in the Kremlin and Peking’s councils of war. Either the U.S. and the UN were prepared to take the risks or they weren’t. The choice was one for civilians, not soldiers.89
Winston Churchill said: “I like commanders on land and sea and in the air to feel that between them and all forms of public criticism the government stands like a strong bulkhead. . . . You will not get generals to run risks unless they feel they have behind them a strong government.” Montgomery, Churchill’s most famous commander, said that generals “are never given adequate directives.” Both points are valid, and both should be borne in mind in retracing the course of the Korean War during the last months of 1950. Washington backed MacArthur as long as he was winning, but he was never told exactly what he was expected to do. Louis Johnson later testified before a Senate committee that when he resigned as secretary of defense in mid-September “there was no definite policy lined out as to what our action should be and how we were to end this thing.” Then came Inchon. The General’s tremendous victory seemed to sustain his argument that a bold response would overpower Communist aggression. On the day of the landings, the Joint Chiefs had told him to “plan for the possible occupation of North Korea,” but to await further instructions from the President before moving. Next, on September 27, he had been directed to “conduct military operations north of the 38th Parallel” leading to “the destruction of the North Korean armed forces.” Just two restraints were imposed upon him. He was forbidden to send aircraft over Sino-Russian territory, and only ROK troops could approach the Yalu. In forty-eight hours he replied, tacitly accepting these limitations and proposing to capture Pyongyang with the Eighth Army, land X Corps at the east-coast port of Wonsan, and, after wide sweeps, to effect a “juncture” of the two. The White House agreed, but then, having committed itself, Washington felt uneasy over its own temerity. MacArthur also had reservations. He wanted a firmer mandate, and the day after the Seoul ceremony the new secretary of defense, George Marshall, gave it to him in an “eyes only” cable: “We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th Parallel.” The General replied: “Unless and until the enemy capitulates, I regard all Korea as open for our military operations.”90
Marshall agreed, and the issue seemed resolved. It wasn’t quite. When MacArthur submitted a directive he planned to issue to the Eighth Army on October 2, launching the coming offensive, Marshall wired him: “We desire you to proceed with your operations without any further explanation or announcement and let action determine the matter. Our government desires to avoid having to make an issue of the 38th Parallel until we have accomplished our mission.” This, according to a SCAP aide, made MacArthur “raise his eyebrows.” It plainly intimated that the United States intended to present its allies with a fait accompli. This impression was strengthened by Truman’s responses to questions at a presidential press conference that week. A few days earlier a State Department spokesman had said that a drive north had been authorized in the UN Security Council’s “independence and unity” resolution, and a reporter asked for Truman’s views. The President vaguely said that “the resolution was very broad.” He was reminded that on another occasion he had said that the United Nations would have to approve any movement above the Parallel. Answering, he reaffirmed that the UN must endorse any such battle plan. But that was not the line State was taking. A New York Times reporter noted: “This reply, suggesting further action at Lake Success, appeared to be in conflict with the position stated by the State Department spokesman and left the world with an enigma.”91
It was no enigma to the General; his orders from Marshall were definite, and on October 2 he told Sebald that ROK troops had crossed into North Korea the night before. U.S. correspondents cabled word of this new action home, where it was, in most instances, welcomed. Yet there was a curious hesitancy in many reactions. A lead editorial in the Times declared the issue of the Parallel “settled” as far as the ROKs were concerned but not “clearly established” for other UN forces. It would be foolish for the Chinese to intervene, the editorial continued, and it was to be “devoutly” hoped that they wouldn’t. The Times suggested that it would be “advantageous” if units crossing the line were chiefly confined to “Koreans and other Asiatics.”92
On October 7, five days later, the United Nations settled the matter. The Russians having returned to the Security Council, measures spurring MacArthur on would be blocked there, so the General Assembly, by a 47 to 5 vote, endorsed a U.S. proposal drafted in the State Department declaring that the UN objective was the establishment of “a unified, independent and democratic government” of all Korea. By then the ROKs had pushed rapidly up the eastern coast of North Korea and were approaching Wonsan. The sole effect of the General Assembly resolution was to provide retroactive sanction to a campaign that appeared to be already half won. Because MacArthur was still adding to his string of victories, no criticism of him was heard then, long afterward, Truman would insist that he never would have moved north of the line if the General hadn’t assured him in their Wake Island meeting that the Chinese wouldn’t enter the war. But that meeting and that assurance—which was to be less than unqualified—lay a fortnight in the future when the die was cast by Truman’s own administration. MacArthur hadn’t been consulted about it; he had merely followed instructions from the Joint Chiefs and secretary of defense, speaking for the President, who, despite his press conference assurances, had acted without consulting America’s allies. Walter Millis observes: “Perhaps the one most critical decision of the Korean War had been taken. But it had been taken in the worst way, for confused reasons, on deficient intelligence and with an inadequate appreciation of the risks.”93
Those risks were growing daily. The Chinese, fully aroused now, saw MacArthur
’s army thundering toward them, and despite the UN profession of plans for a peacefully unified Korea, they believed themselves to be in mortal danger. Later their response would, in retrospect, seem to have been ineluctable. At the time, however, it appeared unlikely. To be sure, as early as August 20, nearly a month before Inchon, Mao’s foreign minister, Chou En-lai, had telegraphed UN Secretary-General Lie that “the Chinese people cannot but be most concerned about the solution of the Korean question.” Twice in the following week Mao’s antiaircraft guns on the Manchurian side of the Yalu had fired at U.S. bombers flying on the Korean side, once near the Sui-Ho reservoir and once in the vicinity of Sinuiju, and Truman had been sufficiently concerned to express the hope on September 1 “that the people of China will not be misled or forced into fighting against the United Nations and against the American people.” But except for George Kennan, most U.S. sinologists felt, in Acheson’s words, that such an outcome was “not a probability.” The State Department persuaded the President that merely driving the In Min Gun over the Parallel without annihilating it wouldn’t be enough, that it would permit the enemy to rearm, rebuild, and reattack. Moreover, the diplomats saw the peninsular war as an excellent chance to affirm the moral authority of the United Nations. Convinced that the risk was worth taking, Truman ordered MacArthur to press northward, merely cautioning him once more to avoid “military action against objectives in Chinese territory.”94
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