The General vs. the President

by H. W. Brands

  MacArthur accepted and confirmed the authorization. “Parallel 38 is not a factor in the military employment of our forces,” he replied. “Unless and until the enemy capitulates, I regard all of Korea open for our military operations.”

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  TRUMAN HAD NEVER met MacArthur, and with the fighting in Korea approaching a successful conclusion, he judged it was about time. “We had never had any personal contacts at all,” he remembered, “and I thought that he ought to know his Commander in Chief and that I ought to know the senior field commander in the Far East.”

  He tested the idea of a meeting with MacArthur on George Marshall, who approved, and then Acheson. “The President did not wish to do this if we had any doubts about it,” Acheson recorded. Truman told Acheson what he had in mind. “He would like to review with General MacArthur the situation in Korea, the probable future developments and the length of time necessary for the maintenance of American forces there. He would also like to appraise the possibilities of possible Chinese interference in Korea, which the President thought was not likely, and also possible Chinese interference in Indochina.”

  Acheson endorsed the idea of a meeting. “I said to the President that we had been giving the matter a good deal of thought in the Department and were prepared to agree with his judgment and that of General Marshall in favor of the trip.” Yet Acheson had one worry. “I hoped strongly that the policy in regard to Formosa would not become unsettled because I thought this was critical in our relations with China, and that we had made a good deal of progress with other members of the United Nations by advocating a United Nations commission and UN consideration of the future of Formosa along with a UN resolution against any military action either way.”

  Truman said all would be well. “The President assured me that I need not have any worries on this account.”

  Even so, Acheson didn’t want to take chances. Truman cabled MacArthur suggesting a meeting either in Hawaii or on Wake Island. MacArthur said he couldn’t possibly travel farther than Wake Island, two thousand miles from Tokyo (and seven thousand miles from Washington). Truman accepted MacArthur’s preference. They agreed on Sunday, October 15, as the day of the meeting. Acheson thereupon wrote a script for a full day of talks. The president and the general would devote the morning to Korea, covering military operations and the reconstruction of the country after the fighting ended. They would lunch together. In the afternoon they would speak of “Japan, Philippines, others,” Acheson wrote. He took care to leave Formosa off the list. Later in the afternoon the president and the general would meet alone, away from their staffs. Dinner would follow. After dinner a press release would be issued and any loose ends from the day tied up.

  The Acheson script included talking points for Truman. “General MacArthur should be complimented for the splendid way in which he and his command have responded to the United Nations aspects of the Korean problem; he should be given the full flavor of United States public and Congressional opinion on the United Nations side.” MacArthur bore primary responsibility for military matters, but he must be reminded to defer to the UN on anything political. “In working out political questions such as unification, we shall be able to influence the situation greatly, but our influence must be exercised through the United Nations and to the general satisfaction of the United Nations.”

  Above all, MacArthur should be made to understand that it was essential that the Korean fighting not spread. “We must do everything we can to localize the conflict in Korea,” Acheson declared. “Politically, we must assure the Chinese and the Soviets that they are not being threatened militarily in Korea but we must also keep before them the recklessness of active intervention on their part. Militarily, we must use extreme measures to prevent incidents involving United Nations forces and Chinese or Soviet forces or territory.”

  Acheson couched several points as questions the president might put to the general. “How feasible is it to consider the use of only Korean forces in the extreme north of Korea and Asiatic forces (Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, Turkish, etc.) in the general area of the 39th–40th parallel, with United States forces more generally in the south? Should we make a strong effort to find Asiatic troops as a ‘buffer’ between United States forces and the Manchurian and Siberian borders?” Most crucially: “What are General MacArthur’s own views about Soviet and Chinese intentions re Korea?”

  Acheson didn’t want Truman to raise the Formosa issue, but he supposed MacArthur might. He prepped the president accordingly. “We have full appreciation of the strategic position of Formosa and of General MacArthur’s views on this subject. But we also have very much in mind the general international situation and the moral and practical value of keeping the support of an overwhelming majority of the United Nations for our action in the Far East. Our present tactic is directed toward getting international support for the military neutralization of Formosa and for an international determination that the problem of Formosa must be settled by peaceful means.”

  Acheson’s advice and other briefings for the trip were closely held. The trip itself was not announced until the day before the president left. “General MacArthur and I are making a quick trip over the coming weekend to meet in the Pacific,” Truman explained in a written statement. For reasons of security he declined to specify where in the Pacific they would meet. He said he would convey to the general the appreciation of the American people for his service on behalf of the United States and the United Nations. “He is carrying out his mission with the imagination, courage and effectiveness which have marked his entire service as one of our greatest military leaders.” Truman added that they would be discussing the final phase of the war and the withdrawal of American troops. “We should like to get our armed forces out and back to their other duties at the earliest moment consistent with the fulfillment of our obligations as a member of the United Nations.”

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  MACARTHUR SMELLED A partisan rat in the Wake Island planning. He still resented having been used by Roosevelt in 1944, and he suspected Truman of trying to steal some of his Inchon-burnished glory just weeks ahead of the 1950 midterm elections. The general complained to William Sebald that the Wake Island meeting was a “political junket.” His suspicions deepened as he prepared his traveling party. American reporters in Japan asked to accompany him to Wake Island. He was inclined to say yes but thought he should check with the Pentagon. “In view of the number of Washington correspondents announced as coming, I assumed that the Tokyo representatives would be permitted to attend also, especially as my plane could accommodate a large representation,” MacArthur wrote later. “I passed their requests along to the Pentagon, recommending approval, and was surprised when the request was promptly and curtly disapproved.”

  Things might not have happened just as MacArthur recalled. He told Sebald at the time that he liked traveling to Wake with a very small party. “The idea of the General appears to be that President Truman will arrive with a powerful staff of advisers (Gen. Bradley, Harriman, Jessup, Rusk, Pace) and a plane-load of newspapermen and photographers, while he, the General, will be alone and without advisers,” Sebald wrote in his diary. “Hence, a tremendous contrast of the simple soldier who knows everything himself and does not need advisers!”

  MacArthur was wary of what awaited him. The announcement of the Wake Island meeting prompted a flurry of telegrams to his headquarters from Americans offering encouragement and telling him to be on his guard. “For heaven’s sake please talk some sense into Truman,” one said. Another pleaded, “We urge you to use every means in your power to frustrate the plot to give Formosa and eventually the rest of Asia to the communists.” Yet another made the same point more succinctly: “Do not give in on Formosa.”

  MacArthur was impressed by the support for himself and the animus toward Truman, and he thought Sebald should be impressed too. “He read me a sheaf of telegrams from people all over the U.S. warning him about the State Department, Truman, Communists, etc.,”
Sebald recorded. “They were obviously from well-wishers who telegraphed such sentiments as ‘Keep a stiff upper lip’; ‘Be on your guard against the evil people still in control’; etc.”

  John Muccio, as American ambassador, was allowed to ride in MacArthur’s plane to Wake Island. “MacArthur sat down beside me and very clearly reflected his disgust at being summoned for political reasons when the front and active military operations had so many calls on his time,” Muccio afterward remembered. “He was mad as hell.” Courtney Whitney, also aboard, elaborated on MacArthur’s mistrust. “It is an eight-hour flight from Tokyo to Wake,” Whitney wrote. “And during almost all of that time MacArthur paced restlessly up and down the aisle of the plane. He talked little, but it was easy to see that his mind was alternately on what lay in store for him at Wake Island and on the war he temporarily had to leave behind. MacArthur, more than most commanders, believes in keeping in the closest personal touch with events on the battlefield—as witness his countless and hazardous trips to the front. So, more than to most commanders, the prospect of traveling two thousand miles from Korea for a conference that could be held by telecom or even telephone was most distasteful to him.”

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  TRUMAN WAS NO less wary than MacArthur. The president recalled how the general had kept Roosevelt waiting for the meeting in Hawaii, and he determined not to suffer similar treatment. “I’ve a whale of a job before me,” he wrote to an old friend. “Have to talk to God’s righthand man.” Truman’s journey west occupied three days. On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 11, he flew from Washington to St. Louis, where he spent the night and the next morning. He proceeded to Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base near San Francisco, arriving on the evening of Thursday. Just after midnight he left for Hawaii. He slept during the first part of the flight, then took the co-pilot’s seat. “It was still dark, but at regular intervals the lights of ships could be seen below,” he recounted later. The vessels were U.S. destroyers, positioned to lend aid in case the Independence encountered trouble. Truman remained up front as the plane approached Hawaii. “I had a breath-taking view of the entire chain of islands rising slowly out of the western sky, tiny little dark points in a vastness of blue that I would not have believed if I had not seen it myself. Then slowly the specks of land took shape and were distinct islands. At last the plane passed Diamond Head, circled low over Pearl Harbor, and came in for a landing at Hickam Air Force Base.”

  Truman spent the day touring Oahu. He met with the Hawaiian territorial governor and with Admiral Arthur Radford, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet. He visited a military hospital and shook hands with soldiers wounded in Korea. Shortly after midnight, in the early hours of Saturday, he took off for Wake Island. He slept across the international date line, awakening on Sunday morning. Flying conditions were favorable—too favorable, in fact. “The pilot had to cut speed in order not to get to Wake Island before the prearranged arrival time,” Truman recalled. He was not going to be kept waiting by MacArthur.

  The Independence rolled to a stop at 6:30, just as the sky was getting light. MacArthur stood at the foot of the ramp while the president deplaned. “His shirt was unbuttoned, and he was wearing a cap that had evidently seen a good deal of use,” Truman recounted in his memoir. In a note to himself written several weeks after the meeting, the president was less circumspect: “General MacArthur was at the airport with his shirt unbuttoned, wearing a greasy ham and eggs cap that evidently had been in use for twenty years.”

  “I have been a long time meeting you, General,” the president said pointedly.

  MacArthur dodged the jab. “I hope it won’t be so long next time, Mr. President,” he replied.

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  AFTERWARD MACARTHUR THREW some jabs of his own. “I had been warned about Mr. Truman’s quick and violent temper and prejudices,” the general wrote in his memoir. In person he concluded that the president possessed wit but lacked depth. “He seemed to take great pride in his historical knowledge, but, it seemed to me that in spite of his having read much, it was of a superficial character, encompassing facts without the logic and reasoning dictating those facts. Of the Far East he knew little, presenting a strange combination of distorted history and vague hopes that somehow, some way, we could do something to help those struggling against Communism.”

  At the Wake Island meeting, MacArthur kept his assessment of Truman’s intellect to himself. He exuded courtesy. “Do you mind if I smoke, Mr. President?” he asked, producing a new briar pipe.

  “No,” Truman replied. “I suppose I’ve had more smoke blown in my face than any other man alive.” MacArthur later recalled, “He seemed to enjoy the laugh that followed.”

  The two men spoke privately for an hour. Truman thought the session went well. “The general seemed genuinely pleased at this opportunity to talk with me, and I found him a most stimulating and interesting person,” he recalled in his memoir. “Our conversation was very friendly—I might say much more so than I had expected.” They spoke of the war in Korea, which MacArthur again said was nearly over, and of the future of Japan. MacArthur apologized for any embarrassment his message to the Veterans of Foreign Wars had caused. Truman said he considered the matter closed. MacArthur assured Truman he was not interested in politics. He had allowed the politicians to make a “chump” of him in 1948, he said, and he would not let it happen again.

  No contemporary record was made of this private session. Several weeks later Truman summarized his recollection of what MacArthur had said: “The General assured the President that the victory was won in Korea, that Japan was ready for a peace treaty and that the Chinese Communists would not attack.”

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  THE LARGER MEETING, with the rest of the military and civilian officials, followed. “The building where the conference was held was a small wooden one, freshly painted green, with two entrances,” Vernice Anderson recalled. Anderson was secretary to the State Department’s Philip Jessup, and she expected to type up the communiqué that would be issued at the end of the conference. “The single medium-sized room had been cleared out or was new. It also had been freshly painted. Five small folding tables had been pushed together to form a long oblong conference table surrounded, I believe, by folding chairs. These represented the sole furniture in the room. Off this room was a small bathroom and at the rear exit a small porch area separated from the main room by a swinging half door. On this porch area, which was about the size of a small closet, were a few chairs and two small tables on which we happily found cold fruit juices, water, and fresh fruit.”

  Truman and MacArthur arrived from their private meeting. “There was a flurry of confusion as to who was to sit where,” Anderson recalled. “Since no one instructed me where to sit, I simply receded into the background into the small rear anteroom where the refreshments were and where the gentlemen had earlier taken my typewriter on which the communiqué was to be typed. Mr. Ross had announced earlier that immediately after the conclusion of the meeting we would prepare the communiqué at that site, he would then secure the approval of the President and the General, and then he would go to the press headquarters in one of the hangars and would read it to the press corps. I assumed the small anteroom was where I was to work later, so I simply sat down awaiting my next assignment.”

  She had hoped to stretch her legs after the flight from Hawaii, but was disappointed. “I looked out the door with the naive notion of taking a stroll on the coral reef, only to find Marine MP’s with carbines and walkie-talkies posted every six feet around the building as well as Secret Service men stationed at strategic points. Then I knew I could not escape for even a short walk, although it would indeed have been welcome after our long journey. So I sat down on one of the three chairs in the small anteroom. With my secretarial training and experience, the most normal and logical thing for me to do to pass the time was to record what I heard.”

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  WHAT SHE HEARD and recorded included MacArthur expatiating with his customary
self-confidence. “I believe that formal resistance will end throughout North and South Korea by Thanksgiving,” the general said. “There is little resistance left in South Korea—only about 15,000 men—and those we do not destroy, the winter will.” MacArthur’s intelligence units estimated that there were 100,000 North Korean soldiers in North Korea, of inferior quality but stubborn spirit. “They are poorly trained, led and equipped, but they are obstinate.” MacArthur wasn’t sure what he would do with them. “It goes against my grain to have to destroy them. They are only fighting to save face. Orientals prefer to die rather than to lose face.” Yet their end was near, one way or the other. “It is my hope to be able to withdraw the Eighth Army to Japan by Christmas,” he said. Units of X Corps would stay until the United Nations held elections for the whole of Korea, preferably by the first of the year. After that, they too would be evacuated. He recommended the creation of a new and more efficient Korean military. “If we do that, it will not only secure Korea but it will be a tremendous deterrent to the Chinese Communists moving south”—to Indochina, perhaps. “This is a threat that cannot be laughed off.”

  Frank Pace asked MacArthur if he was getting the cooperation from Washington he needed.

  “No commander in the history of war ever had more complete and adequate support from all agencies in Washington than I have,” MacArthur replied.

  Truman wanted to hear MacArthur’s estimate of the likelihood of outside communist involvement in Korea. “What are the chances for Chinese or Soviet interference?” the president asked.

  “Very little,” MacArthur answered. The Soviets and Chinese had missed their opportunity. “Had they interfered in the first or second months it would have been decisive.” But not now. “We are no longer fearful of their intervention.” He elaborated about the Chinese: “The Chinese have 300,000 men in Manchuria. Of these probably not more than 100 to 125 thousand are distributed along the Yalu River. Only 50 to 60 thousand could be gotten across the Yalu River. They have no air force. Now that we have bases for our air force in Korea, if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang there would be the greatest slaughter.”