Aboard the Independence, Dad was thinking about the past. He remembered how the democracies had allowed dictatorships to swallow Manchuria, Ethiopia, Austria without acting - and in the end, were forced to fight for their very survival in World War II. At least as important was the status of the United Nations. In two days, the world organization was to celebrate its fifth birthday. Dad had no doubt Secretary of State Acheson’s prompt action in calling a Security Council meeting would result in a condemnation of North Korea’s aggression. This swift move had caught the Russians flatfooted. They had been boycotting the UN over the Security Council’s refusal to seat Communist China and expel Nationalist China. Thus, they were unable to exercise their veto, which would have left the UN helpless to speak until the Assembly was convened - a process that would have taken weeks and perhaps months.
By 6:00 p.m., almost two hours before he landed, my father knew our UN resolution denouncing North Korea’s “unprovoked act of aggression” had been adopted by the Security Council, nine to nothing. But this now meant that the prestige of the United Nations was on the line. If North Korea succeeded in its conquest of South Korea, the UN would become ridiculous in the eyes of the world. The fate of the League of Nations, after its impotent denunciations of Fascist aggression in the 1930s, was something Dad remembered all too well.
Finally, there was our own commitment as a nation to the countries of Western Europe, whom we had joined in the North Atlantic Treaty. More than a few of the politicians in these NATO nations were not entirely convinced we would stand beside them in a crunch with the Russians. The test of our will to resist, the integrity of our declarations in the Truman Doctrine that we were prepared to meet Communist aggression against free nations, was at stake.
My father landed in Washington at 7:15 p.m. Sunday. Secretary of State Acheson, Secretary of Defense Johnson, and Correspondence Secretary Bill Hassett met the plane. They drove to Blair House, and Dad called us at 7:45 Washington time, 5:45 our time, to tell us he had landed safely. No matter what was on his mind, he never failed to perform this ritual, for Mother’s sake. She hated to fly and worried every moment he was in the air.
At 8:00, my father went downstairs to meet his assembled advisers. They included the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, Under Secretary of State James Webb, Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews, Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter, and Generals Bradley, Collins, and Vandenberg, Admiral Sherman, Ambassador at Large Philip Jessup, and Assistant Secretaries of State Dean Rusk and John D. Hickerson. While they were waiting on the patio for dinner to be announced, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson suddenly asked General Bradley to read a memorandum from General MacArthur on the importance of Formosa. My father cut him short by announcing he wanted nothing discussed until dinner was over and the servants had withdrawn. Johnson’s attempt to seize the floor annoyed him, not only because it was indiscreet. It was another sign of the feud Johnson had been conducting with Secretary of State Acheson because he was jealous of what he considered to be Acheson’s and the State Department’s greater influence with the President.
After dinner, the conference got down to business. Secretary of State Acheson read “White III,” the copy of Ambassador Muccio’s telegram, and added what few details had filtered into Washington from Korea since that had been received. The situation was in a state of total confusion. But there were some hopeful reports. One enemy column had been stopped in the mountains northeast of Seoul. Acheson then read a six-page memorandum entitled, “Points Requiring Presidential Decision,” which ranged over a wide variety of alternatives.
After considerable discussion around the table, my father decided to do three things.
1. Order General MacArthur to supply the South Korean army with all available weapons and ammunition.
2. Evacuate the dependents of the 500-man American military mission - the only soldiers we had in Korea. Ships and planes should be used to do this, and the air force was ordered to use all the planes it had at its disposal in the Far East to keep open Kimpo and other airports. However, the planes were strictly ordered to stay south of the 38th parallel.
3. The Seventh Fleet was ordered into the Formosa Straits, and a statement was prepared declaring the fleet would not permit the Chinese Communists to attack Formosa - nor permit Chiang Kai-shek’s army to attack the mainland. At the same time, Dad ordered a maximum effort to gather intelligence on possible Communist attacks elsewhere in the world. He also asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make an immediate study of our ability to attack Russian bases in the Far East, if they joined the fighting on the North Korean side.
My father insisted every man in the meeting state his opinion of what should be done. Looking back on it, after he left office, Dad said there was “complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States should back away from it. This was the test of all the talk of the last five years of collective security.”
One crucial question that was debated, but not decided that fateful night was whether we would have to commit American ground troops to save South Korea. General Hoyt Vandenberg, speaking for the air force, and Admiral Forrest Sherman, speaking for the navy, thought that air and naval aid would be enough. But General Omar Bradley and General Lawton Collins were much more pessimistic. They felt the news received this far pointed towards a complete collapse of the South Korean army. They were all too aware of the balance of power in favor of the Communists. We had equipped the South Koreans only with enough light weapons to maintain order within their own country. They had no heavy artillery, no tanks, and no air force.
My father decided the only way to settle that momentous question was the usual Truman approach - get the facts. He told General Collins to order General MacArthur to send a survey party to South Korea immediately. He also ordered them to prepare orders for the 80,000 men we had on duty in Japan so they could move to Korea swiftly, if the grim decision had to be made.
As the meeting broke up, Secretary of State Acheson showed Dad a telegram they had received in the State Department from John Foster Dulles, who had just returned to Tokyo after addressing the South Korean Assembly.
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOUTH KOREANS MAY THEMSELVES CONTAIN AND REPULSE ATTACK AND, IF SO, THI SIS BEST WAY. IF HOWEVER IT APPEARS THEY CANNOT DO SO THEN WE BELIEVE THAT U.S. FORCE SHOULD BE USED EVEN THOUGH THIS RISKS RUSSIAN COUNTER MOVES. TO SIT BY WHILE KOREA IS OVERRUN BY UNPROVOKED ARMED ATTACK WOULD START DISASTROUS CHAIN OF EVENTS LEADING MOST PROBABLY TO WORLD WAR.
At 11:55 p.m., my father’s orders went chattering out over the Defense Department wire. General MacArthur received them personally in Tokyo. “Do you need any further instructions at this time?” the message concluded.
“No,” was the reply.
Less than thirty hours had passed since we had first heard Korea was under attack, little more than twelve hours since we had heard the attack was serious aggression. Seldom has any government reacted so swiftly to a crisis 6,000 miles away.
The following morning, Monday, my father was in his White House office by 8:00 a.m. Because he had not been expected to arrive in Washington until that afternoon, he had no set appointments. The impromptu schedule set up by Matt Connelly listed, at 8:00 a.m., the following entry: ‘War in Korea.” Beside it Dad wrote a series of question marks. At 10:00 a.m., he met with Charlie Ross, Charlie Murphy, and George Elsey to discuss a statement to the nation. They worked over a draft sent up from the State Department until it satisfied all of them. It was calm and carefully restrained. It stressed our support of the United Nations resolution. As Charlie Ross took the statement off for mimeographing, and Charlie Murphy hurried away on another errand, George Elsey, the youngest of the three aides, stayed behind to discuss the significance of what was happening. Not knowing the decision to send the Seventh Fleet to the Formosa
Straits, he asked about the possibility of the Chinese Communists seizing the Nationalist-held island.
My father walked over to the globe in front of the fireplace and gave it a spin. “I’m more worried about other parts of the world,” he said. “The Middle East, for instance.” He put his finger on Iran, and said, “Here is where they will start trouble if we aren’t careful.”
“Korea,” he said, “is the Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now, if we stand up to them like we did in Greece three years ago, they won’t take any next steps. But if we just stand by, they’ll move into Iran and they’ll take over the whole Middle East. There’s no telling what they’ll do, if we don’t put up a fight now.”
Throughout the day, the news from Korea continued to grow more and more discouraging. At 3:50 p.m., the South Korean ambassador, Dr. John Myun Chang, visited the White House, escorted by Acheson. Very depressed, the ambassador said President Syngman Rhee had telephoned to say the South Korean forces lacked artillery, tanks, and aircraft. My father did his best to cheer up Chang. He assured him help was on the way and pointed out the fight was only forty-eight hours old. Between them, the President and the Secretary of State managed to calm him down, but he was still gloomy when he met with reporters outside the White House. “The hour is late,” he said.
That night at 7:20, Secretary of State Acheson called and suggested another conference of top advisers at Blair House. Dad immediately agreed and scheduled it for 9:00 p.m. At 7:55, he called Independence and talked with Mother and me. He was calm and quiet. Already he could see the steps that lay ahead, the decisions he must soon make that might send young Americans into combat.
At 9:00 p.m., almost the same group of advisers, with one or two exceptions, assembled again in Blair House. They pondered the latest communication from General MacArthur, which said in part: “South Korean units unable to resist determined Northern offensive. Contributory factor exclusive enemy possession of tanks and fighter planes. . . . Our estimate is that a complete collapse is imminent.” Enemy tanks were in the suburbs of Seoul. What to do? Our air force was already fighting over Korea. In the past twenty-four hours, they had shot down three Yak Russian-built fighter planes that had attempted to strafe a Danish ship evacuating American dependents from Inchon. We suspected Russians were flying these planes. The following morning my father told George Elsey he had directed the air force “to protect the Korean army from the Soviet air force.” Both the air force and the navy were ordered to provide full tactical support to the South Korean army. Orders to the Seventh Fleet in regard to Formosa were reaffirmed. The conference was over in forty minutes, and the orders were flashed to General MacArthur at 10:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
My father was still hoping to avoid the use of American infantry in Korea. He hoped air and naval support might boost the morale of the South Korean army and stall the North Korean advance long enough to give the South Koreans time to regroup. After his advisers left, Dad ordered George Elsey and Charlie Murphy to go to work on the telephone, to round up a meeting of congressional leaders for the following morning. For a President, conferring with advisers, weighing and making crucial decisions, was only the first step. He also had to persuade Congress to support him.
The following morning, Tuesday, Dad made another decision. At 7:13 a.m., he asked the White House operator to get Averell Harriman, who was in Paris working on the Marshall Plan, to return to Washington immediately. Actually, Dad had been thinking of bringing Averell home for some time. Meanwhile, in Washington and around the world, diplomats, politicians, and average citizens were holding their breaths, waiting to see what the United States was going to do about Korea. Skepticism was the order of the day. One Washington ambassador cabled his government: “The time has come when Uncle Sam must put up or shut up and my guess is he will do neither.”
At 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, fifteen congressional leaders assembled in the Cabinet Room. When my father came in, he went around the table and shook hands with each of them. Then he took his seat at the head of the table and Dean Acheson, sitting beside him, told the congressmen what was happening and what we had decided to do. Some of the points Acheson made were historically significant. It was vital for the United States to adopt a firm stand because the Korean forces appeared to be weakening fast, and their leadership was feeble and indecisive. Moreover, the governments of many Western European nations appeared to be in a state of near panic as they watched to see whether the United States would act or not.
Whether it was the tension of the situation, or the exhausting pace at which he had been working, for some reason Acheson forgot to mention our role in the United Nations. Dad did not. He immediately noted this as the most important element in the situation. He then read the statement which he was going to release to the press after the meeting, announcing our intention to support the South Korean government. Then he added some very significant remarks. The act of aggression was obviously inspired by the Soviet Union, he said. If we let Korea down, the Soviets would swallow one piece of Asia after another. We had to make a stand somewhere or let all of Asia go by the board. If Asia went, the Near East would collapse, and Europe would inevitably follow. Therefore, he had ordered our forces to support Korea as long as we could - as long as the Koreans put up a fight and gave us something we could support.
The congressional leaders asked a number of worried questions. Did MacArthur have enough military power to support the South Koreans effectively? Would the nations of Western Europe back us in the Security Council, where we were submitting another resolution, calling on them and other free nations to assist us in resisting the North Koreans? Over Secretary of Defense Johnson’s objections, my father permitted General Hoyt Vandenberg to give the congressional leaders secret details about our air strength in the Far East. Secretary of State Acheson said he had cablegrams from most of the countries of Western Europe, assuring him of support in the UN. He also said he did not think the Russians would return to the UN Security Council and exercise their veto. Even if they did, they could not veto the resolution which had been passed on Sunday, thanks to the Secretary of State’s swift action. Senator Tom Connally summed up congressional opinion when he said it was quite apparent this was “the clearest test case that the United Nations has ever faced. If the United Nations is ever going to do anything, this is the time, and if the United Nations cannot bring the crisis in Korea to an end, then we might just as well wash up the United Nations and forget it.”
My father nodded. He vowed he was going to make absolutely certain everything we did in Korea would be in support of and in conformity with the decision by the Security Council of the United Nations.
Secretary of State Acheson then turned to a discussion of the Soviet Union in regard to Korea. He pointed out the President’s statement simply referred to communism. The government was doing its best to leave the door wide open for the Soviet Union to back down without losing too much prestige. In connection with this policy, the Secretary of State begged the members of Congress not to condemn the Russians specifically for the Korean crisis. He held out the hope that if we left the door open, the Soviet government might take this opportunity to withdraw.
Dad’s statement, released at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 27, went through Washington and the other capitals of the free world like an electric shock. Joseph C. Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor, looking back on twenty years in Washington, said, “Never before in that time have I felt such a sense of relief and unity pass through this city.” Both the Senate and the House rose and cheered when the statement was read to them. Newspapers around the nation echoed Harsch. James Reston of The New York Times said it had produced “a transformation in the spirit of the United States government.” The New York Herald Tribune ran an editorial on the front page calling it “a basic contribution to a genuine peace in our disturbed and distracted world.” At 10:45 that night, the UN Security Council, with the Russians still absent, passed another resolution, calling on mem
ber nations to “render such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and restore international peace and security to the area.”
Wednesday was a day for good news. Dad was reassured about the Tightness of his decision by Averell Harriman, just back from Europe. Averell described to my father from firsthand knowledge the feeling of relief which had swept through Europe’s capitals when they learned America was standing fast. Encouraging news even came from Ambassador Muccio in Seoul. At 10:00 a.m., he sent the following telegram:
SITUATION HAD DETERIORATED SO RAPIDLY HAD NOT PRESIDENT’S DECISION PLUS ARRIVAL OF GENERAL CHURCH PARTY [HEADING THE SURVEY TEAM MY FATHER HAD ORDERED] BECOME KNOWN HERE IT IS DOUBTFUL ANY ORGANIZED KOREAN RESISTANCE WOULD HAVE CONTINUED THROUGH NIGHT. COMBAT AID DECISION PLUS CHURCH’S ORDER HAVE HAD GREAT MORALE EFFECT. FORTHCOMING AIR STRIKES HOPED DEMORALIZE ENEMY, MAKE POSSIBLE REFORM KOREAN ARMY SOUTH BANK HAN RIVER.
My father was heartened by other telegrams which flooded into the White House from citizens all over the country. Among them was one from Thomas E. Dewey which read: “I wholeheartedly agree with and support the difficult decision you have made.” The only sour note - and even that was not completely sour - came from Senator Taft, who rose in Congress to accuse the Truman Administration of inviting the North Korean attack by permitting Korea to remain divided. Everything that was wrong in the Far East, according to Senator Taft, was explained by the administration’s “sympathetic acceptance of communism.” The senator singled out for special criticism a speech Secretary of State Acheson had made earlier in 1950, in which he said Korea lay outside the U.S.’s “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific. He called for the resignation of Secretary of State Acheson forthwith and wondered if Dad had violated the Constitution by committing America to a “de facto war.” Then he finally got around to saying he approved of the “general policies outlined in the President’s statement.” Charlie Ross, when he heard the news of Mr. Republican’s speech, gasped: “By God! Bob Taft has joined the U.N. and the U.S.” Dad felt pretty much the same way.
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