The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War Read online

  Johnson, pro-Chiang and hostile to their essential policy, they could handle easily enough. He overvalued himself politically, and the senior uniformed military despised him. But MacArthur, their commander in the field, was quite another matter. He seemed if anything to want a confrontation with the administration. One of the early skirmishes between himself and Truman had taken place even before the Korean War started, in late December 1948, in Life magazine, the powerful weekly published by Henry Luce, a China Firster and a major critic of the administration’s China policies. “MACARTHUR SAYS FALL OF CHINA IMPERILS U.S.,” said the huge headline. MacArthur had sent a sixteen-page cable to the Joint Chiefs, Life reported, which “gave our top military men a historic shock.” The Soviets, he had reported, were now in a position to seize Japan. “In the face of facts which seem so plain, how could Washington ever have been so complacent about the consequences of a Communist victory in China?” It was a fascinating piece—the administration’s leading military man in Asia had lined up with the administration’s sworn enemies on the most sensitive political issue of all. It did not augur well for the future.

  The next fight took place in late July 1950. There had been some bitter internal squabbling over Taiwan within the administration, with the Joint Chiefs beginning to shift in their opinion on the value of the island—at its nearest about eighty-five miles off the China coast—now that the Korean War had begun. Word had come in from intelligence sources—later it turned out to be completely wrong—that an immense Chinese Communist fleet of some four thousand vessels was being gathered on the mainland, possibly as part of preparations to strike Taiwan. That triggered even greater concern. Acheson was wary of any action that would connect U.S. efforts in Korea to Chiang and might widen the war, and he was still opposed to giving Chiang aid. In his mind any help to Taiwan was also help to Chiang, and would be a fateful American policy move. Truman, however, was beginning to make his own political adjustments. The president suggested a survey team be sent out to gauge the needs for the possible defense of Taiwan. The Chiefs thereupon passed the suggestion on to MacArthur, who decided he would lead the team. At this point the Chiefs became a little nervous and suggested that he might send someone else on this preliminary run—a senior officer, perhaps—since State and Defense were still working out the ground rules for it. Otherwise it might seem more like something of a state visit than an attempt to estimate military needs.

  But MacArthur had no intention of waiting and no intention of letting State in as a player. He took off almost immediately, leaving behind in Tokyo the principal representative of State, Bill Sebald, and taking an enormous group of his own senior military people, so large they needed two giant C-54s. On the way over, MacArthur radioed the Pentagon saying that if the Chinese launched their invasion, he intended to use three squadrons of F-80s to repel them. That heightened the tension for everyone back in Washington, most especially Acheson, who believed that the general had already dispatched the three squadrons to Taiwan, thus vastly exceeding his right of command. Acheson was aggravated, but it was also a reminder to the Chiefs, playing their own game in favor of a commitment if not to Chiang, then to Taiwan, that they did not control MacArthur as they might have controlled any other theater commander. It would have been better if Truman himself had ordered MacArthur to delay the trip, Omar Bradley wrote later.

  MacArthur landed in Taiwan on July 29, a month and a week into the war. Chiang’s people were thrilled. He was greeted as nothing less than a head of state, and both he and Chiang played it for all it was worth. He gallantly kissed Madame Chiang’s hand and called Chiang his “old comrade in arms,” though they had never met before. Most important, though there was technically no change in policy, the entire trip gave the appearance of a change in policy, or at least the emergence of a separate policy. It was a great boon for Chiang’s public relations machinery. Chiang said the United States and China were going to make “common cause” against their mutual enemies. “The net effect of the Nationalist propaganda was to give the impression that the United States was, or was going to be, far more closely allied with Chiang militarily in the struggle against communism in the Far East; that we might even arm him for a ‘return to the mainland,’” as Omar Bradley wrote.

  Truman and Acheson were both predictably furious. It was a sign, the first of many to come, that Douglas MacArthur did not merely carry out policy but was entitled, at least in his own mind, to make it as well, that he always had his own agenda, and that the agenda was not necessarily the same as that of the president. The president was certain that the general had used the trip to encourage the China Lobby and to increase pressure on him from the right. Hearing how angry the president was, as the furor over his trip mounted in the press, MacArthur aggravated him even more by saying that his visit “has been maliciously misrepresented to the public by those who invariably in the past have propagandized a policy of defeatism and appeasement in the Pacific.” That was another slap at Acheson.

  Just so there would be no mistaking how importantly Washington took what happened, Truman immediately sent a three-man team to Tokyo and Korea to make sure it did not happen again, and at the same time to find out how the war was going and how much the command was going to need. This was the team that Matt Ridgway was on when he made his evaluation of Walton Walker. But the key figure was Averell Harriman, already Truman’s top troubleshooter. His basic assignment was to improve Washington’s relations with MacArthur, find out what he needed in terms of men and materiel, and pass on two messages from the president, as Harriman later noted, first that “I’m going to do everything I can to give him what he wants in the way of support; and secondly I want you to tell him that I don’t want him to get us in a war with the Chinese Communists.” He was also to try to find out whatever it was that MacArthur had promised Chiang, and to warn him to stay clear of him. But even as Harriman was flying to Tokyo, a story came out of the general’s headquarters quoting a reliable source that MacArthur intended to tell Harriman that the war in Korea would prove useless unless the United States fought Communism everywhere it showed its head in Asia.

  The Harriman-MacArthur talks were a limited success. The president’s instructions, Harriman later reported to the president, were ones that MacArthur might go along with, but his lack of enthusiasm was notable. As a soldier, he would obey, Harriman reported, “but without full conviction.” Given Harriman’s shrewdness in reading people, that was not a good sign. He was in some ways as grand a figure as MacArthur, had been a major player almost as long, and was in no way intimidated by the general. On arrival, when MacArthur had first-named him—“Averell, good to see you”—he had first-named the commander right back; if it was Averell, then it would be Douglas as well.

  It was clear to Harriman that MacArthur thought any form of accommodation with Mao and his China was a policy of appeasement, though he did not put it quite that way. That would come later. He also told Harriman he thought the United States was being too tough on Chiang—they should “stop kicking him around.” But though he did not value Chiang’s troops—there was no disagreement on that—he was essentially on the other side on the general issue of China, one that had begun to haunt Washington politically. “For reasons that are rather difficult to explain,” Harriman reported to Truman on his return, “I did not feel that we came to a full agreement on the way we believed things should be handled in Formosa and with the Generalissimo. He accepted the president’s position and will act accordingly, but without full conviction. He has the strange idea that we should back anybody who will fight communism, even though he could not give me an argument why the Generalissimo’s fighting communists would be a contribution towards the effective dealing with the communists in China.”

  One final meeting between MacArthur and the team from Washington had taken place on August 8 at what was still a low point in the war. The North Koreans were then pushing toward the Pusan Perimeter. At that meeting, MacArthur, surprisingly upbeat, had unveile
d plans for a surprise landing behind North Korean lines at a port called Inchon, located far up the west coast of Korea. It was the old Bluehearts plan that MacArthur had favored in the very early days of the war, now greatly expanded and upgraded. The Inchon landing, which he had scheduled for September 15, had become not so much a preferred battle plan as a MacArthur obsession. Almost from the moment the North Koreans had crossed the border and driven south, he had been thinking about it. There had been a staff meeting early in July, and a number of his people had been told to think in terms of an amphibious landing and make suggestions. Many sites were suggested: one staff officer had selected a port just behind North Korean lines; the next, a spot about ten kilometers north, still in artillery range of American troops. A third officer, a young major named Ed Rowny, was the boldest, suggesting a point about twenty-five kilometers up on the east coast. MacArthur was not impressed. “You’re all pusillanimous,” he said. Then he went to a blackboard and wrote out in French—Rowny remembered it clearly years later because it was the great MacArthur and a great performance, made even better by the unexpected use of the French—“De Qui Objet?” What is the object? And then he took a giant grease pencil and circled Inchon, the port for Seoul, well above what anyone else had suggested. “That’s where we should land, Inchon—go for the throat.” The younger men spoke about the difficulty of the tides and fears that the port’s harbor might be mined, but MacArthur waved the objections aside. “Don’t take counsel of your fears—it’s simply a matter of willpower and courage.” Then he told them to work out a plan for a landing at Inchon.

  Now, with Harriman and Ridgway, he made his push for the landing. He normally would need four divisions for such an operation, but American forces being so strapped by the postwar demobilization, he would do it with two, the Seventh Infantry and the First Marines. It was, Ridgway thought, a brilliant presentation of a highly original strategy, and he enthusiastically supported it, becoming the first member of the senior Washington national security team to leap on the Inchon bandwagon. Ridgway had also been impressed by MacArthur’s concern about the hardships that the upcoming Korean winter held in store for the troops, a winter much worse, he was sure, than anything they had encountered in Germany. The sooner they struck at Inchon, MacArthur said, the better. Once winter arrived, MacArthur had suggested, it would be so bitter and harsh that non-battle casualties might exceed battle ones. The irony of his argument, given the fact that in late November MacArthur would not hesitate to send the Eighth Army and Tenth Corps north to the Yalu in murderously cold weather, often still clothed in summer-weight uniforms, would not be lost later on either Harriman or Ridgway. MacArthur, they decided, could argue passionately on either side of any question—based on whether it suited his immediate purpose or not.

  To Harriman, the originality of the Inchon landing presentation caught the great quandary posed to civilian leaders by MacArthur, a man of two selves—such a talented, imaginative general, yet so difficult for his civilian bosses to deal with, an officer constantly bordering on the insubordinate, with an agenda always at variance with that of his superiors. They all knew that it was like a reflex action with him to hold back critical bits of information. How did you extract the best from a man who constantly seemed to create his own political undertow, simply did not play by the rules used by other senior military men, and was never even close to being straight with you? How could you employ him and yet control him? Could he, with all his talent, actually stay on your team? Harriman and Ridgway’s trip had underlined the MacArthur problem perfectly; the mess he had created with Chiang, and the brilliance of the Inchon plan. In a casual remark that highlighted the dilemma MacArthur always posed for his civilian superiors, Harriman told Ridgway it was crucial “for political and personal considerations to be put to one side and our government deal with General MacArthur on the lofty level of the great national asset which he is.” But even as their meeting proceeded in a positive vein, troubling signs for the future abounded. If the relationship between Moscow and Beijing, countries aligned as fraternal allies in the Communist constellation, was soon to prove uncommonly difficult, it would certainly be equaled by the thorny relationship between the American commander in Tokyo and his military and political superiors in Washington.

  The civilians knew that there was always going to be a next incident with MacArthur. In this case they didn’t have to wait very long. It took fewer than three weeks. This time it was a VFW speech. The general had been asked to speak, or at least send a speech along to be read, to the annual meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, like the American Legion not a constituency of the dovish. Again the speech was about Taiwan. Its military value was not to be underestimated, he said. From Taiwan the United States “can dominate with air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore and prevent any hostile movement into the Pacific.” It was in an odd way as if he were carrying ammunition for the nation’s adversaries by going so public on so delicate a subject. This—that Taiwan was a great military base for the Americans—was exactly the point the Russians, both for themselves and on behalf of the Chinese, were trying to make in the United Nations, and the point that Washington wanted to minimize in order to limit the scope of the Korean War. Then MacArthur went even further—he tweaked the administration one more time—speaking, it seemed, not so much as its most important commanding general in the field, but as one of its leading political critics at home. “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…. Those who speak thus do not understand the Orient. They do not grant that it is in the pattern of Oriental psychology to respect and follow aggressive, resolute and dynamic leadership.” If it was not an assault on Truman himself, it was most obviously an all-out slap at Acheson.

  Truman was once again furious. Though the speech was already public, and had been moved by the wire service, it had not yet been read to the VFW convention. Truman called in his top people and told Louis Johnson, who agreed with MacArthur on the subject, to tell MacArthur to withdraw the speech—and that it was a presidential order. “Do you understand that?” the president asked. “Yes, sir, I do,” Johnson answered. “Go and do it, that’s all,” said the president (angry at Johnson as well, feeling that he was something of a co-conspirator in all this). But Johnson went back to his office and wavered, not liking the idea of telling MacArthur to eat his own speech. He called Acheson and suggested ways of softening Truman’s orders—as if what MacArthur had said was simply one man’s opinion and every man was entitled to his opinion. Acheson reminded him that it was an order from Truman. All day long phone calls went back and forth among the various principals, except for Truman. Finally in mid-afternoon, Truman telephoned Johnson and dictated the message to MacArthur: “The President of the United States directs that you withdraw your message for the National Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, because various features with respect to Formosa are in conflict with the policy of the U.S. and its position in the U.N.” Finally it was withdrawn—now making MacArthur the angry one. But just as the speech had been made public and then withdrawn, the incident was over, but not over. Later, after MacArthur and Truman had their final clash and the president relieved him, Truman would sometimes mutter that he should have done it so much earlier, back at the time of the VFW speech.

  It was the death knell for Louis Johnson, who was ordered by the president to resign some two weeks later. Johnson broke down in tears when Truman repeatedly told him to sign his farewell letter. Johnson was, wrote Truman’s biographer, David McCullough, “possibly the worst appointment Truman ever made.” “Nutty as a fruitcake,” Acheson said of him. He had managed during his brief tour in office to offend almost everyone in the administration, including the president, the secretary of state, most cabinet members, and almost every senior military official whose path he crossed. The senior military men, often squabbling bitterly with o
ne another over postwar roles, were united by a single common feeling in that time—they all hated Louis Johnson. He seemed to them a crude caricature of their worst nightmares of a civilian politician. He regularly denigrated their skills and the need for what they did. With the atomic bomb in mind, he wrote to one senior admiral in December 1949 (using what the writer Robert Heinl called his “characteristic tact”): “Admiral, the Navy is on its way out…. There’s no reason for having a Navy or Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me amphibious landings are a thing of the past. We’ll never have any more amphibious landings. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.” He was hated in senior Army circles because of the pressures he kept applying to make a vastly diminished Army even smaller. By the time he was fired in September 1950, three months into the Korean War, a mordant joke was circulating in the Pentagon: the Joint Chiefs, it went, had informed Johnson that he could finally call off his relentless troop reduction demands—enough men were being killed in Korea every day to bring the Army’s strength down to the desired level. He was despised by almost everyone who had to deal with him. “Unwittingly, Truman had replaced one mental case with another,” Omar Bradley later wrote in his memoirs, in a reference to Forrestal.