Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (32 page)

Perhaps the hardest letter for Truman to bear arrived with a Purple Heart enclosed. It read:

Mr. Truman: As you have been directly responsible for the loss of our son's life, you might just as well keep this emblem on display in your trophy room, as a memory of one of your historic deeds.

One major regret at this time is that your daughter was not there to receive the same treatment as our son received in Korea.

Truman put the letter in his desk drawer, where it stayed for several years.
⁴¹

The letter to Hume, however regrettable, was but a diversion compared to the mayhem that was continuing in Korea. When news of the Chinese assault reached the President, he knew that the whole war had changed. "We've got a terrific situation on our hands," he commented on November 28. "The Chinese have come in with both feet."
⁴²
Although he resisted MacArthur's appeals for a widening of the war, he demanded drastic action at home. On December 15 he went on television to declare a national emergency and to call for all-out mobilization. This, he said, would necessitate a build-up of the army to 3.5 million men and the imposition of economic controls. "Our homes, our nation, all the things we believe in are in great danger." Clinging to the belief that the Soviets were to blame, he added, "This danger has been created by the rulers of the Soviet Union."
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Meanwhile the retreat continued. By Christmas UN forces had been pushed below the 38th parallel—a fallback of more than 300 miles in less than a month. Soldiers and millions of cold and panic-stricken refugees jammed the roads. In the first week of January Seoul had to be evacuated by the UN forces for the second time, and Rhee fled with his government to Pusan. For Truman and the United States it was the bleakest time in the long history of the war.

A
CCIDENTS AND INDIVIDUALS
sometimes make a difference amid the larger determinants of history.

The accident happened on an icy road near Seoul on December 23. It killed General Walton Walker, head of the American Eighth Army, who was riding in a jeep. The individual was his replacement, Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway, who was then vice-chief of staff of the army in Washington. As soon as Ridgway was appointed he flew from Washington to Tokyo, arriving Christmas Day. After talking with MacArthur the next morning, he flew to Korea that afternoon.

Ridgway, fifty-five, already enjoyed a distinguished military record. A protégé of Marshall, he was well read and thoughtful. He was also brave and superbly fit. During World War II he had planned and executed the airborne invasion of Sicily. In June 1944 he jumped himself as leader of his division's D-Day airborne assault on Normandy. A soldier's soldier, he thrived in the field and in the midst of his men. In Korea he stalked the front lines, a hand grenade strapped to his chest, and tried to rally his dispirited forces.

Ridgway was appalled by the low morale, bad food, inadequate clothing, and poor intelligence-gathering of the Eighth Army and moved quickly to improve things. He insisted on more patrolling, so as better to locate and shoot at the enemy. He got some of his men off the roads and up onto the hillsides and brought in the air force and artillery on a much larger scale. He was also fortunate, for enemy supplies, especially of gasoline, ran low, and the advance stalled. Ridgway mounted Operation Killer, which directed heavy artillery fire on enemy soldiers, who by then had become stretched out and more exposed. Thousands were slaughtered. "I'm not interested in real estate—just killing the enemy," he explained. By mid-January Ridgway had helped to restore morale, stopped the retreat, and brightened the UN prospects. He then followed with Operation Ripper, a counter-attack that ground its way back north. By the end of March his troops had regained most of the territory south of the 38th parallel, including Seoul, as well as bits here and there of the North. There the front stabilized, changing little over the remaining twenty-eight months of stalemate on the peninsula.
⁴⁴

MacArthur, however, seemed to find relatively little to cheer about amid this recovery. In December, following his public demands for escalation, he had been ordered to say nothing without prior clearance. But MacArthur continued to give interviews to journalists in Tokyo. These repeated his main themes: Asia was the major battleground of the Cold War, and "limited" war was unthinkable. As before, his complaints angered Truman, Bradley, and other top advisers. But they, too, were shocked by the ferocity of the Chinese assault, and they were afraid to remove so legendary a figure as MacArthur, hero of Inchon, or even seriously to reprimand him. One who did complain was Ridgway, at a meeting shortly before his appointment in Korea. As the meeting was breaking up he grabbed General Hoyt Vandenberg, the air force chief, and asked him why the Joint Chiefs didn't
tell
MacArthur what to do. Vandenberg shook his head. "What good would that do? He wouldn't obey the orders. What can we do?" Ridgway replied, "You can relieve any commander who won't obey orders, can't you?" Vandenberg just looked at him, amazed. Acheson later observed, "This was the first time that someone had expressed what everybody thought—that the Emperor had no clothes on."
⁴⁵

There matters rested uneasily until March 20, at which time Truman told MacArthur that he planned to seek a negotiated settlement with the Chinese. MacArthur sabotaged this idea four days later by issuing a statement of his own in which he offered to meet with the Chinese and to work out a settlement. If they refused, he said, his troops might invade China.
⁴⁶
When Truman heard of this, he was enraged. So were Acheson, Lovett, and other advisers, who wanted the general fired. Truman now knew this would have to be done. "I've come to the conclusion that our Big General in the Far East must be recalled," he wrote in his diary.
⁴⁷
He told Democratic Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia, "I'll show that son of a bitch who's boss. Who does he think he is—God?"
⁴⁸
But Truman took his time. His ratings in the polls were at an all-time low of 26 percent, and he shrank from the firestorm that would erupt if he got rid of the general. Instead, he sent a mild reprimand and awaited a more flagrant act of insubordination that would justify removal.

MacArthur had already written a letter that was just such an act. He sent it on March 20 to Joseph Martin, the House Republican leader, in response to a speech that Martin had given in February and then relayed to Tokyo for MacArthur's reaction. The United States, Martin had proclaimed, must be in Korea to win! If not, "this administration should be indicted for the murder of American boys." MacArthur's reply heartily endorsed Martin's sentiment and nicely summarized his overall views:

It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe's war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words; that if we lose the war to Communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable, win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you point out, we must win. There is no substitute for victory.
⁴⁹

In writing such a letter to a partisan foe of the President—and in placing no restrictions on its publication—MacArthur sealed his doom as commander in Asia. When Martin read the letter on the floor of the House on April 5, Truman knew he had to act.
⁵⁰
Still, he moved deliberately, first consulting not only his military advisers but also Vice-President Barkley and House Speaker Rayburn. He even sought the opinion of Fred Vinson, who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. All said that the President had no choice but to remove MacArthur, political firestorm or no. When the Joint Chiefs finally recommended removal—on military grounds—on April 9, Truman had the papers drawn up, but he still hoped to get word to MacArthur privately before proclaiming the deed to the world. When a leak threatened to foul up this strategy, the firing was announced sooner than Truman had planned—at 1:00
A.M.
on the morning of April 11. That was almost six days after Martin had aired the letter.
⁵¹

In removing MacArthur, Truman noted the important policy issues, especially whether or not to limit the war, that separated the two men. These differences were profound, involving the relative strategic importance to the United States of Europe and Asia, the use or non-use of nuclear weapons, and the taking of other provocative actions of war against China. MacArthur may have been correct to think that stepping up the war with China, especially the threat of nuclear weapons, would have induced Mao to ease off or to back down. But MacArthur had been wrong about a lot of things in 1950, including his predictions that the Chinese would not intervene. And his demands for escalation were frightening not only to Truman and his advisers but also to America's allies and the UN. Had Truman followed MacArthur's counsel, he would have damaged relations with his NATO allies and weakened Western defenses in Europe. He would have faced an even more costly war against China, and he might have had to fight the Soviet Union as well. To get bogged down in a major war in Asia would have been senseless, and Truman knew it.

Instead of dwelling on these policy disputes, however, Truman fired MacArthur because he wished to preserve the important constitutional principle of civilian control over the military. MacArthur had repeatedly disobeyed orders. He had been insubordinate, directly challenging the President's constitutional standing as commander-in-chief. Truman derived no special pleasure in taking action, which he should have done much earlier. "I was sorry to have a parting of the ways with the big man in Asia," he wrote Eisenhower on April 12, "but he asked for it, and I had to give it to him." Although the firing required a certain amount of political courage, Truman later explained to a reporter that "courage had nothing to do with it. He was insubordinate, and I fired him."
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When MacArthur got news of his removal, he was at a luncheon in Tokyo. He said to his wife, "Jeannie, we're going home at last."
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A few days later he took off for the United States, receiving a hero's welcome in Tokyo, Hawaii, and San Francisco before arriving in Washington shortly after midnight on April 19. There he was met by the Joint Chiefs, who had unanimously recommended his firing, and a substantial crowd. Around noon that day he went to Capitol Hill to give an address to both houses of Congress. It was a scene of high drama, and MacArthur did not disappoint his admirers. He strode confidently down the aisle, whereupon the Congress gave him a standing ovation. He spoke for thirty-four minutes, during which time he was interrupted by applause thirty times. Those present were struck by his control as he outlined his now familiar differences with American policies. He ended with dramatics. "I am closing my fifty-two years of military service," he said. "The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the Plains at West Point. . . . But I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that—'Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.' And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away—an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-bye."

Not everyone, of course, found the speech thrilling. Truman privately pronounced it "a hundred percent bullshit." But some congressmen, including people who had wanted him fired, wept openly. Dewey Short, a conservative Republican from Missouri, said, "We heard God speak here today, God in the flesh, the voice of God." From New York came the verdict of former President Herbert Hoover, who described MacArthur as "a reincarnation of St. Paul into a great General of the Army who came out of the East."
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A Gallup poll found that 69 percent of the American people sided with MacArthur in the controversy.
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There was more to come. After MacArthur spoke he rode triumphantly down Pennsylvania Avenue, where an estimated 300,000 people cheered him. Bombers and fighters flew in formation overhead. In New York the next day, he received a ticker-tape parade the likes of which the city had never seen before. Some estimates placed the crowds at 7.5 million people. Office workers and residents clustered on balconies, rooftops, and fire escapes and threw down blizzards of torn paper. Men shouted, "God bless you, Mac!" On the river, tugs and ocean-going boats tooted, adding to the din of the occasion. The general, his cap white with paper, climbed onto the folded top of the open car and acknowledged the adoration. At City Hall he accepted a gold medal and exclaimed, "We shall never forget" the tremendous reception.
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While the homecoming orgy was taking place, Americans throughout the country were letting Truman and Congress know what they thought about the issue. Within twelve days of the firing the White House received more than 27,000 letters and telegrams, which ran twenty to one against the President. Many of these were so hostile and abusive that they were shown to the Secret Service. Members of Congress got another 100,000 messages during the first week, many of which demanded Truman's impeachment: