The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 100 Open the secret (1)
On the morning of Thursday, May 5, MacArthur walked along the marble corridor of the Senate Office Building to Room 3.The place, informally known as the Senate Chamber, is the main venue for the Senate's most important hearings.With a peaceful expression, MacArthur greeted a large number of journalists and photojournalists in a gesture that was half waving and half saluting.His attire was still unrefined: a military jacket with no insignia, not even a five-star rank; black slacks, khaki shirt, and tie.He didn't bring a briefcase.His assistants followed a few paces behind, unobtrusively.MacArthur went into battle single-handedly and with bare hands.

Virtually every member of the United States Senate, along with a slew of their aides, and a surprising number of journalists were waiting for him in the secret chamber.MacArthur gave a slight nod to Chairman Russell and took a seat in a straight-backed chair by the witness table.Fumbling in an inside pocket of his coat, he produced an old briar pipe, which he placed on the table in front of him.He did not light the pipe until half an hour into the hearing, and only after obtaining consent.Then he sat quietly with an air of evident anticipation.Instead of the field commander bristling with anger at "those damned fools in Washington" (a term he often used for Willoughby and Whitney) because of the restraints that barred him from attacking, he is now subject to a special order by the United States Senate. Invitation to sit on the witness stand, and he is prepared to make the most of that pulpit.

MacArthur was furious that the public and the press were excluded from hearings.He is willing to have the widest possible audience to prove that he is not a disloyal soldier (as smeared by the hated Harry Truman and the liberal press) and to force the government to admit that he is Right, to make the government change its North Korea policy.MacArthur believed that he was just in both respects.Not a single word in his voluminous public statements and private documents suggests that he ever had the slightest hint of doubt about his convictions.

While his testimony cannot be heard publicly, a compromise between Democrats and Republicans has guaranteed that his testimony will be released in a timely manner with minimal censorship.According to this agreement, shorthand manuscripts will be sent to the front hall every 5 minutes or so, and the words will be sorted out and printed on mimeographed stencils.The testimony will be vetted by the Pentagon's Vice Admiral Arthur Davis and the State Department's Adrian Fisher.If a sentence threatened safety, Fisher slashed it with a razor blade.Then the mimeograph stencil will pass through a mimeograph machine, and the journalists will come to grab the mimeograph manuscript as soon as it is spit out from the mimeograph machine.Chairman Russell told MacArthur that if he felt that the removed material was "essential for expressing your views," that material could be restored and corrections made to the circulated manuscript.

Richard Russell, in his opening remarks, fills all these roles: he is a senator confronting "big questions vital to the security of our country and to the preservation of our free system of government . . . "; he is Admirers of MacArthur's past achievements said he was "one of the great generals in history"; he was also a non-partisan person, and he demanded "the whole truth, without prejudice and partisan bias, without the meaning of personal attack" .

This gentlemanly demeanor lasted only a moment.As MacArthur began his testimony, Senator Wayne Morse cut in. "Mr. President," he asked, "are you going to take witnesses under oath?"

MacArthur looked at Morse with an unhappy expression, as if to say: "Isn't my uniform enough to prove my loyalty?" Russell explained to the general that the committee had made a decision and all witnesses had to under oath because it was impossible to ascertain the circumstances of the hearing.In this way, MacArthur swore to tell the truth, all the truth, and only the truth, God testifies.

The General began with a disarming statement, saying that he was present "not at all as a voluntary witness, but in response to the Commission's request."He did not have a prepared statement because "I have fully expressed my views when I have the honor and honor of being invited to appear before Congress."This statement took about 1 minute.

MacArthur's superb acting skills, his powerful eloquence, his extensive coverage of such diverse issues as the British Magna Carta, the 19th century English Corn Laws, the daily calorie consumption of Japanese farmers, and his 15 lectures in concise and grammatical sentences. Minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, captivated many senators on the first day.If no constraints were placed on him, he could use a question as a starting point to play, giving lectures on military strategy, Eastern psychology, the futility of limited war, and so on.For a man of seventy-one, the durability of his energy was astonishing.No, he didn't care about adjourning to lunch.He was content to munch on a sandwich on the witness table and continue his testimony.

In his first few hours of testimony, MacArthur dealt with some of the senators' easy questions with tentative, effortless confidence.He dismissed any notion that the Soviets would be able to take Japan by sea and air assault.The Soviets were confused by their own propaganda that the United States was preparing to attack them, and while the Soviet air force might be strong to begin with, weak logistics would make a protracted air battle impossible.Then, MacArthur began to complain.

He kept asking for more troops than before; the navy and air force used only a fraction of their effectiveness because of policy constraints; ideas"—ideas that have been "developed over decades, centuries ... and are not allowed to be adopted there"; to use the Air Force freely, MacArthur said, "I don't believe that a large part of the additional ground forces to end this war," otherwise, "you don't have the ability to logistically supply ground forces in sufficient numbers to confidently eliminate the North Koreans in North Korea."

Russell then directed MacArthur into discussing his special proposal to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and how the chiefs of staff responded to it.After the Chinese entered the war, MacArthur suggested that "the shackles on the Taiwan army should be lifted", and communicated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff by telegram regarding the blockade and bombing of mainland China.MacArthur then spoke of the January 1 list of "options" drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.This list was crucial to MacArthur's position.He has long insisted that he agrees with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on broader military action. The list on January 12 was a trump card he showed during his speech in Congress to prove that his strategy of "ending the war" was not a rash plan put forward by a general, but a well-thought-out plan by the military ruling group. out of judgment.

But MacArthur was wrong—absurdly wrong, and documentedly wrong.Yet he took his position with such unshakable conviction, even in the face of written evidence to the contrary, that one wonders about his motives.The simple answer is that MacArthur did misunderstand the nature of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's "choice list" and considered the worst-possible option the final decision.The more complicated answer (which is not entirely inconsistent with MacArthur's behavior in the first months of 1951) is that the general was confident that he could bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff with him, that the Pentagon generals shared his hatred of Truman, and that Will support him openly.

MacArthur said: "As far as I know, the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is actually consistent with my position."

On January 1, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a study to the Secretary of Defense that included the following conditions:

- Now we are about to continue and strengthen the economic and trade blockade against China;

——Now we are preparing to implement a naval blockade against China, which will be implemented according to the conditions at the time when my position in North Korea is stable or after I withdraw from North Korea;

- the immediate lifting of restrictions on aerial reconnaissance in the coastal areas of China and in "Manchuria";

-- Lift now the restrictions on the movement of Chinese Nationalist forces and provide these forces with logistical support to facilitate effective operations against mainland China.

According to MacArthur:

These observations, made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in January, were no doubt in large part the result of frequent discussions between my command and Washington.I fully agree with these comments, and do now.

As far as I know, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have never changed these recommendations.I was also never told if they had changed.

MacArthur inserted a statement here, saying that his relationship with the Joint Chiefs of Staff "has been admirable, and all members have been my personal friends, for whom I have great respect both individually and collectively. If there was any friction between us, I didn't realize it."

Either the general was incredibly dull—the military's messaging channel was a two-way telegraph line, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had genuinely distrusted him in January; And, to woo the Joint Chiefs of Staff to join the winning side in a campaign to change government policy.He would not blame the Joint Chiefs of Staff for failing to implement the "recommendations" they had made, yet he was backstabbing his old nemesis, General George Marshall.He said the Joint Chiefs of Staff had sent a "recommendation" to the defense secretary and a copy of the briefing to his headquarters.He went on to say that "the decision to put these proposals into practice has never come." He could only "suppose" that either Secretary Marshall or President Truman had vetoed it.

In fact, of course, the so-called "decision" was never made, since the option posited a full-scale air and ground attack by the Chinese in an attempt to drive the UN forces out of North Korea, but such an offensive never materialized.General Matthew Ridgway stabilized the situation on the front lines and made the options a dead letter.

MacArthur's testimony, however, provided headlines for the newspapers on the first day of the hearing.Secretary Marshall "vetoed" a recommendation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take tougher action against the Chinese.The testimony, and the newspaper headlines, are untrue.

MacArthur discouraged probing questions, and Russell lacked the background (or ideas) to ask them.Later, MacArthur interrupted an innocuous inquiry about the relationship between the U.S. military and the United Nations. He suggested to Russell: "If you have three or four days to spare, you can go to North Korea. You are there Forty-eight hours in this environment, you can hear more than you can spend forty-eight weeks in this environment. They will give you a very warm welcome, you will get an indelible impression that you have hung out with the soldiers enough to make yourself Became a soldier."

Russell didn't take the bait. "I don't want to go to North Korea right now, General. I want to be objective in this issue, and I know that anyone who gets there, with troops, and under fire will immediately clamor for planes, additional Troops, blockading the coast, bombing the Chinese. As long as one person is under fire in the Pacific, that's the most important thing in the world."

On another thorny subject, MacArthur's assertion at the Wake Island meeting that the Chinese would not enter the war, MacArthur was trying to blame others.Yes, he did "know" that the Chinese were congregating along the Yalu River, but "you know, my own reconnaissance activities are completely confined to North Korea."Furthermore, the Chinese themselves "declare almost every day that they are not prepared to interfere and that these troops are only volunteers".According to MacArthur, sources outside Beijing also misled him.This source also included Acheson, who said in September 1950 that the chances of Chinese interference were "very slim and illogical"; possible".On this point MacArthur was right.

On this topic, MacArthur was full of complaints and was ready to let it go. "Well, you all know," he lectured the senators, "that information that a country is about to start a war is not . . . given to a commander confined to a small theater of operations. However, This information should have been given to me."

MacArthur talked about the next topic in almost the same tone, that is, the ill-considered separation of the Eighth Army and the Tenth Army.No, he told Russell, this deployment was not based on the assumption that the Chinese would not interfere, but that he was deploying forces "based on the existing enemies and my order to defeat them."He had already defeated the North Koreans and the war would have ended in a short time if the Chinese hadn't joined the war. "Actually," he said, "it seems to me that even if I knew the Chinese were going to attack, the disposition of these troops could never have been improved."

In MacArthur's view, the limitation of American air power allowed the Chinese to succeed. "Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of troops were able to muster on the banks of the Yalu River," he said, "where it was only two nights' march from the battle line." Start heading south." (Of course, "mass reconnaissance" refers to MacArthur's disastrously failed "Coming Home for Christmas" campaign.)
These remarks puzzled Russell, who knew a thing or two about international law. "I don't seem to think we can bomb them before they come in," he said. "I don't quite understand that."

MacArthur didn't quite understand either: "What's the matter, Senator?"

"You said, if you were allowed to bomb them before they crossed the Yalu River, but the Chinese army..."

"If I were allowed to bomb them before they crossed the Yalu River, Senator, they would never cross the Yalu River," MacArthur replied. The bombing would have severely damaged the Chinese logistics base and prevented them from aggressively attacking the Eighth Army.

Russell didn't like the answers he heard. "I see," he said. "Of course, I see the obstacle for you by not bombing them before they cross the river. But bombing them before they cross the river is a very dangerous thing indeed." .”

The senator gave MacArthur a chance to step down from his pre-emptive bombing advocacy. "Of course, you're not advocating bombing them before they've shown their card that they're going to go to war and thus intensify the confrontation between China and us, aren't you, General?"

He would indeed advocate bombing.The "extraordinary massing" of troops along the Yalu River would have been massed across Taiwan, "and when they pulled out of there (and headed north)... I could have warned China that if it interfered, we would treat this as war, and we bomb it and take every possible step to prevent interference. That’s what I could have done. And in my opinion, that’s what common sense should be doing.”

Once again MacArthur was clearly inconsistent. In October 1950, in response to a direct question from President Truman, he said that the Chinese would not interfere.On Wake Island, MacArthur said nothing about his request for permission to bomb any "extraordinary mass" of Chinese.Now, six months later, he is making hindsight conclusions about an issue he didn't see as a problem at the time, and suggesting that some unknown force in Washington vetoed special powers he never asked for.

(End of this chapter)