The Korean War (43 page)

On the afternoon of Tuesday 10 April, the President and his advisers met once more to examine Bradley’s draft of the order for MacArthur’s removal and replacement by Ridgway, and to consider the press release by which the decision would be announced. It was decided that it should be broken to MacArthur at 10 a.m. on the 12th, Tokyo time, 8 p.m. on the 11th in Washington. But that evening of the 11th, Bradley hastened to Blair House with disturbing tidings: there had been a leak. The
Chicago Tribune
would break the story of MacArthur’s removal the following morning. It had become essential for the White House to rush its timetable. The
order for MacArthur’s relief went out on the Pentagon teletype half an hour after midnight, Washington time, on 11 April. The White House press corps was summoned to a press conference at 1 a.m. for a ‘special announcement’. On their arrival, reporters were handed a copy of the President’s order for MacArthur’s relief, the announcement of Ridgway’s promotion, and a statement from Truman:

With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibility imposed on me by the Constitution of the United States, and of the added responsibility which has been entrusted to me by the United Nations, I have decided that I must make a change of command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his commands, and have designated Lieutenant-General Matthew B. Ridgway as his successor.

Full and vigorous debate on matters of national policy is a vital element in the constitutional system of our free democracy. It is fundamental, however, that military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and Constitution. In time of crisis, this consideration is particularly compelling.

General MacArthur’s place in history is fully established. The Nation owes him a debt of gratitude for the distinguished and exceptional service which he has rendered his country in posts of great responsibility. For that reason I repeat my regret at the necessity for the action I feel compelled to take in his case.

From the perspective of thirty-five years later, respect for the political courage of Truman, Acheson, Marshall and the others who saw the need to limit the war in Korea, and to sack MacArthur, may make it hard to understand why so many Americans recoiled
from the action of the Administration. Above all, perhaps, it can be difficult to grasp the lack of awe with which the atomic bomb was viewed by many Americans in those days. For a large part of the nation, it remained merely a weapon: a greater weapon than any other, perhaps; but nonetheless, a legitimate extension of American military power. Flight-Lieutenant John Nicholls, a young RAF pilot who served in Korea with a US Sabre squadron, was struck by the difference in attitude he perceived between that of his American comrades, and that of Europeans, towards the atomic bomb: ‘Americans seemed to take the view that it was a weapon which was there to be used, if necessary. Yet we had been brought up with the view that it was there
not
to be used.’
¹⁰
It is striking to observe how many senior American veterans of Korea, looking back thirty-five years, still believe that nuclear weapons should have been employed to inflict outright defeat upon the Chinese. Colonel Ellis Williamson, G-3 of X Corps, was one of the soldiers in Korea who supported the nuclear option: ‘I favoured using one bomb in one unoccupied area – say, The Punchbowl. Pop it off. Say to the communists: “Come off of this stuff and get out.” The Korean War was our first real national vacillation, the first evidence of the great decline in our will as a nation to make a real hard decision.’
¹¹
Colonel Paul Freeman said: ‘We should have knocked the Chinese out, whatever it took. My senior officers were certainly in favour of using atomic weapons. But some of the European nations were scared we were going to start something.’
¹²

Yet if views such as this were widely expressed in the middle and even upper reaches of the US Army, it is surely significant that America’s most distinguished soldiers – her outstanding commanders of the twentieth century – were at one in their conviction that MacArthur had to go. Beyond Marshall and Bradley, Ridgway had quickly wearied of the Supreme Commander’s posturing and egocentric fantasies. The Eighth Army’s commander was far too big a man to allow his historical judgement on MacArthur to be clouded by the promotion that he gained by his superior’s fall. After Ridgway planned Operation RIPPER, he was compelled to endure
the spectacle of MacArthur flying into Korea on 20 February, and announcing to the press that the new offensive was entirely his own conception and decision. Ridgway later wrote of his deep regret at the undignified manner of MacArthur’s sacking. But he minced no words in his judgement of the Supreme Commander’s plan for extending the war to China.

[It] entailed the very considerable risk of igniting World War III and consequent overrunning of Western Europe, with the loss of our oldest and staunchest allies sure to follow . . . It was an ambitious and dangerous program that would demand a major national effort . . . It is clear that the nation’s top civilian and military leaders, using a wider-angle lens, with deeper sources of information on the atomic situation in the Soviet Union, and with more comprehensive estimates of the possible consequences of general war in Europe, had a much clearer view of the realities and responsibilities of the day.
¹³

The dignity of Truman’s action was marred by the clumsy haste with which it proved necessary to inform MacArthur, to forestall a press leak. Just after 3 p.m. on the afternoon of 11 April, a messenger delivered a personal signal for MacArthur to Blair House, from Bradley in Washington. It announced his relief from all his commands, minutes after the news had been broadcast to the world. Reporters were already gathering at the general’s gates. The calls of sympathy quickly began to flow in. MacArthur did not conceal his hurt, his anger at being ‘publicly humiliated after fifty-two years in the army’.
¹⁴
Early on the morning of 16 April 1951, the general flew out of Tokyo in his Constellation, bound for the United States, amid scenes of deep emotion among his staff and many Japanese, who still regarded him as their saviour.

The circumstances of his return to America have passed into national legend: the ticker-tape parades, the address to Congress, the Senate hearings at which he sought to establish once and for all the justice and constitutionality of his actions. Among the press, from the beginning, the
Washington Post
,
New York Times
,
Herald
Tribune
and other liberal organs sided decisively with the President. But among ordinary people, it was not only conservatives who felt a wave of revulsion against Truman for his action. Many Americans, with their instinctive emotional enthusiasm for a man larger than life, a national symbol, a hero, were bitterly grieved to see him brought low. Yet MacArthur himself, exalted by the warmth of his reception in his own country, failed to grasp its ambivalence. He believed that his prestige and the case he sought to argue were inseparably entwined. In reality, even many of those who cheered his passing through their cities had no stomach for embarking upon another great war, such as he believed necessary. If Truman’s personal popularity was deeply wounded by his sacking of MacArthur, in the months that followed it became apparent that only a small minority of Americans doubted its constitutionality. Many regretted that MacArthur the man had been humbled; but few in the end doubted that Truman, the elected President, was obliged to curb MacArthur the general.

The shock and emotion in the United States about MacArthur’s dismissal was in marked contrast to attitudes in Korea. Many senior officers had long since lost faith in SCAP’s judgement. Even among junior ranks, his standing had never recovered from the disasters of the winter, for which so many men held him personally responsible. One UN officer wrote: ‘MacArthur’s departure made as much impact on the soldiery as would have, say, the replacement of Scipio Africanus on a Roman outpost in the wilds of Mauretania.’
¹⁵
In the same mood, Lieutenant Jim Sheldon of the 17th Infantry said: ‘MacArthur was too distanced from us for his going to make much impact. The only sort of thing we noticed was the food getting better after Ridgway took over.’
¹⁶
Colonel Paul Freeman echoed the ambivalent attitudes of some senior officers who could not forget MacArthur’s past great deeds: ‘I thought his sacking was disgraceful. Sure, he had it coming. He should have been relieved. But it should have been done in a dignified way. He was an actor and an egoist, but he had been a very great man.’ Colonel Ellis Williamson thought MacArthur’s removal ‘absolutely necessary. I
think the world learned a lesson – when you leave a man in a position of authority too long, he stops looking for ideas different from his first thoughts.’ Williamson added, in a moment of compassion common to thousands of Americans in Korea: ‘He was a pompous old bastard; but a great soldier.’ Almond’s aide, Captain Fred Ladd, said: ‘I think he went out like he would like to have gone. How would it have been if he stayed, and eventually gone like Admiral Rickover, just told to retire because he was too old? This way, he went in a blaze of glory.’
¹⁷

The surge of relief at MacArthur’s dismissal among most of the world’s democracies served, if anything, to enhance the anger and strengthen the isolationist impulses of right-wing Americans. The President was compelled to console himself for the abuse he received at home with the enthusiasm his action inspired abroad. The British Ambassador in Tokyo gave an acid description of MacArthur’s departure, ‘after a brief ceremony that, possibly appropriately, was marked by all the traditional discourtesy and casualness to the Diplomatic Corps to which we have become so used . . . To me personally, MacArthur’s departure is a tremendous relief as it is, I think, to nearly all my colleagues.’
¹⁸
Many Asian newspapers welcomed the news: ‘Truman has earned the gratitude of all peace-loving peoples everywhere, by eliminating the greatest single opposition to peaceful efforts and policies in the Far East,’ enthused the
Civil & Military Gazette
of Pakistan. The British Ambassador in Paris reported that Premier Schuman ‘referred at once to General MacArthur’s dismissal in terms of heartfelt thankfulness . . . He had the impression that the United States Administration had almost lost control of the situation.’
¹⁹
Outside the United States, many Western newspapers greeted MacArthur’s fall with something close to exultation. The general had deeply frightened the allies of the United States. They saw in his pronouncements the threat of nuclear war. The impunity with which he spoke suggested that he was a military commander so powerful that he might be capable of action beyond the control of the civilian power. Whether or not these fears were fully justified, they were
sincerely held in Europe. The relief at MacArthur’s departure was matched by pleasure at the succession to the Supreme Command of Matthew Ridgway, whose abilities and judgement commanded immense respect. General James Van Fleet, a wartime divisional commander under Eisenhower in the European theatre, was appointed to direct Eighth Army in Ridgway’s place.

MacArthur’s memory faded with remarkable speed in Korea. Ridgway proved to be all that was hoped as Supreme Commander. He took with him to Tokyo the military skills he had already displayed in full measure in the peninsula, and showed in addition the discretion and political judgement that so conspicuously eluded MacArthur. If the paratroop veteran was no more able than his predecessor to produce a magic formula for extricating the United States, and the United Nations, from the Korean morass, he nevertheless ensured that throughout his tenure of command, no new crisis of authority developed between his headquarters and Washington. Ridgway was unyielding in his opinion that only a display of firmness on the battlefield could force the communists to make peace. But he shared the Administration’s conviction that Korea was not the theatre in which to embark upon a major war. Civilian authority to determine policy in Korea was never challenged again.

Thus far, history has supported Truman’s view of the Asian battlefield in 1951, rather than that of MacArthur. Some conservative writers continue to argue that, had the West displayed the will to achieve decisive victory in Korea – with or without the use of nuclear weapons – there need have been no war in Vietnam, and communism could have been driven back across Asia. This seems highly doubtful. In Korea as in Vietnam, America showed itself militarily at a loss about the conduct of a war amid a peasant society. The will simply did not exist, in the United States and far less among its allies, to treat Kim Il Sung’s act of aggression in Korea as a pretext for all-out war against Asian communism. And had it done so, it remains doubtful whether MacArthur’s policy was militarily practicable, even with the support of nuclear
weapons. If MacArthur had had his way, the cost to the moral credibility of the United States around the world would almost certainly have been historically disastrous.