Drinks were served in the garden after Truman came downstairs from calling Bess to say he had arrived safely. He asked that there be no discussion of the crisis until dinner was over and the Blair House staff had withdrawn. Shortly after eight, dinner was announced by Alonzo Fields. They ate at the long mahogany table in the dining room, doors to the garden open to the warm evening air, and, for some reason, the hurriedly assembled meal—fried chicken, shoestring potatoes, asparagus, biscuits, vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce—would be remembered as especially good and well served, “excellent,” according to Acheson.
With the table cleared, it became the conference table and the meeting began, Acheson opening with a “darkening report,” after which Truman asked for everyone’s views.
The United States, said Rusk, had occupied South Korea for five years and had therefore a particular responsibility for South Korea, which, if absorbed by the Communists, would be “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” Bradley, who with Louis Johnson had just returned from Japan, and was feeling so ill he barely made it through the evening, said, “We must draw the line somewhere” and Korea was as good a place as any. (Acheson, some months later, was to say that if the best minds in the world had set out to find the worst possible location to fight “this damnable war,” the unanimous choice would have been Korea.) Russia, in Bradley’s view, was not ready for war, only “testing us.”
There was no dissenting response. Nor did anyone present have the least doubt that what was happening in Korea was being directed from Moscow. But then this was also the prevailing view in the country and the press. It was the “Russian-sponsored” North Korean Army that had launched the invasion, according to bulletins in the papers. As Bradley would write, “Underlying these discussions was an intense moral outrage, even more than we felt over the Czechoslovakia coup in 1948.”
That everyone at the table was in fundamental agreement became quickly clear, Truman’s own obvious resolution having stiffened them all. “He pulled all the conferees together, by his show of leadership,” one of them would say later, preferring to remain anonymous. Repeating Bradley’s phrase, Truman agreed the line must be drawn “most emphatically.” North Korea must be stopped. The Russians, he said, were trying to get Korea by default, gambling that the United States would be so fearful of starting another world war that it would put up no resistance.
“I thought we were still holding the stronger hand,” he later wrote, “although how much stronger, it was hard to tell.”
Admiral Sherman and General Vandenberg thought a combination of naval forces and air cover would be sufficient to do the job. And though Generals Bradley and Collins disagreed, they opposed any commitment of American ground forces in Korea, at least for the time being.
The possibility of active intervention by Soviet forces greatly concerned Truman. No one seemed to think the Russians were ready for a world war, but who was to say. Truman asked about Russian fleet strength in the Far East, Russian airpower, and requested an immediate intelligence report on “possible next moves” by the Soviets elsewhere in the world.
Recalling the evening, Truman would write that what impressed him most was “the 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.”
As Truman had determined, it was Acheson who led the meeting, Acheson who proposed the decisions Truman made. General MacArthur was to send arms and supplies to South Korea as swiftly as possible. American civilians in Korea were to be evacuated under the cover of American airpower. The Seventh Fleet would proceed from the Philippines to guard the Formosa Strait, to prevent any attack from Communist China on Formosa, or, as Acheson said, vice versa.
As the meeting was breaking up, Johnson made what in time would be remembered as a remarkable observation. Having just been with MacArthur in Japan, he thought it important that any instructions to the general be detailed, “so as not to give him too much discretion.”
Truman, in an exchange with John Hickerson, the Assistant Secretary of State for U.N. Affairs, said the decisions he had just made had been for the United Nations. He had believed in the League of Nations with all his heart, Truman said, but the League had failed. The United Nations must not fail. “It was our idea, and in this first big test we just can’t let them down.”
As the group departed just before eleven, using the back door to avoid reporters, Truman said no one was to make any statement until he did.
It would be said of Harry Truman that without consulting Congress or the American people, he had rushed to judgment; that “as Hermann Goering, when he heard the word culture, reached for his gun, Harry Truman when he heard the word problem, reached for a decision.” But the last thing Truman wanted was a war in Korea, or anywhere, and angry as he may have been over the attack, as determined as he obviously was to do what he felt had to be done, he had nonetheless, so far, made no irrevocable move.
On Monday, as the news from Korea grew worse, he issued a statement notable only for its generalities. The widespread impression was that the United States was going to take little or no action. According to the latest communications from MacArthur, the South Koreans appeared incapable of stopping the North Korean advance: “Our estimate is that a complete collapse is imminent.”
That night, after supper alone, Truman summoned another emergency session, a second “war cabinet” meeting at Blair House, and decided to provide American air and naval support to the forces of South Korea and to press for immediate United Nations support.
No action should be taken north of the 38th parallel, he said, adding, “not yet.”
In addition, he ordered an increase of American forces in the Philippines and a speedup of military aid to Indochina.
No ground troops had yet been committed to Korea. And no one at the meeting recommended that. General Bradley would remember Acheson “dominating” the meeting, as he had the night before. Bradley, as he wrote later, was gravely concerned over the possibility of a ground war in Asia. Whatever troops were sent, MacArthur would surely ask for more. Besides, “We had no war plan for Korea.” Bradley suggested they “wait a few days.” Acheson agreed.
“I don’t want to go to war,” Truman said with a force they would all remember.
“Everything I have done in the past five years,” he remarked sadly as the meeting ended, “has been to try to avoid making a decision such as I had to make tonight.”
Headlines the next day, Tuesday, June 27, reported North Korean tanks sweeping into the South Korean capital of Seoul. The government of South Korea had fled, its president, Syngman Rhee, bitterly describing American help as “Too little, too late.” In a broadcast from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, Communist Premier Kim II Sung vowed to “crush” South Korea as swiftly as possible.
At the White House events moved rapidly, as the leaders of Congress, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Joint Chiefs rolled up to the West Wing in one official car after another. More than forty people were gathered. By 11:30 the doors of the Cabinet Room were closed. Half an hour later the meeting had ended. The congressional leaders had given the President their undivided support. No one had said a word against what he had decided. Further, he had been advised to proceed on the basis of presidential authority alone and not bother to call on Congress for a war resolution. A hundred reporters stood waiting anxiously in the lobby when minutes later Charlie Ross set off a “whirlwind,” handing them the first word from Truman that he had ordered American air and naval forces to support South Korea in its hour of peril:
“The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war….”
Cheers broke out in the House and Senate when the statement was read aloud. By a vote of 315 to 4, the Hous
e promptly voted a one-year extension of the draft law. In the Senate, Republican William Knowland called for “overwhelming support” for the President from all Americans regardless of party.
At the United Nations, debate began on a resolution to back the American decision—a resolution adopted that night at 10:45, the Soviet Union being still absent. For the first time in history, a world organization had voted to use armed force to stop armed force.
The response of the American people—by mail, telegrams, phone calls to the White House and Congress—the response of the press, of nearly everyone whose opinion carried weight in Washington and in the country, was immediate, resounding approval—a point that would be very soon forgotten. Editorials praised Truman for his “bold course,” his “momentous and courageous act.”
Although the President was well and faithfully advised [wrote Joseph and Stewart Alsop], no one can fail to admire the blend of plain guts and homely common sense that has marked his own handling of his immense crisis. This, indeed, was one of the occasions when Truman seemed to sum up the good things in America.
James Reston said much the same thing in The New York Times. Truman, said the Washington Post, had given the free world the leadership it desperately needed.
These are days calling for steady nerves, for a strict eye on the ball, and for a renewed resolve to keep our purposes pure in the grapple we have undertaken with men who would plunge the world into darkness. The occasion has found the man in Harry Truman.
The Wall Street Journal, Walter Lippmann, Thomas E. Dewey, George Kennan, General Eisenhower, all agreed it was time to draw the line. Eisenhower believed, “We’ll have a dozen Koreas soon if we don’t take a firm stand.” Henry Morgenthau, Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., Phil Murray, Walter Reuther, and Sam Goldwyn sent telegrams in praise of Truman’s decision. Cordell Hull called.
White House mail ran strongly in favor of the President’s action. “You may be a whiskey guzzling poker playing old buzzard as some say,” wrote a Republican from Illinois, “but by damn, for the first time since old Teddy left there in March of 1909, the United States has a grass roots American in the White House.”
Even Taft and Henry Wallace gave their support, though Taft urged some congressional say in the matter. British Ambassador Oliver Franks reported to his government that virtually all shades of opinion backed the President. The entire mood in the capital had suddenly, dramatically changed. “I have lived and worked in and out of Washington for twenty years,” wrote Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor. “Never before in that time have I felt such a sense of relief and unity pass through the city.”
Appearing before a meeting of the Reserve Officers Association, an audience of a thousand people at the Mayflower Hotel, Wednesday morning, Truman received a standing ovation.
On Thursday, June 29, at his first press conference since the crisis began, he said with emphasis, “We are not at war.” Could he be quoted? “Yes,” Truman said. “We are not at war.”
Would it be correct, asked a reporter, to call this a police action under the United Nations? “Yes,” Truman replied. “That is exactly what it amounts to.”
Later this would be called another of his press conference blunders—he had allowed a reporter to put words in his mouth. But it was no mistake. A “police action under the United Nations” was precisely how he wished it to be viewed. Nor, importantly, did anyone see reason then to fault him.
It was in the middle of the night in Washington, at 3:00 A.M. Washington time, Friday, June 30, that the Pentagon received still another report from General MacArthur, this based on his first personal inspection of the situation in Korea. “The only assurance for holding the present line and the ability to regain later lost ground,” it said, “is through introduction of United States combat forces into the Korean battle area.” Any further attempt to check the North Korean advance with air- and seapower alone would be a waste of time. So bleak were things at this stage, even an all-out U.S. effort—Army, Navy, and Air Force—might be “doomed to failure.” Time was of the essence—“a clear-cut decision without delay is imperative.”
When Frank Pace telephoned Blair House, it was still dark outside. Truman was already up and shaved. He took the call by his bedside at 4:47 A.M. Pace relayed the grim report. MacArthur wanted two divisions of ground troops.
Truman never hesitated. It was a moment for which he had been preparing himself for days and he made his decision at once.
Later he would say that committing American troops to combat in Korea was the most difficult decision of his presidency, more so than the decision to use the atomic bomb. He did not want to start another world war, he had been heard to say privately more than once during that most crucial week. “Must be careful not to cause a general Asiatic war,” he now wrote in his diary, later that same day, Friday, June 30. What would Mao Tse-tung do? he wondered. Where would the next Russian move come?
“Now, your job as President,” Acheson would observe years later, “is to decide. Mr. Truman decided.”
Later, too—many years later—Acheson would make public a note he received from the President that, as Acheson said, well illustrated the quality of the man who “bound his lieutenants to him with unbreakable devotion.” It was written in longhand:
7/11/50
Memo to Dean Acheson
Regarding June 24 and 25—
Your initiative in immediately calling the Security Council of the U.N. on Saturday night and notifying me was the key to what followed afterwards. Had you not acted promptly in that direction we would have had to go into Korea alone.
The meeting Sunday night at Blair House was the result of our action Saturday night and the results afterward show that you are a great Secretary of State and a diplomat.
Your handling of the situation since has been superb.
I’m sending you this for your record.
Harry S. Truman
16
Commander in Chief
There was nothing passive about Harry Truman. He was the commander in chief in law and in fact.
—GEORGE ELSEY
I
In the five years since the nation was last at war, the President’s office had changed very little, with one notable exception. The melodramatic, moonlit Remington, the painting called Fired On that had hung over the mantelpiece opposite Truman’s desk in 1945, had been replaced by a commanding, full-figured portrait of George Washington, while below, in front of the fireplace, stood Truman’s big office globe, his gift from General Eisenhower.
Thus from his desk now, Truman could look up at both the nation’s first Commander in Chief, resplendent in full uniform, and the world at large, a subject that weighed on him more now than ever—the world and the threat of global war, the world and the imperative need not to repeat past mistakes, the world and Harry Truman.
He was not one to worry about decisions, once made, he told a reporter, but with the “Korean affair” he could not help worrying about the inevitable consequences. “Appeasement leads only to further aggression and ultimately to war,” he would tell the nation in an historic radio and television broadcast the evening of July 19, still unwilling to call what was happening in Korea a war, but an “act of aggression” by the Communist leaders.
The Washington portrait, by Rembrandt Peale, was on loan from the National Gallery. The globe, which, with its heavy three-legged stand of polished mahogany, stood nearly chest high, had been Eisenhower’s when he was Allied Commander in Europe. Truman had chosen the new arrangement himself. He was acutely conscious of everything in the room, liked it all just so. Once when Charlie Ross picked up Truman’s engagement calendar from the desk to check something, then put it back down slightly askew, Truman, while chatting on, immediately lined it up again as before.
The globe especially gave the fireplace end of the room, the northern arc of the Oval Office, a weight and importance it had not had before. Photographers now, when posing the President, liked to have h
im stand there, particularly for portraits with his generals. He would be asked to put his right hand on the globe, as if explaining something, a natural pose, since in discussions with the Joint Chiefs—or members of the Cabinet or Congress or his own staff—Truman would frequently go to the globe to make a point. “Harry, don’t you sometimes feel overwhelmed by your job?” he had been asked by Republican Senator Tobey of New Hampshire, and Truman had stepped to the globe and turning it slowly said, “All the world is focusing on this office. The nearest thing to my heart is to do something to keep the world at peace. We must find a way to peace, or else civilization will be destroyed and the world will turn back to the year 900.”
Now, in the first weeks of the Korean crisis, he would put his finger on various spots in Europe or the Middle East—on the Elbe or the Iranian-Soviet border—then turning the globe, point to the pale gray, of the Korean peninsula, between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea, a place most Americans still had trouble finding on a map.
“This is the Greece of the Far East,” Truman would say. “If we are tough enough now, there won’t be any next time.”
The whole of the Korean peninsula, north and south, was almost half again the size of Greece, roughly 84,000 square miles in total. The distance from top to bottom, from the Yalu River, which formed North Korea’s border with Manchuria, to the southernmost tip of the peninsula, was about 600 miles, while the distance across varied from 125 to 200 miles.
The Republic of South Korea—everything below the arbitrary dividing line of the 38th parallel—was slightly larger than the state of Indiana. Its population of 20 million was double that of North Korea, and its economy chiefly agricultural, whereas most Korean industry was in the north.
The demarcation line of the 38th parallel had no basis in Korean history, geography, or anything else. It had been settled on hastily in the last week of World War II, as a temporary measure to facilitate the surrender of Japanese troops—those north of the line had surrendered to the Soviets, those south, to American forces. The decision had been made late one night at the Pentagon by then Colonel Dean Rusk and another young Army officer named Charles Bonesteel, who picked the line of latitude 38 degrees north because it had the advantage of already being on most maps of Korea.