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Week of Decision: June 29, 1950 |
 The Commander in Chief in the Far East (CINCFE), General Douglas MacArthur, flies to Korea where the South Koreans are attempting to hold a line at the Han River just south of Seoul. Efforts continue to assess Soviet intentions. The President holds a press and radio conference.
Around 7 o'clock in the morning of June 29, a teleconference was held between representatives of G2 [Intelligence] in Tokyo and G2 in Washington, at which State Department representatives were present . . . . At this conference it was reported that the South Korean forces had suffered 50 percent casualties and were attempting to form a line at the Han River, but would fall back to a line above Taegue, if necessary. Reports for holding the Suwon airstrip were favorable. . . . At 1 o'clock in the afternoon the Department of State received a report from Ambassador [to the Soviet Union Alan] Kirk of his interview with [Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei A.] Gromyko, which the Department interpreted as making it appear unlikely that the Soviet Union intended to commit its forces to Korea.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
My record on [the Soviet response to the U.S. diplomatic note delivered by Ambassador Alan Kirk] . . . is this-- . . . "It was unprovocative, and appeared to be dictated primarily by a resolve to Keep Moscow's responsibility in the affair entirely disengaged in the formal sense. At the same time we got word of a highly bellicose and inflammatory statement issued by [Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister] Chou En-lai, constituting the nearest thing in communist practice (the communist governments never declare war) to a declaration of war against us and calling on the peoples of the East to rise up against us. While it seemed to me that this statement must have bent the bow of [Soviet-Chinese] . . . relations pretty far and might turn out to be something of a blunder on the part of the Chinese communists, it indicated--when taken together with the Moscow reply--a pretty clear pattern of Soviet intentions: namely, to keep out of this business themselves in every way but to embroil us to the maximum with their Korean and Chinese satellites."
Counselor George Kennan
The president had appointments up to lunchtime. Shortly after 3:00 P.M. we went into the cabinet room where we held our usual prepress and radio conference session. At the beginning the president read a report on the situation in Korea, which was not too cheerful. The weather has hindered aerial operations, and the situation with the Korean defending forces has deteriorated. The report said they had about forty percent casualties and of those remaining about eighty percent were armed.
Assistant Press Secretary Eben Ayers
In [Press Secretary to the President] Charlie Ross' day, these [pre-press conference meetings] were always very interesting and sometimes quite entertaining. Ross knew Mr. Truman, very well indeed; they'd been boyhood friends and they'd known each other all their adult lives, so Charlie could say things and do things with the President that few other people could. And, what I specifically have in mind at the moment was Charlie's habit of asking the President, in a sharp, sometimes almost rude fashion, blunt and unpleasant questions and the President would sometimes flair back or snap out a quick answer, not always in diplomatic terms, nor would it be very politically wise, at which point, Charlie would lean back and laugh and the President would also grin, and realize that all Ross had been doing was simply putting him on the alert to the fact that that was the kind of a question he might get from an unfriendly reporter or from a reporter who was trying to get from him, precisely the reaction Ross had succeeded in getting. I should have said that these pre-press conference sessions were of the same format and fashion and style as the regular staff conferences. Most of the staff would sit in a semicircle around the President's desk. The Press Secretary would always lead off with all of the questions which he had been told by reporters were going to be asked and then, he would follow up with other questions on which he thought the President might get a question. And, as I say, sometimes he would step out of his normally soft, gentlemanly demeanor and flash one of these sharp questions, flick it across the President's face, so to speak, in whip-style. But once the President was put on notice by that kind of a question from Ross, he would never make the mistake of behaving that way in a press conference itself. And, he understood perfectly well, we all did, what Charlie was doing. Charlie was simply doing his best to brief him in the most effective fashion he could, which was very good indeed.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
We submitted numerous questions [in the pre-press conference session] that we thought might be asked by the correspondents, especially concerning the situation in Korea and some of the many reports and stories that have been printed. Several columnists and writers have charged that the United States has reversed policy toward Korea and Formosa, and others have said [Secretary of State Dean] Acheson would be forced out of the cabinet or would resign. There was some mention of differences between Acheson and Secretary of Defense [Louis] Johnson, and stories have charged that Acheson opposed action. The president said the fact was they had trouble getting the defense establishment to move. Johnson has talked too much - this is my own opinion, shared by numerous others - and undoubtedly has tried to take as much credit as possible. "If this keeps up," the president commented, we're going to have a new secretary of defense."
Assistant Press Secretary Eben Ayers
We are not at war. . . . The Republic of Korea was set up with the United Nations' help. It is a recognized government by the members of the United Nations. It was unlawfully attacked by a bunch of bandits . . . . The United Nations Security Council held a meeting and passed on the situation and asked the members to go to the relief of the Korean republic. And the members of the United Nations are going to the relief of the Korean Republic to suppress a bandit raid on the Republic of Korea.
President Harry S. Truman
The press conference was interesting, naturally, because there were many Korean questions. One question which had later significance ran as follows: "Mr. President, would it be correct, against your explanation, to call this a police action under the United Nations?" The President replied: "Yes. That is exactly what it amounts to."
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
At five in the afternoon a meeting was held of the National Security Council. . . . As a result of the decisions reached, the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] at 7:00 in the evening dispatched a directive to General [Douglas] MacArthur authorizing him -- a. to use his air and naval forces to support the ROK (South Korean) units and against targets in North Korea; b. to use army service and communication units in Korea only, except that combat units could be used in order to retain a port and an air field in the Pusan area. . . . General MacArthur was informed that this commitment of U.S. forces did not involve a decision to engage in war with the USSR if Soviet forces intervened in Korea. If Soviet forces intervened, he was to defend himself, take no action to aggravate situation, and report to Washington.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
[W]e had no sooner gotten [to Suwon] . . . and the chauffeur of Ben Lim, who was the Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs, came up and said that General MacArthur was on the phone and that he wanted to talk to me. And if it had been anyone else I would have considered him a phony of some kind, because I didn't know of any possible telephone connection from Suwon to Tokyo. I turned to General [John] Church and I said, "If it is General MacArthur he'll probably want to talk to you. How about going along? So, the two of us drove up to the Post Office in the center of Suwon. The power was off and the only lights in there were a couple of candles. It was a very eerie feeling to go there and see an old French style telephone . . . . And it wasn't General MacArthur, it was General [Edward M.] Almond, the Chief of Staff, MacArthur had already left the headquarters. And that's when I heard that General MacArthur wanted to come over in person and "get a feel of the situation," on Thursday and he wanted suggestions as to where to come to. . . . Well we were there at Suwon where there was a plausible airstrip. But [Korean President Syngman] Rhee and his Cabinet were already down at Taejon. And I flew down to Taejon the next afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, and came back to Suwon, Rhee in one L-5 and I in another L-5, early Thursday morning where we met MacArthur. That was on the 29th of June. . . .
Ambassador to Korea John Muccio
We landed at Suwon. I want to say that anybody that says that [General] Douglas MacArthur was a coward is crazy. He may have thought he was Jesus Christ and invulnerable to anything--that could well be--but he was not scared of anything. . . . Anyway, they rendezvoused at Suwon, because MacArthur was not going to land way back in the hind end of it; he wanted to get up where it was. . . . We went into this meeting in the schoolhouse across the bombed out bridge from the Suwon strip, and talked to [Korean President] Syngman Rhee and got briefed by the Korean Army Chief of Staff . . . . Then MacArthur said he wanted to ride up to the Han River, and he did. I don't know whether he was strafed; I was in a jeep with some scared-to-death military assistance guy, an American, and the road we were on was strafed. We got in a ditch. I don't know who they thought we were; they were American aircraft, they weren't enemy. But MacArthur went right up to the Han River and stood on the edge and watched Seoul burning.
Lieutenant Colonel John Chiles
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