"Speaking in a General Way"

Just after the Senate argued themselves to a standstill over whether General Omar Bradley should be forced to tell who said what, for or against MacArthur, at the White House conference on April 6, Harry Truman cheerily remarked it didn't matter; he had already made up his mind before he talked to his advisers. He just wanted to hear what they had to say. In fact, he told his press conference, he had made up his mind that he needed a new general in the Far East at the time last month when MacArthur issued his ceasefire offer to the Chinese Communists.

"Even before the Martin letter?" asked a newsman, recalling that Secretary of Defense George Marshall had declared "The matter came to a head with this letter." Harry Truman said that was just what he meant; the Martin letter just added fuel to the fire that had been going on for about a year.

Reporters jumped on the term "year." Did the President mean he had been considering firing MacArthur for a full twelve months? Yes, said Truman--particularly after MacArthur wrote his letter to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August (which urged the U.S. to hold Formosa as strategically vital to U.S. defense, when the President wanted to "neutralize" it).

From MacArthur's Waldorf-Astoria headquarters in Manhattan, the general issued a thundering statement: "I have read with astonishment bordering on incredulity the President's press statement ... It is difficult to reconcile this statement with my appointment by him as Commander in Chief of the United Nations Command, and the number of most commendatory messages he sent me . . ."

Redfaced White House aides pointed out to the President the bobble he had made--the Korean war hadn't even started a year ago. The White House hastened to make an amendment: "The President was just speaking in a general way."

Harry Truman seemed determined to take the whole responsibility for the firing. He exonerated his Secretary of State from Republican charges that Acheson was the real man. It was Acheson who had at first opposed firing MacArthur. What were Acheson's reasons? Political--purely, said Truman with a grin. Acheson said it would stir up a fuss, said the President, and he was right.

"Not in Sympathy." To the Senate investigators, Omar Bradley agreed that it was neither he nor the J.C.S. who had suggested the firing. But "from a military point of view" they had concurred in it. Their principal reason: "That by his public statements and by his official communications to us [MacArthur] had indicated he was not in sympathy with the decision to try to limit the conflict to Korea ... It was necessary to have a commander more responsive to control from Washington."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.