New Evidence?

Running through all the MacArthur hearing testimony was one official Administration explanation for the Yalta concessions to Russia. The justification was military: the U.S. had to coax Russia into the war against Japan, and at the earliest hour, to reduce what were expected to be large U.S. casualties in assaulting the Japanese islands.

"By No Means United." Last week a Republican Senator got wind of a paper which seemed to show that not all the U.S. military had shared that view. The evidence was a secret intelligence report prepared for Army Chief of Staff George Marshall in April 1945, two months after Yalta. It was prepared in the Specialists' Section of Army G2, a high-powered team of some 50 experts, most of them West Pointers, each a lieutenant colonel or better, each a specialist on some country or region of the world. Heading the project was the late Colonel Joseph Michela. The report, said the Senator, warned emphatically against bringing Russia into the Asiatic war and foretold with remarkable accuracy what would result if she were brought in. Major points:

P: ". . . The U.S. and Great Britain, without further help, possess the power to force unconditional surrender from Japan . . ."

P: "The U.S. should make no political or economic concession to Soviet Russia to bring about or prevent an action which she is fully determined to make anyway."

P: "The entry of Russia . . . would destroy America's position in Asia ... as our position is now destroyed in Europe east of the Elbe and beyond the Adriatic."

P: "... China will... become the Poland of Asia, Korea the Asiatic Rumania and Manchoukuo the Soviet Bulgaria."

P: ''The U.S. Army is by no means united in believing it wise to encourage the Soviet Union into the Asiatic war."

At the bottom was a single recommendation: the President should summon General MacArthur from the Pacific to get his views on the matter; "all other political and military personages should be excluded from this conference."

Missing Original. There was no evidence that General Marshall ever saw the report. And the men who put it together apparently did not know (as even some key members of the entourage at Yalta were not told) what had already been secretly given to Stalin at Yalta.

Confident that they had something important, Republicans in the MacArthur investigating committee last week urged Chairman Richard Russell to get the original. Russell asked for it, but by week's end the Army had not found it.

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