TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/48elect/48elect.013

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                                                                                April 23, 1951

THE NATION

Homeward Bound



     On the surface, the news that shook the world was just as
clear and final as the headlines: TRUMAN FIRES MACARTHUR. But for
the U.S. and the rest of the West, the importance of the act lay
not in the rights & wrongs of military discipline or executive
authority; it lay in the issue on which two men had split.

     The question was and is: Who is right about Far Eastern
policy, MacArthur or the Administration? The question itself
pointed the true poles of the argument, MacArthur and Secretary
of State Dean Acheson. It was Secretary Acheson's view which
prevailed with the President: do nothing to widen the war; let
the Communists keep the initiative. The General MacArthur view --
a limited extension of the war against China, a full recognition
of the proposition that Communism was already making its big bid
for world domination in Asia -- had not yet been heard in full.

     In Tokyo's grey, early-morning dampness, the general's five-
starred Chrysler swung down the highway through the lanes of
Japanese police and some 200,000 citizens who had been waiting
since dawn to pay a farewell to the conqueror who had won their
admiration. The car rolled to a stop on the broad apron of
Tokyo's Haneda airport. Douglas MacArthur stepped out, his face
drawn and grey beneath the battered, gold-laced cap. He shook
hands with Matt Ridgway, the man Harry Truman had sent to relieve
him, then stood at attention to receive a 19-gun salute. The
farewells were brief and brisk, and, when MacArthur had gripped
the last hand, he climbed slowly up the steps to his
Constellation, the Bataan. His wife and 13-year-old son Arthur
were already aboard. At 7:23 a.m., while the band played Auld
Lang Syne, the Bataan roared off into the murky overcast, bound
for home.

     The public-address system was blaring Aloha when the big
plane pulled up in the glare of newsreel lights at Hickam Air
Force Base at Honolulu, twelve hours and six minutes later. There
were fast handshakes in the confusion of the midnight welcome,
and next day, on a forty mile parade, the city of Honolulu gave
General MacArthur a preview of the civic receptions to come --
including more applause and cheers than had greeted Harry Truman
on the way to his Wake Island meeting with MacArthur six months
before.

     The Bataan's next stop was San Francisco -- and Douglas
MacArthur's first view of the U.S. mainland in nearly 14 years.
It was the strangest soldier's homecoming in history. He was a
General of the Army, stripped of his commands and without
assignment, yet the U.S. was waiting to sweep him up in
tumultuous greeting all the way to Manhattan's tickertaped
Broadway. His words had brought public dismissal and rebuke from
his Commander in Chief, yet the Congress of the U.S. honored him
by arranging a special joint meeting this week to hear them, and
the entire nation would be listening.


THE PRESIDENCY
The Little Man Who Dared

     A White House aide, leafing through a routine sheaf of wire
copy from the news ticker, started with surprise. He had come
across the report of Joe Martin's speech, made that afternoon n
the House, containing General Douglas MacArthur's letter
endorsing the employment of Chiang Kai-shek's troops to open a
second front in China. The aide rushed in to the President's
office. As he read, Harry Truman flushed with anger. As the White
House leaked the story later, he made his decision then & there-
Thursday, April 5 -- that Douglas MacArthur must go.

     After the Cabinet meeting next day, Truman motioned to
Defense Secretary George Marshall and J.C.S. Chairman Omar
Bradley (who briefs the Cabinet on the Korean fighting) to stay
behind. Truman told them his decision and explained his reasons.
Marshall agreed that MacArthur must go, and Bradley added that
the Joint Chiefs emphatically felt the same way.

     For five days, Truman hugged his secret. The Joint Chiefs
held emergency meetings to discuss MacArthur's successor. They
decided on Lieut. general Matthew Ridgway, then picked Lieut.
General James Van Fleet to replace Ridgway as Eighth Army
Commander in Korea. The secret was so closely guarded that Van
Fleet himself, unaware of it, was vacationing on his brother's
Florida farm when his appointment to Korea was announced. Monday,
Truman saw his congressional fenders and met with the Cabinet,
asked opinions of both groups, but told neither what he planned
later. Secretary of State Dean Acheson undoubtedly already knew
about it, but through the historic week, Acheson, architect of
the Asia policy that MacArthur attacked, kept assiduously out of
the press and out of sight.

     The Order. Just before lunch Tuesday, Harry Truman again saw
Marshall, decided with him that the time had come to act. He went
to Blair House for lunch, took his usual nap, returned to the
White House at 3 o'clock. He summoned Marshall, Bradley, Acheson
and Averell Harriman to a final meeting, then told his staff to
draw up MacArthur's firing orders -- just as the afternoon papers
bloomed with headlines from Tokyo: MACARTHUR DEMANDS FREER HAND
IN WAR.

     The problem was to get Douglas MacArthur fired at a time
when Truman's case against the general would hit the public
hardest and with the least immediate counter-reaction. Classified
documents were dug out of files, declassified and checked. One
was a Dec. 6 memorandum directing that "officials overseas,
including military commanders," were to "clear all but routine
statements with their departments and to refrain from direct
communications on military or foreign policy with newspapers,
magazines, or other publicity media." Assistant Secretary of
State Den Rusk hurried over from the State Department, and
General Omar Bradley arrived from the Pentagon. by 9:30, the
documents and statements were ready an taken over to Blair House.
Harry Truman looked them over and signed.

     The Announcement. by midnight, stencils had been cut, and
Press Secretary Joe Short gave the switchboard orders to summon
the regular White House reporters at 1 a.m. The press got the
mimeographed sheets: "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 . . . It is fundamental . . . that military
commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued
to them in the manner provided by our laws and the Constitution."

     Why the 1 a.m. summons? The White House's hollow explanation
was that the timing was for the convenience of the general, since
it was then midafternoon in Tokyo. But that wasn't the real
reason at all: the news had been timed to make the morning
newspapers, and catch the Republicans in bed.

     As the reporters scrambled for their phones to flash the
news to an unsuspecting world, Blair House was dark. Harry Truman
had gone to bed.

     In Tokyo, just a little after 3 o'clock in the afternoon,
General Douglas MacArthur was eating a chicken leg at a late
lunch when an aide handed him a note. It was a radio news flash.
Holding the drumstick in one hand and the note in the other,
MacArthur read the news. His mouth opened in astonishment.
Abruptly, the luncheon ended. It was 20 minutes later that he got
the official dispatch informing him of the President's decision.
(Truman's order stripped MacArthur of four commands -- Commander
in Chief, United Nations Forces in Korea; Supreme Commander for
Allied Powers, Japan; Commander in Chief, Far East; and
Commanding General, U.S. Army, Far East. But as a five-star
general, MacArthur keeps his rank, active duty status and pay
($18,761 for life.)

     After Six Years. Seldom had a more unpopular man fired a
more popular one. Douglas MacArthur was the personification of
the big man, with the many admirers who look to a great man for
leadership, with the few critics who distrust and fear a big
man's dominating ways. Harry Truman was almost a professional
little man, with the admirers who like the little man's courage,
with the many critics who despise a little man's inadequacies.
Harry Truman, completing his sixth year as President, last week
had written a record of courage in crises -- in enunciating the
Truman Doctrine against the Communist threat in Greece, in his
firmness over the Berlin blockade, in the way he rallied his
party and won the 1948 election, in his quick decision to counter
the Korean aggression. But the six years had provided increasing
evidence of shabby politicking and corruption in his day-to-day
administration, of doubts about his State Department, and
cumulative distaste for his careless government-by-crony.

     Last week as he faced his difficult decision, Harry Truman
knew that he and his Administration were threatened by long-
smoldering rancor just waiting to burst into angry flames.

     Congressional probers were still unearthing new evidence of
skulduggery in the RFC. His leadership in Congress was more
scorned than effective. The public had an impression of a
petulant, irascible President who stubbornly protected shoddy
friends, a man who had grown too touchy to make judicious
decisions, who failed to give the nation any clear leadership in
these challenging times, whose Asia policy seemed to combine a
kind of apologetic resistance with something between a hope and a
prayer.

     The Clash. the man he fired was a military hero, idolized by
many. MacArthur had done a superb job as Supreme Commander for
the Allied Powers in the occupation and reconstruction of Japan.
He was the strongest bulwark against the Far East's Communists,
who had long cried for his head. If Douglas MacArthur had an
admirer in the White Hose set, it was Truman himself, an ex-
artilleryman with an innate respect for soldiering.

     But strong-minded General Douglas MacArthur had set himself
firmly against the policy of Truman, of his Secretary of State
Dean Acheson, and of the U.N. itself. Despite repeated efforts to
silence him, he had spoken up defiantly and deliberately. As a
soldier, Douglas MacArthur well knew that he was risking his
military career. His bold pronouncements had alarmed U.S. allies,
especially Britain. In Truman's view, this threatened the
solidarity of the North Atlantic countries, and embarrassed
Secretary Acheson in his own plans. Douglas MacArthur could not
(and would not) compromise his views of what was right and
necessary, refused to accept the acquiescence of silence. The
clash was slow in building, but the end was inevitable. Taking
his political future in his hands, Truman made his decision.

     Letters & Meetings. On the record, there was little doubt
that Douglas MacArthur had ignored the wishes, intent, and
specific orders of his Commander in Chief on policy
pronouncements, though he carried out his directives in the
military field. But his forceful pronouncements had moved into a
vacuum left by the Administration's own uncertainties.

     Within a month after the President's announcement
neutralizing Formosa, he had flown there to call on Chiang Kai-
shek and had been pictured kissing the hand of madame Chiang Kai-
shek; he made numerous statements to visitors of the course he
deemed necessary in Asia, and he fired off his famed letter to
Veterans of Foreign Wars, declaring Formosa essential to U.S.
defense.

     Unable to suppress the letter or to silence MacArthur by
teletype, Harry Truman staged the dramatic Wake Island meeting,
from which emerged public White House statements of agreement
(and MacArthur's private assurance to Truman that the Chinese
Communists would not come into Korea). Harry Truman returned
triumphantly to proclaim that he and his general had settled
their differences -- only to have a Tokyo "informed source"
announce that Supreme Commander MacArthur "holds unalterably to
the view that Formosa should not be allowed to fall into the hands
of a potential enemy."

     Last Warning. Then the Chinese surged across the Yalu. They
forced a bruising defeat on MacArthur's ill-deployed forces,
shaking the J.C.S.'s confidence in his military judgment.
MacArthur was for bold and forceful retaliation. But the State
Department laid down the line: U.S. policy would be to fight
China only in Korea. MacArthur, unable to accept the logic of
fighting a war he could not win, launched a fresh barrage of
dissent. He loosed a flood of announcements, interviews, and
answers to magazine queries, complaining of the enemy's
"privilege sanctuary," calling such limitations "an enormous
handicap without precedent in military history," declaring that
"never before has the patience of man been more sorely tried."

     On March 20, the J.C.S. forwarded a memo informing MacArthur
that the President was planning an announcement that, with South
Korea cleared of aggressors, the U.N. was willing to talk of
negotiations. Before anyone in Washington knew what was up,
MacArthur had flown to Korea and offered to meet the enemy
commander to arrange a cease-fire in the field. MacArthur added
an implied threat: "The enemy therefore must by now be painfully
aware that a decision of the United Nations to depart from its
tolerant effort to contain the war to the area of Korea through
expansion of our military operations to his coastal areas and
interior bases would doom Red China to the risk of imminent
military collapse."

     Harry Truman dispatched a sharp reminder again demanding
silence, and smoldered when he was told later in the week of a
British correspondent's report of a conversation with MacArthur:
"He said that it was not the soldier who had encroached on the
realm of the politician, it was the politician who had encroached
on that of the soldier." The came the Martin letter, addressed to
a member of the political opposition, with its observation: "It
seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here . . . we
fight Europe's war with arms while the diplomats there still
fight it with words."

     The Explanation. A few days later, over the morning coffee,
the nation read of Harry Truman's reply and fumed. That night,
Truman took to the air with an explanation. "I believe that we
must try to limit the war to Korea . . . A number of events have
made it evident that General MacArthur did not agree with that
policy. I have therefore considered it essential to relieve
General MacArthur so that there would be no doubt or confusion as
to the real purpose and aim of our policy . . .

     "You may ask: why don't we bomb Manchuria and China itself?
Why don't we assist the Chinese Nationalist troops to land on the
mainland of China? . . . What would suit the ambitions of the
Kremlin better than for our military forces to be committed to a
full-scale war with Red China? . . .

     "The Communist side must now choose its course of action . .
. They may take further action which will spread the conflict.
They have that choice, and with it the awful responsibility
follow . . . We do not want to see the conflict in Korea
extended. We are trying to prevent a world war -- not to start
one."

     Douglas MacArthur believed that "here in Asia is where the
Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global
conquest," and that the battle might be lost before Harry Truman
decided it had begun. Harry Truman, as the first of 18,000
telegrams and 50,000 letters poured in, knew that he faced the
biggest political storm of his stormy political career.


Action on M-Day

     The long-distance call from Connecticut roused Joe Martin to
of a sound sleep in Washington's Hay-Adams House at 1:30 a.m.
Said a woman's voice: "I think it's terrible." "What's terrible?"
asked the House Republican leader wearily. Then Joe Martin was
shocked awake by the news that Douglas MacArthur had been fired.

     The shock was only momentary. by midmorning, on Martin's
signal, the Republican leadership moved smoothly into battle
position. Martin, longtime admirer of Douglas MacArthur, quickly
assumed the role of leader in getting him back to the U.S. to
make his position clear before the nation. He put in a call to
Tokyo and got the general's promise to address a joint session of
Congress. Just before noon, Martin wound up a conference with
Senate and House G.O.P. brass in time to catch the hungry
lunchtime headlines with terse talk of "the possibility of
impeachments." The plural "impeachments" obviously meant both
Harry Truman and Dean Acheson.

     One Man Battle. Before such a coordinated offensive, and the
wave after wave of angry telegrams (125,000 of them, almost all
pro-MacArthur), the Democrats fell back in confusion. Compelled
to stand by their party, but unwilling to attack MacArthur in the
face of public opinion, they mumbled about the President's right
to fire an insubordinate general. They were only saved from
complete rout by a freshman Senator. Oklahoma's Robert Kerr. Like
a Democratic Horatius, Kerr fought a desperate battle all
afternoon in the Senate. "The Republicans are making a lot of
noise on this floor today," said he, "but they are dodging the
real issue. If they . . . believe that the future security of
this nation depends on following the MacArthur policy, let them
put up or shut up. Let them submit a resolution, expressing it as
the sense of the Senate, that we should either declare war
against Red China, or do that which would amount to open warfare
against her . . . If they do not, their support of MacArthur is a
mockery." Minnesota's brash Hubert Humphrey picked up the cue.
"The Republican Party," he said, "has become the war party."

     The accusation was enough to make Joe Martin & Co. give
pause. Already three Republican Senators -- Pennsylvania's Jim
Duff and Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge and Leverett Saltonstall
-- had broken ranks to defend Truman's right to act. If the
MacArthur issue was to be broad enough to include the eastern
internationalists in the G.O.P (generally more interested in
Europe than Asia), such forthright Republicans as California's
Bill Knowland (who favors the decisive course in both Asia and
Europe) and such high & dry isolationists as Indiana's Homer
Capehart and Illinois' Everett Dirksen (who frequently criticize
U.S. involvement in either Korea or Europe), some changes had to
be made fast. Out from Martin's office went the new word: forget
impeachment talk for the time being, stop talking about the
Formosa question, and concentrate on a demand that MacArthur come
back an report his views to Congress -- in a joint session,
nothing less.

     Tell the People. The G.O.P.'s best speechmakers fanned out
across the nation. Bob Taft talked of the new "appeasement." Said
he: "It would be hard to deliberately invent a more disastrous
series of policy moves than this Administration had adopted
during the past 18 months." Dirksen saw MacArthur's firing as a
victory for Great Britain, and the State Department as "a branch
of Downing Street." Far out in right field, Joe McCarthy
announced in Milwaukee that the recall was "a Communist victory
won with the aid of bourbon and Benedictine." Of Harry Truman he
said in a press conference: "the son of a bitch should be
impeached." Nebraska's Ken Wherry took to the air to ask: "Who
got us into this war? This is Truman's war and General MacArthur,
under orders of the Commander in Chief, has done his level best
to end the war . . . I have not seen any statement by (MacArthur)
that he wants to send American foot soldiers into Manchuria.
Certainly he has not suggested an all-out war with China . . .
Let us hear from him."

     Hearing from MacArthur was plainly what few Democrats
relished. While they hemmed & hawed about inviting the general to
address Congress, Joe Martin hurled an ultimatum. If they didn't
make up their minds by that very afternoon, Douglas MacArthur
would proceed to New York and address the nation from there."
(Maring telephoned MacArthur headquarters only once, on the first
day, but had good knowledge of what MacArthur was thinking all
week long. Presumably his go-between with Tokyo was Patrick J.
Hurley, Secretary of War when MacArthur was Chief of Staff,
wartime ambassador to China and, since then, unbending foe of
Dean Acheson and the Asia policies of the State Department.)
Suddenly, opposition evaporated. With a concurring nod from Harry
Truman, the Democrats announced that they would be glad to join
in honoring such a great general with a "joint meeting" (slightly
less formal than a joint session) this week. Word went out from
the White House: don't attack MacArthur personally; he's
dynamite.

     The Long & Short. At week's end Harry Truman himself showed
his party how he proposed to play politics in his fashion. He
chose Washington's top ceremonial rite for faithful, fat-cat
Democrats, the $100-a-plate Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, to beg
"every Democrat to put patriotism above politics." Not once did
he mention MacArthur by name, but he got a fine laugh by ad-
libbing a reference to MacArthur's report to him at Wake Island:
"It has been categorically stated that Russia will not come in if
we bomb Manchuria. That statement was made to me about the
Chinese not coming into Korea. And it was made on good authority,
too, and I believed it."

     Otherwise, Harry Truman concentrated on some of MacArthur's
Republican supporters in Congress, also unnamed:

     "They say they want other free nations to resist aggression,
said he, "but they don't want us to send any troops to help. They
want us to get out of Korea -- but they urge us to wage an
aggressive war against China. They say it will provoke Russia to
attack if we send troops to Europe -- but they are sure Russia
won't be provoked if we carry the war to China. They say they
want to crush Communism -- and yet they want us to go back into
our shell, and let the rest of the world be overrun by the Reds.
They say they are worried because the Russians outnumber us --
but they are not interested in keeping allies who can help us.

     "The long and short of it is they want defenses without
spending the money; they want us to wage war without an army;
they want us to have victory without taking any risks, and they
want us to try to run the whole world and run it without any
friends."

     The assembled Democrats got a great kick out of that. But
millions of other Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, had
their ears tuned for the roar of a Constellation bringing Douglas
MacArthur home.

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MACARTHUR'S CAREER

     Born: Jan. 26, 1880, at Fort Little Rock, Ark.

     Family Background: His father, General Arthur MacArthur, was
a Civil War colonel ("the Boy Colonel of the West") who earned a
Congressional Medal, became an Indian fighter in the '70s, a hero
of the Spanish-American war, and Military Governor of the
Philippines. He died dramatically of a heart attack while
addressing a reunion of his old regiment in Milwaukee in 1912.
Douglas MacArthur grew up at a succession of Army posts and, as a
child at Fort Little Rock, was almost killed by an arrow during
the last of the western Indian uprisings.

     Education: Graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1903.
Ranked first in his class, with one of the highest grade averages
ever earned at West Point. He was also chosen cadet captain,
earned his "A" in baseball.

     Marriage: MacArthur was married in 1922 at the age of 42 to
Mrs. Louis Cromwell Brooks, the daughter of Philadelphia's
wealthy socialite, Mrs. Edward Stotesbury. The marriage ended in
divorce in 1929. In 1937, he married Jean Marie Faircloth of
Murfreesboro, Tenn., a quiet, dark-haired woman 19 years his
junior. The MacArthurs have one son, 13-year-old Arthur
MacArthur.

     Military Career: Served in the Philippines after graduation
from West Point, aide to his father's good friend, President
Theodore Roosevelt, in 1907. He went on the U.S. expedition which
seized Veracruz, Mexico in 1914, and scouted inland disguised as
a hobo. When the U.S. entered World War I, MacArthur, then a
major on staff duty, conceived the idea of a "Rainbow Division"
of National Guard troops from different states; though his
superiors were hesitant to send National Guardsmen to France, he
went over their heads, sold the idea to War Secretary Newton D.
Baker and went with the division to France.

     His reckless bravery (he was twice wounded, once gassed) won
him 13 medals (plus seven citations and 24 foreign decorations),
a brigadier general's star intendent of West Point (at 39),
history's youngest Chief of Staff (at 50). In 1932, he incurred
political unpopularity by personally commanding, under Herbert
Hoover's orders, the troops which drove the veterans' Bonus Army
from Washington's Anacostia Flats.

     He retired from the Army in 1937; but he had a showy new
title: Field Marshal of the new Philippine Army. In 1941, six
months before Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt restored MacArthur
to duty as a full general with the title of Commander of U.S.
Forces in the Far East. By V-J day, when he took the Japanese
surrender aboard U.S.S. Missouri, Douglas MacArthur had made
himself one of the most famous commanders in U.S. history. He
became Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Japan 5
1/2 years ago, Commander of U.N. Forces in Korea within 13 days
after the invasion last June.