It was a very simple, direct order. While it didn't give me much guidance, it
certainly gave me a lot of freedom.
Q ..
Why did General MacArthur pick you?
A ..
I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps he felt I knew something about the Korean situation.
Or perhaps he felt I was known to the chief of staff who had confidence in me.
Or perhaps I was simply "Mr. Available," someone who was in the plans section
and could explain to the press corps what was happening in Korea.
Q..
How long were you at this job before you moved on?
A ..
I was the spokesman and continued to work in the plans section until we left Tokyo
to join the invasion forces headed for Korea. I think this was around September
5th, about ten days before we landed at Inchon. During the early days of the war
we were looking everywhere we could throughout the Pacific Theater and
throughout the Army for troops to send to Korea to stabilize the situation.
Within the FECOM staff there were, broadly speaking, two schools of thought.
One school of thought, the prevailing one, was that we should pull our troops back
into a perimeter at Pusan and evacuate them to Japan. The second school of
thought, the one held by my boss, Colonel Armstrong, was that we could land an
amphibious force in Korea instead of evacuating our forces. He believed, and we
in the plans section concurred, that once we evacuated Korea, there would be very
little opportunity to go back. Accordingly, we began thinking along these lines in
mid-July It took that much time to determine what was happening in Korea and
how seriously the situation would deteriorate before we could stop the enemy.
Around the first of August, we planned an amphibious force to outflank the North
Koreans and thus save us from having to evacuate our troops.
Q ..
Would you tell me about the idea of a landing farther up the coast from Pusan and
how you were involved in it?
A
Once we got the okay from our boss, three of us worked up an invasion plan. One
was Colonel James Landrum, who was a distinguished war hero who had been
seriously wounded in the Pacific War. He is now a retired major general, living
in Hawaii. The second was Colonel Lynne Smith, who became a brigadier general
before the end of the Korean War. Smith was a very bright officer but a practical
one. I've lost track of him. And I was the third.
28
Previous Page
