American Experience

Historian Walter LaFeber on MacArthur and Nuclear Weapons

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In January and February of 1951 the military situation looked particularly bleak. It now seems that Truman was ready to order nuclear weapons in place in U.S. air fields in Okinawa for the possible use in the Korean War. He actually ordered the bombs to be sent across the Pacific. He had second thoughts, apparently, and stopped the bombs at Guam instead of moving them on into Okinawa, where they would have been operational.

What this did, I think, was, on the one hand, to show how frightened Truman was and how concerned he was about the course of the war now that the Chinese had intervened. The other thing that it did, however, was to show the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington that Truman was very serious about fighting this war and that in the long run this perhaps worked to Truman's advantage because when he moved to replace MacArthur in April of 1951, the Joint Chiefs had no doubt but that Truman was not relieving MacArthur because he was going to stop fighting the war, but he was relieving MacArthur because MacArthur had crossed him in the decisions about how to end the war.

The military situation becomes stabilized in February of 1951. I don't think Truman really at that point, and afterwards, considered using nuclear weapons in a serious way. The question then was, how do you negotiate your way out of this? The Chinese seemed to be receptive. Truman was certainly receptive to some kind of armistice negotiations.

The person who was not receptive was Stalin, who, if he had had his wish, would have had the Chinese and the Americans fight each other to the death. And the other person who was not receptive to this, along with Stalin, was General MacArthur, who essentially wanted this war to end in a glorious victory for the UN forces that he commanded. Consequently, as Truman was indicating that the United States was willing to talk about some kind of armistice discussion, MacArthur undercut this by summoning the commanders from the other side to meet him in the field, as he said, in order to discuss the possible surrender. That's when President Truman began to think seriously about recalling General MacArthur.

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