Transcript: Chapter 27

ALONZO HAMBY: Truman hopes this is going to be a quick enterprise, and we can take care of it. Clearly, he and perhaps some of the people in his administration have underestimated the formidable character of the North Korean army.

NARRATOR: The first Americans thrown into action were green. Their enemy was not. Well-trained and combat hardened, the North Koreans pushed the Americans further and further South, across unknown terrain, through drenching downpours and punishing heat. Truman's cuts in the defense budget had left America unprepared for the war it now faced.

WALTER LAFEBER: By July and August of 1950, Korea was a full-fledged conventional war. Truman made the decision at this point to bust the defense budget. Harry Truman, who had opposed high defense budgets, had sent a $13-billion defense budget in '49. By the end of 1950, he is sending in a defense budget of $50 billion dollars. And the United States is now beginning to move into the period of the modern defense budget.

NARRATOR: While the massive re-armament of America began at home, news from the front remained grim. At the end of July, 4,000 Americans were dead, almost 14,000 wounded or missing.

GEORGE ELSEY: The North Koreans were so much stronger than we initially realized that they really practically pushed us right off into the sea.

NARRATOR: The United Nations army now clung to only a tiny corner of the southeastern tip of Korea. Truman had expected to overwhelm the Communists, to hurl them back above the 38th parallel into North Korea.

Instead, after just six weeks, the war seemed lost. With disaster looming, a daring plan was devised by the head of United Nations forces, the fabled hero of World War II, whose exploits in the Pacific had made his name a household word -- General Douglas MacArthur.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: It's somewhat difficult, today, to imagine the aura around General Douglas MacArthur; the size of the shadow he cast. Americans looked upon him as a kind of god, an infallible god.

GENERAL EDWIN SIMMONS, Marine Corps Historian: He was only about five-foot-nine, but if you were in his presence, you would swear that he was about six-foot-six. He always dominated any group and he had all the props -- the open-collared shirt, the sunglasses, the crushed hat, the pipe. He made his own laws. He took unclear directives and interpreted them his own way. He was very much the American Caesar.

NARRATOR: To save his army trapped on the tip of Korea, MacArthur sent a message to Truman asking him to approve one of the most daring operations in American military history.

GENERAL VERNON WALTERS: I always remember this -- he said, "Tell the president I will land at Inchon on the 15th of September. And between the hammer of this landing and the anvil of the Eighth Army, I will smash and destroy the armies of North Korea." And the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

NARRATOR: On September 15, 1950, with Truman's full support, MacArthur struck without warning at the port of Inchon, 30 miles from Seoul.

The risks were enormous. Dangerous 30 foot tides... enemy guns trained on mine-infested waters. One Pentagon strategist called it a 5,000 to one shot. But MacArthur's gamble paid off. The North Koreans were caught completely by surprise. Inchon fell in less than a day.

"I salute you all," Truman cabled MacArthur, "and say to all of you from all of us at home, 'Well and nobly done.'

Thirteen days later Seoul was retaken. At the same time, UN armies in the South were fighting their way North with the enemy in full retreat.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: And, suddenly, the North Koreans, instead of being this invincible invading army, were caught in a giant pincer.

NARRATOR: In less than two weeks, MacArthur had turned the war around. "General MacArthur," Life magazine wrote, "is a great soldier and a great American."

By late September, UN forces had pushed the Communists back above the 38th parallel, the line separating the two armies before the war began. There, MacArthur's army halted.

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