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N0KFQ > TODAY 08.07.11 19:38l 68 Lines 3245 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jul 8
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Sent: 110708/1718Z 9735@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Jul 8, 1950:
MacArthur named Korean commander
The day after the U.N. Security Council recommended that all U.N.
forces in Korea be placed under the command of the U.S. military,
General Douglas MacArthur, the hero of the war against Japan, is
appointed head of the United Nations Command by President Harry
S. Truman.
MacArthur, the son of a top-ranking army general who fought in
the Civil War, was commissioned as an army lieutenant in 1903.
During World War I, MacArthur served as a commander of the famed
84th Infantry Brigade. During the 1920s, he was stationed
primarily in the Philippines, a U.S. commonwealth, and in the
first half of the 1930s he served as U.S. Army chief of staff. In
1935, with Japanese expansion underway in the Pacific, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed MacArthur military adviser to the
government of the Philippines. In 1941, five months before Japan
bombed Pearl Harbor, he was named commander of all U.S. armed
forces in the Pacific.
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, he conducted the
defense of the Philippines against great odds. In March 1942,
with Japanese victory imminent, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to
Australia, but the American general famously promised the
Philippines "I shall return." Five months later, the great U.S.
counteroffensive against Japan began. On October 20, 1944, after
advancing island by island across the South Pacific, MacArthur
waded onto the Philippines' shores. Eleven months later, he
officiated the Japanese surrender and then served as the
effective ruler of Japan during a productive five-year
occupation.
After North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, MacArthur
was appointed supreme commander of the U.S.-led U.N. force sent
to aid the South. In September, he organized a risky but highly
successful landing at Inchon, and by October North Korean forces
had been driven back across the 38th parallel. With President
Truman's approval, U.N. forces crossed into North Korea and
advanced all the way to the Yalu River--the border between North
Korea and communist China--despite warnings that this would
provoke Chinese intervention. When China did intervene, forcing
U.N. forces into a desperate retreat, MacArthur pressed for
permission to bomb China. President Truman, fearing the Cold War
implications of an expanded war in the Far East, refused.
MacArthur then publicly threatened to escalate hostilities with
China in defiance of Truman's stated war policy, leading Truman
to fire him on April 11, 1951.
For his action against General MacArthur, the celebrated hero of
the war against Japan, Truman was subjected to a torrent of
attacks, and some Republicans called for his impeachment. On
April 17, MacArthur returned to U.S. soil for the first time
since before World War II and was given a hero's welcome. Two
days later, he announced the end of his military career before a
joint meeting of Congress, declaring, "Old soldiers never die;
they just fade away." After unsuccessfully running for the
Republican presidential nomination in 1952, MacArthur did indeed
fade from public view. He died in 1964.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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