that the armed forces were firmly under civilian control, and gave that control to the President.
With that authority, of course, came responsibility. It is the responsibility—the duty—of the President to ensure that the armed forces are prepared to wage war when called upon to do so. In practical terms, this means the President ensures that the uniformed officers in command of the armed forces meet their responsibilities to keep their forces in readiness. In turn, that means that the armed forces are trained and equipped to go to war.
There is little question now that the senior American officer in the Pacific, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, failed in his duty to make sure that the Eighth Army under his command was both trained and equipped to go to war. On 25 June 1950, it was neither.
That it was not adequately trained is entirely MacArthur’s fault, but to place blame for the literally disgraceful lack of equipment in the Eighth United States Army, it is necessary to go all the way to the top of the chain of command.
United States Forces, Far East, were under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur repeatedly advised them of the sorry state of his equipment, and requested to be supplied with what he believed he needed.
The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs—there were several during this period—repeatedly requested of their superior, the Secretary of Defense, that the U.S. Armed Forces worldwide (not only MacArthur’s forces in Japan) be adequately supplied with the necessary equipment.
Truman’s Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, openly boasted at the time that he had first cut military spending to the bone, and then cut some more.
He had. At Johnson’s orders, there were two battalions (instead of the three considered necessary) in most of the U.S. Army’s regiments. And there were two regiments (instead of three) in all but one of the divisions.
The Secretary of Defense is, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointed by the President. Once Louis Johnson had been confirmed, President Truman was responsible for his actions, good or bad.
The blame for the inadequate equipment in the Eighth U.S. Army—and just about everywhere else—has to be laid on the desk of President Harry S Truman, right beside the small sign reading “The Buck Stops Here” that he kept there.
There were, of course, extenuating circumstances.
Congress, for one, was not in the mood to appropriate the billions of dollars it would have cost to bring the armed forces back to the state of preparedness they had been in five years before, when, on 2 September 1945, MacArthur had accepted the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor.
And Korea was almost at the bottom of the list of problems with which President Truman had to deal on a daily basis. Most of these problems had to do with thwarting Soviet mischief in Europe, the Near East, and even Africa.
The Soviets hadn’t done nearly so well in the Far East, and the credit for that unquestionably belongs to Douglas MacArthur, who had flatly refused to permit the Soviets to participate in the occupation of Japan.
MacArthur had also successfully sown the seed of democratic government in the mind of the Japanese people, and taken wide and generally successful steps to get the war-ravaged Japanese economy moving.
As far as the disgraceful condition of the Eighth United States Army in Japan was concerned, one has to remember that all armies are rank conscious.
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was not only the senior officer on active duty, but he had been Army Chief of Staff when the general officers in the 1950 Pentagon had been captains and majors. In World War II, MacArthur had been a theater commander, commanding more men of all services than there were now in 1950 in all the armed forces of the United States.
There are annual inspections of every organization in the Army, ending with a conference during which the inspectors point out to the commander where he is doing what he should not be doing, or not doing what he should be doing.
It is very difficult to imagine any officer, even one with a galaxy of stars on his epaulets, pointing out to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, and Commanding General, United States Far East Command (FECOM), where he was doing something wrong, or where he had failed to do something he should have been doing.