Harry Truman (57 page)

The liveliest staff meetings took place before a press conference. At that time, the aides would discuss the most likely questions to be asked, and Dad would discuss possible answers with them. Charlie Ross, as the working newspaperman of the group, developed a technique which was really startling. He would set aside three or four nasty questions in his mind, and in the midst of discussing another issue he would suddenly lash out with one of these toughies, in a harsh, almost insulting way. More than once, Dad almost lost his temper - which was exactly what Charlie was trying to prevent in the press conference. It was a rugged approach to preparation, but Dad and Charlie Ross both felt it was worth it. I doubt very much if any other President ever had a press secretary toughen him up this way. It was only possible because Dad and Charlie were such old and close friends.

There was a tremendous frankness between Dad and his staff. On neither side was anyone ever afraid to say exactly what they thought. There were times when Dad became discouraged about the way things were going. That was when his humility almost got out of control, and he would begin talking about the possibility that there were other people in the country who could do the job of President a lot better than he was doing it.

One of the staff would clear his throat, in the midst of one of these monologues, and say, “What did the cook say to the admiral, Mr. President?”

Dad would grin, shake his head, and remember a story Admiral Nimitz had told him. It seems there was once an admiral who had a birthday party aboard his flagship. The cook baked him a cake, and the admiral, very pleased by all the attention he was getting, laid on the praise with a trowel. “Cook,” he said, “this is a fine cake. It’s one of the best cakes I ever ate. I never ate a cake as light as this.” On and on he babbled, praising the cake’s color, its icing, its filling, its color, its size, its taste on the tongue and in the stomach.

Finally, the cook, a big black man, couldn’t stand it any longer. “Admiral,” he said, “you sure do talk silly.”

Dad took great pains to have his staff organized with just the right balance between definite continuing responsibilities and flexibility to meet special problems. He knew there was an inevitable human temptation to build empires, especially for men so close to the seat of power. The staff reported directly to him at all times. But he also insisted the Director of the Budget, Cabinet members, the Council of Economic Advisers, and other executive office units also have access to him directly. “Incidentally,” Charlie says, “the President was quite an ego deflater in a gentle way.”

Dad used to call the staff his “crew.” Looking back, he is proudest of the fact that “not one of them went out and wrote a book on me.” This perhaps is the best evidence of the loyalty and deep affection Dad generated. There was a definite family feeling between him and all the men around him. When one of them was ill, or one of their relatives was ill, Dad was like a worried father, visiting them in the hospital, sending presents and get-well notes. An example of this feeling is a letter which his correspondence secretary, Bill Hassett, wrote to Dad in the summer of 1950.

Dad had written “the Bishop” a warm note the previous day telling him how much he appreciated him staying on the job, in spite of his obvious desire to retire. He had been working those outrageous White House hours for so many years. (He had also been Roosevelt’s correspondence secretary.) Bill was a great asset to Dad. Not only did he have a delightful sense of humor and an unlimited vocabulary, as well as a fund of good stories and jokes, but he could write the friendliest letter with the most words saying absolutely nothing, turning down a request or soothing an irate voter. We used to call them “Hassett Valentines.”

Bill responded to Dad’s praise with words that sum up the feelings Dad inspired in his “crew.”

EARLY IN THE morning on June 24, 1950, Dad dashed off the following carefree letter to Stanley Woodward, the former head of protocol for the State Department, whom he had recently appointed ambassador to Canada.

Obviously, my father had no sense of impending trouble. Later in the morning, he dedicated Friendship International Airport in Baltimore. He talked about the need for federal, state, and local cooperation in the development of airports and similar transportation projects, sounding one of his favorite themes - the importance of planning for the future, in spite of the croakers of doom who saw every change as a potential disaster.

There were strong echoes of Dad’s five-year plan for peace in these words, of his determination to achieve a position in the world where we could negotiate from strength with communism.

As soon as my father finished this speech, he boarded the
Independence
and headed for Kansas City. Mother and I were already there, and he was looking forward to spending a pleasant weekend with us, and as he told Stanley Woodward, paying a visit to his brother Vivian in Grandview, where they planned to discuss family and farm matters. Personally I was feeling rather pleased with life. I had just made my first national TV appearance on Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town.” There were no clouds on my personal horizon, and no serious storm warnings on the Truman political horizon. Joe McCarthy was locked in combat with the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee headed by Senator Tydings of Maryland, and he seemed to be losing.

Mother and I were feeling so relaxed and lazy, we did not drive to Kansas City to meet Dad’s plane. He landed at two o’clock and was greeted by his sister Mary and several old Kansas City friends. We had a very pleasant family dinner around six o’clock and then migrated to our small book-crammed library for Truman-style small talk. About nine o’clock the telephone rang. It was Secretary of State Acheson.

“Mr. President,” he said, “I have very serious news. The North Koreans have invaded South Korea.”

My father asked Acheson whether he should return to Washington immediately. After considerable discussion, they decided against it, for two reasons. First, they did not know the real extent of the North Korean invasion. During the previous year, the North Koreans had made numerous raids across the frontier, sometimes involving as many as 1,500 men. Second, a night flight to Washington by the President of the United States was not only physically dangerous - it might panic the nation and the world.

None of us got much sleep that night. My father made it clear, from the moment he heard the news, that he feared this was the opening round in World War III. Large Bulgarian and Rumanian armies were massed on the border of Yugoslavia, which had broken with Stalin the previous year and asked for our support. There was a huge Russian garrison in East Germany. Iran and Turkey were, we knew, equally threatened by powerful Russian forces just across the border.

The next morning, my father issued orders, commander-in-chief style. We were to act as normal and as unconcerned as possible and do all the things we usually did on a Sunday morning. Mother and I went to church, and Dad drove out to the family farm to see his brother Vivian. He looked over new equipment Uncle Vivian had installed, such as an electric milking machine, and then drove back to Grandview. He told no one about his conversations with Secretary Acheson, not even his brother Vivian, who was quite disappointed when Dad explained he could not stay for the family dinner they had planned to have around noon.

Back home in Independence, my father was handed the cable which our ambassador to South Korea, John Muccio, had sent to the State Department the previous evening. It read:

In spite of this grim news, my father still hoped to remain in Independence until the next day and return to Washington according to his already announced schedule. Foremost in his mind was the need to prevent panic and thus confine the conflagration. From the moment he heard the news, he was thinking of ways to prevent this act of aggression from becoming World War III.

For Mother and me, these were the most anxious hours we had spent with Dad since the night of April 12, 1945. I went about the motions of living, going to church, kneeling, standing, singing hymns, coming home, having Sunday dinner, feeling but not feeling, trying to realize what was happening - and failing.

In Washington, the teletype machines were chattering. At 8:00 a.m., General Douglas MacArthur sent a personal message to the Defense Department giving details of the North Korean invasion and commenting: “Enemy effort serious in strength and strategic intent and is undisguised act of war subject to United Nations censure.” The General added that he was placing all ammunition available in his command at the disposal of the South Korean armed forces.

At 12:35 p.m., Independence time, Secretary of State Acheson called Dad. Mother and I had gotten back from church only minutes before the call came. The news was growing rather grim. The North Korean attack was spearheaded by over a hundred modern tanks, and amphibious landings had been made at seven points along the east coast of South Korea. Tank-led columns were already threatening the South Korean capital of Seoul and vital Kimpo Airport. The Secretary of State recommended an immediate call for a UN Security Council meeting to adopt a resolution asking all the members of the UN to take action under the “last resort” clause of the UN Charter - “Threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.” Dad agreed completely and authorized him to issue the call immediately.

At the same time, my father decided on an immediate return to Washington. He told Acheson he wanted all the available top people from the State and Defense Departments to join him for dinner and a conference at Blair House that evening. Calmly, he sat down at the dining room table and ate lunch, and told us the bad news. Meanwhile, assistant press secretary Eben Ayers and Secret Service man Jim Rowley were phoning aides and the crew of the
Independence.
At 1:20, only forty minutes after he made the decision, we left Independence for Kansas City Municipal Airport. There was no time to tell the reporters what was happening so they could get an airplane ready and follow him. At exactly 2:13, the
Independence
roared down the runway and was airborne. Although I have no recollection of actually praying, there is a picture of me with my hands clasped together under my chin. It was a gesture that accurately expressed what I was feeling at that moment.

My father landed in St. Louis to pick up John Snyder and then flew east. From the air, he wired Charles Claunch, the White House usher, to warn him a “very important dinner” should be ready at Blair House by 8:30. Acheson would give him the guest list. Claunch called Alonzo Fields, the head butler at the White House, who recruited two cooks and made up a menu en route to Blair House in a taxi.

Aboard the
Independence
,
Dad was thinking about the past. He remembered how the democracies had allowed dictatorships to swallow Manchuria, Ethiopia, Austria without acting - and in the end, were forced to fight for their very survival in World War II. At least as important was the status of the United Nations. In two days, the world organization was to celebrate its fifth birthday. Dad had no doubt Secretary of State Acheson’s prompt action in calling a Security Council meeting would result in a condemnation of North Korea’s aggression. This swift move had caught the Russians flatfooted. They had been boycotting the UN over the Security Council’s refusal to seat Communist China and expel Nationalist China. Thus, they were unable to exercise their veto, which would have left the UN helpless to speak until the Assembly was convened - a process that would have taken weeks and perhaps months.

By 6:00 p.m., almost two hours before he landed, my father knew our UN resolution denouncing North Korea’s “unprovoked act of aggression” had been adopted by the Security Council, nine to nothing. But this now meant that the prestige of the United Nations was on the line. If North Korea succeeded in its conquest of South Korea, the UN would become ridiculous in the eyes of the world. The fate of the League of Nations, after its impotent denunciations of Fascist aggression in the 1930s, was something Dad remembered all too well.

Finally, there was our own commitment as a nation to the countries of Western Europe, whom we had joined in the North Atlantic Treaty. More than a few of the politicians in these NATO nations were not entirely convinced we would stand beside them in a crunch with the Russians. The test of our will to resist, the integrity of our declarations in the Truman Doctrine that we were prepared to meet Communist aggression against free nations, was at stake.

My father landed in Washington at 7:15 p.m. Sunday. Secretary of State Acheson, Secretary of Defense Johnson, and Correspondence Secretary Bill Hassett met the plane. They drove to Blair House, and Dad called us at 7:45 Washington time, 5:45 our time, to tell us he had landed safely. No matter what was on his mind, he never failed to perform this ritual, for Mother’s sake. She hated to fly and worried every moment he was in the air.

At 8:00, my father went downstairs to meet his assembled advisers. They included the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, Under Secretary of State James Webb, Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews, Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter, and Generals Bradley, Collins, and Vandenberg, Admiral Sherman, Ambassador at Large Philip Jessup, and Assistant Secretaries of State Dean Rusk and John D. Hickerson. While they were waiting on the patio for dinner to be announced, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson suddenly asked General Bradley to read a memorandum from General MacArthur on the importance of Formosa. My father cut him short by announcing he wanted nothing discussed until dinner was over and the servants had withdrawn. Johnson’s attempt to seize the floor annoyed him, not only because it was indiscreet. It was another sign of the feud Johnson had been conducting with Secretary of State Acheson because he was jealous of what he considered to be Acheson’s and the State Department’s greater influence with the President.

After dinner, the conference got down to business. Secretary of State Acheson read “White III,” the copy of Ambassador Muccio’s telegram, and added what few details had filtered into Washington from Korea since that had been received. The situation was in a state of total confusion. But there were some hopeful reports. One enemy column had been stopped in the mountains northeast of Seoul. Acheson then read a six-page memorandum entitled, “Points Requiring Presidential Decision,” which ranged over a wide variety of alternatives.

After considerable discussion around the table, my father decided to do three things.

1. Order General MacArthur to supply the South Korean army with all available weapons and ammunition.

2. Evacuate the dependents of the 500-man American military mission - the only soldiers we had in Korea. Ships and planes should be used to do this, and the air force was ordered to use all the planes it had at its disposal in the Far East to keep open Kimpo and other airports. However, the planes were strictly ordered to stay south of the 38th parallel.