encountered an American intelligence officer. The officer told lack he'd heard the North Koreans had attacked all along the line. Jack immediately got on a phone, obtained confirmation, and phoned in his flash.
In the closing stages of the Pacific War, it had been agreed at Potsdam that Korea should be arbitrarily divided at the 38th parallel so the Russian forces could enter from the north and American troops from the south. After Japan's surrender, Korea was to be unified under a single trusteeship, and later under an independent Korean government chosen in U.N.-monitored elections. The election arrangements were made and a U.N. commission named. But the Soviets barred the team at the 38th parallel. The two occupied zones held separate elections, after which the USSR withdrew its troops in September 1948, and the United States in June 1949, leaving only a military advisory team. That was the situation when North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950.
Storm signals had been reported but were ignored. Chief of the United Press bureau in Tokyo Rutherford Poats noted: "Full North Korean divisions were shifted from their northern training camps toward the 38th parallel during May and June. Tanks, guns and ammunition poured into North Korea across the Yalu and Tumen rivers. Reserve units were called up. The strength of Communist forces along the 38th parallel was noticeably increased in some sectors. Most of this ominous activity was reported to Tokyo and Washington, but discounting interpretations were added along the way."
The U.N. Security Council met in an emergency session the day of the North Korean transgression, and, in the absence of the Soviet Union which was boycotting the U.N. in protest against Nationalist China's U.N. membership, passed a resolution demanding that North Korea withdraw north of the 38th parallel. President Truman promised South Korea air and navy support, and later land support as well. The North Koreans sent in thousands of infiltrators as a "fifth column." To infiltrate the U.N. lines, they wore American uniforms or white civilian pantaloons and blouses.
The Communists captured Seoul on June 28, and hammered their way southward down both the east and west coasts against the disorganized Republic of Korea (ROK) forces. President Syngman Rhee and his South Korean government moved to Pusan. Even as the invaders hammered at Seoul's gates, U.S. Air Force planes flew from Japan to Seoul's Kimpo Airport to evacuate two thousand Americans and other foreigners, including members of the United Nations Commission.
Correspondents in Tokyo scrambled to get to Korea. Among the first to arrive were three veterans: Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News, Burton Crane of the New York Times, and Frank Gibney of Time-Life. Together with Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune, they made it to the U.S. Military Advisory Group's headquarters in Seoul on the night of June 27 . . . just in time to be told, "They're in the city. Head for Su won."
While the military took Higgins under its wing, the three men commandeered a jeep and made for the safety of the Han River. In an article excerpted by No. 1 Shimbun from Keyes' book Tokyo and Points East, Beech, a marine during World War II who had served as Club president 1948-49, related that they almost made the casualty statistics when they came to a stop on the Han River Bridge, blocked by a stream of refugees. Just at that moment, a South Korean demolition charge-detonated prematurely, it later developed-blew out the center of the span. Crane, who was driving, and Gibney were injured by exploding windshield fragments.
The three men walked back to the American headquarters housing compound on the outskirts of Seoul, picked up two abandoned jeeps, drove back to the Han and down a steep levee into the river waters and onto a raft, which carried the trio and their jeeps safely to the other side. It was another thirty miles through rice paddies to Suwon and safety, but they made it. Keyes later received a Pulitzer Prize for his Korean War reporting.
But talk about luck. Bill Shinn crossed the same Han River Bridge two and a half hours before it was blown up. Ray Falk, who was with ABC at the time, was at Suwon when he saw a cloud of dust in the distance. "That's the ROK headquarters bugging out," he heard a soldier say. "Let's do the same." Ray did, and survived to cover the remainder of the war.
General MacArthur flew to Suwon airstrip on June 29 to survey the situation. With him were four U.N. correspondents, whom the Herald Trib's Marguerite Higgins referred to as "The Palace Guard." They were representatives of the four major news agencies: Brines of the AP, Hoberecht of the UP, Handleman of the INS, and Roy Macartney of Reuters.
Back in Tokyo, MacArthur found waiting for him President Truman's order to send troops from Japan. Transport planes, already waiting at Itazuke Airport, moved two battalions of the 24th Infantry Division to Pusan, on Korea's southeast coast. These 1,000-odd soldiers arrived in Korea on July 1, six days after the North Koreans launched their invasion.
The U.S. Occupation Command had rotated the bulk of its experienced World War II combat veterans stateside. The troops who arrived in Pusan, according to Rutherford Poats' history of the Korean War, Decision in Korea, "were transplanted from a world of peacetime pleasures and occupation comforts to the unreality of war and sudden death. They had been given little military or psychological preparation for the shock or for the job ahead. Many of them had entered or stayed in the army to see the world, earn credits toward a 'GI Bill of Rights' education, or find the advertised 'security' of a 'peacetime army career.' Their arms and equipment were limited. Only recently had they begun to get realistic unit training in field exercises, and even this was carried out without mental conditioning for war."
On July 2, Major General William F. Dean was named commander of U.S. forces in Korea. Dean had no illusions about what he faced. "When he ordered two green, under-strength battalions northward to meet the main force of the Communist drive, he knew they were in for a bloody beating," Poats said.
On July 5, they met four thousand Communist troops led by forty medium tanks near Osan. Low clouds made American air cover out of the question. "Long before the tanks were within effective range, American bazooka and recoilless rifle crews opened fire," Poats wrote. With ammunition running out, the colonel in command ordered a retreat. Casualties were heavy and many wounded men had to be abandoned on their litters.
The Osan story was repeated again and again as the available American strength from Japan was committed and sacrificed in the name of delaying action, Rud said. "For MacArthur there was no other way. He needed time to ship from Japan two more American divisions, land them in Korea and move them to the front. With this force, some luck in reorganizing the South Korean army, and effective use of his growing air and naval forces, MacArthur believed he had a good chance of stalling the Communists short of Pusan and then destroying them at the end of their overtaxed supply lines."
Some of the best accounts of the Korean War were written by Australian correspondents. With the Australians in Korea, edited by Norman Bartlett, is a collection of stories written by Australian newsmen and combatants. Roy Macartney, chief correspondent for the Australian Associated Press-Reuters in Tokyo, was at Osan, and his article noted that the 2-inch bazookas initially carried by the U.S. troops lacked the punch to knock out Soviet tanks. Dean immediately had a batch of 3.5-inch bazookas rushed to Korea from the States. Macartney said they claimed seven North Korean tanks on the day they arrived. In the air, Australian 77 Squadron Mustangs from Japan joined U.S. planes in action over the perimeter sector.
On August 29, the headquarters and two battalions of the 27th British Infantry Brigade arrived in Pusan from Hong Kong. An Australian ground force of nine hundred men, all "volunteers" and eager for action, either from Australia or from the Australian Infantry Battalion on Occupation duty in Japan, had arrived at Pusan by the end of September. These Diggers were to prove their worth in the fighting that lay ahead.