Paul, I really mean it, read Bruce Cumings’s books to get an idea where the far-left is coming from. They do read him. This will help you understand the nature of the anti-USFK group and the basis of their fervor.

I would like to quote from H.G. Underwood (of the family that founded Yonsei University) in his book ‘Korea in War, Revolution and Peace’ (p 130):

“Historian Bruce Cumings’ works, including his two-volume ‘The Origins of the Korean War’ … paint a highly unpleasant picture of South Korea under Rhee, while playing down or ignoring the atrocities and complete suppression of civil liberties in North Korea. Elegantly written and filled with information from a wide range of American, Korean, and Chinese sources, Cumings’ cleverly crafted chapters present Rhee Syngman as a mere dupe of the American occupation forces and Soviet agent Kim Il-sung as a true Korean patriot who, despite a tendency to act a little harshly once in a while towards landowners, merchants, Christians, and political opponents of any stripe, enjoyed wide popular support throughout both North and South Korea.”

So that’s it. Must have been the AOL “Insta-message” (?) that popped up while I was typing, inviting me to come visit a “cutie-pie” at her web site. Lately, a standard theme with these has been their assurance that they have seen my profile and are only a few miles away from where I live! Pretty exciting all right…

I try to block these but I still get a message asking me if I want to accept it. If I’m in the middle of quickly typing keystrokes when the “pop-up” happens, it will open before I can delete it.

Maybe that’s God’s way of trying to tell me that she “really” is the one for me…

It just seem you both are military, so whenever you discuss military, commentaries are always interesting.

Not sure where that came from, but I always try to be moderate in all things (as the great Buddha counseled, may peace be upon him) and I hereby pledge to renew my commitment to moderation.

Manchester is an overall admiring biographer but I think he was very honest about covering MacArthur’s character flaws. Overwhelming self-promotion and vanity were among them but Manchester’s position on this is that MacArthur’s talents were (usually) of a match to justify them (in the military arena and the “politics” of the US military, however definitely not in the field of US electoral politics, though MacArthur fancied he knew this field too).

His flaws in this area were enhanced by his tendency to fill his staff up with self-important
sycophants. Fortunately there were many exceptions (his Air Ops Deputy Gen Kenney (sp?) in WWII being an outstanding example).

To me it looked like Manchester did the detailed research to justify his conclusions (ref: my post about Manchester, just prior). As I recall, Manchester wrote that in the closing days of WWI MacArthur participated in several night trench raids and also full scale day assaults (in his capacity as Asst Div Cdr; maybe by this time MacA had been promoted to ADC from his position as Division Chief of Staff (?) — can’t remember now for sure)).

Certainly the Div C of S should not be forward like this on the battlefield. But of course those were different days then, and I think that MacArthur was satisfied that the C of S office was being capably handled at this point by his own staff and so felt fully justified in going forward.

During the 42nd’s participation in the US portion (Argonne Forest) of the Allied offensive (Oct 1918), according to Manchester when MacA went forward, he dressed up in a dashing uniform with a scarf, carried a swagger stick (but not even a pistol) and was in as much danger from German fire as any doughboy.

Because of this type of thing, Manchester wrote that both during and after WWI, MacArthur was enormously popular with his former 42nd Division troops. Some of the stories about this came from MacArthur himself (as related to others who wrote them down or told them later to Manchester), but to me they seemed to have the ring of truth. (For example, during the interwar years supposedly MacArthur was always a good “touch” for a small “loan” for any former Rainbow division member he encountered who was down and out, and this was evidently pretty well known to a lot of people).

If Manchester got this right, I’d be inclined to trust the judgment of his WWI troops in deciding that MacArthur wasn’t just an “Iron Cross hound” (as the Wehrmacht saying went).

Such popularity was a great discrepancy as compared to what happened to him during WWII and may have been a cause of MacArthur’s seeming insensitivity later to the issue of his personal popularity with the troops (at heart he didn’t really credit the reports and so might have been inclined to “shoot the messenger” when someone attempted to tactfully put a flea in his ear about this particular subject).

As far as Inchon, if I recall correctly, the JCS repeatedly communicated by message with MacArthur their misgivings about the Inchon landing concept. Also, I’m almost certain that Manchester relates that a JCS delegation personally visited him at his HQ in Japan to discuss it (to include the CNO (?), or maybe it was another senior Navy flag officer). The tidal problems at Inchon were well-known and they were prepared to dispute him on this.

I’m almost positive it wasn’t just an 0-5 level staffer.

Remember such a visit would have been highly classifed at the time for reasons of OPSEC, and afterwards nobody would have had any particular interest in relating the story of it any further (maybe not even till Manchester went looking in the files, 30 or so years later).

Nobody was writing Woodward-type books (”The Commanders”) back in those days, something that may seem almost incomprehesible to those here who aren’t old enough to have been alive during the lifetimes of these people.

If I remember Manchester’s account, the CNO and the other members of the JCS delegation were personally briefed by MacArthur on the plan.

He assured them he would be personally present at the landing, and his compelling oratory, coupled with his enormous personal prestige, got them caught up with his enthusiasm. (Immediately afterwards, I think Manchester relates that the Navy flag officer (CNO?) made some wry remark along these lines, sort of like a man feeling his pockets to see if his wallet was still there).

Again, I’m just going from my memory of Manchester’s account here, so subject to verification. Can be easily checked though from the book at your convenience; book was well-footnoted, look for Inchon and then skim to see if you can find the appropriate passages.

Some more recent accounts of the Pacific war I have read (late 80’s) have been much more scornful about MacArthur’s vanity than Manchester was.

One author made the point that the memory of MacArthur’s WWII accomplishments has not “aged” well, due chiefly to his greatest flaw — his extreme control of all aspects of public relations (everything released about the Southwest Pacific theater had to say that “MacArthur” is doing this and “MacArthur” is doing that, etc).

Manchester makes the point about how the overwhelmingly successful campaign in the Southwest Pacific theater (less US casualties for most territory conquered compared to other US campaigns of WWII, particularly the head-on slugging of the Central Pacific theater) has been completely obscured due to MacArthur’s overwhelming ego at the time. The newspapermen couldn’t get in to get the “ground level” story of what the troops were doing, so they just repeated the HQ press releases and then went elsewhere for the “GI” level (Ernie Pyle-type) stories.

So in terms of the lasting historical memory of his accomplishments, MacArthur was often his own worst enemy.

Somewhere I read a newspaper or magazine article about this specific subject (Manchester’s health and the completion of the last volume) but can’t remember when or where I saw it now. The article was based on a personal interview with Manchester during his incapacitation.

If I recall correctly, I think the main reason was that Manchester’s methods were too “old fashioned” (eclectic note-taking system, plus he wrote everything out longhand had no use for computers or automation? Something along these lines).

Although Manchester still had pretty much full possession of his mental thinking acuity for the interviewer, the particular conditions of his physical disability (nervous frustration due to inability to concentrate for long periods, and his own inability to modify his very individualistic work habits) had caused him to resign himself to the fact that the last volume would never be finished.

Wish I could remember where I saw the article, you would have found it interesting.

I don’t want to portray myself as a Manchester expert, I used American Caesar and Goodbye Darkness extensively years ago as a teaching resource but haven’t gotten into his other stuff. I will eventually; though I remember once trying to start on “The Arms of Krupp” and it was just too impenetrable. I have to have something to catalyze my interest in a subject first.

Your mention of the Churchill volumes is eerie as I was just thinking about how I need to check them out. I’m particularly interested in what Manchester had to say about some of the more sinister allegations surrounding Churchill’s role in the loss of the Lusitania (from the British author (Simpson?) who wrote the controversial book about the sinking, the one that first came out about 1971).

Caused a big stir in the press at the time. Finally a few years ago I picked up a used paperbook copy and got “into” it. Not too long but a hard read, but parts of it are so hair-raising that it became a object of re-reading interest to me.

Unlike a good mystery novel the mystery of what exactly caused it to sink has never been solved and probably never will (as well as the subject of just who knew exactly what about its cargo, routing, etc in the US and British governments).