To mark the 55th anniversary of the Incheon Landing, GI Korea has a great post detailing the operation that marked a turning point in the Korean War.
A ceremony was held in Incheon marking the event, attended by Korean and U.S. military personnel and Incheon mayor Ahn Sang-soo.
On a related note, ROK Marine Corps veterans have taken it upon themselves to make sure no one brings harm to Big Mac — since a picture is worth a 1,000 words, check out the photos at:
- Dongnip Shinmun (nice to see they brought their own music)
- Daily Surprise (some great quotes, if you read Korean)
- OhMyNews (OhMy photographer Kwon Woo-sung must be having a field day with this shit)
Nice shades. The General would have been proud.
Also interesting was the Chosun Ilbo’s interview with James Zobel, the chief archivist at the MacArthur Memorial and Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Zobel discusses the debate surrounding the general, and makes some unflattering remarks about Korean historians while he’s at it.
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That picture brought a tear to my eye, seriously. That is one bad-ass patriot right there.
I understand and appreciate their stance, but I wish they would ditch their dark sunglasses and battle fatigues. To the Korean youth, they smack of past dictatorships and right wing military coups and takeovers. These men should maybe try to project a softer image with non battle uniforms. Instead of trying force their ideals on the youth, maybe try persuation.
Ohmy news has an online poll going. Should Macarthur go or not?
So far 73% says “YES”, 27% says “NO”. Is this a surprise for Ohmynews?
http://play.ohmynews.com/hotis.....pmode=VIEW
I vote “YES”, I hope they do it. I want to see these ungrateful F****rs be out of jobs once American consumers get a whiff of what went on and start boycotting Made In Korea. Britain, Italy, Canada too, should all boycott such renegade countries like China, Myanmar, North Korea, and now South Korea going backwards to primitiveness.
For you military people, a question. According to the article DM was one of only five Americans to become a five star general. What does that really mean? Is that like a sort of, Medal of Honor kind of rank?
I don’t know about that historian’s reasoning.
So who’s responsible for prolonging the war? If China hadn’t intervened, the Korean War would have ended in a year and casualties would have been much fewer.
And why did China intervene? Perhaps because…the US/UN intervened, and was advancing upon its border? I’m not assigning blame here, just pointing out a rather simple point. If you had to pick an invasion which was more threatening to a country, would you pick NK’s invasion of SK (1000s of miles from the US), or US/UN/ROK troops advancing towards China’s border? Whether this guy failed to address this or whether it was edited out of the interview, I don’t know.
From 1948 to 1950, the inter-Korean military conflict was along the 38th parallel.
There are a lot of people who are quite certain North Korea was directing and/or aiding the partisans in Jeju-do and Jirisan, for example. Jeju-do is about as far from the 38th parallel as you can get in Korea. The families of about 30,000 people in Jeju (that is, if the entire familt wasn’t wiped out during the scorched earth operations) might disagree with this guy’s assertion that the conflict was only along the 38th parallel.
Fatigues, berets, and dark sunglasses. You can’t get anymore banana republic than that. On the other hand, I think the ROKAF airforce uniforms are really stylish, probably because they so closely resemble USAF ones. Can anyone identify for me the red insignia the front individual in the photograph is sporting on his right breast. It almost seems like a stretched out PRC flag
It’s the flag of the ROK Marines.
The insignia still seems distincty commieish to me. Something about the particular use of yellow and red.
The commie flags have a sickle as the emblem, ROK marine emblems have a naval ship anchor.
A historical note.
From the interview with the MacArthur historian in Norfolk VA:
“MacArthur was born in Arkansas but considered Norfolk, Virginia, where his mother hailed from, his home. The city of Norfolk donated its historic city hall for use as a memorial to MacArthur, and it opened three months prior to the general’s death aged 84 in January 1964. The tombs of the general and his wife are located near the entrance of the memorial.” (end of quote)
I don’t think MacArthur really considered Norfolk his home. MacArthur’s father was a famous US Army general and from the moment of his birth MacArthur lived whereever his father was stationed by the Army. MacArthur then entered West Point and from then on he lived whereever the Army sent him.
While alive I think he listed his home of record as somewhere in Wisconsin (where his father resided after retiring). After he left the Army in 1951 he ran for President in 1952 as a resident of Wisconsin, but after that he then took up permanent residence in New York City where he lived in a hotel (Waldorf-Astoria?).
My understanding is that he chose Norfolk (a Navy town) as his burial place because they promised him the use of this old city hall as a mausoleum and museum. The logical burial place for him would have been the West Point cemetary but all the facility WP would afford him is a grave in the cemetary along with everyone else.
Manchester didn’t emphasize this in his book; I got it from the finale of a fairly recent PBS special TV documentary on MacArthur. They chose to give a disparaging tone to the business of the memorial in Norfolk.
I think it’s true that the location of his mortal remains is a testament to the general’s ego, but like the statue in Korea it’s all a matter of what emphasis you choose to put on facts. For example, Eisenhower and his wife (and also one of their children who died as an infant or small child) is buried in the midst of his Presidential library complex (Abilene Kansas I think) and I’ve seen anyone who considers that unusually egoistic.
Likewise for the big hoopla surrounding the Clinton Presidential library.
VW:
The 5 star rank was created during WWII and hasn’t been used since then. It wasn’t meant as an honor for a specific past action or period of service; rank is given for the purpose of future authority. (Honoring past service is served by the military’s various awards and decorations, of which the Medal of Honor is the most prominent).
The reason the rank was created is simply because at that time the US had 12 million men under arms, as well as thousands of airplanes and fleets of ships, and the additional rank was felt to be needed in order to fully convey authority to those at the very top of the US military command structure.
Particularly in view of the fact that at these levels such command involved significant authority over vast numbers of allied forces as well. Remember that foreign armies had the ranks of “Marshal” or “Field Marshal”; think of the 5 star designation as roughly equivalent to this.
The use of some title like “field marshal” for this rank would have been much too pretentious though (implying perhaps a “Napoleonic complex” to the skeptical citizens of this republic).
A 4 star general or admiral is simply “General” or “Admiral”. An Army 5 star was formally known as “General of the Army” (”General of the Air Force” for, let’s see, I think it was Arnold).
Not sure what the Navy version was called (Admiral of the Navy? Maybe but somehow that doesn’t sound right to me).
Considering the specialization of the internet there’s probably a web site somewhere with all the facts if you want to search for it.
There were more than 5 so that particular fact is wrong. I can’t remember the exact number, used to know, maybe it was around nine. Some of them may have gotten their rank immediately after the end of the war (Bradley?) but since the late 1940’s no more have been created. The last one to die was Bradley (early 1980’s I think).
Let’s see (not necessarily in order of seniority):
Army:
Marshall (probably the first one created and the most deserving IMHO)
Eisenhower
Bradley
MacArthur
(Patton was definitely not one, he got into too much trouble and so “only” had 4, plus he was killed in a traffic accident in Europe not long after the end of the
war).
Navy:
King
Nimitz
Halsey(? not sure about this one)
Air Force:
Arnold (not sure about Spaatz and Vandenburg)
So I get nine but that’s strictly from memory and so subject to correction by anyone who knows better. There may have been one other associated with supply/logistics(?)
BTW, if you don’t know who King and Arnold were, they were the Pentagon chiefs of their respective services (Navy and Army Air Force) and thus equivalent to Marshall (who was the Army Chief of Staff).
Actually Arnold was technically under Marshall during WWII, as the Air Force didn’t become a separate service from the Army until 1947, so I’m not sure when Arnold got his 5th star — might have been after 1947.
I think in the last decade or so the US Congress went back posthumously for George Washington and made him a 6 star (the only one). So keep that one in mind for when you play Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit.
Further note: turns out it was nine but I left out Admiral Leahy, and my addition in the previous post was incorrect.
4 Army, 4 Navy, 1 Air Force; short description of the nine at
http://www.historyguy.com/5-star-military.htm
For a short description of who Admiral Leahy was, see this link:
http://www.doug-long.com/leahy.htm
bulgasari,
I have a hunch it wasn’t just a border issue with China.
If the CCP hadn’t won over the Nationalists a few years before, I gaurantee you China wouldn’t have done a damn thing like that.
VW and Paul H:
The naval equivalent of General of the Army was Fleet Admiral.
In addition to the considerations mentioned by Paul, creation of these ransk was considered necessary in order to put senior American commanders on a par with thier Allied peers, who did carry such titles as Field Mrshall, e.g, Montogomery, Air Marshall, e.g, Teddy., etc.
Can anyone identify for me the red insignia the front individual in the photograph is sporting on his right breast. It almost seems like a stretched out PRC flag.
It’s his nametag. Gold embroidery on a big block of red velvet. Very butch.
Demands for MacArthur statute destroyed, bad for relationship with the US, but China is laughing on the side. They’re saying, yeah Korea, Korea go, show them Yankees (gleefully waiting for the day when all of Korea once again bow to the emperor of China)
http://www.ohmynews.com/articl.....8rel_no=15
And then read this event of the internet chat by an Ohmynews participant and an American. The American said it all - ungrateful double standard Koreans - give that guy 10 bucks. I may even join the guy and boycott Korean products for the way they treat foreign workers, Americans, and sucking up to the bad ass rotten North Koreans only because they’re the same glorious race.
http://www.ohmynews.com/articl.....8rel_no=15
Minor brain farts. Yellow (gold) and red are the traditional colors of the U.S. Marine Corps, which the ROKMC adopted, as was their right. Blue and gold are traditional Navy colors. If you put yourself back to 1950, the USMC enjoyed worldwide prestige as the finest amphibious force in the world. The ROK decision to create a Marine Corps goes back to the Yeosu mutiny, which itself was in response to the Cheju-do revolt. Trained and patterned on the USMC, they landed a Regiment at Incheon and thus earned their spurs among the worlds marine forces. Paul H.: Congress authorized Pershing the title of “General of the Armies”, allegedly George Washington’s rank, and authorized him to wear up to six stars (the same number as a French Marshal). He never wore more than four. I remember being told that the reason that the U.S. avoided the adoption of the “Field Marshal” rank was that George Marshall had no intention of becoming “Field Marshal Marshall”. Could be just an old barracks story. The foremost individual is obviously a retired ROK General, for which reason he has the right to the belt and pistol. And yes, they do smack of the bad old days, third world banana respublics, inter allia, but these are the same guys who kept the ROK free, and laid the basis for today’s prosperous and democratic republic. It is also important that Koreans remember that present success in no guarantor that things will always be so. Argentina in the late 1800/early 1900s was also prosperous, and I believe ranked 12 in the then world economy. It is no so today.
Good info Lirelou thanks.
Turns out there are lots of links that show up after a search for “5 star general”, I listed only one of them that I checked (after I posted), it had some of the info you mention. I didn’t check it before writing initially.
Prestige of the USMC was further enhanced by their actions in their sector in Dec 1950 (in North Korea, the farthest east UN axis of advance, in the area of the Chosin Reservoir, a famous name to USMC and indeed all US military historians).
US Marine General Smith (first name Oliver?) was skeptical of MacArthur’s admonitions to get to the Yalu as fast as possible so he took his time and made sure to secure his route (based on all the Chinese prisoners that kept turning up in front of his lines.
So when the Chinese struck he was able to save the bulk of his forces (to include some US Army units in his sector as well). The tradition is that he brought out all of his dead and wounded; I’m sure this is in fact mostly true. I don’t recall if/how many ROK forces he had under him but I suspect his good generalship probably saved a lot of ROK forces’ lives as well.
Another US general who deserves a statue in the ROK. (At least just a small one). Maybe the ROK Marine Corps drinks a toast to him every now and again.
Yet more information about the history of this title in the United States can be found here,here, here and here.
The last “here” is the most interesting of the group, I believe.
Paul,
The 1st marine Division was part of Xth Corps, under Almond’s command, which was operating independently of 8th Army. The Corps counted the 1st MARDIV, the 1st ROK MC Bde, the 7th US Inf Div, and the 3rd US Inf Div. There was a good account of its operations published a few years ago, and written by the former Corps chief of staff, but I am unsure of the title (Escape from Hell?) It had a fair amount of criticism for the entire concept of the operation that did not reflect well upon MacArthur’s leadership. It also laid to rest some myths regarding the withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir.