here the moral issue was clear-cut. And just as adamantly, the Red Chinese and North Koreans declined to accept anything less than full repatriation.
This was the only deadlock preventing truce. The other questions, such as unification of Korea, and guarantees of its independence, the U.N. had put by the board in its resolution of February 1951, when it was decided that these problems were to be solved 'through peaceful means' at a conveniently unspecified time following cease-fire.
At first, owing to the extravagant claims of Nam II and the Communist leadership at Panmunjom, world opinion had remained confused on the POW issue. Among the neutrals, particularly, there had been much doubt that the United States told the truth, that there had been no coercion used on the POW's at the time the prisoners were rioting by the thousands on Koje. If a mass breakout had occurred, the United States would never have been able to convince these peoples of its truthfulness and morality.
But with the POW's under tighter control, and inspected by neutral teams, the truth of the American position slowly became self-evident.
And inevitably, from the time Haydon Boatner had control of U.N. POW Camp 1, the Communists began to lose the POW propaganda war. After all, their camps had never been opened to anyone, including the Red Cross.
Whether the Communists could publicly admit that many of their captured soldiers refused repatriation or not, the world was becoming aware of it. And more and more of the world, from Mexico to India, was becoming annoyed at Communist intransigence.
In November 1952, Indian Delegate V. K. Krishna Menon, avowedly no friend of the United States, proposed to the U.N. that the POW's of both sides be released to a neutral repatriation commission completely outside the control of either combatant, in agreed numbers and at agreed exchange points in Korean demilitarized zones. The commission would screen them, and if there were any POW's whose return was not provided for, these should then become the responsibility of the U.N.
The proposal was greeted with anger by the Communist side.
In December, with slight modifications, it was passed as a resolution by the U.N. Lester Pearson of Canada, Assembly President, presented the resolution to China and North Korea, requesting their acceptance in order to facilitate 'a constructive and durable peace in Korea.'
The two Communist governments termed the proposal 'illegal, unfair, and unreasonable,' and promptly rejected it.
South Korea, which was holding a large number of now decidedly anti-Communist POW's, also angrily denounced the Indian resolution.
The United States was cautiously—it had no great trust in Menon—agreeable.
Now the Communists, who cried over and over again their fervent desire for peace, were increasingly being backed into a corner in which it was apparent they preferred continued bloodshed to a propaganda defeat—and in so doing they were getting the defeat anyway.
Trygve Lie, U.N. Secretary General, stated publicly that it seemed those who had commenced the aggression in Korea were simply not willing to end it. He was widely quoted.
In late 1952, world opinion, for whatever it was worth, was turning slowly but definitely against the North Koreans and Red Chinese. Continued fighting by these nations could only intensify the swing.
When Eisenhower departed the Far East in December, General Clark was certain that the new Administration would opt for a negotiated peace rather than intensified war. Shortly after the inauguration, he was formally notified to this effect.
Then, on 19 February, he was advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that on 13 December 1952 the Executive Committee of the League of Red Cross Societies meeting in Geneva had voted fifteen to two that sick and wounded POW's of the Korean War be exchanged even before a truce was negotiated. Only Red China and Russia opposed, and the JCS understood that a similar resolution was pending before the U.N. With concurrence from the State Department, they urged Clark to put such a proposal before the enemy, in advance of the U.N. action.
This very thing had been proposed by the U.N. Command in December 1951; the Communists had rejected it.
On 22 February 1953, Clark wrote to premier Kim II Sung of North Korea, and to Peng Teh-huai of the Chinese Volunteers: …
The appeal was delivered through Panmunjom. For thirty-six days there was no reply.
During the first months of 1953, as the propaganda war began to turn against the Red Chinese, other pressures, both subtle and unsubtle, began to make themselves felt in Communist capitals.
Communist leaders, without success, had tried to assess the meaning of the American change of Administration. During 1952 it had been the Republican leadership that had cried the loudest for direct action against the Communists—which had threatened, in one way or another—the loosing of the lightning against the transgressor. It had been largely Republicans who proposed Douglas MacArthur for the Presidency; it had been largely Republicans who seemed to support him in the Congress.
Now the Republicans, a general, at their head, were in power. And generals were as worrisome to the Kremlin, in one way, as they were to Capitol Hill, for the Communist leadership was essentially civilian. It had occurred to the Communist leaders, too, that generals were much more likely to regard war as inevitable than either politicians or diplomats.
The Communist ruling circles knew that General MacArthur, oddly, had been idolized by the American 'millionaire ruling cliques' and supported by Senator Taft, who was certainly at the very center of those cliques—and Communist rulers were now trapped by their own mythology, which they tended to believe more than the West gave them credit for. It was Communist dogma that capitalists desire war in search of profits, ignoring the fact that in any Western nation the wealthy probably wanted war less than any other group—since wars normally bring social upheaval.
It may have been, in 1953, that the Republican leadership didn't know exactly what it was going to do about the Korean War. So far, it had not exactly enlightened the American people. But, more important, it had failed to enlighten the Communist world, too, and the Communist world, just now developing new problems, was deeply concerned, and far from convinced that the United States, in a fit of frustration, would not strike out.
Certain pressures out of Tokyo fell on receptive ground.
In Nevada, at Frenchman's Flat, a bright flash and ugly mushroom cloud had signified a gigantic change in the tactical battlefield—a change that had not come about at Hiroshima, despite statements to the contrary. In its early years the atomic device had remained a strategic weapon, suitable for delivery against cities and industries, suitable to obliterate civilians, men, women, and children by the millions, but of no practical use on a limited battlefield—until it was fired from a field gun.
Until this time, 1953, the armies of the world, including that of the United States, had hardly taken the advent of fissionable material into account. The 280mm gun, an interim weapon that would remain in use only a few years, changed all that, forever. With an atomic cannon that could deliver tactical fires in the low-kiloton range, with great selectivity, ground warfare stood on the brink of its greatest change since the advent of firepower.
The atomic cannon could blow any existing fortification, even one twenty thousand yards in depth, out of existence neatly and selectively, along with the battalions that manned it. Any concentration of manpower, also, was its meat.
It spelled the doom of Communist massed armies, which opposed superior firepower with numbers, and which had in 1953 no tactical nuclear weapons of their own.
The 280mm gun was shipped to the Far East. Then, in great secrecy, atomic warheads—it could fire either nuclear or conventional rounds—followed, not to Korea, but to storage close by. And with even greater secrecy, word of this shipment was allowed to fall into Communist hands.
At the same time, into Communist hands wafted a pervasive rumor, one they could neither completely verify nor scotch: that the United States would not accept a stalemate beyond the end of summer.
