HISTORICAL NOTES: MacArthur & Yalta

When the State Department made public the Yalta record (TIME, March 28), Senate Democrats hastened to defend Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secret concessions to the U.S.S.R. by blaming his military advisers—notably General Douglas MacArthur. The fact that U.S. strategists urged Soviet entry into the Pacific war was taken to justify the Roosevelt deal made at Yalta. Senator Herbert Lehman attacked MacArthur, directly on the ground that he “urgently recommended that Soviet Russia be involved in the war against Japan.” The two sides of the argument were talking about different questions: 1) Was it desirable that Russia enter the war? 2) Were the concessions justified? Last week, in a 40,000-word postscript to the 500,000-word Yalta record, the Defense Department released the supposed gist of all “major official military advice given on the question of Soviet participation in the war against Japan.” It turned out that MacArthur sent his opinions on the subject to Washington only twice during the war:

¶In December 1941, right after Pearl Harbor, he cabled that “entry of Russia is enemy greatest fear” and called for “immediate attack on Japan from the North.”

¶In June 1945, three-and-a-half years later, when President Truman was considering the projected U.S. invasion of Japan, MacArthur’s advice was requested. He noted, among other favorable factors: “The hazard and loss will be greatly lessened if an attack is launched from Siberia sufficiently ahead of our target date to commit the enemy to major combat.”

“Essential.” The report contained no recommendations or statements of any kind from MacArthur relating to Yalta. But the New York Times and much of the U.S. press headlined reports filed by two War Department staff officers who discussed Pacific strategy with MacArthur in the Philippines in February 1945. Both reported that he considered a Soviet attack against the Japanese forces in Manchuria “essential.” One said: “He emphatically stated that we must not invade Japan proper unless the Russian army is previously committed to action in Manchuria.” The other quoted him as saying, “We should make every effort to get Russia into the Japanese war.” The talks had no effect on Yalta, because the Yalta conference was already over.

Some leading Democrats, after reading the record last week, declared that the report vindicated Roosevelt’s conduct at Yalta. New York’s Lehman said: “General MacArthur’s views were represented to President Roosevelt as being exactly what I said. I am satisfied.”

“Fantastic.” In a public statement, MacArthur himself said: “The report of the Department of Defense fully confirms that I was never consulted concerning the Yalta conference, that I exercised no influence whatsoever thereon and knew nothing about its secret agreements until after they had been consummated and communicated to me. The report furthermore clearly demonstrates that the basis of such agreements lay in decisions taken by the State Department on political policy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on military policy long before Yalta.

“Of these I was not informed. However, once such decisions had been taken and communicated to me following Yalta, they became binding upon me as upon any other theater commander. All future discussions thereon with War Department representatives necessarily became limited to consideration of their ultimate application to the conduct of the war. The attempt to interpret any statements I may have made in the course of such post-Yalta discussions as reflecting my pre-Yalta views and convictions is wholly unwarranted.

“The issue involved at the origin of this controversy was not whether Russia should have been brought into the Pacific war—this should have clearly been done at the beginning—but whether we should have made vital territorial concessions at the expense of Chinese sovereignty to induce Russia to come in at the end. On Dec. 13, 1941, I urged that Russia attack immediately from the north. This would have saved countless lives, billions of dollars, and spared the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea and many Pacific islands.

“There is not the slightest hint of documentation over my signature in the entire Defense Department report which even remotely suggests my support of these territorial concessions which so adversely altered the course of future events in Asia; or that after my initial recommendation in 1941 I advocated prior to Yalta that Russia enter the Pacific war. To hold the contrary is to prevaricate the truth and the record.

“I repeat—had my views been requested concerning the secret agreements bearing upon Russia’s entrance into the Pacific war I would have opposed them as fantastic.”