MacArthur Might Have Resigned

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30560, 1 October 1964, Page 12

MacArthur Might Have Resigned

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) NEW YORK, September 29. The late General Douglas MacArthur said he almost resigned his Far Eastern command during the Korean war six months before he was fired by President Harry S. Truman.

He wrote out his resignation, MacArthur said in his book, “Reminiscences,” after hearing a bitter question from a dying American bomber pilot MacArthur died last April 5. The book, completed by the General last March and published yesterday, spelled out the bombing restrictions imposed on him—the sanctuaries of Manchuria and certain vulnerable North Korean spots. MacArthur wrote: “One of those bomber pilots, wounded unto death, the stump of an arm dangling

by his side, gasped at me through the bubbles of blood he spat out: ’General, what side are Washington and the United Nations on? It seared my very soul.” MacArthur said he was prepared to resign his command at that moment, but was persuaded to stay by his chief of staff, General Doyle Hickey.. “1 tore up my dispatch,” MacArthur added. The General asked if Peking did not have access to intelligence that MacArthur would not be permitted to hit Manchuria. He published what he said was an “official leaflet” by the top Chinese commander, General Lin Piao, which read: “I would never have made the attack and risked my men and military reputation if I had not been assured that Washington would restrain General MacArthur from taking adequate retaliatory measures against my lines of supply and communication.”

MacArthur elaborated on Ms belief that Russia would never have gone to the aid of China if the United States had bombed strategic points in metropolitan China. The book mainly is devoted to MacArthur's 52 years as a soldier, which began when he entered the United States military academy at West Point in 1899. He was relieved of his command by Mr Truman on April 11, 1951.