What’s a major news story you can remember as a child?

The outbreak of the Korean War.

On June 25, 1950 North Korean forces, backed by the Russians and China, invaded South Korea with massive force.

I heard the news in June 1950 while traveling by train with a group of Texas Boy Scouts to the International Jamboree from June 27 to July 6 in Valley Forge, PA. I was twelve years old. The war worried me a lot and became a nagging presence I could not shake.

World War II ended the Japanese rule of Korea. By advance agreement among the victorious Allies the Russians occupied the Korean peninsula above the 38th parallel (latitude 38° N); Allied forces, mainly the US occupied the south. In 1948 two states emerged, communist North Korea, a puppet of the Russians, and democratic South Korea, backed by the US.

On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces, backed by the Russians and China, invaded South Korea with massive force. US and South Korean forces retreated the length of the Korean peninsula, finally occupying a perilous perimeter around the port city of Pusan.

After returning home, I followed the war in our daily paper. Several times a week the front page would carry a map showing the battle zone as a jagged line across the Korean peninsula. US and Allied forces retreated steadily. I woke up each day wondering if we would be defeated and thrown into the sea. Most vividly I remember the famous Pusan Perimeter, where all of our forces were crammed into a small area around the seaport of Pusan at the southern tip of the peninsula. 

The Battle of Pusan raged for six weeks in late summer. I followed it closely. When I was most worried we would be thrown into the sea a miracle occurred. On September 15 General Douglas MacArthur’s brilliant, don’t-even-think-about-it risky amphibious landing of America Marines and Korean troops at Inchon on the west coast near the 38th parallel, hundreds of miles behind enemy lines. Two weeks later Seoul, the capital, was retaken and the war turned in our favor.

MacArthur was an egomaniac genius who flouted orders right and left during his WWII career, and Truman was right to fire him for insubordination in April 1951, but he is probably the only one who could have conceived and executed Inchon.