“Russia? It makes me laugh when I recall the fears of the Truman-Acheson-Marshall-Bradley-General Staff group that Russia would commit its armies to a war in China’s behalf at the end of an endless one-track railroad to a peninsular background that led only to the sea. The enemy could not have marched across that radiated collar I proposed to put across Korea’s neck. For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North. “It has an active life of between 60 and 120 years. It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes. It was my plan as our amphibious forces moved South to spread behind us-from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea-a belt of radioactive cobalt. “You may ask what would have prevented the enemy’s reinforcements massing and crossing the Yalu in great strength, as they had before. I suggest now he would have sued for peace immediately after learning his air had been taken out and we had spread across his supply routes.

The enemy commander would have been starved out within 10 days after the landings.

“North Korea, holding not less than one million to 1 1/2 million of the enemy, could not have sustained him. Nothing in the way of supplies or reinforcements could have moved across the Yalu. The joined amphibious forces would press down from the North. “Now, with the northern border sealed, the 8th Army, spread roughly along the 38th Parallel, would then have put pressure on the enemy from the South. … forces could have joined in two days, forming a wall of manpower and firepower across the entire northern border of Korea. “The other force, led by the other Marine division, would have landed simultaneously at Unggi or Najin in the east, hit the same river road, and moved very quickly westward. One, totaling four-fifths of my strength and led by one of the Marine divisions, would have landed at Antung and proceeded eastward along the road that parallels the Yalu. These would have been formed into two amphibious forces. “With the destruction of the enemy’s air power, I would then have called upon a half million of Chiang Kai-shek’s troops, sweetened by two U.S. “That many bombs would have more than done the job! Dropped under the cover of darkness, when his planes were in for the night, they would have destroyed his air force on the ground, wiped out his maintenance and his airmen. I would have dropped between 30 to 50 tactical atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria from just across the Yalu at Antung (northwest tip of Korea) to the neighborhood of Hunchun (northeast tip of Korea near the border of the USSR). “The enemy’s air would first have been taken out. It would have altered the course of history.

I could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days, once the campaign was under way, and with considerably fewer casualties than were suffered during the so-called truce period. … ” “Of all the campaigns in my life-20 major ones to be exact-the one I felt the most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging properly. Douglas MacArthur (Gold Medal Books, Greenwich, Conn.), Bob Considine writes, “ MacArthur’s final plan for winning the Korean War was outlined to this reporter in the course of an interview in 1954 on his 74th birthday.

The korean colossus