Word: asia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MacArthur, whose job it was to police the boundaries of chaos in Asia, was not fooled. Never for a minute did he believe the U.S. secure in the face of the Red advance. He had expressed his forebodings to scores of American visitors to Tokyo. No quotation of any particular interview was allowed, but the gist, delivered in a resonant baritone, ran something like this: "Whether you like it or not, most of the human race lives around this Pacific basin. Here in Asia there are great de mands, great dangers, great opportunities -all neglected by the United States...
...strategist, his pleas-considered political, and hence beyond his province-were largely ignored. In 1948 the Defense Department had answered with a flat "no" the general's request for more troops to buttress Japan, which MacArthur regarded as the only firm anchor of the U.S. position in Asia. Last January the State Department had overruled MacArthur's urgent proposal that Formosa be defended. He had warned Washington that Communist capture of Formosa would break the defense line Japan-Okinawa-Formosa-Philippines and drive the U.S. back to the line Alaska-Hawaii...
...weeks ago, however, MacArthur finally succeeded in selling a bit of his program for Asia to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and General Omar Bradley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After a week in Tokyo, Johnson and Bradley flew back to Washington armed with a strongly worded memorandum from MacArthur, and prepared at last to argue for a great investment of U.S. strength in the Pacific. They reached Washington less than twelve hours before the Communists invaded South Korea. It was the Communists who finally won MacArthur's argument...
...over Asia, leaders' words rang with a new sense of clear purpose. The most interesting reaction came from India. Its newspapers freely predicted that India's U.N. delegate would not vote for the U.S. resolution on Korea. Then Pandit Nehru came home from a trip to Indonesia, Malaya, Burma. For months he had been preaching "neutrality" in the struggle between Communism and the West. What he had seen in other lands, plus the U.S. action on Korea, changed his mind. He amazed his countrymen and the world by lining India up on the side...
Ring sat on the platform as Paul Robeson denounced the U.S.'s "wicked and shameful policy" and Gus Hall, national secretary of the Communist Party, accused the U.S. of making "undeclared shooting war against all the peoples of Asia." To the 9,000 "peace partisans," Ring cried: "For a mere screenwriter to be imprisoned for his beliefs elevates him ... to a fraternity which includes Socrates ... St. Paul . . . John Donne . . . Thomas Paine...