Word: quemoy
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...commander of the Asiatic Fleet from 1936 to 1939, when he was retired. (He was twice recalled to duty in Washington during World War II.) In 1955 the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader queried top-ranking Army and Navy officers, asking: "Do you think giving up the liberty of Quemoy and Matsu would produce peace?" Yarnell was the only advocate of surrender: "To paraphrase Bismarck, these islands are not worth the bones of a single American. Use the surrender of the islands to secure the release of servicemen and civilians illegally held prisoners of the Chinese Communists." Among those who said...
...fall of 1954, five years after the Chinese Communists seized the mainland, they first bombarded Quemoy. The resulting pressures on the U.S. from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek produced a Mutual Defense Treaty, committing the U.S. to aid in the defense of Formosa and the nearby Pescadores islands (see map). At President Eisenhower's behest, Congress in January 1955 passed the so-called Formosa Resolution authorizing the President to use American forces "as he deems necessary for the specific purpose of securing and protecting Formosa and the Pescadores against armed attack, this authority to include the securing and protection...
Though the "related positions and territories" clearly referred to Quemoy and Matsu, the names were deliberately omitted from the resolution in line with Secretary of State Dulles' policy of maintaining freedom of action; at the same time, the resolution was aimed at keeping the Chinese Communists at bay, since, presumably, they did not know whether the U.S. would attempt to deter an invasion of Quemoy. "I won't be pressed or pinned down," said Dulles at a press conference, "on whether an attack on Matsu and Quemoy would be an attack on Formosa...
...offshore islands out of the defense perimeter. The amendment was beaten down, 74-13 (Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, both absent, were paired: Kennedy for, Johnson against). In April 1955, Dulles told a press conference that "there is no commitment expressed or implied to defend Quemoy and Matsu." The President sent Admiral Arthur Radford, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the then Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson on a mission to Taipei to discuss Formosan defenses with their old friend Chiang, and, privately, to try to get Chiang to reduce his Quemoy forces. On that...
Dulles' dogged policy of calculated ambiguity served to keep the Communists relatively quiet for three years. Then came crisis: in August 1958, the Communists opened a tremendous artillery attack on Quemoy from their positions seven miles away. Day after day, they lobbed thousands of shells onto the dreary islands, killing and maiming more than a thousand soldiers and civilians, disrupting the supply lines from Formosa...