Northeast Asia and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman: Japan, China, and the Two Koreas ed. by James I. Matray (review)

This thought-provoking collection of essays, expertly edited by James Matray, who also provides an excellent introduction, examines how President Harry S. Truman and his key advisers responded to a series of challenges in East Asia from 1945 to 1953. All the authors acknowledge that Truman had little detailed knowledge of the region or its complexities and tended to react to rather than guide events. Many of the contributors use recently declassified documents, especially from Chinese and Russian sources. The result is a nuanced and measured examination of the forces that shaped the early Cold War in East Asia.

Marc Gallicchio argues that domestic politics, especially Truman's determination to show his loyalty to New Deal reforms, prompted the new president to spurn advice that he offer assurances to Emperor Hirohito to speed a Japanese surrender. This had the unintended consequence of making reliance on the nuclear bomb even more critical as a way of compelling Japan to quit fighting, quite apart from anti-Soviet impulses.

Although the president devoted limited attention to occupied Japan, both Roger Dingman and Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu assert that his actions had positive if sometimes unintended consequences. For example, firing General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War reassured many Japanese who remained wary of rearmament that it was possible for civilians to assert control over the military even in the midst of war. This provided cover to Japanese conservatives willing to accept limited rearmament as a price to be paid for the restoration of sovereignty. Truman's desire for Republican support in reaching a peace settlement with Japan, Dingman stresses, led him and Secretary of State Dean Acheson to place John Foster Dulles in charge of the treaty negotiations. The result assured bipartisan support at home, Japanese cooperation, and an alliance structure that benefitted the United States and Japan for half a century.

An underlying theme of several essays is how the decision by the Truman administration to defend South Korea in June 1950, and the subsequent decision to cross the 38th parallel, altered East Asian politics for a generation. Historian William Stueck is especially clear in explaining how and why the Soviet Union, the United States, and the two Koreas all bore responsibility for the division of the peninsula and the eventual outbreak of war. Qing Simei cites a variety of Chinese memoir and documentary materials to argue that Mao Zedong and the People's Republic of China (PRC) were actually reluctant to send forces into Korea but found their hand forced by Washington's decision to cross the 38th parallel. Mao, she insists, was less a revolutionary adventurer than a defender of national security against a reckless United States. Other contributors offer a more positive view of U.S. policies in Korea. Xiaobing Li, for example, writes in praise of Truman's decision to send the 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Straits. The deployment assured that the long-term confrontation between Taiwan and the PRC would be a cold, rather than hot, war. Steven Casey similarly praises Truman's wartime leadership as prudent and responsible for establishing a long-term balance of power.

The collection also includes several short but interesting essays on the quality of intelligence during the Korea War, as well as a fascinating illustrated account by Charles S. Young of the impact of tattooing on prisoners of war and the ways it complicated repatriation.

The arguments presented in these essays have been offered by several of the authors in book-length studies. However, these briefer treatments make their points effectively and provocatively. Collectively, they provide a window onto both Washington's decision-making and the complexities of post-World War II East Asia.