The Korean War—Pusan to Chosin: An Oral History (review)

84BOOK REVIEWS This emphasis leads him to an eyebrow-raising disregard of Korean sources. Among hundreds of sources, not a single one published in Korea in any language could be located. Even books, articles, and dissertations by Koreans in the United States, though fairly often cited, are given extraordinarily little relative weight. The views of American officials with few, if any, Korean contacts dominate—to some extent imprison—Matray's view. The same, unfortunately, occurs today among Korean-Americans who will not permit chapters in their books by non-Korean scholars, and with professors in Seoul who turn down American scholarly articles which do not accord with their nationalist consensus about Korean culture. Such trends are disturbing. If allowed to persist, serious and even acrimonious splits between Korean and foreign views of Korea may well arise and deepen to the detriment of the entire field and spirit of Korean studies. These reservations sound deeper than perhaps they should. Dr. Matray's conscientious, even-tempered, intelligent, and fascinatingly detailed study is an important and welcome contribution to an understanding of American policy during twenty crucial years. Gregory Henderson Korea Institute, Fairbank Center Harvard University The Korean War—Pusan to Chosin: An Oral History, by Donald Knox. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985. 512 pp. Illustrated. $19.95. Paper, $10.95. The author has put together an oral history of the first six months of the Korean War, a war that lasted more than three years and ended in a truce on July 27, 1953. Perhaps because the United States was not completely victorious in its first post-WW II struggle against communism, the Korean conflict is, according to the book jacket, "one of the most bitter and inglorious—and yet least known—conflicts in history." Donald Knox, in a skillful weaving of eyewitness accounts, written reports and orders, and his own narrative of events and situations, does much to make the crucial early events of the American battles against North Korea and Communist China better known and appreciated. The range ot oral interviews is impressive: there are generals and admirals as well as pfc's and all ranks in between telling their stories. Presumably due to skillful editing, the narratives are articulate and informative. As might be expected in an oral history, the more senior officers remember the basic strategic and tactical decisions, which were so instrumental in determining the courses of battle, while the lower-ranking soldiers and marines have anecdotes to tell that make the bitter cold of the Korean winter or the sizzling heat of the summer seem real to the reader. There is an occasional bit of humor in the remembrances of those who fought in Korea, but for the most part this is a narrative of struggle, fear, and privation. Knox divides the months from the start of the war in June 1950 to December 31, 1950, into eleven periods, each corresponding to an aspect of the overall struggle with the North Korean and Chinese enemies. The remembrances of BOOK REVIEWS85 those interviewed take the reader through the early period of defeat for American forces, as they and their South Korean allies are pushed back under the onslaught of numerically superior North Korean forces, on through the fierce battles in which the U.S. Army troops struggle to hold the Pusan perimeter. Thereafter the fortunes of U.S. Army and Marine units ebb and flow as there are victories at Inch'on and defeats when the Chinese enter the war. Although this is a book about ground forces in the Korean War and the privations they suffered, navy personnel are not slighted. In the chapter about the amphibious invasion of Inch'on, there are oral history reports from Admiral Arleigh Burke, then Deputy Chief of Staff to Commander Naval Forces, Far East; Captain (later Admiral) U.S. Grant Sharp, then Fleet Planning Officer, Staff, Commander Seventh Fleet; and Commander George H. Miller, Plans Officer to Commander, Joint Task Force. They tell an important story about some of the detailed planning that went into this extremely complex operation. Narratives about the conduct of the operation itself are provided by excerpts from the ships' logs of the USS...