Casualty Reporting and Domestic Support for War: The US Experience during the Korean War

Abstract

The common argument that public support for war is casualty sensitive ignores the fact that casualty figures are not revealed automatically. While the military decides when, and to whom, to release such information, political elites can question, even condemn, how the government goes about this business. After briefly exploring how the US military operated during the two world wars, this article focuses on American casualty reporting during the Korean War, arguing that the way the figures were revealed often sparked enormous political controversy, which at two crucial moments helped to undermine domestic support for this distant war.

Key Words:

• Casualties
• Public Opinion
• Korean War

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the US Army Center of Military History and the Truman Library for the award of a travel grant that made the research for this article possible.

Notes

¹John Mueller, Wars, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley 1973); and ‘The Iraq Syndrome’, Foreign Affairs 84/6 (Nov.–Dec. 2005), 44.

²For a summary of recent literature, and its impact on conventional wisdom, see Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton UP 2009), 1–2, although the book itself is a sustained challenge to the Mueller thesis.

³See, for instance, Bruce W. Jentleson, ‘The Pretty Prudent Public: Post-Vietnam Opinion on the Use of Military Force’, International Studies Quarterly 36/1 (March 1992), 49–73; Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing Your Battles: American-Civil Relations and the Use of Force (Princeton UP 2004).

⁴This is one of the arguments in my recent book, Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics and Public Opinion (New York: Oxford UP 2008), esp. 279–89. The concept of ‘remobilization’ is developed by John Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “Total War”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’, in John Horne (ed.), State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge: CUP 1997), 195–211.

⁵Adam J. Berinsky, ‘Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict’, Journal of Politics 69 (2007), 975–97 emphasizes the importance of ‘patterns of elite discourse’, especially partisan clashes over the meaning of key wartime events, in shaping public attitudes.

⁶For an analysis of the casualty figures, see Frank A. Reister, Battle Casualties and Medical Statistics: US Army Experience in the Korean War (Washington DC: Dept. of the Army 1973).

⁷Michael Sledge, Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen (New York: Columbia UP 2005), 222; Shuji Otsuka and Peter N. Stearns, ‘Perceptions of Death and the Korean War’, War in History 6/1 (Jan. 1999), 72–87; Bradley Lynn Coleman, ‘Recovering the Korean War Dead: 1950–58: Graves Registration, Forensic Anthropology and Wartime Memorialization’, Virginia Military Institute Archives, <www.vmi.edu/uploadedFiles/Archives/Adams_Center/EssayContest/20052006/ColemanBL.pdf>

⁸Sledge, Soldier Dead, 33, 37, 97; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf 2008), 14, 102–5, 118–22, 252–3.

⁹Faust, Republic of Suffering, 230–41.

¹⁰‘History of the Dog Tag’, <www.173rdairborne.com/dogtag.htm>.

¹¹N[ational] A[rchives, College Park, MD], [AEF Records] RG 120, Entry 222, box 6110, Dennis Nolan, Memorandum for the Commander-in-Chief, 3 March 1918; RG 120, Entry 239, box 6195, Dennis Nolan, Memorandum for the Commander-in-Chief, 20 March 1918.

¹²‘Publication of Casualty Lists’, Army and Navy Journal, 16 March 1918; ‘Casualty Lists Placed Under Ban’, New York Times, 3 April 1918.

¹³See, for instance, editorial, ‘An Inexplicable Order’, New York Times, 4 April 1918.

¹⁴RG 120, Entry 240, box 6207, Francis C. Wickes to Memorandum for Lt Morgan, 24 March 1918; RG 120, Entry 222, box 6112, Mark S. Watson to Dengler, 15 May 1918.

¹⁵RG 120, Entry 222, box 6110, E.R. Warner McCabe, Memorandum to Press Officers, 3 July 1918.

¹⁶‘Casualty Lists’, Editor and Publisher, 24 Jan. 1942.

¹⁷‘Casualties: Just as Bloody’, Time, 3 Aug. 1942.

¹⁸NA, [SHAEF Records] RG 331, Entry 86, Press Censor Guidance, No.158, ‘Casualties’, 30 June 1944.

¹⁹M[ilitary] H[istory] I[nstitute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania], Richard H. Merrick Papers, box 1, ‘History of US and SHAEF Press Censorship in the ETO, 1942–45’, July 1945.

²⁰D.M. Giangreco, ‘“Spinning the Casualties”: Media Strategies during the Roosevelt administration’, Passport: The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations 35 (Dec. 2004), 22–9. For an earlier example, see Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1986), 67–8.

²¹‘Lifts Picture Ban on War's Realism’, New York Times, 5 Sept. 1943; George H. Roeder, The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War II (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1993), 13–14.

²²NA, [OWI Records] RG 44, Entry 149, box 1712, Bureau of Special Services, ‘Prediction of War Casualties, 23–31 December 1943’, Analysis of Public Opinion, No. 30.

²³Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (Washington DC: Office of the Chief of Military History 1961), 179–81.

²⁴[Douglas] MacArthur Papers [Norfolk, VA], RG 9, box 26, Douglas MacArthur to Dept. of Army, 10 July 1950.

²⁵NA, [Office of Secretary Defense Records] RG 330, Entry 149A, box 1, Press Branch, ‘Casualty Releases’, 10 Aug. 1950; OPI, Memorandum for the Press, ‘Summary of Casualty Reporting Procedure’, 11 Aug. 1950.

²⁶Ibid. See also RG 330, Entry 134, box 152, OPI, ‘Activity Reports’, 6 July 1950.

²⁷Edward F. Witsell, ‘The Casualty Report Tells the Story’, Army Information Digest 11 (Nov. 1950), 7–10; ‘Army Tells How Casualty Report is Speeded Up’, Editor and Publisher, 9 Dec. 1950.

²⁸Appleman, South to the Naktong, 82–6, 94, 146–80.

²⁹Roy E. Appleman, Escaping the Trap: The US Army X Corps in Northeast Korea, 1950 (College Station: Texas A&M UP 1990), 11, 29.

³⁰[Houghton Library, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA] Time Dispatches, Folder 589, Clay Blair to Don Bermingham, ‘Box Scores’, 28 July 1950.

³¹RG 330, Entry 149A, box 1, OPI, Memorandum for the Press, ‘Summary of Casualty Reporting Procedure’, 11 Aug. 1950.

³²On MacArthur's pre-Korean War publicity activities, see Clayton D. James, The Years of MacArthur (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1970–75) 1: 130–5 and 2: 89, 164–5, 277–8, 708–9.

³³On MacArthur's Korean War press system and the reasoning behind it, see MacArthur Papers, RG 6, box 4, Marion P. Echols to Correspondents, 2 July 1950; MHI, Marion P. Echols Papers, box 2, Official Correspondence Folder, Marion P. Echols to Virginius Dabney, 31 July 1950; Ray Erwin, ‘Voluntary Censorship Asked in Korean War’, Editor & Publisher, 8 July 1950.

³⁴NA, [Allied Operational and Occupation HQ Records] RG 332, Entry 1102, box 27, SCAP, GHQ, PIO, Press Releases, 11, 13 and 20 July 1950.

³⁵Ibid., SCAP, GHQ, PIO, Communiqué No.99, 20 July 1950. For the battle itself, see Appleman, South to the Naktong, 146–80.

³⁶Marguerite Higgins, ‘Newswoman Tells Harrowing Tale of Night Infiltration Raid on US Command Post’, Washington Post, 4 Aug. 1950. See also, ‘Medics in Arms’, Time, 7 Aug. 1950.

³⁷‘Death of Wounded Reduced in Korea’, New York Times, 10 Nov. 1950. See also NA, [Army Dept., Adjutant General Records] RG 407, Entry 429, box 362, Far East Command, PIO, ‘Amazingly Low Death Rate in Korea’, 23 Oct. 1950. The Pentagon placed a complete block on all press interviews with the wounded who returned home; see RG 330, Entry 148, box 755, ‘Return of War Wounded Personnel’, 14 July 1950.

³⁸Ronald J. Caridi, The Korean War and American Politics: The Republican Party as a Case Study (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press 1968); David R. Kepley, The Collapse of the Middle Way: Senate Republicans and the Bipartisan Foreign Policy, 1948–1952 (New York: Greenwood Press 1988).

³⁹‘Unproved Casualties Handed to Congress’, New York Times, 12 Aug. 1950.

⁴⁰‘100 Seek War Beat Despite Privations’; ‘Communications Snag for War Reporters’; both in Editor & Publisher, 12 and 26 Aug. 1950. RG 330, Entry 134, box 152, OPI, ‘Activity Reports’, 8 Aug. 1950.

⁴¹‘US Army Confirms 2,616 Casualties’; ‘Casualty Gap Denied’; both in New York Times, 8 and 11 Aug. 1951.

⁴²MacArthur Papers, Box 149, CINCFE to Dept. of Army, 12 July 12 1950; RG 331, Entry 1102, box 27, Far East Command, PIO, Communiqué No.72, 13 July 1950; ‘Needed: A Rule Book’, Time, 24 July 1950.

⁴³Casey, Selling the Korean War, 146–54.

⁴⁴‘MacArthur's Own Story’, US News & World Report, 8 Dec. 1950; AP Report, 2 Dec. 1950, copy in H[arry] S. T[ruman] L[ibrary, Independence, MO,] Harry S. Truman Papers, OF 584, box 1397.

⁴⁵MacArthur Papers, RG 9, box 53, Douglas MacArthur to Army Commanders, 10 Dec. 1950.

⁴⁶Homer Bigart, ‘Ghastly Night Put in by Yanks’, Washington Post, 28 Nov. 1950.

⁴⁷Fred Sparks, ‘Nightmare Valley Ahead of Yanks’, Chicago Daily News, 6 Dec. 1950.

⁴⁸Charles Moore, ‘Wounded GIs Burned Alive, Survivors Say’, Washington Post, 3 Dec. 1950.

⁴⁹‘Marine Losses “Heavier Than Tarawa”’, Washington Post, 11 Dec. 1950; Time Dispatches, Folder 622, Robert Sherrod to Don Bermingham, ‘Add Casualties’, 11 Dec. 1950.

⁵⁰Time Dispatches, Folder 620, ‘The Battle’, 6 Dec. 1950.

⁵¹‘The Price’; ‘U.S. War Casualties’; both in Time, 1 and 22 Jan. 1951. Peter Edson, ‘Korea and World War I’, Washington Daily News, 2 Jan. 1951.

⁵²‘Casualties Forcing Army to Add 50,000 Draftees’, New York Times, 12 Jan. 1951. NA, [Army Staff Records] RG 319, Entry 206A, Unclassified Decimal File 000.7, box 54, Floyd Parks to Lawton Collins, 26 Feb. 1951.

⁵³RG 319, Entry 206A, Unclassified Decimal File 000.7, box 54, Floyd Parks, Memorandum For Deputy Chief, 15 March 1951; Floyd Parks to Doyle Hickey, 21 March 1951; Doyle Hickey to Floyd Parks, 1 April 1951.

⁵⁴Rosemary Foot, Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1990), 208.

⁵⁵RG 407, Entry 429, boxes 1151 and 1163, Eighth Army, PIO, Command Report, Jan. and Feb. 1951.

⁵⁶Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front (Washington DC: Center of Military History, US Army 1992), 80–103. For a vivid description see Clay Blair, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953, new ed. (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press 2003), 947–50.

⁵⁷RG 319, box 5, Korean War Communiqués, Unnumbered Press Release, 5 Sept. 1951; ‘18-Day Fight Won!’, Chicago Daily News, 5 Sept. 1951; ‘US Troops Battle for Weeks’, Washington Post, 5 Sept. 1951; ‘US Forces Win Korea Ridge in 17-Day Battle’, New York Herald Tribune, 6 Sept. 1951.

⁵⁸US Senate, Military Situation in the Far East (Washington DC: GPO 1951), 30,44, 65–6.

⁵⁹ Military Situation in the Far East, 610–11, 937, 950, 1278–9, 1286–8; Congressional Record Vol. 97 (Washington DC: GPO 1951), 5418, 5778, 6605, 6623–8, A3122. This was a constant theme of media reports, see, for instance, Drew Pearson, ‘Casualty Figures Held Faulty’, Washington Post, 7 March 1951; ‘Bradley Discloses Non-Battle Loss’, New York Times, 25 May 1951; ‘US Non-Battle Casualty Total’, New York Herald Tribune, 7 March 1952.

⁶⁰ Congressional Record, 97: 12,537–39; 98: 1598–1600.

⁶¹CBS, ‘People's Platform’, 6 May 1951, copy of transcript in Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA, George C. Marshall Papers, box 195A, Folder 16; Library of Congress, Washington DC, Robert Taft Papers, box 968, Subject File: Foreign Policy, Robert Taft to Smith, 23 May 1951.

⁶²D[wight] D. E[isenhower] L[ibrary, Abilene, KS], Stephen Benedict Papers, Campaign File, 1952: Speeches and Statements, boxes 2 to 7, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Campaign Speeches, 15 and 22 Sept., 23 Oct. 1952. See also David Lawrence, ‘6,000 US Boys Dead in Korea Called Real Issue of Campaign’, New York Herald Tribune, 30 Sept. 1952.

⁶³George Gallup, ‘Public Favors Withdrawing from Korea by Nearly 3 to 1’, Washington Post, 21 Jan. 1951.

⁶⁴For the argument that citizens from communities who experience a higher loss of life are more likely to oppose a war, see Scott Gartner, Gary Segura and Michael Wilkening, ‘All Politics are Local: Local Losses and Individual Attitudes toward the Vietnam War’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/5 (1997), 673–6.

⁶⁵‘Casualties Forcing Army to Add 50,000 Draftees’; ‘Educators Favor Draft Proposals’; both in New York Times, 12 and 20 Jan. 1951.

⁶⁶George Q. Flynn, Lewis B. Hershey: Mr Selective Service (Chapel Hill: Univ. of N. Carolina Press 1985), 180–7; and George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 1993), 114–25.

⁶⁷Time Dispatches, Folder 629, ‘Draft “Delinquents”’, 26 Jan. 1951.

⁶⁸HSTL, Dean Acheson Papers, Memoranda of Conversations File, box 67, Memorandum of Telephone Conversation between Sec. of State Dean Acheson and Sec. of Defense Gen. of the Army George Marshall, 19 Feb. 1951; William M. Donnelly, Under Army Orders: The Army National Guard during the Korean War (College Station: Texas A&M UP 2001), 178–9.

⁶⁹NA, [State Dept. Records] RG 59, Entry 568L, box 12, PA, Monthly Survey of American Opinion, Feb. 1951.

⁷⁰For an analysis of these polls, see Casey, Selling the Korean War, 292–3.

⁷¹Martin Medhurst, ‘Text and Context in the 1952 Presidential Campaign: Eisenhower's “I Shall Go to Korea” Speech’, Presidential Studies Quarterly 30/3 (Sept. 2000), 469.

⁷⁴‘An Old Pattern’, Time, 3 Nov. 1952. See also, ‘Relationship of Friendly Casualties to Enemy Fire’, undated, copy in DDEL, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File: Administrative Series, box 40, Wilson Folder.

⁷²Hermes, Truce Tent, 303–18; Blair, Forgotten War, 970.

⁷³‘Then He was Dead’, Time, 6 Oct. 1952; ‘Bloodshed in the Hills’, Time, 27 Oct. 1952.

⁷⁵RG 59, Entry 568L, box 12, PA, Monthly Survey of American Opinion, Jan., Oct., and Nov. 1952.

⁷⁶Samuel Lubell, Revolt of the Moderates (New York: Harper & Bros. 1956), 39–40.