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The Announcement. By midnight, stencils had been cut, and Press Secretary Joe Short gave the switchboard orders to summon the regular White House reporters (see PRESS) at 1 a.m. The press got the mimeographed sheets: "With deep regret, I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties ... It is fundamental . . . that military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and the Constitution."
Why the 1 a.m. summons? The White House's hollow explanation was that the timing was for the convenience of the general, since it was then midafternoon in Tokyo. But that wasn't the real reason at all: the news had been timed to make the morning newspapers, and catch the Republicans in bed.
As the reporters scrambled for their phones to flash the news to an unsuspecting world, Blair House was dark. Harry Truman had gone to bed.
In Tokyo, just a little after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, General Douglas MacArthur was eating a chicken leg at a late lunch when an aide handed him a note. It was a radio news flash. Holding the drumstick in one hand and the note in the other, MacArthur read the news. His mouth opened in astonishment. Abruptly, the luncheon ended. It was 20 minutes later that he got the official dispatch informing him of the President's decision.*
After Six Years. Seldom had a more unpopular man fired a more popular one. Douglas MacArthur was the personification of the big man, with the many admirers who look to a great man for leadership, with the few critics who distrust and fear a big man's dominating ways. Harry Truman was almost a professional little man, with the admirers who like the little man's courage, with the many critics who despise a little man's inadequacies. Harry Truman, completing his sixth year as President, last week had written a record of courage in crises—in enunciating the Truman Doctrine against the Communist threat in Greece, in his firmness over the Berlin blockade, in the way he rallied his party and won the 1948 election, in his quick decision to counter the Korean aggression. But the six years had provided increasing evidence of shabby politicking and corruption in his day-to-day administration, of doubts about his State Department, and cumulative distaste for his careless government-by-crony.
Last week as he faced his difficult decision, Harry Truman knew that he and his Administration were threatened by long-smoldering rancor just waiting to burst into angry flames.
Congressional probers were still unearthing new evidence of skulduggery in the RFC. His leadership in Congress was more scorned than effective. The public had an impression of a petulant, irascible President who stubbornly protected shoddy friends, a man who had grown too touchy to make judicious decisions, who failed to give the nation any clear leadership in these challenging times, whose Asia policy seemed to combine a kind of apologetic resistance with something between a hope and a prayer.