When the US decided to jump in, why didn’t we use an atomic bomb on Pyongyang to just nip the war in the bud? The Chinese didn’t have the bomb then; did the Soviets? That’s maybe the only reason I could think of, but I’m looking for more learned folks to educate me.
Could a mod please correct my horrible spelling gaff in the title?
IIRC, MacArthur was fired by Truman for this suggestion?
By then, the atomic bomb was being recognized as something more horrific than just a giant explosion.
Plus, there wasn’t a lot in the way of target for them to aim at; Japan and Germany had rail yards, shipbuilding, factories, etc. The Korean peninsula was pretty much still in the stone age, so likely the bomb would be less effective than using it against the Taliban. You would have to wipe the countryside clean of life with serious carpet atom-bombing to ahve a serious effect on the war… and what do you do about close-in troops? If they’re at the front lines, your guys will get it to.
Big bombs only work against big targets, which is why most recent wars have been more guerilla campaigns than anything else.
The Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949, which was similar in design and yield to the Nagasaki bomb. The Korean War started in 1950, so yes, the Soviets did have an atomic bomb by the time the war started, and fear that they would use it in retalliation was one of the reasons Truman decided not to use the bomb in Korea.
Complementary to this, though not terribly relevant: The judge that condemned the atomic spies, the Rosenbergs, to death cited the fact/opinion that the war in Korea, which was happening at the time, IIRC, would not have happened if the Commies hadn’t had the atom bomb.
Best wishes,
hh
After the initial invasion by North Korea, the US/UN/SK counterattacked (the Battle of Incheon) and then were doing quite well for themselves without the need for an atomic bomb. Four months after the war started, the Chinese started sending troops into NK (MacArthur thought they wouldn’t.)
At that point MacArthur wanted to use the bomb but Truman refused. Like md2000 says, big bombs only work against big targets – not against 300,000 Chinese infantry scattered across the countryside.
While MacArthur is famously quoted as saying “never get involved in a land war in Asia,” he didn’t come up with that gem until after the Korean War ended.
From Back To School:
Professor Terguson: You remember that thing we had about 30 years ago called the Korean conflict? And how we failed to achieve victory? How come we didn’t cross the 38th parallel and push those rice-eaters back to the Great Wall of China?
Professor Terguson: [rips a desk apart] Then take the fucking wall apart
[shouts]
Professor Terguson: brick by brick and nuke them back into the fucking stone age forever? Tell me why! How come? Say it! Say it!
Thornton Melon: [incensed] All right. I’ll say it. 'Cause Truman was too much of a pussy wimp to let MacArthur go in there and blow out those Commie bastards!
Professor Terguson: Good answer. Good answer. I like the way you think. I’m gonna be watching you.
Thornton Melon: [chuckling to his classmates] Good teacher. He really seems to care. About what I have no idea.
This article might help:
Here’s MacArthur talking about his plan (in interviews published after his death)
Also, there were targets for bombing in North Korea. The northern part of Korea was actually more industrial than the south, and in fact, most of the cities of North Korea were virtually destroyed during the war by conventional bombing.
In Richard Rhodes’s history of the development of the hydrogen bomb, “Dark Sun,” he quotes General Curtis LeMay as wanting to immediately begin strategic conventional bombing of the North Koreans. I don’t have the book right in front of me, but the quote is something of the nature of, ‘They don’t have that many towns and we can bomb them all out within two weeks.’ Presumably after all of their towns had been firebombed, with the assorting 10s to 100s of thousands dead, Kim Il-Sung would rethink the wisdom of continuing to invade the South. Rhodes goes on to note that we ended up bombing the crap out of the North anyway over the next three years. (As Captain Amazing notes above me) I don’t remember if LeMay also advocated conventional bombing against Chinese cities. Need to find that book…
Atomic bombs, IMHO, would have worked just fine to seal rail tunnels, destroy viaducts, and annihilate troop concentrations. It also would have snapped the UN coalition into a million pieces, and would have escalated to a full war with Communist China, that the Soviets may have decided to formally join and broaden to include Europe.
Scary stuff.
[moderating]
Done.
And it’s “gaffe,” by the way. 
[/moderating]
Ah a double spelling gaffe!
Thanks Wombat, and thanks to all the posters. Quite illuminating.
Your post contains at least two grammar gaffes 
tut tut 
Wow, I new MacArthur was a rat-bastard but I didn’t realize he was that much of a rat-bastard.
My understanding was that MacArthur wasn’t fired for advocating the use of nuclear weapons per se, but for advocating expanding the war into China.
MacArthur was fired because a shitload of Chinese troops snuck across the border and whomped his army on his watch. Basically, after the success of the Inchon landings he did a rather shitty job of running the war. Plus, he wasn’t giving Truman the proper respect that a President deserves.
There is more to it then that. The Truman administration and its intelligence services didn’t pick up on China entering the war either. MacArthur violated Truman’s policy of not communicating civilain-military disputes to the media, in this case through a letter to Congressman Joe Martin.
MacArthur is a fascinating man to study. His biographer William Manchester said every battle he was in, win or lose, had a “yes, but”. Did he deserve to be fired? Yes, although Truman could have shown him the door instead of kicking him out the window? Could you argue he showed courage in protesting a policy that would have American/UN troops get trapped in a stalemate for several years with no chance of winning? You could. But aren’t civilians who protest decisions by the President, such as Cyrus Vance resigning over the Carter Iran helicopter rescue plan, generally lauded for having a conscience and “courage to speak their convictions”? Some 60 years later the 37th parallel is still a hot zone and a kooky, murdering dictatorship still exists in North Korea.
If its horrific nature hadn’t already been deomonstrated in Japan, the A-bomb surely would have been used in Korea.
This is one answer to those who complain about Hiroshima. The A-bomb was always going to be “used in anger” at least once.
Nitpick: 38th Parallel.
I was in a hurry. Sue me. 
MacArthur had been insubordinate to President Truman and the JCS, repeatedly and publicly carped about administration policy, and was proposing a vast and potentially WW3-triggering expansion of the war after having already been proven wrong in a whopper of a bad prediction (that China would never intervene). He had to go.
Through back channels, President-elect Eisenhower threatened the use of nuclear weapons against NK and was able to get China to lean on NK for a cease-fire and eventual armistice.