Frank Pace Jr. Oral History Interview, February 25, 1972

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

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This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened June, 1974
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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HESS: All right, Mr. Secretary, we are up to and through the dismissal of General MacArthur, and in September of 1951, General Marshall retired, but just a couple of questions on him. You mentioned that you met with him before the trip to Wake Island. What did he say at that time; did he make any comments about General MacArthur that we should record?

PACE: No. No, really my more significant meeting with General Marshall--I did meet with him before I left--but my more significant meeting was after we came back.

HESS: Tell me about that.

PACE: Well, I came into his office and I said, "General Marshall, General MacArthur says the war will be over by Thanksgiving and the troops home by Christmas."

Well, he said, "Pace, that's troublesome."

Well, I said, "Sir, you must not have heard me, I said, the war would be over by Thanksgiving and the troops home by Christmas."

He said, "I heard you, but," he said, "too precipitate an end to the war would not permit us to have a full understanding of the problems that we face ahead of us."

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And I said, "But General Marshall, do you mean by that that the American People would not have fully had an opportunity to grasp the implications of the cold war?"

He said, "I certainly do."

But I said, "General Marshall this has been a very, very difficult and extensive war from the American People's point of view."

"Yes," he said, "I know, Pace, but you didn't live through the end of World War II the way I did, and watch people rush back to their civilian jobs and leave the tanks to rot in the Pacific and the military strength that was built up to fade away."

I said, "I know, General Marshall, but a great deal of water has passed under the bridge since then." I said, "Would you say I was naive if I said that the American people had learned their lesson?" And he looked at me with those cold blue eyes and he said, "No, Pace, I wouldn't say you were naive, I'd say you were incredibly naive."

HESS: So he thought we should keep up our guard longer even if the war did end at that time.

PACE: That is correct, I think he felt that there was an inherent disposition on the part of the American people to assume that

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all would go well. We were an optimistic people and that once a war was over, we wanted to get back to peaceful pursuit, and it was not a natural tendency on our part to keep our guard up.

HESS: Did he seem to accept General Mac Arthur' s appraisal of the situation that the war might be over by Thanksgiving, and the troops might come back? Or was he skeptical about that?

PACE: No, if he was skeptical about that he did not indicate that he was skeptical about it. I believe that he had a high respect for General MacArthur as a military commander. I think their differences were differences in personal attitudes and approaches. And I believe that he felt that General MacArthur was on the ground, close to the situation and able to evaluate it. I don't think that he challenged that decision.

HESS: Did you ever hear General Marshall articulate any of those differences that he may have had with General MacArthur?

PACE: Not in specific terms. In general conversation it was clear that he had concerns about General Mac Arthur' s inner drive, his egocentricity. But General Marshall was not a man to talk about other men; he just didn't do it. What I'm

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saying to you is the kind of impression one would gain, but to specifically say this or that about a General--he just wasn't that kind of a man.

HESS: What seemed to be his views in March and April when it looked like serious difficulties were going to arise between the President and General MacArthur? What seemed to be Marshall's views then?

PACE: Well, I am reasonably sure that General Marshall played a very compelling part in the President's determination to relieve General MacArthur.

HESS: I have read, and I believe Mr. Truman has written along these lines, that when he asked his advisers if he should dismiss General MacArthur, General Marshall was the only one who hesitated, and he took some papers home and looked over them and came in the next morning and agreed with the President that that had to be done. Have you heard that story?

PACE: I have and I can believe that it would be accurate. I believe that General Marshall, because he honestly did not basically, himself, like General MacArthur as a person, would be doubly careful about making any recommendation for his dismissal.

Over and beyond that I think General Marshall, of all

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advisers, would have been peculiarly aware of the danger to the nation as a whole of the dismissal of an extremely popular American commander, almost a legendary figure. So I can understand, and would believe, although I do not know this to be true, that General Marshall would have acted exactly like that, but I am also quite sure that when he came in after that consideration, and agreed that the President could move without hesitation and without personal concern.

HESS: General Marshall retired, again, in September of 1951 and was replaced by Mr. Robert A. Lovett, who had been his deputy.

PACE: Right.

HESS: What is your evaluation of the manner in which Mr. Lovett handled the position as Secretary of Defense.

PACE: Oh, Mr. Lovett was an enormously broad-gauged man. He had many of the qualities of General Marshall, a sense of history, a sense of perspective, an overall top man.

If I were to differentiate I would say that General Marshall tended to be more incisive, that the course to be taken was much clearer to General Marshall than to Mr. Lovett and that the decision-making process moved much more quickly and cleanly. I don't want to say this in derogation of

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Mr. Lovett, because I've made clear before that I thought General Marshall was possibly the most remarkable person that I had a close association with in my life. And quite obviously if you feel that way, nobody is going to quite come up to it.

I want to say that I think Mr. Lovett was an exceptionally fine Secretary of Defense, but I believe that General Marshall had an incisiveness, and a sense of how to manage an administrative process, that was greater than Mr. Lovett's. Also historically, Mr. Lovett had been a number two man to General Marshall, both in the State Department and in the Department of Defense, whereas General Marshall had for many years been a number one man accustomed to making hard decisions after careful consideration.

HESS: The truce that was established in Korea, was established of course, after the Republicans came in. Do you think that it would have been possible for Mr. Truman to have reached somewhat the same agreements with the Communists before the election? Could he have ended the war on the same terms, or as favorable of terms, as General Eisenhower did?

PACE: I remember that there was a great deal of belief on the part of people who had served in the Defense Establishment that that was true, that Mr. Eisenhower had merely used the circumstance to achieve a settlement that Mr. Truman was

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not prepared to accept. I can't honestly say that that was true. Mr. Eisenhower came in with great prestige, he was the newly elected President, he was a new figure in old and unsatisfactory discussion of...

HESS: And during the campaign, he had used the phrase "If elected I will go to Korea."

PACE: That's right. That is correct. So, you're asking me a highly speculative question, I answer it in the vein that it is speculative, but my instinct is I doubt Mr. Truman could have achieved the same settlement. I would say to you that I am not sure that if the same settlement could have been achieved Mr. Truman would have accepted it.

HESS: Were there negotiations going on in the background that the general public did not know about with the Communists, to try to reach a settlement?

PACE: If there were I was not aware of it.

HESS: Your counterparts in the other services who served in the same period of time that you did, were Francis P. Matthews, and Dan Kimball at the Navy Department, and Thomas K. Finletter who served as Secretary of the Air Force for the entire period that you were Secretary of the Army.

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PACE: That is correct.

HESS: Just what is your general evaluation of those men and how effective were they in their positions? First, Mr. Matthews.

PACE: Frank Matthews I do not believe ever fully mastered the whole requirements of the Navy or the military process. I don't remember, but I believe that he was not there for a very long period of time, and I would have to say that during the period he was there I did not feel that he made a basic impact on the Navy.

HESS: He took over at the time that Secretary Sullivan...

PACE: Secretary John Sullivan resigned.

HESS: ...resigned over the fact that they would not build the aircraft carrier--there were other things, but the fact Mr. Louis Johnson cancelled the contract for the USS United States, the super aircraft carrier, then Mr. Matthews took over.

Do you know why Mr. Matthews was appointed Secretary of the Navy? It seems to me he did not have much of a background along those lines.

PACE: I have no idea. You remember he was appointed prior to the time I came to the Pentagon.

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HESS: That's right.

PACE: He was from Omaha, you see.

HESS: He was from Nebraska.

PACE: Yes, somewhere in Nebraska, and he was a competent man, but not a man that I ever felt really intimately associated himself with the real deep problems of the Navy and the services.

HESS: During the Korean war I understand that he made a speech, I believe it was to the Sons of St. Patrick in Boston, disagreeing somewhat with the way the Truman administration was carrying out the war, and with the objectives of the war and was soon released and was Ambassador to Ireland for awhile, is that right, do you recall that?

PACE: To be perfectly frank that's very vague in my memory. The facts are correct, the speech I really don't recall. I would not have thought of Frank Matthews really as openly identifying a different course than the President. He just didn't seem like that kind of man to me. I would be inclined to say that this. was more a press development, a possibly not too well thought through phrase, rather than a direct indication that the war was not being fought along correct lines. That's just--but I'm giving you here pure speculation.

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HESS: And he was replaced by Dan Kimball.

PACE: I had known Dan Kimball slightly prior to that time. Dan was a great humanist, people couldn't help but like Dan. He had great acceptance on Capitol Hill. And he was a man who had a view beyond the Navy, and I felt, was a very effective Secretary of the Navy.

HESS: And then Mr. Thomas Finletter, Secretary of the Air Force.

PACE: Tom Finletter was quite different from Dan Kimball. They couldn't have been more different. Tom was an intellectual, very precise in his thinking, probably immersed himself more deeply in the whole philosophy and pattern of Defense than any of the three of us. He was a driving force in the establishment of the secretariat, of the secretaries of the services. It was established on the assumption that although we each exercised leadership over our individual Chiefs of Staff that they exercised a persuasion on the Secretary of Defense as the Joint Chiefs of Staff that really nullified our individual leadership. This was a unique experiment, never again repeated, in which the secretaries really established the equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the Joint Secretaries and Tom was a leading force in that.

HESS: What was your view in the setting up that secretariat?

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PACE: I was very strong for it. I agreed with Tom very strongly that if you were to have true civilian influence there needed to be a counterpart to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

HESS: Was it effective; did you have that counterpoint with the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

PACE: Well, I would say that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would always, under any circumstances, because this had long been an institution, would always have a greater preeminence in its relationship with the Secretary of Defense. But, I felt that the institution of the Joint Secretaries did a great deal to minimize the preeminence of that position. I felt that if the other were institutionalized, and carried out over a period of time, it had an opportunity to achieve an institutional position that would have been useful to the Secretary of Defense.

HESS: Did you hire someone and place them in charge...

PACE: We did.

HESS: ...of the secretariat.

PACE: We did, yes.

HESS: Who was that?

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PACE: A fellow named Ed Dickenson. I think I...

HESS: Did he have a staff?

PACE: He did; yes he had a small staff, I think two or three people. We determined that it would not be a large staff.

HESS: Is he around?

PACE: I'm sure he is. At one time he served with Governor Harriman in New York, and I think he'd be a very interesting fellow for you to talk to.

HESS: I do, too.

All right, anything further on Mr. Finletter?

PACE: No. I liked him a great deal. We were different people. I am more in the Dan Kimball tradition, a populist, enjoyed people, knew my way around the Hill, I had many friends there, but Tom and I worked very well together.

HESS: Was Mr. Finletter somewhat lacking in contacts on the Hill?

PACE: Well, I think that that in the law is referred to as a negative pregnant, I would say that Tom Finletter was not the kind of man who knew the Hill well. I'm sure that he had friends there, but I would not say that that was his forte.

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HESS: All right, and the men who served as your Under Secretaries were Archibald S. Alexander.

PACE: Right.

HESS: And Karl R. Bendetsen, and the man who was your Assistant Secretary from Mr. Bendetsen, Earl D. Johnson and Fred Korth. Tell me just a little about those men, starting with Mr.Alexander.

PACE: Well, Arch Alexander was Assistant Secretary under Gordon Gray when I came there. He was a man of great character, great warmth, not in my estimation an exceptional manager, was not also the man to make the kind of hard decisions that you have to make in a position like that, particularly in the case of a war. Arch was with me I believe for about a year. I don't know, I can't identify it, but then he was replaced by Karl Bendetsen who was a brilliant man, thoroughly capable of making hard decisions, indefatigable worker, and a great and strong believer in the critical importance of civilian control. In the enormously complicated period of the war, Karl was really basically indispensable.

My Assistant Secretaries were Earl Johnson, who had an investment banker's background, but an extremely capacious mind, and very great ability to assimilate details. He was,

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for his position, remarkably well adapted.

Another was Fred Korth who was a Texan, lawyer, very broad-gauge fellow, very broad-gauge mind, extremely well oriented to people. All these men related very well with the military. The military accepted them, didn't overdo their civilian leadership nor did they back away from it.

Now the third was...

HESS: Mr. Bendetsen.

PACE: Yes, well, I've already spoken about him.

HESS: Tell me a little about your relations with General Bradley. What type of a man was he and was he easy to get along with?

PACE: Oh, enormously easy. He had, for so competent a man, such incredible modesty. You just automatically felt comfortable with General Bradley, the kind of fellow who with all he had on his mind would always deal in an extremely relaxed way; with all of his modest ways, had great personal courage, high convictions, unique character. And in the period in which Mr. Acheson was suffering from the disabilities of the "red herring" statement on Alger Hiss, General Bradley really carried a great deal of the foreign policy of the U.S. on his shoulders along with the military problems. I found him a superb man.

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HESS: All right. Perhaps one of the major changes of the military setup during the Truman administration, was the unification of the Armed Forces into the Department of Defense. And as you know, during the changeover, the Navy expressed a good deal of fear that they might lose the air wing to the Air Force; they might lose the Marines to the Army. Just in your general opinion, was there any basis for those fears, would the Army have liked to have taken over the Marine Corps, and do you think the Air Force would have liked to have taken over their air wing?

PACE: Well, I think I can only speak for the Army, although at the time of the establishment of the Department of Defense I was in the Bureau of the Budget where I had a really overall view of it and played a considerable role in it, I don't think the Army ever for a moment considered taking over the Marine Corps. I don't think they could, I don't think that they had--there may have been some individuals who might have thought that that was an appropriate thing, but the thought that it might be done effectively, it seems to me, was without reasonable basis.

HESS: One of those individuals was General J. Lawton Collins, and he came out with what came to be known as the Collins plan at that time, which pointed toward the absorption of

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naval and Marine aviation into the Air Force, and not quite an outright abolition of the Marine Corps, but they would be reduced to a ceremonial force, and the rest would be taken over by the Army. Now do you recall anything about General J. Lawton Collins'...

PACE: Attitude on that?

HESS: ...attitude on this?

PACE: Well, only that he made the statement. I think that General Collins, who was a great competitor, always found the function of the Marine Corps a little galling from his point of view. However, that of course, would cause the Marine Corps to have concern. But quite frankly, to me it is a totally unrealistic proposition, not just politically unrealistic, I'm talking about institutionally unrealistic. I just can't conceive of this elite corps functioning within the structure of the army.

I would say to you that this competition between the Marines and the Army was very prevalent throughout the Korean war, one which I constantly, frankly, played down. I remember one day Dan Kimball called me and said, "Frank, Cliff Case is here in my office and he says that he is not getting his share of the tanks at the proper time."

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HESS: He was commandant at that time.

PACE: That's right. Well, I said, "Why don't you send General Case down?"

He said, "Well, now he doesn't want to come down, he just wants you to know about it."

Well I said, "Well, that's fine," I said, "why don't you send him down."

So, he came down and he was a little embarrassed about it. And I said, "General Case, how far behind do you feel you are?"

He said, "Sir, I think we are entitled to thirty-two tanks, not that we won't get them, but we're not getting them in time."

Well, I said, "If I check it and I feel that this is correct, how would you feel if the next thirty-two tanks went to the Marine Corps?"

And he said, "Oh, sir, that would be more than I would expect."

Well, I said, "Well, that's just what is going to happen if I find that to be correct," and that's what happened.

Interestingly enough, outside of Mr. Kimball, when General Case retired I was the only civilian that was invited to the farewell lunch. And I think that I did play a

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considerable role in downgrading the really almost inevitable competition that would occur between two great institutions during a war.

I remember that I myself felt certain facets of that competition because whenever I walked into a dinner and they played the "Halls of Montezuma" everybody jumped up and down and shouted and I said, "By gosh, we've got to have an Army song that will move people the way that song does," and through my aides I commissioned the great song writers of that period to write a song for the Army; write the Army song. I think there was Lowe, Lerner, all of those great ones. Well, it's an amazing thing, they came up with zip...nothing. This sort of song has to come out of a great heart and sense of spirit, no genius can sit down and do it. And so we ended up with "The Caissons Go Rolling Along." But, I didn't want you to get the impression that I myself did not feel that sense of competition.

HESS: What's your personal opinion, do you think it is a good thing, does it raise esprit de corps to have these various units, to have the Marine Corps, and to have the different units, the "Big Red 1" in the Army, where men can identify…

PACE: Oh yes.

HESS: …with a particular group?

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PACE: I think it's critical, I really do I think that the Army in particularly is so big that if you're just in the Army, that doesn't mean anything, you've got to be with, as you say…

HESS: The "Screaming Eagles," or something like that.

PACE: ...the "Screaming Eagles," or the "Big Red 1," I think that that identification is fine and if I am correct, and I haven't been that close to it, although I have for three years been president of the Association of the U.S. Army, I feel that they are getting the most out of the Marines without denigrating the Army in the process. If I were starting it today, I don't believe that I would start them separately, but to try to reorient them at this stage in history would not appear feasible.

HESS: If you were starting all over from scratch, would you have it a bit more unified?

PACE: Oh yes, yes, I would.

HESS: But as it is now it's best to leave it alone, is that right?

PACE: Well, maybe to modify it from time to time, as circumstance permits.

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HESS: Okay, now leading into the political events of 1952, now, we have covered your views on political involvement, but what do you recall about the political events in 1952, perhaps starting with when you first became aware that Mr. Truman did not intend to run for re-election. Were you at the National Guard Armory that night at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner on March the 29th, 1952, when he made his public announcement?

PACE: Yes, I was.

HESS: Did you know anything about that decision on his part before that time?

PACE: I did not.

HESS: Did not. Were you somewhat surprised or not, did you think that was a natural thing for Mr. Truman to step down at that time?

PACE: I rather did, yes, I thought probably Mrs. Truman played a good part in the decision. A marvelous woman, eminently sensible. Mr. Truman had been through some very hard times, and I think she felt that Mr. Truman was a competitor and would give too much in a campaign. She felt this was the appropriate time and he concurred in that decision and I

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can't say I was that surprised.

HESS: Of course, at this time no one really knew who the Republican...

PACE: Nominee was.

HESS: ...competition, the nominee was going to be, but what's your general impression, do you think Mr. Truman could have won?

PACE: Over Mr. Eisenhower? It would have been very, very difficult. Mr. Eisenhower had a certain appeal to the ordinary American, he was of them and yet above them, he...

HESS: Difficult to defeat.

PACE: He would have been enormously difficult to defeat.

HESS: After Mr. Truman removed himself from the race...

PACE: Obviously that was not in Mr. Truman's mind. If you asked Mr. Truman there would be no question how he thought it would come out and he probably would have been right, and I would have been wrong, because I was wrong about the prior election.

HESS: After Mr. Truman removed himself from the race, who did

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you think would be the best man for the Democrats to put up, or did you concern yourself with those matters?

PACE: I really didn't have a candidate. We were so deeply involved in this very difficult period in the Army that I really paid almost no attention. As I didn't participate in any political activities. I thought Adlai Stevenson was an absolutely superb man, he intrigued me as a human being.

HESS: Are you ready to leave?

PACE: Yes, I have to go.