State-JCS Meetings, lot 61 D 417
Memorandum of the Substance of Discussion at a Department of State Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting1
Korean Negotiations
Mr. Robertson: The line of thinking which seems to have prevailed till now on how to deal with the Chinese Communists’ 8-point proposal is that we should accept the four countries—Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and leave it to the four to choose the fifth. If they should then choose India, we should be prepared to accept India at that time. To our own minds we think there are serious disadvantages in this line of action. In the first place we would offend the Indians by not accepting them initially and in the second place we would probably end up with the Indians in any case, but after we had rebuffed them. We would have worries that with the Indians on the commission it might make possible a 3 to 2 vote against us, since the Indian position on the POWs has to some degree been close to the Communist position. We ourselves also see grave difficulties in having Communist troops in custody of the POWs. Clark has made what seems to me a very strong case against having Communist troops in our rear or in custody of the POWs.
General Bradley: Part of the difficulty might be overcome if the Commie troops were completely limited to an island.
Mr. Johnson: Would it help if all the POWs were put on Cheju-do rather than leaving some of them on Koje. It would mean, I should think, a greater possibility of isolating them, although it would probably require construction of facilities.
Mr. Matthews: Clark has actually suggested that. (At this point Mr. Matthews read a portion of Clark’s message which stated that he thought it would be preferable to concentrate all POWs on Cheju-do and pointed out that there were some housing facilities there which presently were being used for ROK training purposes.2)
[Page 984]Mr. Johnson: Another possibility that we have been considering is that we might propose that we have just Indian troops and no Czech or Polish armed forces.
Mr. Nitze: Personally I think it would be better to have the Indians act as a single neutral rather than to accept the 5-Power proposal at all.
General Bradley: Would the Commies accept that?
Mr. Nitze: I don’t know why not.
General Vandenberg: The President has said that it was politically impossible for him to accept India alone.
Mr. Nitze: I agree that we would have real initial difficulties with the Hill, but the eventual difficulties that we would run into from having Communists on the Commission or particularly from having Communist troops would be considerably greater.
General Hull: Have the Swiss and Swedes said they would provide forces?
Mr. Matthews: The Swedes have reserved their position and the Swiss are very much worried about their ability to provide forces of the magnitude required.
General Hull: It certainly would be better to have all the troops come from just one country.
General Bradley: I think it would be better to accept the Indians if we are going to end up with the Indians anyway. There is the further point of having some sort of time limit after which the prisoners will be released. Under the Communist proposal the prisoners would probably have to stay in the jug forever. On the question of Communist troops—if this were a question of their being back of our lines in Europe it might be that we would gain something from it. The Communist troops would have a chance to see Western European standards of life, and in terms of psychological warfare that might be a net asset to us. The Communist troops in Korea would bring us no asset in the psychological warfare field and might constitute a real nuisance. I think they would have to be on an island.
Mr. Johnson: Can communications be by sea alone?
General Hull: Personnel and supplies could be shipped in LSTs from Inchon.
Mr. Nitze: I have been concerned about our use of the phrase “countries to which the prisoners belong”. It seems to me that referring to these Chinese POWs as belonging to Communist China is a mistake and that the heart of our psychological position on these POWs is that they “don’t belong” to Communist China if they don’t want to.
Mr. Johnson: The difficulty is this is the precise language used at the Geneva Convention so it’s hard to make an issue of it at this time.
Mr. Robertson: If we have Communist troops guarding the POWs we won’t have any problem to worry about in handling those who will [Page 985] decide not to go back. After the treatment we can expect them to get from the Communist troops, they will probably all go back.
General Bradley: There are no safeguards on this thing at all—no provision for the ICRC to check on conditions and no provision for newspaper men or other news media to have access. On the other hand I think we are in something of a spot if we don’t accept the Communists’ proposal in general.
Mr. Robertson: Would you accept including Communist troops?
General Bradley: I think it would be much better to have Indian troops alone. Is anybody working on a draft telegram to Clark?
Mr. Robertson: We thought it would be useful to sort out our ideas with you before we undertook to get further instructions.
General Hull: Clark does need specific instructions right away which would give him clarification on his authority to talk about more than the 6th point of the Communist proposal. We have a draft telegram here.3 (At this point General Hull distributed attached draft telegram.)
Mr. Johnson: I think that in the second paragraph you might revise it to read “As this point constitutes a principal issue it should receive primary attention” rather than the present wording which says “This point constitutes principal issue”. With that change I think this telegram could go out. On the question of further instructions for Clark we have given our Secretary a memorandum which in sum makes three points—first that we should accept the Indians right away as a member of the commission, second that we should propose that all forces be provided by the Indians alone, and third that we should stand on having a terminal date after which POWs would be released.
General Hull: I think that we just have to face up to the fact that if there are Communist troops guarding the POWs, some POWs are going to get badly hurt and extreme pressure will be exerted on them.
Mr. Matthews: I think Brad’s suggestion of making sure that there are rights for the press is a sensible one.
Mr. Robertson: I think we should stand firm on no Communist troops.
Mr. Matthews: Even if the troops were all Indians it still would be useful to have the press have the right to watch and report what was going on.
General Bradley: I would like to sum up the points we want to make in our instructions. First that we accept the Indians from the start. Second, only Indian troops, and third, no Iron Curtain and freedom for reporting. Fourth, some positive disposition of the POWs provided for.
Mr. Johnson: On the last point there are three alternative possibilities. The first that we should adopt the formula of the old Indian resolution [Page 986] which would be to refer decision on the POWs to the UN if it were not agreed to by the political conference. Second, to provide specifically for release of the prisoners in the armistice terms and third, to leave the disposition to the discretion of the neutral. With a 5-Power commission which includes two Communist countries and India, the third alternative would obviously be hopeless. The second the Communists might have difficulty with. The first one might eventually prove to be most practicable.
General Bradley: It might really be useful to get the Indians out in the open on this thing. If they do follow purely the Communist line on the POWs, it might give us a good reason to wonder why we should spend $90 million on helping the Indians.
Mr. Nitze: There is some distinction, I think, between the Indian position and the Communist position. The Indians, I am pretty sure, are against sending the POWs by force back to Communist China, but I think they are also against sending any of them to Formosa.
Mr. Robertson: It seems to me that we should try to get into the armistice terms the point that the prisoners will be free to choose where they want to go after a given period of time. Even if this isn’t an issue we can break on, we can still at least try to get it. After all, the Communists always ask for what they want and I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to get what we want.
Mr. Matthews: Clark in his message thought that the best position for him to be in would be to have a full counter proposal to make.
General Bradley: Could we have a recess of negotiations so that we can get squared away with a full counter proposal?
Mr. Johnson: Our Secretary, I believe, is pretty strong against our asking for a recess.
Mr. Matthews: I think we should try and get up a draft as soon as possible.
General Bradley: Let’s work up a draft as soon as we can. We don’t have to actually send it until we get Clark’s report tomorrow on his meeting with the Communists.
Mr. Johnson: I think we need to get decisions made here and get out a message as rapidly as possible. We might be able to have a draft message this afternoon.
General Bradley: Let us try to get one up.
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A note on the title page read: “State Draft. Not cleared with any of participants.”
On the JCS side, Generals Bradley and Vandenberg and Admiral Fechteler attended as well as Vice Chief General Hull. Matthews headed the Department of State contingent. General Cabell represented the CIA, Gleason and General Gerhard the NSC, and Admiral Smith the Department of Defense. In all, 20 persons attended. Korea was the sole topic of discussion.
↩ - Reference was to telegram CX 62301, May 8, 1953, paragraph 6a(4), infra.↩
- The reference was to a draft of telegram JCS 938446 to Clark, May 8, 1953, not printed, but see footnote 6 p. 993.↩