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    "localId": "193223675",
    "label": "Letter from George Kennan to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, with Attached Speech",
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    "id": "193223675",
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    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Letter from George Kennan to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, with Attached Speech",
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    "ocrText": "- 2 -\nSERVICE\"\nobviously barred by the circunstances of his position. While\nGeneral Marshall could give the only authoritative answer as\nto why this recommendation was not acted upon, I am sure it\nwas out of consideration for General MacArthur's known feel-\nings on this subject and out of a reluctance to propose any\narrangements which would not be agreeable to him.\nThe point I am driving at, which I think may be relevant\nto questions asked you, is that the State Department exercized\nconsiderable forebearance over a period of some years, and\nconsented to forego adequate facilities for judging the situ-\nation in Japan, in deference to wha.t it believed to be General\nMacArthur's feelings on this subject.\n3) I would like to stress again the difficulty the\nState Department had in getting information pertinent to the\nmilitary-political decisions involved in the Korean situation.\nYou will recall that you charged me one time last summer with\nfollowing the question of Russian and Chinese communist inten-\ntions and presenting currently to the morning meeting our best\ninformation on this subject. Just as an example of the diffi-\nculties we encountered, I would like to take the question of\nthe port of Rashin which has come up in the hearings. There\nis some material on this in the notes I placed at Luke Battle's\ndisposal. Although General MacArthur said in his testimony\nthat the military would never have bombed the place except\nin good weather and visibility, it is my recollection that\nGeneral MacArthur's communique of August 12, 1950, stated that\nthe port had been bombed through heavy overcast. Furthermore,\na story sent from Tokyo the same day by the Herald Tribune\ncorrespondents said in effect that while it would be officially\nannounced that the reason for bombing the port was its impor-\ntance in the supply line of the communist forces in North\nKorea, this was merely a pretext, that nothing of consequence\nhad been known to pass through the port since the beginning\nof hostilities, and that the real reason was the existence\nof Soviet naval installations in the port. Now during the\nentire time I had the responsibility of briefing you on these\nmatters I was never able to get a statement out of our intelli-\ngence authorities as to whether there were or were not such\ninstallations in the port, or even an admission that our in-\ntelligence authorities knew whether there were such installa-\ntions. I can only conclude that in this, as in other instances,\npeople in the Headquarters in Tokyo were willing to leak things\nto American correspondents which they were not willing to\ntransmit for the information of the State Department, Despite\nrepeated inquiries about communications through this port I\nwas never told by any of our intelligence people that it did\nnot have a railroad connection with the rest of Korea or\nKorean territory, and in all our discussions I was allowed to\nlabor under the delusion that it might be an important point"
}