The Vietnam war was not the first war in Southeast Asia in which the United States lost over 50,000 men. Earlier, America fought a bitter war in Korea--a struggle that most Americans know mainly from the television show MASH. There was nothing funny, however, about the real Korean War.
At 6 a.m., June 25, 1950, the army of Communist North Korea invaded non-communist South Korea, allegedly repelling an invasion from the South. President Harry S. Truman was at dinner at his home in Independence, Mo., when Secretary of State Dean Acheson called from Washington and told him, "Mr President, I have very serious news." Within a week, American air, sea and ground forces had been committed. Over the next three years, in a conflict that would soon engage us with China, almost six million Americans served and 54,000 died.
Ironically, just months before, the National Security Council, with Truman as chair, endorsed a recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Korea was "of little strategic value to the United States and that commitment to United States use of military forces in Korea would be ill-advised."
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