Harry S. Truman: A President In Need Of A Reassessment

President Harry S. Truman signing the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with guests in the Oval Office.

I never trusted Harry Truman. I know he is conservative Democratic favorite, and we all read David McCullough's book, but at the very least, he allowed the right-wing and the Republican Party to take control of the reigns of power in this country...and destroy it.

He replaced Henry Wallace as Roosevelt's Vice-President, a man we Democrats no longer talk about.

So here we are unearthing South Korean skeletons. What are we to make of this?

"One journalist's bid to report mass murder in South Korea in 1950 was blocked by his British publisher. Another correspondent was denounced as a possibly treasonous fabricator when he did report it. In South Korea, down the generations, fear silenced those who knew.

Fifty-eight years ago, at the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korean authorities secretively executed, usually without legal process, tens of thousands of southern leftists and others rightly or wrongly identified as sympathizers. Today a government Truth and Reconciliation Commission is working to dig up the facts, and the remains of victims.

How could such a bloodbath have been hidden from history?

Among the Koreans who witnessed, took part in or lost family members to the mass killings, the events were hardly hidden, but they became a "public secret," barely whispered about through four decades of right-wing dictatorship here.

"The family couldn't talk about it, or we'd be stigmatized as leftists," said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, leader of an organization of families seeking redress for their loved ones' deaths in 1950."

Comments

[Christian Democrat]

There were atrocities in Korea, no doubt. There always is in war.

My father came out of Annapolis as a Marine and was planning on a lifetime of service but after one tour in Korea he was home. My parents then moved to Canada for my birth - "in case it's a boy, and in case there is another undeclared war." Foresight is an amazing thing when based on current experience.

My dad will not speak of his time in Korea nor will he touch a gun.

What do some of our boys coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan have in store for themselves? They, too, will need a good deal of help.