This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about an important aspect of the Korean War. Some of the subjects included in this history: Major General Field Harris, Colonel Lewis B. Chesty Puller, Major General Oliver P. Smith, 1st Marine Division, General Douglas MacArthur, President Truman, USS Mount McKinley, Wolmi-Do, the drive to Kimpo, amphibious assault, and DUKWs. Here is an excerpt: Just three weeks away and there was still no approval from Washington for the Marines to land at Inchon on 15 September 1950. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, determined to beat down the opposition to the landing, called a conference for late in the day, 23 August, at his headquarters in the Dai Ichi building in Tokyo. As Commander in Chief, Far East (CinCFE), MacArthur considered himself empowered to conduct military operations more-or-less as he saw fit. But for an operation of the magnitude of Inchon and the resources it would require he needed approval from the highest level. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), doubtful of the landing's chances of success, had sent out the Army Chief of Staff, General J. Lawton Collins, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, to review the situation directly with MacArthur. Now he would have to overcome their skeptical resistance. Collins was the JCS executive agent for the Far East Command and nominally higher in the chain-of-command than MacArthur-but only nominally. In World War I MacArthur was already a brigadier general when Collins was barely a captain. Now MacArthur had five stars and Collins four. On this afternoon, First Lieutenant Alexander M. Haig's task was to lay out the pads of paper, pencils, and water glasses on the table of the sixth floor conference room. This done, he took his post seated in a straight-backed chair just outside the door. Haig, then the junior aide-de-camp to MacArthur's chief of staff, was destined to become, many years later, the Secretary of State. The Marine Corps would have no voice at the meeting. The Corps had neither membership nor representation on the JCS. Admiral Sherman, not a strong champion of Marine Corps interests, was the service chief most directly concerned with the amphibious phase of the still tentative operation.

This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about an important aspect of the Korean War. Subjects covered in this history include: the Pershing Medium Tank, the North Korean medium Tank, Vought F4 Corsair, General Gates, Sikorsky Helicopter, rifles, and mortars. Here is an excerpt: "The Marines have landed." How familiar the phrase, how extraordinary the circumstances on 2 August 1950. Instead of a beach saturated with enemy fire, the scene was a dock in the port of Pusan in the far southeast corner of Korea. The landing force was the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade; the situation it would soon face was one of desperate crisis. The men arriving on board the transport ships that day knew they were going into battle, and their brigade commander, Brigadier General Edward A. Craig, had made his combat standards very clear in a meeting with his officers before the ships had sailed from San Diego: "It has been necessary for troops now fighting in Korea to pull back at times, but I am stating now that no unit of this brigade will retreat except on orders from an authority higher than the 1st Marine Brigade. You will never receive an order to retreat from me. All I ask is that you fight as Marines have always fought." At sea, no one knew where the brigade would be committed to action, and the men knew nothing about the forthcoming enemy except it was called the North Korean People's Army (NKPA). On board their ships they had seen the situation maps which daily showed the steadily retreating line of defense, as the enemy drove irresistibly farther and farther into South Korea. The regular physical fitness drills and weapons target practice took on an urgent new sense of purpose for the Marines.

This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about important aspects of the Korean War, with material on the 1st Marine Division, Imjin River, Kimpo Peninsula, the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, Medal of Honor Winners, and General Selden. Here is an excerpt:The 1st Marine Division-- including the Kimpo Provisional Regiment, the amphibian tractor battalion, the Korean Marines, and the two Marine regiments on line --defended some 60,000 yards, two to four times that normally assigned to a similarly reinforced division. Within the division, a battalion, one third of the infantry strength of a regiment, held a frontage of from 3,500 to 5,000 yards, while a rifle company, one-third the infantry strength of a battalion, could man a sector as wide as 1,700 yards. A line of outposts of varying strength located on hills as far as 2,500 yards in front of the main line of resistance, improved the security of the Jamestown positions, but forced the Marines to spread themselves even thinner along the front. To defend the division's broad segment of the Jamestown Line, General Selden commanded a total of 1,364 Marine officers, 24,846 enlisted Marines, 1,100 naval officers and sailors-- mostly doctors, dentists, and medical corpsmen--and 4,400 Korean Marines.The Imjin River, flowing southwest from the division's right flank, lay behind the main line of resistance until the defenses crossed the river west of Munsan-ni. Since only three bridges--all of them vulnerable to damage from floods --spanned the Imjin, the stream, when in flood, posed a formidable obstacle to the movement of supplies and reinforcements. A single rail line to Munsan-ni served the region and the existing road net required extensive improvement to support military traffic. The terrain varied from mountainous, with sharp-backed ridges delineating narrow valleys, to rice paddies and mud flats along the major rivers. West-central Korea promised to be a difficult place for the reinforced but widely spread 1st Marine Division to conduct sustained military operations.General Selden's Marines took over their portion of the Jamestown Line from South Korean soldiers manning an area that had become something of a backwater, perhaps because of its proximity to Kaesong, where truce talks had begun, and Panmunjom where they were continuing. "It was quite apparent," Seldon noted, "that the relieved ROK [Republic of Korea] Division had not been conducting an aggressive defense." As a result, the Marines inherited bunkers built to protect more against the elements than against enemy mortars and artillery. Korean noncombatants, taking advantage of the lull, had resumed farming in the area, moving about and creating concealment for possible Chinese infiltration.

Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series. Chronicles the part played by United States Marines in the Chosin Reservoir Campaign. Chosin is the Japanese word for the Changjin Reservoir.

Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series. Chronicles the part played by United States Marines in the retaking of Seoul, the capital of the Republic of South Korea, during the Korean War.