October 15, 1950: Truman Meets MacArthur at Wake Island

Today in 1950 · Sunday, October 15, 1950

President Truman met by General MacArthur at Wake Island, October 15, 1950

President Truman met by General MacArthur at Wake Island, October 15, 1950 · U.S. Army Signal Corps photo, Truman Library, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On this day in 1950, on a coral airstrip in the middle of the Pacific, the President of the United States and his Far East commander met face to face — for the first and only time in their lives. Truman had flown 7,000 miles; MacArthur, 1,900. The formal conference at Wake Island ran, by the official record, from 7:36 to 9:12 a.m. — ninety-six minutes — plus another hour and a half of informal talk.

The exchange that history remembers took only seconds. Asked what chance the Chinese or the Soviets had of intervening in Korea, MacArthur answered: 'Very little.' He went further — 'we are no longer fearful of their intervention' — reasoning that China had missed its moment. The agenda moved briskly on: Korean reconstruction, prisoners, elections, the Japanese treaty. General Bradley compiled the record on the flight home, partly from the shorthand notes of a secretary, Vernice Anderson, whose presence would itself become controversial.

The verdict came within six weeks, and it was catastrophic. Chinese armies were already moving through North Korea's mountains as the two men shook hands on the tarmac. By late November they would strike in overwhelming force; by April 1951, the deepening collision between president and general would end with Truman relieving MacArthur of command. The 96 minutes at Wake Island became the textbook case of the question every leader should ask twice: 'What if we're wrong?'

Also on this day

  • East Germany held its first single-list national elections, with the ruling bloc claiming over 99 percent.
  • Thomas E. Dewey announced he would never again run for president.
  • Hemingway's 'Across the River and into the Trees' — covered in this series on September 7 — sat atop the New York Times bestseller list.

🎵 On the radio that week: America’s No. 1 song was “Goodnight Irene” by Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers (Billboard best sellers) — its 13 straight weeks at No. 1 was the longest run of the 1950s. That sound never really left — we recreate 1950s doo-wop and slow-dance ballads every week: read the stories behind our songs or listen on the lovesong1950s channel.
🎬 At the movies: “All About Eve” — fresh from its Roxy premiere, where extra telephone operators were hired just to handle ticket calls — was the picture everyone was talking about.
⚾ In sports: No. 1 Army flattened Michigan 27-6 and No. 3 Oklahoma survived Texas 14-13 in Dallas — the college football Saturday that kept the Cadets on top of the AP poll.

Sources: FRUS: official Wake Island record · Bill of Rights Institute: Truman fires MacArthur · Wikipedia: October 1950 · Billboard best-seller charts, 1950 (issue scans) · Variety National Boxoffice Survey, 1950 (Lantern scans) · Sports records: www.sports-reference.com. Every fact above is drawn from the records linked here — no dramatization, no invented details.

More from this series: Today in 1950 — the daily archive · every post from October 2026

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