이것이 전쟁이다! Ⅲ. Korea 1950 l 21 JUNE: Sunday, June 25, was beautiful in Tokyo. For the first time in weeks the sun broke through the heavy clouds of Japan’s worst rains of the year. The thermometer climbed into the high humid nineties and hundreds of thousands of Tokyoites poured out from the city into the nearby rolling foothills of Fujiyama. Others jammed the beaches. All sought relief and the fun of summer’s first really fine day. I was among them. Friends, knowing that I had just finished the first portion of a vast story for Life Magazine, based upon the highlights of Japanese art, had made the beach sound far more alluring than the studio of the National Museum. So off I went with nothing more serious in mind than trying to think of captions for my picture of one particularly exotic bronze Buddha which would convince my editors that it deserved fullest play in the story. Like another Sunday morning, nearly nine years earlier, the news of war came as a simple statement, complete in its finality. But there was one great difference. This time I was in Japan, and the Japanese soil underfoot was my base. Two hours later, back at General McArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo, the pieces of the new pattern of violence still had not fallen into recognizable shape, at least not at a level where we correspondents could see it. A planeload of pressmen had been one hour out from Tokyo’s Haneda airport, Korea bound, when it was turned back, without explanation. Word came in that South Korea’s President Rhee had phoned MacArthur for help. Others spoke of Russians being pulled out of every tank which the South Koreans claimed to have killed. The first batch of atrocity reports earned wide early circulation, then died almost as quickly. Radio Tokyo choked the heavy afternoon air with flashes and bulletins and quotes from anybody who had any kind of news of the attack. Japan had had Ⅲ. Korea 1950
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