Relief of Douglas MacArthur participant Harry S. Truman
Wake Island Conference
With the 1950 mid-term elections drawing near, and Truman abstaining from overt campaigning while the troops were fighting in Korea, members of Truman's staff, most notably George Elsey, came up with another way to garner votes for the Democratic Party. In July 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt had traveled to Hawaii to meet with MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. At this meeting, Roosevelt made the decision to attack the Philippines in the final year of the Pacific war. It was a political triumph in an election year, refuting Republican claims that Roosevelt fixated on Europe at the expense of the Pacific.
Truman emulated this by flying to the Pacific to meet MacArthur. Initially, Truman was unenthusiastic about the idea, as he disliked publicity stunts, but in October 1950, in the wake of the victories at Pusan and Inchon, MacArthur's star was burning bright. By meeting with him, Truman could emphasize his own part in the victories, as Commander-in-Chief. A message was sent to MacArthur suggesting a meeting on Hawaii or Wake Island. MacArthur replied that he "would be delighted to meet the President on the morning of the 15th at Wake Island". When MacArthur discovered that the President would be bringing the news media with him, MacArthur asked if he could bring correspondents from Tokyo. His request was denied.Truman arrived at Wake Island on 15 October, where he was greeted on the tarmac by MacArthur, who had arrived the day before. MacArthur shook hands with the President rather than salute, and declined an offer to stay for lunch with the President, which Bradley considered "insulting". This did not bother Truman; what did annoy the President, a former haberdasher, was MacArthur's "greasy ham and eggs cap that evidently had been in use for twenty years". The meeting, which had no agenda and no structure, took the form of a free-wheeling discussion between the President and his advisors on one hand, and MacArthur and the  Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Admiral Arthur Radford, on the other. Topics discussed included Formosa, the Philippines and the wars in Vietnam and Korea. MacArthur noted that "No new policies, no new strategy of war or international politics, were proposed or discussed." Robert Sherrod, who was present as a correspondent, felt that he "had witnessed nothing but a political grandstand play".MacArthur did say things that would later be used against him. When asked by the President about the odds of Soviet or Chinese intervention in Korea, MacArthur replied: