BRIGADIER GENERAL GEORGE LINCOLN SPENT THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 10–11, 1945, in his office at the Army Operations Division in Washington. During the past week his country had dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In between those attacks, the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and commenced attacks against its forces in continental northeast Asia. On August 10 the United States had received word of Japan's willingness to surrender, provided the position of its emperor was not compromised. The news produced a scramble among planners in Washington to craft an order for postwar operations to American forces in the Pacific. As the army's adviser to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC), General Lincoln was one of dozens of U.S. officials working through the night to carry out that task. 1
Sometime after 2:00 A.M. the phone rang in Lincoln's office. The State Department's James Dunn, SWNCC's chairman, was on the line. He stated that the United States needed to move troops into Korea, which had been part of Japan's empire since early in the century. So-
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