Note on sources used in the compilation on Korea

A listing of published and unpublished sources used in the 1950 volume on Korea is contained in Foreign Relations, 1950, volume VII, page vii . Most of the sources there listed were used in the 1951 compilation.

In addition to the Department of State decimal files, the most important of which for Korea is file 795.00, the largest collection of material here printed was taken from Lot File 55D128, a retired office file of the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs, which contains the so-called “Black Book on Cease-Fire”, in which were kept the telegraphic exchanges between General Ridgway and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Black Book, actually a series of loose-leaf binders with each document given a tab number, was kept at the time in the office of Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Dean Rusk and, following his departure in November 1951, in the office of U. Alexis Johnson, who had been Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs and became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Messrs. Rusk and Johnson, along with Deputy Under Secretary of State H. Freeman Matthews, were the officers in the Department primarily responsible for handling Korea on a day-to-day basis, although on U.N. matters and matters relating to the group of nations which contributed to the U.N. military effort in Korea, Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs John D. Hickerson shared responsibility.

With regard to published sources, again those listed in the volume for the preceding year were helpful, particularly the official histories compiled by the Office of the Chief of Military History in the series United States Army in the Korean War; Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1966); and James F. Schnabel, Policy and Direction: The First Year (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1972). Mr. Hermes’ volume (p. 540) has an excellent bibliographical note concerning the location of primary sources on the cease-fire talks, which are covered in Foreign Relations—primarily for purposes of saving space—in the form of the daily telegraphic reports from General Ridgway to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (This volume also contains a fine collection of detailed maps depicting the progress of the fighting during the year 1951.) Unofficial accounts by participants in the cease-fire talks are given in C. Turner Joy, How Communists Negotiate (New York, The [Page VIII] Macmillan Company, 1955) and William H. Vatcher, Jr., Panmunjom: The Story of the Korean Military Armistice Negotiations (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1958). See also Allan E. Goodman, ed., Negotiating While Fighting: The Diary of Admiral C. Turner Joy at the Korean Armistice Conference (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1978). No responsibility is taken by the Department of State for the truth or accuracy of events set forth in unofficial sources.