Los Banos Rotary Club History
Hunter Speaks To Service Clubs

Oakley Hunter, Fresno attorney and candidate for Congress from this district, was in Los Banos Tuesday as guest speaker at the Rotary and Lions Clubs. He addressed both meetings on the subject "Implications of the Korean Conflict."

Hunter, former FBI agent and World War II veteran who served with the O.S.S. in the European theater, defined the Korean affair as a fight for our freedom and security. "If we are defeated in Korea," he said, "then Russia will proceed systematically and ruthlessly to grab up the entire far east. The Korean conflict is 'local' only in the limited sense of actual shooting warfare. The bold aggression of Soviet Russia is a global challenge."

Hunter said that Korea, a peninsula whose southern tip is within 120 miles of Japan, has been the scene of wars for the past 2000 years. Though it proclaimed its independence from Japan in 1918, the Japanese still retained control of the county until the close of World War II, when the southern part of the country was occupied by United States troops and the northern portion by Russian troops. The 38th parallel, separting the two areas, is an arbitrary line which has no political, geographic or industrial significance.

The country's independence from Japan, Hunter said, was one of this country's announced objectives in World War II.

After the war, he said, Russia trained and outfitted northern Korea troops for modern warfare, while the U.S. occupation troops in the south were mainly concerned with the organization of a democratic form of government which could stand and operate on its own.

As a result, when the communistic controlled northern Korean forces attacked, the southern forces were almost helpless when a United Nations order for both sides to cease firing and move back to their own lines was ignored. President Truman ordered U.S. ships, planes and men into the fight to enforce the order. And the United Nations approved a resolution authorizing member countries to take whatever steps necessary to put down the attack by the reds.

The attack, Hunter said, demonstrated to the American people the futility of hoping for eventual permanent peace until such time as Russian-bred communism can be completely halted.

Hence, Hunter said, the freedom and security of the American people can be assured only by immediate mobilization. It will be costly. But not as costly as the loss of millions of American lives through failure to estimate correctly when and where and to what extent Soviet aggression will next take place.
Hunter rapped the State Department for its almost total lack of Pacific policy. Instead of a definite statement of what this government would do in the event of aggression by Russia in the far east, he said, "nothing was forthcoming from Washington but a hodge podge of contradictory mutterings. At a time when common sense should have demanded no retreat from the realities of the Korean situation, State Department experts like Owen Lattimore advised that Korea should be abandoned. What more invitation to aggression in Korea could the Kremlin want?"

Hunter predicted the Korean conflict will cost the U.S. several billion dollars, and said the Congress must finance the campaign on a cash basis, either by government economies in non-military fields, or by new taxes. He condemned possible further governmental borrowing as an economical threat leading to confiscation of money, materials and labor. Should that happen, he concluded, the first step in the Communistic objective will have been won, for our free enterprise system will have been abandoned.

July 18, 1950

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