Video: 'Korean War: Truman vs MacArthur over Korea' (Oct. 15, 1950 at 10:15)

(Sunday, October 15, 1950, Truman’s plane arrived at 6:30 a.m. Wake Time; during the Wake Island Conference, part of the Korean War and the Cold War) — President Harry S. Truman and Army General Douglas MacArthur met for a conference today at Wake Island to define the Far Eastern policy of the United States in the light of recent United Nations victories in Korea.

The two posed for photographs, then rode together in “a battered Chevrolet sedan” to the conference site at a “small, new one-story concrete and frame office hut,” where they conferred for two hours.

Video: 'Korean War - PART 13, To the 38th Parallel and beyond- 6.25' (Oct. 15, 1950, at 7:00)

The general told the president that the war would be over by Thanksgiving and most troops would be home by Christmas.

Video: 'PBS - American Experience - Truman (1997) 5of5' (October 15, 1950, at 25:05)

When Truman asked, “What will be the attitude of Commie China?” MacArthur said it would not intervene. Even if China tried, it could not get more than 50,000 troops across the Yalu River, MacArthur promised, citing his G2’s intelligence estimate.

Four days later, on Oct. 19, 1950, 255,000 Chinese soldiers crossed the Yalu River into Korea over three different bridges.