ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the development of the US policy initiative of utilizing Korean soldiers in the war against Japan. The military cooperation between the Korean Provisional Government and the US during World War II set a clear precedent for the later more concrete US-South Korean military alliance. The chapter demonstrates how most US government officials in the State Department and in the US military failed, as they would again do so in the second half of the 1940s, to quickly identify the most obvious Korean group which would be most compatible with US interests and strategic aims in East Asia, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (KPG). Fortunately for Korea, pro-Korean US officials in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who had family connections to American Christian missionaries that had lived in Korea, and who were strongly influenced by Syngman Rhee, overcame opposition from the State Department and facilitated a virtual alliance between the US and the Korean nationalists.
