James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last cabinet-level United States secretary of the Navy and the first United States secretary of defense.
Forrestal came from a very strict middle-class Irish Catholic family. He was a successful financier on Wall Street before becoming Undersecretary of the Navy in 1940, shortly before the United States entered the Second World War. He became Secretary of the Navy in May 1944 upon the death of his superior, Col. Frank Knox. President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested that Forrestal take the lead in building up the Navy. In 1947, after the end of the war, President Harry S. Truman appointed him the first secretary of the newly created Department of Defense. Forrestal was intensely hostile to the Soviet Union, fearing Communist expansion in Europe and the Middle East. Along with Secretary of State George C. Marshall, he strongly opposed the United States' support for the establishment of the State of Israel, fearing that this would alienate Arab nations which were needed as allies, and whose petroleum reserves were vital for both military and civilian industrial expansion.
Forrestal was a supporter of naval battle groups centered on aircraft carriers. He tried to weaken the proposed Department of Defense for the Navy's benefit, but was hard-pressed to run it from 1947 to 1949 after Truman named him Secretary of Defense. The two men were often at odds, and Truman forced Forrestal's resignation.
Thereafter, Forrestal's mental health rapidly deteriorated, declining to the point in which he underwent medical care for depression. While a patient at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Forrestal died by an alleged suicide from fatal injuries sustained after falling out of a sixteenth-floor window.
In 1954, the USN's new supercarrier was named in his honor, as is the James V. Forrestal Building, which houses the headquarters of the United States Department of Energy. He is the namesake of the Forrestal Lecture Series at the United States Naval Academy and of the James Forrestal Campus of his alma mater Princeton University.
Life and career
Early life
Forrestal was born in Matteawan, the youngest son of James Forrestal, an Irish immigrant who dabbled in politics. His mother, the former Mary Anne Toohey raised him as a devout Catholic. During his youth, Forrestal was an amateur boxer. After graduating from high school in 1908, at the age of 16, he spent the next three years working for a trio of newspapers: the Matteawan Evening Journal, the Mount Vernon Argus and the Poughkeepsie News Press.Forrestal entered Dartmouth College in 1911, but transferred to Princeton University in his sophomore year, where he served as an editor for The Daily Princetonian. His senior class voted him "Most Likely to Succeed", but he left just prior to completing work on a degree. Forrestal was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Forrestal married the former Josephine Stovall, a Vogue writer, in 1926. She eventually developed a dependence on alcohol and suffered various mental health issues.
World War I naval officer and Wall Street financier
Forrestal went to work as a bond salesman for William A. Read and Company in 1916. When the US entered World War I, he enlisted in the Navy and ultimately became a Naval Aviator, training with the Royal Flying Corps at Camp Borden and Deseronto in Canada. During the final year of the war Forrestal spent much of his time in Washington, at the Office of Naval Operations, while completing his flight training and reaching the rank of lieutenant. After the war, Forrestal resumed his career in finance and made his fortune on Wall Street. He became a partner in 1923, was appointed vice president in 1926, and by 1937 was president of the company. He also acted as a publicist for the Democratic Party committee in Dutchess County, New York, helping politicians from the area win elections at both the local and state level. One of the individuals aided by his work was a neighbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt.Forrestal has been characterized
as a compulsive workaholic and skilled administrator. Biographers have described him as pugnacious, introspective, shy, philosophic, solitary, and emotionally insecure. He took no part in national politics, though he usually voted for Democrats, but did not support New Deal liberalism.
Political career
Secretary of the Navy
President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Forrestal a special administrative assistant on June 22, 1940. Six weeks later, he nominated him for the newly established position, Undersecretary of the Navy. In his nearly four years as undersecretary, Forrestal proved highly effective at mobilizing domestic industrial production for the war effort. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ernest J. King, wanted to control logistics and procurement, but Forrestal prevailed.In September 1942, to get a grasp on the reports for material his office was receiving, he made a tour of naval operations in the Southwest Pacific and a stop at Pearl Harbor. Returning to Washington, D.C., he made his report to Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and the cabinet. In response to Forrestal's elevated request that materiel be sent immediately to the Southwest Pacific area, Stimson, told Forrestal, "Jim, you've got a bad case of localitis." Forrestal shot back in a heated manner, "Mr. Secretary, if the Marines on Guadalcanal were wiped out, the reaction of the country will give you a bad case of localitis in the seat of your pants."
He became Secretary of the Navy on May 19, 1944, after his immediate superior, Secretary Frank Knox, died from a heart attack. Knox had been a figurehead as secretary and Forrestal was highly energetic. Forrestal led the Navy through the closing year of the war and the early years of demobilization that followed. Forrestal ordered that a Naval Court of Inquiry be convened to investigate the facts surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and to assess any culpability borne by members of the Navy. The Court consisted of Admiral Adolphus Andrews; Admiral Orin G. Murfin, who served as President of the Court and Admiral Edward C. Kalbfus.
The court convened on July 24, 1944, and held daily sessions in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Pearl Harbor. After interviewing numerous witnesses, it completed its work on October 19, 1944. Its report to the Navy Department largely exonerated Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet at the time of the attack. The court found that Kimmel's decisions had been correct given the limited information available to him, but criticized then-Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark for failing to warn Kimmel that war was imminent. The court concluded that "based upon the facts established, the Court is of the opinion that no offenses have been committed nor serious blame incurred on the part of any person or persons in the naval service." Because the court's findings implicitly revealed that American cryptographers had broken the Japanese codes, a critical wartime secret, the court's report was not made public until after the end of the war.
Upon reviewing the report, Forrestal felt that the court had been too lenient in assigning blame for the disaster. The court had found that the Army and Navy had adequately cooperated in the defense of Pearl Harbor; that there had been no information indicating that Japanese carriers were on their way to attack Pearl Harbor; and that the attack had succeeded principally because of the aerial torpedo, a secret weapon whose use could not have been predicted. Forrestal disapproved all of these findings, judging that Kimmel could have done more with the information he had had to prevent or mitigate the attack. Forrestal concluded that both Kimmel and Stark had "failed to demonstrate the superior judgment necessary for exercising command commensurate with their rank and their assigned duties."
File:80-G-702670.jpg|thumb|Secretary of the Navy Forrestal pins Admiral Jonas H. Ingram with a Gold Star in lieu of a third Distinguished Service Medal on May 21, 1946.
As Secretary, Forrestal introduced a policy of racial integration in the Navy. Forrestal traveled to combat zones to see naval forces in action. He was in the South Pacific in 1942, present at the Battle of Kwajalein in 1944, and witnessed the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. After five days of pitched battle, a detachment of Marines was sent to hoist the American flag on the 545-foot summit of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. This was the first time in the war that the U.S. flag had flown on Japanese soil. Forrestal, who had just landed on the beach, claimed the historic flag as a souvenir. When Forrestal witnessed the sight of the Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi, he turned to Major General Holland Smith and said, "the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next 500 years." A second, larger flag was run up in its place, and this second flag-raising was the moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal in his famous photograph.
In the early months of 1945, Forrestal, along with Stimson and Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew, strongly advocated a softer policy toward Japan that would permit a negotiated armistice, a face-saving surrender. Forrestal's primary concern was not the resurgence of a militarized Japan, but rather "the menace of Russian Communism and its attraction for decimated, destabilized societies in Europe and Asia," and, therefore, keeping the Soviet Union out of the war with Japan. So strongly did he feel about this matter that he cultivated negotiation efforts that some regarded as approaching insubordination.
His counsel on ending the war was finally followed, but not until the atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On 10 August 1945, the day after the Nagasaki attack, the Japanese sent out a radio transmission saying that it was ready to accept the terms of the Allies' Potsdam Declaration, "with the understanding that said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler." That position still fell short of the U.S. "unconditional surrender" demand, retaining the sticking point that had held up the war's conclusion for months. Strong voices within the administration, including Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, counseled fighting on. At that point, "Forrestal came up with a shrewd and simple solution: Accept the offer and declare that it accomplishes what the Potsdam Declaration demanded. Say that the Emperor and the Japanese government will rule subject to the orders of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. This would imply recognition of the Emperor while tending to neutralize American public passions against the Emperor. President Harry S. Truman liked this. It would be close enough to 'unconditional'."
After the war, Forrestal urged Truman to take a hard line with the Soviets over Poland and other issues. In furtherance of the anti-Soviet position, he was the primary promoter of the famous "long telegram" by State Department official George Kennan. " Harriman thought Forrestal's reaction was a 'decisive' catalyst in shaping American opinion on the issue." He also strongly influenced the new Wisconsin Senator, Joseph McCarthy, concerning infiltration of the government by Communists. Upon McCarthy's arrival in Washington in December 1946, Forrestal invited him to lunch. In McCarthy's words, "Before meeting Jim Forrestal I thought we were losing to international Communism because of incompetence and stupidity on the part of our planners. I mentioned that to Forrestal. I shall forever remember his answer. He said, 'McCarthy, consistency has never been a mark of stupidity. If they were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor.' This phrase struck me so forcefully that I have often used it since."