43 Facts About James Forrestal

James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense.

James Forrestal 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.

James Forrestal became Secretary of the Navy in May 1944 upon the death of his superior, Col.

President Franklin D Roosevelt requested that Forrestal take the lead in building up the Navy.

James Forrestal was intensely hostile to the Soviet Union, fearing Communist expansion in Europe and the Middle East.

James Forrestal was a supporter of naval battle groups centered on aircraft carriers.

James Forrestal 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.

James Forrestal 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.

James 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.

James Forrestal was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton.

James Forrestal married the former Josephine Stovall, a Vogue writer, in 1926.

James Forrestal eventually developed a dependence on alcohol and suffered various mental health issues.

James Forrestal became a partner in 1923, was appointed vice president in 1926, and by 1937 was president of the company.

James Forrestal 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.

James Forrestal was described as pugnacious, introspective, shy, philosophic, solitary, and emotionally insecure.

James Forrestal took no part in national politics, though he usually voted for Democrats, but did not support New Deal liberalism.

James Forrestal 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 James Forrestal was highly energetic.

James Forrestal led the Navy through the closing year of the war and the early years of demobilization that followed.

James 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.

James 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.

James Forrestal traveled to combat zones to see naval forces in action.

James Forrestal was in the South Pacific in 1942, present at the Battle of Kwajalein in 1944, and witnessed the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

James Forrestal, who had just landed on the beach, claimed the historic flag as a souvenir.

James Forrestal said, 'McCarthy, consistency has never been a mark of stupidity.

James Forrestal continued to advocate for complete racial integration of the services, a policy eventually implemented in 1949.

James Forrestal was an early target of the muckraking columnist and broadcaster Drew Pearson, an opponent of foreign policies hostile to the Soviet Union, who began to regularly call for James Forrestal's removal after Truman named him Secretary of Defense.

Nitze felt that James Forrestal was the only one who possessed all three qualities together.

James Forrestal opposed the unification of the military services proposed by the Truman officials.

James Forrestal met with Dewey privately, and it was agreed he would continue as Secretary of Defense under a Dewey administration.

In 1949, angered over James Forrestal's continued opposition to his defense economization policies, and concerned about reports in the press over his mental condition, Truman abruptly asked James Forrestal to resign.

James Forrestal was replaced by Louis A Johnson, an ardent supporter of Truman's defense retrenchment policy.

James Forrestal seemed to be on the road to recovery, having regained 12 pounds since his admission into the hospital.

James Forrestal was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia.

James Forrestal was brought up in a rigidly Catholic environment where harsh discipline gave the boy doubts about himself that were never overcome by his many achievements.

James Forrestal felt war was a necessity and negotiation was possible only alongside military's parity or superiority.

James Forrestal abandoned his religion and his Irish community, but was never at ease on Wall Street, where he suspected and envied its rich and wellborn WASP elite.

James Forrestal was awarded both the Distinguished Service Medal and the Medal of Merit by President Truman.

James Forrestal is depicted as sitting on a commission concerning the Roswell UFO incident and advocating the eventual release of information to the public.

An opera concerning the conspiracy theories behind Forrestal's death, Nightingale: The Last Days of James Forrestal composed by Evan Hause with a libretto by Gary Heidt, premiered in New York City at the Present Company Theatorium on May 19,2002.

James Forrestal is pushed from the window of his Bethesda Naval Hospital room by the Golden Age Robotman.

The later part of James Forrestal's life, including his marriage and his death, is a large part of Majic Man by Max Allan Collins.

The 2020 film The 11th Green suggests that in 1949, James Forrestal was preparing to make public proof of alien visitations and technology, and was forced by two Men in Black to choose between committing suicide or seeing his entire family killed.