Forrestal, James

Forrestal, James (1892–1949) U.S. undersecretary and later secretary of the navy during World War II James Vincent Forrestal is best remembered for his postwar appointment as the first U.S. secretary of defense (1947–49), but during World War II, as under secretary and later as secretary of the navy, his formidable administrative genius enabled him to direct the massive wartime build-up of naval forces. Forrestal was a naval aviator during World War I, then returned to civilian life as a successful executive with a Wall Street investment firm, becoming its president in 1938. In June 1940, Forrestal was tapped by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as his administrative assistant, and in August he was named undersecretary of the navy. He was charged with overseeing and directing the huge peacetime expansion of the navy, which was gearing up for what increasingly seemed the inevitable entry of the United States into World War II. The task was a staggering one, which became even more intensive after the Battle of Pearl Harbor thrust the nation into the war. In May 1944, with the death of navy secretary Frank Knox, Forrestal was named the new secretary of the navy and continued to direct the logistics of this mighty force. Following the war, after passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which terminated the Department of War and inaugurated the Department of Defense at the cabinet level, Forrestal was appointed to the new post. His task was nothing less than the total reorganization and coordination of the armed services. The U.S. Air Force, independent of the army, was created, and all the armed services were redesigned to function more cooperatively together, answering to a single civilian authority, the secretary of defense. Forrestal's war work had been tireless and overwhelming, and peacetime brought no rest. On the contrary, it required the reinvention of the entire U.S. military. Exhausted and in a state of emotional collapse, Forrestal stepped down as secretary of defense in March 1949. Afflicted with severe depression, which his physicians subsequently compared to battle fatigue, the post-traumatic stress syndrome to which combat troops often fall prey, Forrestal entered Bethesda Naval Hospital. On May 22, 1949, he leaped to his death from a hospital window.