Mr Forrestal Commits Suicide

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25810, 23 May 1949, Page 7

Mr Forrestal Commits Suicide

FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENCE

(Rec. 12.45 a.m.) WASHINGTON, May 22. Mr Janies V. Forrestal, the former Secretary of Defence, committed suicide this morning. The Bethesda Naval Hospital, where Mr Forrestal had been under treatment for “nervouc exhaustion,” announced that Mr Forrestal had taken his own life at 2 a.m. by climbing out of a window near his room, which was 10 or 12 storeys above the ground. Early this month Mr Forrestal was reported to be showing a steady improvement. His successor as Secretary of Defence <Mr Louis Johnson) announced that Mr Forrestal was recovering rapidly and would be “a completely restored man.” Mr Forrestal’s exhaustion was directly attributed by hospital authorities to excessive work during the war and post-war years. After his resign nation as Secretary of Defence, Mr Truman presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. He leaves a widow and two sons. Mr Forrestal, who was 56, went to Washington from Wall Street in 1940 as an anonymous assistant to President Roosevelt, advanced rapidly in the Government service, serving as Under-Secretary of the Navy and then as Secretary of the Navy for seven years. In September, 1947, he became the first Secretary of Defence, charged with co-ordinating the activities of the United States armed services and with determining national defence policy. He resigned from this post last March. Announcing that he had accepted the resignation, President Truman said that Mr Forrestal had been trying to resign for a year. It had been Mr Forrestal who, as Under-Secretary of the Navy, spurred on the construction drive that built the United Stated Navy from its 1940 strength of 383 combat vessels and 158,000 men to its war-time peak of 15,000 combat ships, 50,000 auxiliary ships, and 3,600,000 men.

When he was made Secretary of the Navy in May, 1944, after the death of Colonel Frank Knox, Mr Forrestal broadened the scope of his activities beyond production problems. Although he considered himself solely “the representative of the public on the naval staff,” and though he left strategy to the professional sailors, he closely watched every aspect of top naval policy. Mr Forrestal was commonly known as the hardest working man in Washington. Seven days a week he arrived at the Defence Department’s building at 8.45 in the morning and stayed on until 9 or 10 at night. He worked hard because he believed the United States was in a race against time.