Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 3:12am

James Forrestal and his Prophecy

Flag Raising Iwo Jima

 

The last cabinet level Secretary of the Navy, and the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal was not content to remain in Washington.  As Secretary of the Navy during World War II he often visited the sites of active combat operations.  Thus it was that he was present on Iwo Jima when the flag was raised on Mount Suribachi.  What he said then has entered the lore of the Marine Corps:

The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years.

Appointed the first Secretary of Defense in 1947, Forrestal fought against budget cuts proposed by President Truman that he thought endangered the nation’s security.  He also opposed the proposal to unify the services which would gut the Navy and eliminate the Marine Corps.  On March 31, 1949, Harry Truman, angered over Forrestal’s opposition to his policies, fired him.  Tragically, Forrestal, who had worked non-stop on Defense issues since he joined the Roosevelt administration in 1940, had a nervous breakdown.  While undergoing psychiatric treatment he committed suicide by jumping from the 16th floor of the National Naval Medical Center.  He left behind a note with a quotation from Sophocles’ Ajax:

Fair Salamis, the billows’ roar,

Wander around thee yet,

And sailors gaze upon thy shore

Firm in the Ocean set.

Thy son is in a foreign clime

Where Ida feeds her countless flocks,

Far from thy dear, remembered rocks,

Worn by the waste of time–

Comfortless, nameless, hopeless save

In the dark prospect of the yawning grave….

Woe to the mother in her close of day,

Woe to her desolate heart and temples gray,

When she shall hear

Her loved one’s story whispered in her ear!

“Woe, woe!’ will be the cry–

No quiet murmur like the tremulous wail

Of the lone bird, the querulous nightingale–

 

Louis Johnson who enthusiastically endorsed Truman’s policies, became the second Secretary of Defense.  He summed up his views in one sentence that angered the Navy and the Marines:

There’s no reason for having a Navy and Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me that amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.

The Navy struck back with the Revolt of the Admirals where several admirals spoke out against the defense policies of the Truman administration at the cost of their careers.  The Marines, perhaps recalling what Forrestal had said, enlisted John Wayne to ride to the rescue.

The film  Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) earned John Wayne his first Oscar nomination as best actor.  (Broderick Crawford would win for his stunning performance in All The King’s Men.)   Wayne was initially reluctant to take the role, partly because he had not fought in World War II, and partly because he saw script problems and didn’t like the character of Sergeant Styker as initially written in the screen play.  (There is evidence that Wayne, 34 at the time of Pearl Harbor, and with 3 kids, did attempt to volunteer in 1943 for the Marine Corps with assignment to John Ford’s OSS Field Photographic Unit, but was turned down.)  Wayne was convinced to take the role because the film had the enthusiastic backing of the Marine Corps, which viewed it as a fitting tribute to the Marines who fought in the Pacific, and to help combat the move to abolish the Corps.  Marine Commandant Clifton B. Cates went to see Wayne to request that he take the role and Wayne immediately agreed.  (Thus began a long association of John Wayne with the Marine Corps, including Wayne narrating a tribute to Marine Lieutenant General Chesty Puller.)  Appearing in the film were several Marine veterans of the Pacific, including Colonel David Shoup, who earned a Medal of Honor for his heroism at Tarawa, and who would later serve as a Commandant of the Corps, and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Crow who led a Marine battalion at Tarawa.  The Marines’ Hymn is sung in the film after the death of Wayne’s character, one of ten films in which a Wayne character died, and as the raising of the flag is recreated. Taking part in the flag raising were Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes and John Bradley, the three survivors of the six flag raisers.  (The three men who raised the flag and subsequently died in the battle were Franklin Sousely, Harlon Block and Michael Strank.)  (First Lieutenant Harold Schrier, who led the flag raising party that raised the first, smaller, flag on Mount Suribachi, and who was awarded a Navy Cross and a Silver Star for his heroism on Iwo Jima, also appeared in the film.)  The film was a smash hit, and plans to dismantle the Corps were quietly shelved.

Ironically, the Korean War started just the next year, with both the Navy and the Marine Corps proving they were essential during that conflict, and the attempt to dismantle the two services became a mere historical footnote.

 Update:  Forrestal’s suicide has ever been a feeding ground for conspiracy theorists.  Go here for a prime example.

 

 

 

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cthemfly25
cthemfly25
Friday, February 27, AD 2015 10:07am

This caught my eye for perhaps obvious reasons.

“The Navy struck back with the Revolt of the Admirals where several admirals spoke out against the defense policies of the Truman administration at the cost of their careers.”

Mary De Voe
Friday, February 27, AD 2015 10:37am

It seems that the authentic power over the A-bomb had gone to Truman’s head. To denigrate the sacrifice of the Marines on Mt. Suribachi smacks of treason. Different branches of the Armed Forces are like different personalities. Men adhere to the “Espri de Core” (sp). I knew a Marine, a paratrooper (said one had to be crazy to jump from a plane but he did) an Air Force man, but no regular Army man and almost had a Navy man as a son-in-law. These people would have been stabbed in the heart by Truman’s really stupid concept of the Armed Forces.
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But would any change impact the Chaplains’ service as did Obama? During the government shutdown, Obama demanded the sacrifice from the Armed Forces encamped in government facilities by forbidding the Mass to be said, even as human beings were living out their lives unto dying. That is not a president who represents his constituents, allowing them to live and die without the consolation of their Faith, a despicable treason.

Mary De Voe
Friday, February 27, AD 2015 10:40am

I think I am a Marine: Semper Fi

CAM
CAM
Friday, February 27, AD 2015 3:09pm

It was always heartening to see from our quarters our guarters a patrol of marines in full battle dress go down into the jungle on the lookout for “the bad guys”. My then third grade son presented me with a picture he had drawn of three heroes – a US Marine, a USN chaplain and a Navy pilot.
I hope to run across that drawing of 20 years ago as that chaplain conducts burials at Arlington Cemetery.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, February 27, AD 2015 4:01pm

Appearing in the film were several Marine veterans of the Pacific, including Colonel David Shoup, who earned a Medal of Honor for his heroism at Tarawa, and who would later serve as a Commandant of the Corps, and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Crow who led a Marine battalion at Tarawa. The Marines’ Hymn is sung in the film after the death of Wayne’s character, one of ten films in which a Wayne character died, and as the raising of the flag is recreated. Taking part in the flag raising were Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes and John Bradley, the three survivors of the six flag raisers.

I’d have loved to have cross-examined William Manchester with this datum.

James
James
Saturday, February 28, AD 2015 8:35am

A friend pointed out certain similarities between Truman and the current CIC. I have tried not to believe them, but after reading this post, among other signs, well…

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Sunday, March 1, AD 2015 3:46am

No US Navy equals no Navy SEALS. Horrid thought!!!

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Sunday, March 1, AD 2015 9:01am

“There’s no reason for having a Navy and Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me that amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.”

Military brass & govt appointees who tell politicians what they want to hear are heartbreaking & sickening to the very core of my heart.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Sunday, March 1, AD 2015 9:03am

I had no idea that Truman tried to end the Marines & the Navy!! He was insane. Especially after WW 1 & 2. What was his reasoning?

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, March 1, AD 2015 11:13am

Barbara G., I think that Truman, being a politician (naturally venal and ignorant), believed that the nuke weapon ended the need/utility of conventional warfare.
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In Truman’s administration’s stupidity (signals/statements), Comintern gangsters – Stalin, Mao – came to assume/believe that the US would not fight over Korea. Ergo, Truman needed to unseriously (not using all the arrows in the quiver and strategically not fighting to win) fight the Korean War. And, more than 36,000 young Americans seriously fought and gave their lives for South Korean freedom.
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After Obama and Carter, Truman may be the worst POTUS. The 19th century POTUS losers don’t measure down. They didn’t have the power to massively mess up everything.
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JFK officially swung away from nuke dependence and presided over the formations of the green berets and SEALS; and started “playing” with American blood in Vietnam, Republic of.

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