[3] 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.

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.

[6] 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.

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.

[3] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[17] 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.

During private cabinet meetings with Truman in 1946 and 1947, Forrestal had argued against partition of Palestine on the grounds it would infuriate Arab countries who supplied oil needed for the U.S. economy and national defense.

Truman received threats to cut off campaign contributions from wealthy donors, as well as hate mail, including a letter accusing him of "preferring fascist and Arab elements to the democracy-loving Jewish people of Palestine.

[24] In his only known public comment on the issue, Forrestal stated to J. Howard McGrath, Senator from Rhode Island: ...no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point it could endanger our national security.

He was also 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 Forrestal's removal after Truman named him Secretary of Defense.

[26] Pearson told his own protege, Jack Anderson, that he believed Forrestal was "the most dangerous man in America" and claimed that if he was not removed from office, he would "cause another world war".

[27] The Truman administration's willingness to slash conventional readiness needs for the Navy and Marine Corps soon caused fierce controversies within the upper ranks of their respective branches.

By 1948, Truman had approved military budgets billions of dollars below what the services were requesting, putting Forrestal in the middle of a fierce tug-of-war between the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Eisenhower remembered on several occasions, while he was Supreme Allied Commander, he had been visited by Forrestal, who carefully explained his thesis that the Communists would never cease trying to destroy all representative government.

Unwittingly, Forrestal would trigger a series of events that would not only undermine his already precarious position with Truman but also contribute to the loss of his job, his failing health and eventual demise.

However, in the early morning hours of May 22, his body, clad only in the bottom half of a pair of pajamas, was found on a third-floor roof below the sixteenth-floor kitchen across the hall from his room.

[41][42] Forrestal's alleged last written statement, touted in the contemporary press and later biographers as an implied suicide note, was part of a poem from W. M. Praed's translation of Sophocles' tragedy Ajax:[43] 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!

will be the cry– No quiet murmur like the tremulous wail Of the lone bird, the querulous nightingale– The official Navy review board, which completed hearings on May 31, waited until October 11, 1949, to release only a brief summary of its findings.

[47] Adam Matthew Publications Ltd. published a microfilm of the complete and unexpurgated diaries in 2001, from the originals preserved in the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; a digital edition was released in January 2020.

In the anime OVA series Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, a secret document is briefly viewable in the eighth episode that mentions the death of a Secretary Forrestal.

In December 1950, William Bradford Huie published an article titled "Untold Facts about the Death of James Forrestal" in The American Mercury, which he co-owned.

[53] That article, later entered into the Congressional Record and republished, suggested Forrestal has been forced to resign amid pressure from "disgruntled politicians, Communists, Zionists, and gossip columnists".

[58][53] In a statement posted to the Paranet BBS in December 1987, John Lear claimed that Forrestal's suicide was connected to the "horrible truth" about aliens and their interactions with humanity, and implies that his medical records remain sealed as part of the coverup initiated by President Truman.

In The Golden Age, a DC Comics Elseworlds "imaginary story" four-issue prestige format mini-series by James Robinson (writer) and Paul Smith (artist), Forrestal's death is shown to have been a murder.

The 2020 film The 11th Green suggests that in 1949, 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.

A title slide over the last shot of the movie says "Dedicated to the Memory of James V. Forrestal (1892–1949), who understood the significance of the events and sought to act honorably amid treachery."