JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  16. Quoted in Stern, Averting “The Final Failure,” 37–38.

  17. On the PT boats and their service in the war, see Keating, Mosquito Fleet; and Whipple, Small Ships.

  18. Life, May 10, 1943; JFK to KK, June 3, 1943, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 555–56.

  19. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific, 52–53.

  20. Donovan, PT 109, 21; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 204. A history of PT 109, from its launching in June 1942 to its destruction in 1943, is Domagalski, Dark Water.

  21. “To Mother with love,” he wrote on the card accompanying the flowers. “Love, Jack. Sorry I could not be there.” Box 2, JPKP.

  22. JFK to RK and JPK, May 15, 1943, box 2, JPKP. In another letter to his family, Jack wrote, “The living conditions here are rugged—nearly as rugged as Daly, and much more rugged than me (or is it I, mother). We live on the boats, eat canned army rations (beans, fried spam) and go out nearly every night—try to grab a little sleep in the day. So far we have been lucky. The first night out they came the closest. We were well up in there and lying to, thinking this wasn’t too tough, when suddenly I heard a plane, looked up and said it looks like one of our new ones to my exec. The next minute I was flat on my back across the deck. He had straddled us with a couple. The boat was full of holes and a couple of the boys were hit but are doing O.K.” JFK to JPK and RK and siblings, n.d. (received August 10, 1943), box 21, JPKP.

  23. JFK to KK, June 3, 1943, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 555–56.

  24. JFK to RK and JPK, n.d. (early May 1943), printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 550–51.

  25. Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 649; Edward Oxford, “Ten Lives for Kennedy,” Argosy, July 1960.

  26. Renehan, Kennedys at War, 245.

  27. The story of John F. Kennedy and PT 109 has been told many times. An early, highly sympathetic account that holds up quite well is Donovan, PT 109. The most recent book-length study, also favorable, is Doyle, PT 109. The incident also receives close attention in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth (sympathetic); and Blair and Blair, Search for JFK (more critical). All were highly useful in preparing the account that follows. John Hersey’s classic account in The New Yorker, titled “Survival” and published June 17, 1944 (and discussed in later chapters), though superseded by these later accounts, retains power.

  28. Donovan, PT 109, 76–77.

  29. JFK to JPK and RK and siblings, n.d. (received August 10, 1943), box 21, JPKP.

  30. B. R. White and J. G. McClure, Memo to Commander, “Sinking of PT 109 and Subsequent Rescue of Survivors,” August 22, 1943, box 22, JPKP; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 158.

  31. White/McClure memo; Donovan, PT 109, 90.

  32. Hersey, “Survival.”

  33. Hersey, “Survival”; JFK notes for a speech on PT 109, n.d. (fall 1945), box 96, JFK Pre-Pres; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 274; Doyle, PT 109, chaps. 6 and 7.

  34. Barney Ross interview, CBSI, JFKL.

  35. White/McClure memo; Doyle, PT 109, 115–16; Renehan, Kennedys at War, 264–65. In 2002, a National Geographic expedition led by deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck of PT 109 about twelve hundred feet below the water’s surface.

  36. Quoted in Donovan, PT 109, 103.

  37. Doyle, PT 109, 118; Donovan, PT 109, 105. In later years the island would become known as Kennedy Island.

  38. Fay, Pleasure of His Company, 127. On the initial Fay-Kennedy interactions in Melville, see also Meyers, As We Remember, 39.

  39. White/McClure memo.

  40. Hersey, “Survival”; Donovan, PT 109, 109–11.

  41. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 285–88; White/McClure memo.

  42. White/McClure memo; Doyle, PT 109, 149–51. On Eroni Kumana and Biuku Gasa, who lived to be ninety-three and eighty-two, respectively, see also Rob Brown, “The Solomon Islanders Who Saved JFK,” BBC, August 6, 2014, at www.bbc.com/​news/​magazine-28644830, accessed November 30, 2019.

  43. Quoted in Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 657.

  44. Jessica Contrera, “He Saved JFK’s Life During WWII—With the Help of an SOS Carved on a Coconut,” WP, August 23, 2018.

  45. O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 153–54; Doyle, PT 109, 105. Ensign William Battle, the skipper of another PT boat who later in life became U.S. ambassador to Australia during the Kennedy administration, claimed he wanted to go back into Blackett Strait during the day on August 2 but that the request was denied.

  46. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 271; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 157; Doyle, PT 109, 294.

  47. Quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 569.

  48. Donovan, PT 109, 89; Bill Hosokawa, “John F. Kennedy’s Friendly Enemy,” American Legion Magazine, June 1965; Doyle, PT 109, 1–9.

  49. Parmet, Jack, 107. Said William “Bud” Liebenow, who commanded PT 157, with respect to the 109 crew, “Not one of them ever had anything bad to say about JFK. And they are the ones who know.” Quoted in Doyle, PT 109, 176. Bucky Harris, for his part, declared: “If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here—I really feel that. I venture to say there are very few men who would swim out in that ocean alone without knowing what was underneath you. Brother, I wouldn’t do it….I thought he was great. Everybody on the crew thought he was top-notch.” Quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 602.

  50. Quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 610–11.

  51. “Ten Lives for Kennedy,” Argosy, July 1960. See also Donovan, PT 109, 124; and Stephen Plotkin, “Sixty Years Later, the Story of PT-109 Still Captivates,” Prologue 35, no. 2 (Summer 2003).

  52. Wills, Kennedy Imprisonment, 131. A more consistently sympathetic voice, that of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., said that Kennedy’s “leadership, resourcefulness, and cheer until rescue came…[made] this…one of the authentic passages of heroism in the war.” Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 82–83.

  53. Louis Denfeld to Russell Willson, April 7, 1944, box 22, JPKP; A. P. Cluster to JPK, January 9, 1944, box 22, JPKP. Kennedy is the only president to have received either of these honors.

  54. RK to children, August 25, 1943, box 2, JPKP. See also RK, Times to Remember, 293.

  55. Nasaw, Patriarch, 557.

  56. JFK to RK and JPK, August 13, 1943, box 2, JPKP.

  57. BG, August 19, 1943; NYT, August 20, 1943; Nasaw, Patriarch, 557–58.

  58. JFK to RK and JPK, n.d. (September 1943), box 5, JFKPP.

  59. JFK to JPK, n.d. (September 1943), box 2, JPKP.

  60. JFK to Inga Arvad, n.d. (September 1943), printed in Sandler, Letters, 31–33.

  61. JPK to JPK Jr., August 31, 1943, box 2, JPKP.

  62. JPK Jr. to parents, August 29, 1943, quoted in Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 662.

  63. Searls, Lost Prince, 202–3; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 325.

  64. RK, Times to Remember, 285.

  65. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 337, 339–40. In a letter home, he made light of his new title: “Got promoted…—purely routine—and am now a full Lieutenant. (Mother, you can look that up on your little chart—it’s the same as Captain in the Army.)” JFK to family, n.d. (received November 1, 1943), box 2, JPKP. Byron White co-authored the report on the PT 109 incident cited above. In 1962 Kennedy would nominate him for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he turned out to be more conservative than Kennedy and his advisers expected.

  66. O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 163, 164.

  67. The malaria symptoms would continue to plague him. See JPK to JFK, February 10, 1948, box 3, JPKP.

  68. JFK to RFK, November 14, 1943, in Donovan, PT 109, 152.

  69. Fay, Pleasure of His Company, 130–31.

  70. Hastings, Inferno, 422.

  71. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 352; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 638.


  72. The story appeared in dozens of newspapers nationwide; e.g., “Tells Story of PT Epic: Kennedy Lauds Men, Disdains Hero Stuff,” BG, January 11, 1944.

  73. BG, January 11, 1944; Farris, Inga, 306.

  CHAPTER 13: LOST PRINCE

  1. Smith, American Diplomacy, 74; Meacham, Franklin and Winston, chap. 9. On Tehran’s importance, see also Hamilton, War and Peace, part 3.

  2. Butler, Roosevelt, xliii, liv; NYT, December 7, 1943.

  3. Quoted in Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 243. On the symbiosis between the USSR’s manpower contribution and America’s productive might, see also Katznelson, Fear Itself, 17.

  4. Quoted in Evans, American Century, 354.

  5. Quoted in Harbutt, Yalta 1945, 131.

  6. Quoted in Ash, History of the Present, 214.

  7. Quoted in Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 347.

  8. Evans, American Century, 346.

  9. Evans, American Century, 346. See also Herman, Freedom’s Forge; and Baime, Arsenal of Democracy. Inevitably, Paul Bunyan–type yarns made the rounds, such as the one about the woman who was invited to christen a new ship. She was escorted to an empty launching pad and handed a bottle of champagne. “But where is the ship?” she asked, bewildered. “You just start swinging the bottle, lady,” a worker replied. “We’ll have the ship there.” Burns, Crosswinds of Freedom, 186.

  10. Liddell Hart, History of the Second, 23; Kennedy, Victory at Sea, chap. 8.

  11. Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 292.

  12. Thompson, Sense of Power.

  13. Dr. Paul O’Leary to Dr. Frank Lahey, January 18, 1944, box 21, JPKP; JFK to Clare Boothe Luce, January 11, 1944, Clare Boothe Luce Papers, LC.

  14. Rose Kennedy diary note, n.d. (January 1944), printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 573.

  15. Spalding OH, JFKL; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 640.

  16. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 354–55; Rose Kennedy diary note, n.d. (January 1944), printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 573. To her other children, however, Rose offered assurances that he was still the same Jack: “He wears his oldest clothes, still late for meals, still no money. He has even overflowed the bathtub, as was his boyhood custom, and I was the one who discovered it as the water came trickling down through the ceiling to my bath house below.” RK to children, January 31, 1944, box 3, JPKP.

  17. JFK to Inga Arvad, n.d. (September 1943), quoted in Leamer, Kennedy Men, 192–93; JFK to JPK and RK, September 1943, box 2, JFKPP.

  18. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 712; Max Hastings, “Imagining the Unimaginable,” New York Review of Books, May 10, 2018.

  19. Betty Coxe Spalding OH, CBP; Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 317–20, 364. A lengthy analysis of Hersey’s article and its genesis is in Hellman, Obsession, chap. 2.

  20. BG, February 12, 1944.

  21. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 365–66.

  22. Canellos, Last Lion, 23–24. Interestingly, research by historian Douglas Brinkley indicates that while in Miami, Kennedy may have made a stab at becoming a naval aviator. Records suggest he spent a number of days piloting Piper J-3 Cub floatplanes at the Embry-Riddle Seaplane Base. Brinkley, American Moonshot, 52.

  23. Quoted in Parmet, Jack, 117–18.

  24. JPK to JPK Jr., May 24, 1944, box 3, JPKP; Navy Department, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “History of USS PT-109,” n.d., box 132, President’s Office Files, JFKL; NYT, June 12, 1944; Dallek, Unfinished Life, 101–2.

  25. JFK to KLB, May 3, 1944, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 646.

  26. RK, Times to Remember, 265.

  27. KK to JFK, July 29, 1943, box 2, JPKP. See also Bailey, Black Diamonds, 346–51. In addition to their main seat at Chatsworth, the family owned Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire, Compton Place, in Eastbourne, Bolton Abbey, in Yorkshire, and Lismore Castle, in Ireland, as well as various townhouses in London.

  28. Byrne, Kick, 218–25; NYT, May 7, 1944. A few weeks after the wedding, Joe Junior wrote to his parents that “Kick is terribly happy, and I think everything will work out very well.” JPK Jr. to JPK and RK, June 23, 1944, box 3, JPKP.

  29. JPK Jr. to RK, telegram, May 6, 1944, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 586; JPK to JPK Jr., May 24, 1944, box 3, JPKP.

  30. JFK, As We Remember Joe (privately published, 1944), 54.

  31. JFK to KLB, May 19, 1944, KLBP, quoted in Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 652.

  32. Sorensen, Kennedy, 40.

  33. Treglown, Straight Arrow, 90–91.

  34. JFK to John Hersey, n.d. (1944), in Parmet, Jack, 119.

  35. John Hersey, “Survival,” The New Yorker, June 17, 1944.

  36. JPK to JPK Jr., May 24, 1944, box 3, JPKP; Doyle, PT 109, 201–2.

  37. Hellman, Obsession, 43.

  38. JFK to KLB, February 20, 1945, quoted in O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 171.

  39. McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 146.

  40. JPK Jr. to JFK, August 10, 1944, box 4a, JFKPP.

  41. RK, Times to Remember, 301.

  42. Four days before, he had written to his eldest son, “The reason I haven’t been writing you is that I have been expecting to hear the telephone ring any time and to hear that you were in Norfolk and were on your way home.” JPK to JPK Jr., August 9, 1944, box 3, JPKP.

  43. JPK Jr. to JPK and RK, August 4, 1944, box 3, JPKP.

  44. Axelrod, Lost Destiny, 160ff; Olsen, Aphrodite. The U.S. Army Air Forces called its version of the effort Operation Aphrodite. On the V-weapons and their impact, see Tami Davis Biddle, “On the Crest of Fear: V-Weapons, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Last Stages of World War II in Europe,” Journal of Military History 83, no. 1 (January 2019): 157–94; and Brinkley, American Moonshot, 31–39, 61–69.

  45. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 211.

  46. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 214; Searls, Lost Prince, 270–71.

  47. See Krock, Memoirs, 348.

  48. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 661. See also Brinkley, American Moonshot, 53–58.

  49. McNamara, Eunice, 69–70; JFK, As We Remember, 5. Part of the Navy Cross citation read, “For extraordinary heroism and courage in aerial flight as a pilot of a United States Liberator bomber on August 12, 1944. Well knowing the extreme dangers involved and totally unconcerned for his own safety, Lieutenant Kennedy unhesitatingly volunteered to conduct an exceptionally hazardous and special operations mission.”

  50. Whalen, Founding Father, 373; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 693.

  51. Krock, Memoirs, 348; Krock interview, Blair Papers.

  52. Kennedy, Times to Remember, 302; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 691. Chuck Spalding sent a touching condolence letter to Rose and Joe, in which he said he had not known Joe Junior well. Spalding to RK and JPK, September 2, 1944, box 4B, JFKPP.

  53. McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 175.

  54. Byrne, Kick, 253; Bailey, Black Diamonds, 375–76.

  55. Various items from this notebook, including Kick’s letter, are in box SG64, JKOP. Kick wrote, “If Eunice, Pat, and Jean marry nice guys for fifty years they’ll be lucky if they have five weeks like I did.” See also Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 87.

  56. JFK to KLB, February 20, 1945, quoted in O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 176; Martin, Hero for Our Time, 41. Choate headmaster George St. John congratulated Jack on a “real tribute, a tribute with breadth of appeal, showing the many facets of Joe’s personality.” Lem Billings, who saw the two brothers up close and understood the nature of their relationship, was moved to say, “When two brothers are growing up and they are two years apart you aren’t aware of a great love between them, but Jack’s editing of Joe’s memorial book was a real work of love.” Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 704–5; KLB OH, JFKL.

  57. JFK to JPK and RK, May 21, 1945, printed in Smith, Hostage to F
ortune, 619–20; O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 44.

  58. JFK, As We Remember Joe, 3–5; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 176–77.

  59. On the disappearance of the thesis, see Searls, Lost Prince, 109.

  60. Quoted in Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 48.

  61. O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 45. Professor William G. Carleton of the University of Florida, who participated in an evening discussion at Palm Beach in the spring of 1941, later said, “It was clear to me that John had a far better historical and political mind than his father or his elder brother; indeed, that John’s capacity for seeing current events in historical perspective and for projecting historical trends into the future was unusual.” Quoted in Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 80.

  62. JPK to Joe Kane, March 4, 1944, quoted in Savage, Senator from New England, 6.

  63. Parmet, Jack, 2, 125; Sorensen, Kennedy, 15. Lem Billings went further: “Nothing could have kept Jack out of politics: I think this is what he had in him and it just would have come out, no matter what.” Quoted in Brinkley, Kennedy, 22. Or, as sister Eunice put it three decades later, “It wasn’t like he was headed to be a doctor and had to change his course. Nothing like that. He was very interested in politics. It was just a natural culmination of his interests.” McNamara, Eunice, 82.

  64. Bradley to Pardee, December 19, 1944, box 19, JPKP; JFK to KLB, February 20, 1945, quoted in O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 179.

  65. “Let’s Try an Experiment in Peace,” box 21, DFPP; Edward Weeks to JFK, April 17, 1945, box 73, JFK Pre-Pres; JPK to Henry Luce, February 15, 1945, box 19, JPKP. There’s also a folder of materials pertaining to the article draft in box 19, JPKP.

  66. JFK, “Let’s Try an Experiment in Peace,” box 21, DFPP; Sandford, Union Jack, 83.

  67. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 365–67.

  68. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 416.

  CHAPTER 14: “POLITICAL TO HIS FINGERTIPS”

  1. Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, 600–36; Richard J. Bing, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Treatment of Hypertension: Matters at Heart,” Dialogues in Cardiovascular Medicine 12, no. 2 (2007): 133–35. Roosevelt’s health in his final months is ably explored in Lelyveld, His Final Battle.