What if John F. Kennedy died during World War 2? It is not far-fetched. Kennedy’s older brother died in 1944 during the war. Kennedy himself almost perished in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1943 after the Japanese sank his PT boat. How would the twentieth century be different in America without John F. Kennedy’s presidency? His name would be reduced to a trivia answer. What were the names of Robert F. Kennedy’s two older brothers whose deaths in WW2 rocketed the third Kennedy brother to political stardom? Instead, JFK’s premature death came twenty years after World War 2 while he was president.
Welcome to History Week! Today, we will explore JFK’s life from childhood to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Childhood
John F. Kennedy was born in 1917 in the Boston suburbs to one of the most prominent families in Massachusetts. As Irish-Roman Catholics, Kennedy’s family built a power base despite a society dominated by WASPs (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant). With eight siblings, JFK grew up in a large family led by their father, wealthy businessman Joseph P. Kennedy. His mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the daughter of Boston mayor John Fitzgerald. As an avid baseball fan, I first heard John Fitzgerald’s name in the book World Series Classics by Dan Gutman as a young child. I marveled at Gutman’s description of Fitzgerald:
“It was Monday night, the night before the World Series, and the streets of Manhattan were jumping. Three hundred crazed Red Sox fans who called themselves the Royal Rooters were marching and dancing down Broadway. Leading the parade in his silk hat was the flamboyant mayor of Boston, John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald. His grandson—John F. Kennedy—would one day be president of the United States.”[1]
Clearly, Kennedy’s family members were wealthy and influential. Nevertheless, they knew how to have a good time, as Honey Fitz’s leading the most die-hard Red Sox fans down the streets of Manhattan before the World Series shows. This parade occurred in 1912, the day before a World Series began in which the Red Sox defeated the New York Giants in eight nail-biting games (including one tie on account of darkness). JFK took after his maternal grandfather’s boisterous spirit and desire for fun.
The Navy
Upon graduating from boarding school, JFK enrolled in Harvard, like much of his family before him. He hurt his back playing on the football team and dealt with the pain for many years. After finishing Harvard, JFK joined the Navy. Assigned to the Pacific Theater during WW2, his experience with the Japanese Navy sinking his patrol torpedo boat took place in August of 1943. At twenty-six, Kennedy found himself in command of the surviving, stranded sailors. He was not comfortable in the situation. In his book Killing Kennedy, Bill O’Reilly describes Kennedy at the time. “He is twenty-six, rail thin, and deeply tanned, a Harvard-educated playboy whose father forced him to leave naval intelligence to seek a combat position when it was discovered that his son’s Danish mistress was suspected of being a Nazi spy. Being second-born in a family where great things are expected from the oldest son, Kennedy has had the luxury of a frivolous life.”[2] Kennedy matured during this harrowing time, stranded in the Pacific Ocean for several days. He helped his men dodge enemy soldiers and eventually to safety with the help of native islanders.[3] In 1944, JFK’s older brother, Joseph Kennedy, died when his plane crashed over Europe, leaving John the oldest surviving brother.[4]
Politics
Being the oldest brother in the Kennedy family meant a career in politics. Kennedy served three terms in Congress from 1946–1952, when he became one of the two senators from Massachusetts. In 1953, he married Jacqueline Bouvier, better known as Jackie Kennedy. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dominated American politics in the 1950s, serving with broad popular support for two terms. When Eisenhower’s second term ended in 1960, JFK’s star had risen enough to become the Democratic party’s nominee for president against Eisenhower’s Vice President—Richard Nixon. In an upset, Kennedy won by about 100,000 votes and 84 electoral votes. The AMC TV show Mad Men vividly portrays the 1960 election in season one and the shock many Americans felt at the result. Still, Kennedy now was the first Roman Catholic to hold the most powerful office in the United States. He would immediately be faced with a myriad of domestic and international crises.
The Civil Rights Movement
On April 15th, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped up to the plate for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Almost seventy-seven years ago, he integrated Major League Baseball. The military and other sports would soon follow. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. By the late 1950s, Martin Luther King Jr. had established himself as one of the most prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. JFK generally supported MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. Providing support for MLK while maintaining the Democrat Party’s traditional support among white Southerners would prove a challenge.
The Space Race
In the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cultural, political, and technological battle for world influence and power. In 1961, JFK promised the USA would land a man on the moon by 1970—a bold claim at a time when the Soviet Union was undoubtedly leading the race. They put the first satellite and the first man in space, humiliating America.[5] Kennedy’s words would prove prophetic, but he would not live to see it.
The Cold War
The USA’s rivalry with the Communistic Soviet Union came close several times to armed conflict. War in the Korean Peninsula between Communists and non-Communists lasted for several years in the early 1950s. The Vietnam War started before JFK’s presidency and continued long after his death. The most important Cold War event of JFK’s life, however, took place in October 1962. In 1959, Communists led by Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, very close to Florida’s border. In 1961, Kennedy approved a CIA-backed coup to overthrow Castro’s government. The CIA armed and supported anti-Castro Cuban expatriates in an invasion of Cuba. Castro’s nascent government managed to defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion, increasing his control of the island and damaging American prestige worldwide.
The following year, Castro worked with the Soviets to bring nuclear missiles to Cuba. Just a few dozen miles off the US coastline, these nuclear warheads could hit almost the entire American continent. Nuclear war seemed imminent as the USA made plans to invade Cuba and topple their government with American troops.[6] Kennedy ordered Cuba “quarantined” by the US Navy to keep more Soviet military equipment from arriving. Between October 22nd and October 28th, 1962, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev communicated back and forth. On the edge of nuclear war, Khrushchev backed down and destroyed the Soviet missile installations in Cuba. Again, the AMC TV show Mad Men vividly shows in living color the fear and terror that permeated the USA during those October days. For many, nuclear war not starting felt like a new lease on life. Not surprisingly, Kennedy’s popularity soared in the months after October 1962.
About a year later, in November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated. That momentous event will be the subject of next month’s history article.
Sources
Gutman, Dan, World Series Classics, New York: Viking, 1994.
The Kingfisher History of Encyclopedia, New York: Kingfisher, 1999.
O’Reilly, Bill and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012.
Here are the websites hyperlinked above.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/bay-of-pigs
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-kennedy
https://www.270towin.com/1960_Election/
[1] Gutman, World Series Classics, 4.
[2] O’Reilly, Killing Kennedy, 22.
[3] O’Reilly, Killing Kennedy, 30–31.
[4] O’Reilly, Killing Kennedy, 31.
[5] The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, 438.
[6] The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, 437.