NAVY ARCHIVE,WOMAN IN WAVES,VARIOUS DOCUMENTS,IDs,PASSES TO D.C. BLDGS ETC,1940s

Description

INTERESTING ARCHIVE OF NAVY WAVE, ETHEL HELEN NEUBAUER.
Scan 1 shows her Certificate for successfully completing a course at the U.S. Naval Training School. November 1944,
qualifying her for the rating of Seaman First Class (Y).
Other paper and passes, including
signed letter of thanks for service in the Navy by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal....
with mailed official envelope.
Also a letter sent by Senator Joseph Ball to The Secretary of the President, asking the White House to show
her "special courtesies."
Passes to the Senate and House of Representatives.
A TYPED TWO PAGE CARBON LETTER TO "ALL WAVES, SPARS, AND BAMS"
ON SEVERAL TOPICS, NOTABLY A WOMAN'S PREGNANCY AND ITS EFFECT ON HER ACTIVE DUTY,
GIVING TIME FRAMES OF PREGNANCY AND RULES OF SERVICE AND LEAVE GRANTED.
Mostly Post War, 1947-48.
add .00 for 1st class/Insured to U.S.....
James Vincent Forrestal
(February 15, 1892 – May 22, 1949) was the last
Cabinet
-level
United States Secretary of the Navy
and the first
United States Secretary of Defense
.
[1]
Forrestal came from a very strict middle-class Irish Catholic family. He was a successful financier on Wall Street before becoming Undersecretary of the Navy in 1940, shortly before the United States entered the
Second World War
. He became Secretary of the Navy in May 1944 upon the death of his superior,
Frank Knox
. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
requested that Forrestal take the lead in building up the Navy. In 1947, after the end of the war, President
Harry S. Truman
appointed him the first secretary of the newly created Department of Defense. Forrestal was intensely hostile to the Soviet Union, fearing Communist expansion in Europe and the Middle East. Along with Secretary of State
George C. Marshall
, he strongly opposed the United States' support for the establishment of the
State of Israel
, fearing that this would alienate Arab nations which were needed as allies, and whose petroleum reserves were vital for both military and civilian industrial expansion.
Forrestal was a supporter of naval
battle groups
centered on
aircraft carriers
. He tried to weaken the proposed Department of Defense for the Navy's benefit, but was hard pressed to run it from 1947 to 1949 after Truman named him Secretary of Defense. The two men were often at odds, and Truman forced Forrestal's resignation.
Thereafter, Forrestal's mental health rapidly deteriorated, declining to the point in which he underwent medical care for depression. While a patient at
Bethesda Naval Hospital
, Forrestal died by suicide from fatal injuries sustained after falling out a sixteenth floor window.
In 1954, the USN's new
supercarrier
was named
USS
Forrestal
in his honor, as is the
James V. Forrestal Building
, which houses the headquarters of the
United States Department of Energy
. He is the namesake of the Forrestal Lecture Series at the
United States Naval Academy
and of the
James Forrestal Campus
of his alma mater
Princeton University
.