General Records of the Department of the Navy: Public Statements of the Secretary of the Navy (Record Group 80)

The records consist of transcripts of the speeches and public statements of Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal from April 1945 to September 1947.

Size: 5 linear inches (about 600 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: Records created by U.S. Government employees in the course of their official duties are in the public domain.
Processed by: Philip D. Lagerquist (1969); Deborah Keating (2010).

The Department of the Navy (Record Group 80) was established by an act of Congress on April 30, 1798. In 1947, the National Security Act combined the Department of the Navy, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force into the National Military Establishment (NME), under the Secretary of Defense. In 1949, further legislation transformed the NME into the Department of Defense.

The collection consists of three bound volumes containing transcripts of the speeches, press releases and public statements of Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal from April 1945 to September 1947.

James V. Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level Secretary of the Navy. He was appointed to that position by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 19, 1944 and served until September 17, 1947, when he resigned to become the first Secretary of Defense.

Included in his public statements are comments on the death of President Roosevelt and Ernie Pyle, messages congratulating the Navy on the successful completion of the war with Japan, statements and testimony relating to planned reorganizations of the armed forces, and transcripts of speeches given by Secretary Forrestal to various government and civic organizations.

The Truman Library also has the public statements of Forrestal and his successors as Secretary of Defense from 1947 to 1952 (Record Group 330) and the public statements of the Secretary of War from 1945 to 1947 (Record Group 107).