1941 — JFK Joins The U.S. Navy
After the war broke out, Kennedy’s plans to enroll at Yale University were scrapped, so instead, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, and despite months of training in order to enter the army’s Officer Candidate School, he was medically disqualified due to his chronic lower back problems. However, his contribution to the war would instead come with the help of his father.
The then director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Alan Kirk, who had formerly been a naval attaché to Kennedy’s father, intervened to get him accepted JFK into the U.S. Navy. He initially served as an ensign in the Secretary of the Navy’s Office until the ‘day that would live in infamy,’ the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
