Frank Knox (1 January 1874-28 April 1944) was the US Secretary of the Navy from 11 July 1940 to 28 April 1944, succeeding Charles Edison and preceding James V. Forrestal.
Biography[]
Frank Knox was born on 1 January 1874 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of two immigrants from Canada. Knox joined the US Army during the Spanish-American War and served with Theodore Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" in Cuba. After the war, he became a newspaper reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he founded New Hampshire's Manchester Leader in 1912. Knox rejoined the US Army as an artillery officer during World War I, and he became a partial owner of the Chicago Daily News. In 1936, he was Alf Landon's vice presidential nominee from the US Republican Party, but Franklin D. Roosevelt beat the Republicans in a landslide victory.
Nevertheless, Roosevelt appointed Knox Secretary of the Navy on 11 July 1940, and he supported aid to the Allied Powers and opposed isolationism during World War II. In his new position, he called for the internment of Japanese-Americans even before the start of the war, having done so since 1933. Knox went so far as to bar Americans of Japanese descent from serving in the US Navy during the war, having already pushed for their internment. After a series of heart attacks, he died in Washington DC on 28 April 1944, and James V. Forrestal succeeded him as Secretary of the Navy.